Joe Jackson (shoeless@erols.com)
Sat, 5 Feb 2000 07:58:33 -0500
> The North failed to help rebuild the South or to provide any assistance in
> helping the newly freed slaves to assimilate into society. Doing
> either or
> both of those things would have helped alleviate the widespread
> poverty that
> existed in the South for many years following the war. Many people were
> left with no means of supporting themselves (no work skills and/or no
> available jobs). The South was largely agricultural and the large-scale
> destruction of land and crops led to shortages of food.
>
> If food is scarce and you have no means of attaining it, you starve.
and yet it is impossible to state unequivically that Lincoln's method's were
"half-baked".
1. Nobody can say that they were not the best decisions that could be made
at the time, and
2. we will never know what the alternatives would have been.
I think our country has learned and continues to learn how to conduct war on
a trial-and-error basis, and I still think portraying his decisions as
"half-baked" is a misstatement. "Half-baked" says to me that you think his
decisions were not well considered or thought out. To say they were not
successful is not to say they were "half-baked" but "unsuccessful". The
Sudbury movement may very well turn out to be unsuccessful, but one cannot
currently, and therefore ever, characterize it as half-baked.
Am I getting through?
-Joe Jackson
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