Negotiate, Mr. Lincoln

CNN reported today (Sunday, 01/07) that yesterday, Donald Trump suggested the Civil War could have been avoided through negotiation, contending that the fight to end slavery in the US was \unnecessary, and that Abraham Lincoln should have done more to avoid bloodshed.
As is almost always the case, Mr. Trump operates in an alternate reality, with alternate facts. There were indeed a series of efforts before the Civil War began to find a way to save the Union. But the future of slavery in the South could not be settled through compromise. As had been the case when the Constitution was written and approved, the southern sates would accept no compromise on what can be called the three-fifths principle. So, our nation went to war with itself.
Mr. Trump neglected to say how he would have prevented that war. But sickeningly, he called it horrible but [so] fascinating. It was, I don’t know, it was just different, he continued.  I’m so attracted to seeing it. He also suggested that Lincoln would not have the same historical cachet had he negotiated an end to the conflict. Cheney wrote Which part of the Civil War could have been negotiated? The slavery part? The secession part? Whether Lincoln should have preserved the Union?

If you weren't terrified by Trump before this, now's the time. Anyone who can say, of the bloodiest and most catastrophic conflict in our history, I’m so attracted to seeing it is completely unfit for any office in the United States, let alone the Presidency.