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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Kenny Coyote" data-source="post: 222010" data-attributes="member: 102">Did they really call themselves a “foreign” power? That would have been ridiculous. They couldn’t possibly have been foreign. Something foreign is something that originates from somewhere else!There was no diplomacy, or no effective diplomacy used. If there had been, it never would have escalated to the point where they would have decided to secede. I’d hope that the president of the country would have the wherewithal to be diplomatic enough to avoid the deaths of million of his own people. Even after the secession Lincoln could have left the door open for negotiation. Just because they seceded didn’t mean they wouldn’t have changed their minds later.Lincoln got more American soldiers killed than were killed in both world wars, Korea and Vietnam combined. That’s a dubious achievement. It wasn’t self defense because the South wasn’t going to invade the North and couldn’t have even if they had wanted to. It was an exchange of human life for power. It did make the country more powerful, but look at the cost. If you consider human life to be sacred, how could you justify getting all those people killed?</blockquote>