Today’s author was a veteran of World War I. I think he may well have been indulging in wishful thinking.
There was a time when only two countries in the entire world were headed by females, Thatcher in Britain, and Indira in India. Both were engaged in shooting wars, with Argentina and Pakistan, respectively.
You see Palestinian mothers offer their sons to Allah on a daily basis.
I believe it was Robert E. Lee who is supposed to have said that it is well that war is so horrible, or we should grow fond of it. It makes a small, sane, humane part of me wince to see reenactors celebrating war.
When I read the history of events leading up to the Civil War and read the statements of leaders on both sides, it makes me almost ill knowing what came next. The same with the First World War. If anyone knew the pending horrors, they would have moved heaven and earth to avoid those tragic, pointless conflicts.
The Civil War did yield one beneficial effect, the end of slavery. But anyone reading contemporary accounts knows that “the peculiar institution” was already moribund, and probably would have been phased out in a generation or two, but a generation or two is a lifetime to the bondman. We are still dealing with the mess that the Civil War generated.
I agree with everything you said.
That lie - that The Civil War was fought in order to end slavery - is no different than the lie we are always told:
That the purpose of giving the government more power is to protect the little people from the rich and powerful. The government IS the rich and powerful!
It’s just sad to see how easily people can be convinced of something so patently absurd.