[Peace-discuss] Lincoln-AWARE debate

[Bob Illyes]

John writes "I'm curious what you would have done as President in 1861, 
Wayne.  Simply let the South secede? "

Consider the advantages. Instead of red and blue states, we'd have a red 
and a blue county. We could have had wars all the way to the West coast and 
probably beyond. What more could one ask? Whoops- I forgot that this is an 
ANTI-war group.

Lincoln wasn't prepared to start a war over secession. Fort Sumter forced a 
decision. I think it was the wrong decision, but it was certainly a hard 
one. Lacking a crystal ball to look down both paths, we cannot know if 
Lincoln made the right choice, or if it would have been better to let the 
Confederacy go. It is the case that after we got Britain out of the mix we 
didn't have another war with Canada, and one can use this to argue that 
there would not have been war if secession had been allowed. On the other 
hand, the South was hyper-militarized due to a fear of slave rebellions, 
and I'm not so sure that we wouldn't have had war anyhow over who owned 
which part of the West. The Union would have been pinched between British 
Canada and the pro-British Southern oligarchs, which is fairly scarry to 
think about.

In any case, it is done.

A perhaps more interesting question is whether or not the American 
Revolution was a good idea. I say yes, but I'm quite sure that there are 
people monitoring this list who don't think so. This is a somewhat better 
test of the purity of ones anti-war stance.

Bob