In March 1865, Lincoln succinctly analyzed the outbreak of hostilities: “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.” Lincoln may have been willing to accept war because he believed, as he told Orville H. Browning in February 1861, “far less evil & bloodshed would result from an effort to maintain the Union and the Constitution, than from disruption and the formation of two confederacies[.]”
Source: Abraham Lincoln ∶ A Life ▫𓂃
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