William Marvel: The Inevitability Myth

Both amateur and academic symposia on the Civil War sometimes entertain the question of whether that conflict could have been avoided. William Seward's antebellum remark on the "irrepressible conflict" between the slave and free states is often invoked as a challenge to those who might doubt its inevitability.

Except to those determinists who insist that everything is ordained from above, logic suggests that any disaster could be avoided, save for death itself or an asteroid strike. Ben Franklin notwithstanding, even some taxes can be circumvented, given a sufficient combination of political will and government restraint.