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“It's all now you see. Yesterday won't be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it's still not yet two o'clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it's all in the balance, it hasn't happened yet, it hasn't even begun yet, it not only hasn't begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it's going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn't need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago; or to anyone who ever sailed a skiff under a quilt sail, the moment in 1492 when somebody thought This is it: the absolute edge of no return, to turn back now and make home or sail irrevocably on and either find land or plunge over the world's roaring rim.” ― William Faulkner, Intruder in the Dust

I'd just like to take a moment to remind one and all about Crispus Atticks. Shot dead during the Boston Massacre and first casualty of the American Revolution. Unfortunately not much is known about him, other than that his father was a black slave and his mother a Natick Indian.

Incidentally, if you don't think the waters of Boston Harbor, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, are clear, that is because of the tea we threw into it.

That's all ...........now let's get back to the War of Southern Secession........

If Lee had won at Gettysburg, which was his intention, what would he have done next? Would he have said “I have whipped the Yankees and now I shall retire to my Virgina home and live in peace and prosperity’’.? As any sensible commander of an army which had just won a decisive victory over it's enemy, on his own territory , you either force him to surrender, seize his major cities or his capitol city and for certain you make damn sure he cannot be in a position to recover his strength to re-attack, defeat you and finish you off. Thank God Lee was an idiot and lost The Battle Of Gettysburg. It lost the South the war. That and the fact that the very next day Vicksburg fell to the North, splitting the Confederacy in two and giving the North control of the vital Mississippi River. At that point if Lee had any brains or decency he would have known the jig was up but he led the slaughter for two more years.

This popped up again at FR, and I am glad it did.

I noticed some discussion as to why War Between The States (WBTS) are posted. I can’t say in general, but I appreciate this article because I want to know the truth about things.

Tariff policy was very important and controversial in the early 19th century and may well have been a major contributor to the Civil War. I first read about this in a book on US tax history written by Charles Adams:
Those Dirty Rotten Taxes: The Tax Revolts That Built America

https://www.amazon.com/Those-Dirty-Rotten-Taxes-Revolts/dp/0684871149/181-8250648-8390154?ie=UTF8&*Version*=1&*entries*=0

If memory serves, Lincoln said the south could secede provided it collected and paid the tariff. I often say context is everything. So Lincoln’s words could be taken at face value, presented as a “poison pill,” etc.

I think an individual state may have had as much right to secede then as Britain has today in the case of the European Union. Slavery was not the only cause for war. At the time it might have been a minor cause.

I certainly do not know the mind of God. Still, it is sometimes fun to attempt a theological perspective. The devil is sometimes presented at using our good inclinations against us; God as bringing good out of bad. Perhaps the “wrong side” won the Civil War, but this event was used to end slavery (win WWI, WWII, and the cold war).