One concerns the discussion here recently of whether it is "presentism" to impose 20th century antislavery views on Thomas Jefferson. Judging from John Adams' quote -- "I never knew a [pre-Revolutionary] Jury by a Verdict to determine a Negro to be a slave. They always found them free" -- Jefferson was backwards even by the standards of his time.
The second point is, was it necessary to fight the Civil War at all? I have long had a suspicion that the Civil War caused damage -- in terms of casualties and regional resentments that endure to this day -- that outweighs the benefit of ending slavery quickly (which, in itself, seemed an afterthought -- Lincoln appeared much more concerned with his fetish of preserving the union, to me a meaningless abstraction). Even without the war, how long could slavery have endured without the South becoming a pariah state in the 19th century as South Africa did in the 20th? My position is a pacifist one -- I think wars bring more ills than solutions.
Carl Remick