re: #291 lostlakehiker

The union did not start the civil war.

(1) The south seceded. Secession includes taking over federal property, and as such it’s an act of war.

(2) The south fired the first shot.

Unless you want to call it an act of war to elect a president who favors the restriction of slavery to just those states where it’s already established, you can’t say that the north started the war.

A mindset that says we get to expand forever, and if you get in our way the war’s on you, is nuts. It’s doubly nuts when what you’re expanding is slavery.

Well put. I was making a distinction between an act of war as seen by the Feds and the Confeds and their interpretation of the constitutional powers of the Federal Government and the moral obligation to hold the union together and abolish slavery. A fine distinction to be sure but one the South felt justified their actions nonetheless. It wasn’t all so clear cut in the 1860s and the Union was the first to amass an army (vs the isolated actions of state militias) and cross over into the other side’s territory (making it a general war and not an isolated skirmish.

I repeat- I side with the Union and agree with the decision to engage in a general war with the confederacy to keep the Union under a single government and abolish slavery.