[geeks] I just saw...

[Charles Shannon Hendrix]

Sun, 12 Nov 2006 @ 17:13 -0600, Lionel Peterson said:

> >From: "Jonathan C. Patschke" <jp at celestrion.net>
> >Date: 2006/11/11 Sat PM 05:33:35 CST
> >To: The Geeks List <geeks at sunhelp.org>
> >Subject: Re: [geeks] I just saw...
> 
> >On Sat, 11 Nov 2006, Geoffrey S. Mendelson wrote:
> >
> >> As for Lincon, have you ever read the emacipation proclimation? He freed
> >> the slaves in "the states in rebelion", over which he had no control.
> >
> >Sort of like all the times President Lincoln said "If I could preserve
> >the Union without freeing a single slave, I would gladly do so"?
> 
> How many lives would have been saved if it were possible? Granted, the vast majority of them were white, but they still count, don't they?
> 
> As I understand it, he went to war out of necessity, not out of any
> personal desire of his...

Um, no.

He illegally invaded Virginia, a soverign nation that broke away from a
what used to be a voluntary republic.

Lincoln knew the southern complaints were justified, but for reasons I
suppose only he knows, he didn't take the diplomatic route.

This necessarily brings up the southern first strike: it was a reaction
to the Union army massing on the border of Virginia, designed to
dissuade Lincoln from ordering the attack by showing that Virginia had
teeth.

So really, the North fired the first shot.

-- 
shannon "AT" widomaker.com -- ["There is no such thing as security.  Life
is either bold adventure, or it is nothing -- Helen Keller"]