Lincoln won the Civil War, not on the battlefield, but in the thoughtspace. He kept borderline slave holding states in the Union via wise diplomacy, maintaining the high ground, and politicking appropriately.
Brown lost the war. It was the South who, if wiser more mature men had succeeded, could have walked away from the Union. The attack on Ft. Sumter handed the war and the moral high ground to the North.
Follow the example of Lincoln and we win, bigger than FReepers realize. We’re about to take both Houses of Congress. We hold in 100% control over half the states. Unionism is on the decline. The corrupt, socialist urban model that dominates in NY, CA and IL is dying and dying hard. Don’t give the losers an opportunity to win.
Pivot away from Bundy, make him one of ten thousand and you win your cause without sullying it with a kook.
Last I check, Brown won the war. He prevented the “wiser more mature men” from succeeding. Not a coincidence that the Battle Hymn of the Republic is built upon John Brown’s Body.
Who knows how the election of 1860 would have turned out without Harper’s Ferry, but once a majority of voters in a majority of states, though they themselves were an overall minority, had adopted a more radical course, and another polarized group pulled their officials out of Washington, things happened.
“Lincoln won the Civil War, not on the battlefield, but in the thoughtspace.”
Lincoln was a tyrant that took to the mud early on. He won through Sherman’s march to the sea. You don’t know history, son.