As someone with a degree in history who took classes from leaders of the field at a "public ivy," I have a hard time understanding the outcry over the claim that the civil war was brought about as a lack of compromise. As I understand it, both North and South recognized that slavery would not be able to continue indefinitely under a United States of America, but the most probable route of emancipation was gradual emancipation over a course of decades. Southerners in an attempt to preserve their way of life rejected this compromise and took the gamble of starting a war of secession which ultimately failed, bringing about the emancipation of slaves much earlier than would have otherwise been the case. How does this not represent a failure to compromise?