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Date: Thu, 03 Nov 2005 09:56:55 -0500 From: Andre Mayer <amayer@aimnet.org> Paul Finkelman makes explicit a very important point: The supposedly impractical Garrisonian approach might actually have worked, whereas the supposedly pragmatic political one could not have - at least not without a transformative moral revulsion against slavery in the slave states. (This reversal of received wisdom is one reason why the reaction to Wills's recent book on the Slave Power is so reminiscent of early responses to the "hot- blooded dinosaur" theory.) Those who argue that the political approach was the "right" one are assuming that a civil war resulting in 365,000 dead on the Union side alone constituted a political success - surely an attitude more Prussian than American. André Mayer Cambridge, Massachusetts
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