But the truth is, the panicky months before the Civil War were full of attempts to compromise with the rebellious South. The most popular proposal, by far, was a constitutional amendment that would have irreversibly immortalized slavery as a feature of the United States. And although supporters of this compromise — up to and including Abraham Lincoln and most of Congress — did fail to pull it off, it wasn’t for lack of trying. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/retropolis/wp/2017/10/31/actually-john-kelly-the-failed-compromise-to-avoid-civil-war-would-have-enshrined-slavery/
“Because the amendment was designed to prevent a war, it became irrelevant once the war broke out,” Crofts writes. “Before long, Northerners who never could imagine using armed force against the slave system found that war forced them to do just that.” The Civil War made real what had been a secessionist fantasy weeks earlier: It turned Republicans into abolitionists. And in the final year of the war, the South nearly defeated, Lincoln pushed for a very different 13th Amendment than the one he first endorsed. This one was ratified, and it abolished slavery forever — the antithesis of an abandoned compromise.
"Subsequent Democratic presidents and majorities will once again have to be the bad guys by restoring the earlier tax rates. The Republican Party is able to sell itself as the party that lowers taxes. The Democrats end up as the party that raises them in order to be fiscally responsible while still providing basic humane services — which expand the middle class."
