Your favorite president?

Don’t ask me, that’s why it would have made him the GOAT. I think it’s a stretch to say it couldn’t possibly have been averted. Maybe paying them for the property loss would have worked. It was a violation of the takings clause after all.

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The Confederacy forced the federal government’s hands. By starting the war.

They deserve the blame.

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The south never even gave them the chance to explore that idea.

We started the war. The bloodshed is, for the most part, on our ancestors’ hands.

We didn’t give the Union much of a choice on their response. We declared ourselves a nation and attacked Federal troops.

The bloodshed was unavoidable.

Meh. The South got kid gloves. Could have been a lot worse for us. Should have been a lot worse for us. Way too many straight necks in 1866.

The Federals were trying to avoid an insurgency.

The Union was surprisingly lenient on surrendering Confederate armies at the end of the war for the most part. Much More lenient than the US was to surrendering Germans at the end of WWII.

Which was an understandable decision. No one wanted to deal with a full scale insurgency.

The US did have to deal with an insurgency a few years later in the south, but it was much smaller than it would have been had they been extremely harsh on the surrendering Confederates.

The only thing he could have done was immediately resign. That may have averted the war, but I doubt it. By the time of his inauguration, 6 states had already secceeded. It was on.

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Sam Houston

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I don’t even think that would have worked.

The new Confederacy wanted a fight.

He/she hasn’t been elected yet.

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