----- Original Message ----- From: "Gautam Mukunda" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: "Killer Bs Discussion" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Monday, March 01, 2004 3:35 PM Subject: Re: L3 Bitter Mellons, Gin and Tonic, and a an Un- reasonable view.
> So, was Southern defeat inevitable? I would actually > say, in retrospect, that it's actually fairly > improbable. Why didn't Britain intervene? Mainly the > extraordinary diplomatic adroitness of the Lincoln > Administration. Why did the Republicans survive the > 1862 midterm elections? Lincoln. Why did they win > the 1864 election? Lincoln again. Why did they > (finally) find the generals (Grant and Sherman) who > understood the war (not just tactics, but the war > itself) and what it took to win it? Lincoln. And > what are the odds of that? If this is true, and if Lincoln was right when he said: "Fourscore and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation or any nation so conceived and so dedicated can long endure." Then the very idea of representative government was hanging by a thread in the early 1860s. Now, it looks as inevitable as evolution producing humans does to some...but it really wasn't inevitable any more than humans evolving on the earth was inevitable (yes, the odds are far worse for evolution producing humans given the state of the earth even 200 million years ago that the US surviving without Lincoln, given the US in 1850). So, if it wasn't for luck of having Lincoln, we'd have a 20th century without the massive influence of the US. If any of the other Republicans won, it would be hard to see how the US would have emerged as a major world player. Is that a fair assessment? Dan M. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
