Yeah, isn't it awful? What a horrible country! We should have left slavery in place rather than break the law.
I guess the whole "the constitution isn't a suicide pact" phrase so beloved about here gets tossed in the trash when blacks are considered Americans in the 1860's.
Oh, right, they weren't citizens, so we should have stuck to the letter of the law. I guess if slaves were all, say, Irish people or Brits we'd all feel the same way. Should have just let slavery die in its own time. Not like slaves were PEOPLE.
I await the laughable flames from those who want to pretend slavery had NOTHING to do with the Civil War.
The whole concept of one person owning another is was and shall always be an abomination. We should have freed the slaves first, then fired on Ft. Sumter.
Lt Gen. James Longstreet CSA June 1863
FYI, Maryland, Delaware, Kentucky and Missouri remained in the Union during the war and were also slave states. In addition, Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamaion was written only for the slaves in the South. Those in the North were excluded. Of course, as everyone knows, the Proclamation freed no one; it was only used in an attempt to incite insurrection among the slaves.