This is from Brad Hicks, posted on Facebook. It says that if they start a second Civil War, the result will be the same, but worse. What do you think?
--Kim
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Going into 1860, the anti-freedom states had two and only two advantages. One, they had the Senate. And two, if that failed, they had the loyalty of almost literally the entire US Army. So when Congress's attempt to shut down the Underground Railroad, the Fugitive Slave Act, turned out to be impossible to enforce, they thought the same thing that Vladimir Putin just thought about Ukraine: we have the infantry numbers on our side, it'll be a short march to seize the capitol, this whole war will be over in a week.
And got damn near to the capitol in a matter of days. And then had to fall back because they were WAY out past their supply lines, they hadn't won yet, and they couldn't sustain the push. But the "we have the whole Army" guess wasn't wrong, it looked really dire for the free states at first.
But there was never any chance that the anti-freedom states were going to win for four reasons:
RELATIVE POVERTY. After 40 years of rising industrialization and urbanization, the free states could simply afford a much longer war than the anti-urban, anti-industrial anti-freedom states. The whole economy of the anti-freedom states was based on a low-margin extraction economy.
DIPLOMATIC ISOLATION. African hereditary chattel slavery had been outlawed, at least on paper, literally everywhere else in the world by 1860. British conservatives covertly funded and equipped the anti-freedom states for as long as they thought they could do so safely, but that didn't last. For one thing, it became politically unsafe for them, at home, to be seen to be siding with the anti-freedom US states. But the even bigger reason was that they weren't willing to send people or ships to die to do so, and ...
THEY *ONLY* HAD THE ARMY. Except for a few coast-guard units, the entire US Navy stayed loyal to the pro-freedom government. The blockade of Charleston, combined with their fiscal poverty, guaranteed that the anti-freedom states couldn't keep their troops fed, let alone armed, for a long war. And ...
EMPTY LAND DOESN'T FIGHT FOR ITSELF. Sure, by long-standing political compromise they had half of the states, and over half of the land. And by long-standing necessity, they had the highest percentage of their (free) population in arms. But their (free) population was a tiny fraction of the population of the free states. Once the free states started mobilizing its own army, they didn't even have infantry numbers on their side. And they couldn't even mobilize all the infantry they had, they had to reserve lots of their troops to hold the plantations or face a huge fifth-column behind their lines.
So when your anti-freedom co-workers or family members tell them that the South Will Rise Again, and this time they'll win?
ASK THEM WHAT'S CHANGED.
Sure, they have the Senate, just like last time, so they can push through these new Bounty Hunter Bills that replicate the old Fugitive Slave Act, but how is that going to work any better than it did the last time? And if they try to secede and close their borders again, despite rural states' still-low populations and still-high poverty, with no navy to speak of and no air force to speak of and only *maybe* Russia and Hungary and Poland for allies, how is this going to end up any better than last time?
Because last time a million people died, disproportionately people from the anti-freedom states. And dozens of towns and at least two large cities were burned, all in anti-freedom states. And it was their rebellion and war and loss that resulted in the passage of the Reconstruction Amendments, so the outcome was that they had even less of what they wanted than they had when the shooting started.
See if that inspires any doubt in them. See if, all of a sudden, some of them lose enthusiasm for starting the conflict just yet.
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