Re: “What if we had left Fort Sumter alone?”
I think we had an economic alternative, too.
Lincoln could have offered to purchase all the slaves.
Obviously, there would be huge down stream problems still to solve - where do they live - are they voting citizens, etc.
But the cost of the War was many, many, many times more expensive.
Bottom Line - I do not think the Civil War would have happened once the issue of Slavery was removed.
The eventual solution - the total destruction of the Southern states, and the uneducated freed slaves left to live among their former owners - was incomprehensibly stupid.
“The eventual solution - the total destruction of the Southern states, and the uneducated freed slaves left to live among their former owners - was incomprehensibly stupid.”
I sure wish there could have been a true compromise that would have avoided both the war and the aftermath. The reconstruction era hurt blacks in many ways people don’t think about. Most think only the slaveholders were punished. No, the South basically was treated like the Scots after Culloden and The Clearances.