In his Second Inaugural Address (on this website) Lincoln offered his own observations about the outbreak of war. "Four years ago," he recalled, "all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil-war. All dreaded it -- all sought to avert it. . . Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive; and the other would accept war rather than let it perish. And the war came." Do you think that Lincoln was accurately describing the positions of both the Union and the Confederacy? Does his statement imply a fatalistic recognition that war was inevitable?