Angry Robot

That Wacky Emancipator

Via an excellent MeFi post: a postcard reveals that Lincoln offered command of the Union forces to an Italian revolutionary, who refused since Lincoln wouldn’t declare abolition to be the purpose of the war. Further evidence that the Civil War was only about slavery after the fact, which has been mentioned as an historical precedent to the shifting justifications for war in Iraq. But as the Mefi post mentions, it’s also one of those examples of how history would be radically different save for one apparently minor decision. If Cato hadn’t stonewalled Caesar, say, we’d have a pretty shitty calendar right now.