[Who is John Galt?]

Fail.

If you're going to call for troops to prevent the departure of several States from the union (which was nowhere prohibited by the Constitution), you probably wouldn't want to drive several more States out of the union by that action...

[MikefromOhio]

Fail. If you're going to call for troops to prevent the departure of several States from the union (which was nowhere prohibited by the Constitution), you probably wouldn't want to drive several more States out of the union by that action...

If you're going to fire the first shot, make damned sure you can win the fight.

Once that invisible but very real line is crossed, no one was right and EVERYONE paid for it. You can whine about lincoln or sherman the hero or Grant or whatever, but in the end, the South's own stubbornness and leadership ineptitude to fully use its resources doomed it.

The Union even spotted the south two full years and they couldn't get the job done. Of course had the south had the foresight to USE the manpower it held in shackles, they would possibly be a separate country even to this day. But had they had the foresight to use their slaves in an efficient and HUMANE manner, the sniping between the NOrth and South never would have happened to the scale it did.

Sorry if you can't handle that.