Replies

CommerceComet: "Possibly but first you have to prove the point that different standards are appropriate."

DiogenesLamp: "So far as I can see, it is axiomatic that someone defending their homeland should be given more leeway in making hard decisions to protect themselves and their families.
Why should the invader be given any consideration?
No one is threatening their lands and homes, wives and children."

Among the many fallacies in DiogenesLamp's arguments are these: Secessionists in 1861 did not simply "defend their homeland", they invaded Union states, Union territories and Unionist regions of secessionist states.
They provoked, started & declared war against the United States, leading the Confederate Secretary of State, Robert Toombs to tell Jefferson Davis:

"Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North.
You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountain to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death.
It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."[15]

Toombs was right, Jefferson Davis and DiogenesLamp were wrong.

CommerceComet: "Lincoln felt that the union must be preserved."

DiogenesLamp: "As a domineering Husband would think his wife must not be allowed to leave.
Shouldn't it be up to the wife?"

In fact, the metaphorical "wife" was allowed to leave peacefully, but she soon returned with her posse and guns a blazing to take as much of the property as she could grab.

DiogenesLamp: "Someone leaving you is not a condition of 'desperation' unless you are some sort of psychotic.
Someone raining body blows on you and injuring you grievously is a condition that would be desperate, but someone saying they no longer wish to associate with you is not going to constitute a threat to your life."

Right, body blows, such as:

Violent seizures of dozens of Federal forts, ships, arsenals & mints,
Threatening, firing on & killing Union officials, some in Union states,
Declaration of War against the United States (May 6, 1861)
Invasions of Union states & territories.

Those "body blows"

DiogenesLamp: "This "Preserve the Union" is not a very good justification for killing 750,000 people in direct war, and perhaps as many as 2 million in subsequent starvation, disease, and loss of life from exposure.
It is also not a good reason to break the Federalism which was originally established by the founders."

The alleged "2 million" is a statistical fantasy.
Regardless, all responsibility for every death belongs to the Confederate leadership which provoked, started, declared & continued to wage war against the United States long after it served any conceivable purpose.

BroJoeK,

Thanks for responding to that. I've been busy the last few days and frankly, there was so much wrong with his comments and analogies, I wasn't quite sure where to start. Proverbs 26:4 came to my mind.

Among the many fallacies in DiogenesLamp's arguments are these: Secessionists in 1861 did not simply "defend their homeland", they invaded Union states, Union territories and Unionist regions of secessionist states.

Pray tell, in what incident did the forces of the Confederate army invade Union states prior to the Union starting a war with them?

The Union army did invade Southern states first. I know of no incidents in which the Confederate Army invaded Union states first.