"The Only Winning Move is Not to Play..."

Heard Ron Chernow on NPR/WPR this morning, plugging his new book, Grant.*  He assumes that John Kelly does not know his country's history: the many compromises on slavery that took place before the Civil War. Why does everyone ass-u/me that Kelly meant the North should have continued compromising by allowing slavery to exist?  That's a bit too simplistic, no?

Sam Houston: Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win southern independence, but I doubt it. The north is determined to preserve this union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates, but when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche.

Was the bloody civil war really unavoidable? Could the North have -- in time -- convinced the Southern economy to free their slaves, but to continue a share-cropping economy, as happened to many of the freed people during and after Reconstruction?

Those who insist that we accept the bloody war as the only means possible of going forward as one nation are guilty of limited thinking. In my mind, they are willing us into another. You can't read about Andersonville, and the butchery, and the living conditions after the war, without wondering if slavery might have been abolished without such a bloody toll for so many.

Today, we should be addressing national issues such as affirmative action, and considering whether reparations and discrimination based on a person's skin color are the only ways our country can heal and move forward. Sometimes, looking back, the price paid by so many is not in saying the goal was not worth achieving, but in wondering if America might have been able to achieve the same ends without paying such a costly price...

Honest minds indeed can disagree.
And as a military man, John Kelly knows the price ultimately paid.

Let's not assume that violence, and such deadly ends, are the only way -- or the best way -- to achieve our country's goals. (Didn't we learn anything in the past decade-plus of America's war years? Do those who assume John Kelly does not know his history really understand the price paid? Have we really not evolved at all as a People in the last century and a half, and do we still hold force and violence as the ultimate method of persuasion?)

Maybe it's the Irish in me, but there can be better ways of achieving change other than warring for progress...
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* If you haven't already, read the General's memoirs first, before investing in Chernow's latest biography.