Third, if I'm right about the South being, at some level, driven toward conflict -- driven, I might say, to destruction (this will be the subject of the next installment) -- then that, too, might have made a peace between the USA and the CSA difficult to maintain.
Despite all those, I believe that an attempt at negotiating the division of the United States into two nations would have been preferable to the course taken.
Lincoln never considered it. (Many others in the North advocated a position like mine: let the South go, they said, weary of the trouble-making and bullying they'd experienced from that region.)
I don't know if Lincoln is to be faulted here. But I hold some space in my thinking for the idea that, in the course Lincoln took, the North bears some responsibility for the fact that the central issue of that era was decided not peacefully but through a monstrous war.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
1
1
