The American Spectator

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I agree, compensation should have been paid for the slaves, and it is my thought that this should have been the main approach throughout. But once war was in process, all calculations of propriety about "property" went out the window.

If only both sides could have foreseen how awful the war would have been.... Best, Ben

*****

You raise very good questions regarding our Civil War/War of Northern Aggression/War of the Slaveholder's Rebellion. If you want these answered, then next time you happen to be in God's country (i.e. the Midwest) please stop by for a meeting of the Civil War Round Table of Eastern Kansas here in Topeka and we will feed you and answer your every question. Aw heck, don't worry about making it to a scheduled meeting, we'll entertain you anytime.

p>And did you know there was a war west of Virginia, and, yes, even west of the Mississippi! br> -- Bryce Benedict br> Past President CWRTEK /p>

Thank you for the invite. Of course I know about the war west of the Mississippi. I even know about bleeding Kansas before the war. Best, Ben

*****

Excellent questions all, and probably each could support at least one doctoral dissertation. So my answers necessarily will be incomplete, schematic, and oversimplified.

1. Did The Civil War Have To Be Fought? Obviously not: there had been plenty of chances for it to be fought before, on both the same grounds and on other grounds. However, once the Southern states committed themselves to leaving the Union if Lincoln became President -- and Lincoln remained committed to the core plank of his party's platform, preserving the Union -- war was inevitable.

2. To slightly restate this -- assuming, as I do, that slavery was a moral evil of horrendous proportions -- could it not have been allowed to wither away? Yes, it could: in fact, it did wither away in some other countries, including Brazil.

3. Why was it legal for the colonies to rebel against Britain but not for the South to rebel against the North? Neither act was "legal" in the sense of being permitted under the constitutional arrangements of either relationship. The signers of the Declaration of Independence did not appeal to the British constitution as their basis for action, but to a natural-rights theory of good government. The secessionists had already tried (and failed) to make their argument for a fuller concept of state sovereignty in 1832 during the Nullification Crisis: in this sense, the issue of secession was already well-settled by the time of the Civil War.

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