U.S. civil war question

what if both sides decided to try to negotiate first? That the North and South decided that they would negotiate first would the North do it?

What would the South be willing to lose?
 
It's going to be difficult to have negotiations in the first place. By negotiating with the CSA the Union could recognize it as a country, which is something Lincoln was careful not to do OTL. Granted, there are ways around this - the Union negotiated with "the leaders of the army currently in opposition to Union forces" later in the war - and perhaps Buchanan doesn't care anyway.

Given that negotiations happen, what are they going to negotiate about? The Union is not going to accept anything short of the Confederate states staying in the Union. Maybe, maybe, the south will rejoin the Union in return for protection and the ability to spread slavery to the territories, but it is difficult to see Lincoln or Congress going along with those terms. Most likely negotiations would stall out.
 
It's going to be difficult to have negotiations in the first place. By negotiating with the CSA the Union could recognize it as a country, which is something Lincoln was careful not to do OTL.

^ Yup

Plus after the attack on Fort Sumter theres no way Lincoln will negotiate.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
There was a flurry of compromise proposals in late 1860/early 1861, but they were all doomed to failure. By the time secession took place, the South was set on independence and no amount of concessions by the North on slavery was going to persuade them to come back into the Union. In turn, Lincoln was absolutely determined to keep the Union together and there really was nothing for the South to offer him. IOTL, they offered to pay for federal property, assume a portion of the pre-1860 national debt, and a whole host of other things, but it didn't matter.

The two sides were dead-set on mutually exclusive goals. The South was bent on independence and the North was bent on union. War was inevitable.
 
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