[Peace-discuss] the stinkin' lincoln legacy

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Actually that's not quite it, Mort.

We are being asked to honour the lingering legacy of a past president.

In order for him to have any legacy he had to do Something, and we are 
discussing
whether he should be honoured or tried as a war criminal after the order 
of Mr. Bush
and his apparent protege' Mr. Obama.

All of which requires some examination of history.  Given the patience 
of "paper" and
the malleability of representations, we don't know what the future might 
have been, but we
are also certain that the past has been altered too.


On 5/21/2009 3:28 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> I find all this discussion about what might have been rather silly. No 
> one knows what the future might have been, in the short or thelong 
> run,  if other actions/policies had been taken before or after Fort 
> Sumter. It's what's called idle speculation, that leads to nowhere.   
> --mkb
>
> On May 21, 2009, at 3:07 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> Options other than war were available to Lincoln, and he was aware of 
>> them.
>>
>> Advice came from the most distinguished American military figure of 
>> the day,
>> Gen. Winfield Scott (1786-1866). He served on active duty as a 
>> general longer
>> than any other man in American history and may have been the ablest 
>> American
>> commander of his time; he devised the Anaconda Plan that would be 
>> used to defeat
>> the Confederacy.
>>
>> In a letter addressed to  Governor Seward (leading Republican and 
>> Lincoln's Secretary of State) -- and obviously meant for Lincoln's 
>> eyes -- on the day preceding Lincoln's inauguration (March 3, 1861), 
>> Scott suggested that the president had four possible courses of action:
>>
>>  [1] adopt the Crittenden Compromise (which restored the Missouri 
>> Compromise
>> line: slavery would be prohibited north of the 36° 30′ parallel and 
>> guaranteed
>> south of it);
>>
>>  [2] collect duties outside the ports of seceding States or blockade 
>> them;
>>
>>  [3] conquer those States at the end of a long, expensive, and 
>> desolating war,
>> and to no good purpose; or,
>>
>>  [4] say to the seceded States, "Wayward sisters, depart in peace!"
>>
>> Scott clearly preferred the forth.  In retrospect, it probably would 
>> have been best.
>>
>> (For more on why that would have been the case, see the recent book 
>> by William Marvel I mentioned the other day.)  --CGE
>>
>>
>> John W. wrote:
>>> On Thu, May 21, 2009 at 10:37 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag 
>>> <mailto:ewj at pigs.ag>> wrote:
>>> Death toll from "Lincoln's War"
>>> "The number that is most often quoted is 620,000. At any rate, these
>>> casualties exceed the nation's loss in all its other wars, from the
>>> Revolution through Vietnam."
>>> Adjusted for today's US population, the number would be over 6 million.
>>> I'm curious what you would have done as President in 1861, Wayne. 
>>> Simply let
>>> the South secede?
>>> ------------------------------------------------------------------------ 
>>>
>>
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