If you want to avoid war, don't think of your fellow countrymen as the enemy and recognize that they have a vote and a say in what happens to the country too.
Lincoln's "vote" wasn't for war. It was for the continuation of the union. But I'm talking about the weeks, months, years, and decades before Fort Sumter. There was a major strategic failure by Southern elites. They had been dominant in the early Republic, but they were too attached to slavery and the money it brought in to think clearly about their future and the nation's.
And this applied to the British too? Seems as though the defining rule is the boundaries of states, not the entire collective.
Lincoln's "vote" wasn't for war. It was for the continuation of the union.
No different from an abusive husband deciding for the wife that she will not be allowed to leave him. What if she doesn't want to remain in the Union?
There was a major strategic failure by Southern elites. They had been dominant in the early Republic, but they were too attached to slavery and the money it brought in to think clearly about their future and the nation's.
It seems like Washington DC was too attached to slavery and the money it brought in. Why again was it important or necessary to keep states everyone hated in the Union, when those states didn't want to remain in the Union?
We let Cuba go. We let the Philippines go. We didn't keep Mexico. So why was it necessary to keep those states that wanted out?
Also, isn't keeping people against their will the very essence of slavery?