In fact, my main complaint with Non-Sequitur's argument was that he making Lincoln the sole actor in the affair, and that distorts the picture of what happened at Sumter. To say Lincoln did not know how the South would respond is a distortion of Lincoln's great political savvy.
In fact, my main complaint with Non-Sequitur's argument was that he making Lincoln the sole actor in the affair, and that distorts the picture of what happened at Sumter. To say Lincoln did not know how the South would respond is a distortion of Lincoln's great political savvy.
To say that Lincoln could predict the South's response with 100% accuracy is an equal distortion. Were Davis' or Lincoln's actions entirely predictable to the other side of the dispute, the whole thing would have been a bizarre kabuki play, with each on predetermined tracks. They were not playing Grandmaster chess, they were playing all-in poker.
And it is also to ignore the repeatedly posted quotation from Lincoln's own personal secretary and enthusiastic cheerleader, John Nicolay, that shows very definitively that Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing, and why, and to whom.
Non-Sequitur has made an online career of the forensic foot-fault called "slothful induction". He simply refuses, without acknowledgement but persistently and tenaciously, to recognize valid points made, supported, and documented with data and contemporary source documents, and goes on levelling his charges, accusations, and snarks without regard to what actually happened, firstly, and secondly in utter disregard of any previous actual refutation of his assorted arguments and themes that may have been put up by his interlocutors.
His theory seems to be that if you are a Southerner, you are a talking dog, and not to be taken seriously. Your documents are trash, even when the sources are on Non-Sequitur's own side, or unimpeachable in their authority (such as, e.g. Federalist 39 re-posted to him above by another poster for about the 14th time), and any points made or documents offered are instantly vitiated and transubstantiated into ontological nullities by their issuing from a Bad and Faithless (i.e. rebellious Southern) Person, viz., you.
To sum up, Non-Sequitur is intransigently dishonest in debate.
So don't worry about him. Just make sure you don't let him lie to the noobs.
And that, gentlemen, is called "calling it the way it is."