🚀 go-pugleaf

<hchickpea@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:45108bdd.52352232@news.earthlink.net...
> "Don K" <dk@dont_bother_me.com> wrote:
>
> ><hchickpea@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:450d6a18.43705981@news.earthlink.net...
> >>
> >> Whatever the costs of the civil war, the alternatives would have been
> >> far worse.  The successful secession would have quickly opened the
> >> door for the Balkanization of the other states, and the weakening of
> >> the defensive power of the nation, leading to more battles between
> >> states and countries.  Mexico would have surely taken Texas and the
> >> west, at considerable loss of life, the northern states would have had
> >> constant skirmishes over disputed land, Napoleon might have found
> >> Louisiana more enticing than Egypt, and more importantly, the outcome
> >> of WWII would have been vastly different.
> >
> >Omigosh! You've come around to the domino theory!
>
> Merely that the above are likely scenarios.  Military success has been
> based on chance and weather as much as relative strengths.
>
> Kublai Khan invasion of Japan - thwarted by cyclone
> Spanish Armada vs English - defeated by bad weather
> British Invasion of Washington - cyclone
> Napolean invasion of Russia - snow
> Nazi invasion of Russia - snow, then mud
> etc. etc.
>
I think that's kind of the point I was getting at. Given that the costs AND
benefits of war are impossible to predict with certainty, I don't think it
would have been an unreasonable position to oppose the war for independence,
or the one to preserve the union. The colonists could have lost the
Revolutionary War, and who can say what would have happened had the south
been allowed to succeed. Would slavery have been abolished at some point in
the future anyway? Even if the outcome could have somehow been known ahead
of time, I would have hated to be the President who needed to weigh the
value of 600,000 + lives versus an accelerated end to slavery, and decide
whether to make that trade. I'm not taking a side one way or another, just
saying that I don't view the correct decision to be "obvious", so I wouldn't
retrospectively ridicule those who would have decided differently.

Having said that, I am forced to wonder: "What the heck does all this have
to do with Frugal Living??" :)