All of you suffer most from Wilson and the progressive movement, namely public education. I have read your thoughts and it seems most of you lack a good history education, as well as the ability to discern and explain cause and effect because A happened before B does not mean A cused B. Public education purposfully destroys critical thinking, think about it when was the last time the students were required to learn about Thomas Jefferson from Thomas Jefferson, and explain what you learned and why you draw those conclusions, trying to instill such rigor only in later years is a pointless endeavor.
As for the Presidents, Lincoln and the North did not start the civil war or cause it the south did. The key period you need to look up is 1833 - 1855. Key topics are the Compromise of 1833 in which congress declared that all new states coming into the union would be 'free'. And the lincoln-douglass debates of late 1850's, as well as the war hawks such as John C. Calhoun. Essentially the south decided to go to war because they realized that as free states grew in number the slave holding regions would be far out numbered by the free. They were corect. On the intelectual front the country was beginning to quesion openly that which the founders questioned privately, "how can a nation founded on the high ideals of liberty co-exist with the institutions of slavery" it cannot unfortunately the founders knew if they would not have opportunity to deal with this in thier lifetimes so almost everyone of them on thier death beds freed thier slaves and even left provision for them to start a new life. This act was a death bed declaration they hoped thier more enlighted sons catch on to. They did not, and a civil war was used to answer this question as well as defining the balance of Federal versus state power, unfortunatley it was Federalist senators and congressman who wanted to Punish the south, which they did againsts the Lincoln administration, and after Lincoln assassination they did just that resulting in the period known as 'Reconstruction' this caused a knee jerk reaction against the negro population because they were seen as tools used by the north to control and take advantage of the south and thus on and on until the Civil Rights movement. Even to this day southerners despise "Yankees" for thier belief in big centralized and controling governmen. As for civil war and ww1 deaths, this is due to mainly advances in warfare tecnology ahead of battlefield tacticts, men were using revolution era tacticts in an age of rifles, machine guns and first uses of chemical and biological warfare.
As the next few decades rolled by, the those at the helm of the Abolitionist movement, went on to use government coercion to push 'social reform. Evangelicals such as D.L. Moody, Charles Spurgeon, in conjuction with remnants of the Quaker and Shaker movements made popular the "Social Gospel" of the 1880's through early 1900's. President McKinley in the late 1890s was the first to depart from the monroe doctrine, in issues with spain over cuba, thus resulting the Spanish American War. This set the tone for Woodrow Wilson and 'The War to End All Wars' better known as world war 1. After this bloody encounter the nation knee jerked back to Isolationism and the Do-gooders turned thier attention to domestic intervention, with such ideas as prohibition, income tax ect. leading to the the Great Depression (Mises et al) culminating in the new deal. Every President up until Reagan has furthered interventionism in some way or another. Now in the spirit Mr. Mises I think it to soon to start determining whether his policies were good or bad longterm, and while he was a foriegn interventionist, his ideals of people needing to be free of intervention from government and the encouragment of individual enterprise that are already proving prosperous. Example, Bill Gate, Steve Jobs, Micheal Dell three college drop outs who started finacial empires and business revolution FROM A GARAGE, early in the eighties a company called Comp USA obtained grants from the Reagan administration to take ARPA NET and develpe it the result was the internet, the rest is history.
In conclusion it is aggresive movements and arrogance that propels interventions at home and abroad, presidents are the culmination of this. Moving forward we need to reject the idea government is responsible for the people, but people for the government. We must in order to enjoy liberty and the persuit of happiness accecpt its noble responsibilities. Society today does not have the moxie to govern itself, for Life Liberty and self governance require responsibility and self restraint, young men and women today do not understand this, to create anew the lofty ideals of our founding fathers we must accept that action without consequences cannot exist or be promoted, we must restrain our lower angels and raise our sons and daughters to do the same. Perhaps then when we are old we will see great men and women leading this country that we can be proud of for centuries to come.