Are you aware of a good history of the pre-civil war years that explains how slavery in the south was going extinct and the war was not necessary?
I had not heard of the anti-cotton boycott before, and I am interested in reading more about those efforts. I always held Lincoln in high esteem and the civil war as inevitable in light of the failure of Buchanan’s failure as a president and the seemingly intractable divide in the US.
...I always held Lincoln in high esteem and the civil war as inevitable in light of the failure of Buchanan’s failure as a president and the seemingly intractable divide in the US.
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Well, that’s just it. A good president would have prevented the civil war, and come to better negotiations. ANY option would have been better then decimating half of the country and millions of Americans.
As a kid in the North (and I’m an old guy), we were taught about the civil war, and in such tones (such as the south had it coming, and yes we financially punished them, therefore Lincoln was great), that we actually bought into it all.
Later in life though, as one reads and learns more about the history of such, my own thoughts to go the notion this war was unavoidable, but rather he was egged on and goaded into it, made to feel that there was no alternative (or he just had bad judgement).
If Lincoln were alive today and asked “was it worth it”? I wonder what his response would be.
Time would have been a better strategy to end slavery, and states rights would have been kept intact.