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[Prophet 451]

28. Good question

I think there's several seperate parts to this. The first is the purely political, whether the union was worth preserving as a political entity. On that one, I'm honestly not sure. The ongoing influence of a far-right based in and strongest in the old South make me wonder whether it was worth preserving.

However, there's also the question of slavery. The South seceeded over their right to keep slaves (and we know that because they downright said so). Now, while it's not as simple as saying that Lincoln went to war to free the slaves, the upshot of his decision was that the slaves were eventually freed. Personally, I think freeing teh slaves would have been a morally justifiable reason to go to war. That said, it's questionable how much longer slavery would have persisted anyway when wage slavery is so much cheaper for the plantation class. What I suspect would have happened was the gradual withering away of outright slavery in favour of wage slavery and second-class citizenship.

There's quite a good film about this called "CSA: Confederate States of America".