How to think about whether we should have fought the Civil War

“Why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?”
•Some guy back in 2017

The Civil War was really bad and lots of people died, and I can see why someone would want to avoid it. Henry Clay practically did backflips to prevent it, although of course he only managed to delay things. Clearly, slavery would have disappeared from America eventually, anyway (based on the fact that at least in overt form it’s disappeared from the rest of the developed world) so would we all have ...