“With malice toward none...”
...except the hundreds of thousands of innocents his generals had just killed in the South. As a proportion of the population today, it’s millions.
A speech can’t take away these blunders. No other nation required a war to end slavery. The amount of money the union spent on the war could have bought the freedom of every slave.
+1
"Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained."
I think the Southerners had a lot to do with that as well.
No other nation required a war to end slavery.
No other nation has a large section willing to go to war to protect slavery.
The amount of money the union spent on the war could have bought the freedom of every slave.
In retrospect that's probably true. But it's also irrelevant because there was no desire in the South to end slavery, either through compensated means or any other.
It’s too bad that south chose to go to war and cause the loss of all those soldiers. BTW: the south refused to entertain the notion of a federal slave “buy-back” program.
Tell that the confederates who STARTED the war to PRESERVE slavery.
American exceptionalism?
The amount of money the union spent on the war could have bought the freedom of every slave.
To make a purchase, you have to have somebody willing to sell, and there weren't many slave owners in the Deep South willing to sell in 1860, and wouldn't be for years to come. If we tried to force them to do so, then pretty much what you complain about would have happened anyway.