What This Cruel War is Over

"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." Abraham Lincoln

Is this not what the secession of the Western States is all about? Is Ralph's insistance on keeping up the fight really about Mark from my perspective, or is it about the states. I almost don't know anymore. All I know is this: in spite of my libertarian teachings that revolution is justifiable when elections cease to be fair and what not, I cannot bring myself to believe that the South had just cause for seceding from the Union. Who says the election was not fair? Seems fair enough to me. So what if Lincoln won without a single electoral vote from the South. Some elections are horrible, plain and simple. That is not an excuse to throw away everything for which a nation has worked for so long. There is so much more that binds us: our common beliefs and hopes and dreams. We Americans have ideals, had them before anyone else dared to think them more than the stuff of fairy-tales.We have ideals, and they're worth fighting for.

It seems fitting to speak of these things tonight, in celebration of 200 years of Abraham Lincoln (and Charles Darwin). I am writing as much as I can and am almost done with Chapter 8, but I am so damn tired. I have had the worst week I can remember. It is all I can do to shut my eyes and think of Mark, Ralph, America, Liberty, Truth, Justice, Right, Reason, Sanity... everything which I hold to be numinous in the universe. These things get me through the day, the week, the torrid quotidienne. They get me thinking about the questions without answers, and not just the purely philosophical ones. I wonder what this cruel war is over. The real Civil War? The one in my novels? The one between my body, mind, and soul? Oh, God, what fission of the soul I feel tonight!