Kelly: "The lack of an ability to compromise led to the Civil War."

[Algernon Moncrieff]

30. That's true only in the sense that there was no more compromising to be done

"Compromise" had been the watchword from the drafting of the Constitution (3/5), through the Kansas/Nebraska act all the way to the election of 1860. Even then, the end-game was not the end of slavery, but stopping the spread of slavery to the West and maintaining the Union. It was not until after Antietam that Lincoln emancipated the slaves -- that is those slaves in Confederate territory. Slaves in Maryland, Missouri, and Kentucky were still legally held. Lee fought for the side that wanted to maintain agrarian feudalism in the South, and left to their own devices, would have maintained the South as an apartheid state.

My views on Confederate honor are reflected in this excerpt from correspondence from W.T. Sherman to J.B. Hood. This is part of an ongoing discussion of evacuating civilians from Atlanta, which Sherman proposed to burn to the ground:

In the name of common sense, I ask you not to appeal to a just God in such a sacrilegious manner --you, who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into civil war, "dark and cruel war," who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag, seized our arsenals and forts that were left in the honorable custody of a peaceful ordnance sergeant, seized and made prisoners of war the very garrisons sent to protect your people against negroes and Indians, long before any overt act was committed by the (to you) hateful Lincoln Government, tried to force Kentucky and Missouri into the rebellion in spite of themselves, falsified the vote of Louisiana, turned loose your privateers to plunder unarmed ships, expelled Union families by the thousand burned their houses, and declared by ac of your Congress the confiscation of all debts due Northern men for goods had and received. Talk thus to the marines but not to me, who have seen these things, and who will this day make as much sacrifice for the peace and honor of the South, as the best born Southerner among you. If we must be enemies, let us be men, and fight it out as we propose to-day, and not deal in such hypocritical appeals to God and humanity.