Civil War—and the Phenomenon of Annoyance

How dangerous mere annoyance can be, as Lincoln knew.

Abraham Lincoln was extremely worried about how annoying people can be.

Especially Northerners. It’s not anything specific they did, some intrinsically annoying gesture of antebellum wokeness.

Nevertheless it was a fact: Southerners in the mid-19th century were just deeply, intractably bugged by Northerners.

Lincoln resolved in his first inaugural address: “There will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people” of the South.

“While the strict legal right may exist in the Government, the attempt to do so would be so irritating…that I deem it better to forego [it] for the time.”

Obnoxiousness and irritation can raze whole nations, the same way they raze familes.