What Should a First-Time Visitor to America Read?

To: DiogenesLamp

You are really playing the fool with that witty response. Why not answer the question so that we can proceed with your meaning made clear?

241 posted on 04/18/2018 3:36:40 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie

To: DiogenesLamp

I’m still waiting for you to specify which social changes you are referring to.

242 posted on 04/18/2018 5:40:30 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie

I wonder why Lampie doesn’t want to touch those social changes he mentioned?

243 posted on 04/18/2018 7:49:52 PM PDT by SoCal Pubbie

Lincoln was not the one who threatened & launched war over a resupply mission to Union troops in a Union fort:

Confederate demands for Union surrender: that’s war.
Confederate firing on Union ships (i.e., Harriet Lane): that’s war.
Confederate firing on Fort Sumter: that’s war.
Union resupplying Union troops in a Union fort: not war.

It was not merely a “supply mission” as you call it. It was a heavily armed flotilla of several warships and hundreds of troops. Nevermind the fact that the federals fired first at Ft Pickens in Pensacola in January of that year.

Sending a fleet of warships into another country’s territorial waters with hostile intent - that’s war.

The only Union firing at Fort Barrancas came in response to secessionists’ unlawful attempts to seize the fort by force.
Union troops there attacked no one.

The fort sat on sovereign Florida territory and was being illegally held by federal troops....and they are the ones who fired first.

No they didn’t, far from it, from Day One Confederates continuously provoked war by seizing Union property, threatening Union officials, firing on Union ships and demanding Union surrenders.
In short, Confederates were cruisin’ for a bruisin’.

Again false. Federal troops illegally occupied installations on territory that belonged to the sovereign states.

Total rubbish.

Nope. Unvarnished truth. You just can’t handle it.

Exactly right, Virginians believed they could not secede until their condition of “injury or oppression” was met.
That’s why Davis needed war at Fort Sumter, to convert Virginia and with it the entire Upper South.

For that exact reason Lincoln didn’t want war, but simply could not abandon Union troops in Fort Sumter without some attempt to resupply them.

No, its not that they believed they could not. It is that they chose not to. They could any time they wanted to. Lincoln deliberately provoked war and did so without the consent of Congress.

“Lincoln and the First Shot” (in Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John Denson), John Denson painstakingly shows how Lincoln maneuvered the Confederates into firing the first shot at Fort Sumter. As the Providence Daily Post wrote on April 13, 1861, “Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor” by reprovisioning Fort Sumter. On the day before that the Jersey City American Statesman wrote that “This unarmed vessel, it is well understood, is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South.” Lincoln’s personal secretaries, John Nicolay and John Hay, clearly stated after the war that Lincoln successfully duped the Confederates into firing on Fort Sumter. And as Shelby Foote wrote in The Civil War, “Lincoln had maneuvered [the Confederates] into the position of having either to back down on their threats or else to fire the first shot of the war.”

And you pretend it had nothing to do with slavery?

I didn’t say it had “nothing to do with” slavery. You said it was “all about” slavery. That is false.

Rhett used the word “tariff” exactly twice, both times in passing, i.e., “There was then no tariff — no negro fanaticism.”

Rhett does use the word “tax” 23 times, nearly all in relation to the Founders’ “no taxation without representation”.
He claims that even though Southern Democrats ruled in Washington, DC, since 1800, now they would be in the minority, thus suddenly deprived of representation, and everybody knows that when Democrats lose political power they go berserk, smash things & hurt people.
It’s in the nature of being a Democrat.

In Rhett’s mind it was: rule or ruin, my way or F.U. USA.

By contrast, Rhett used words like slave, abolition & institution some 45 times, explicitly explaining the threat to them represented by Northern States.

Rhett went on at length explaining how the Northern states saw fit to use their larger population and thus more representation in Washington DC to levy tariffs on the South that were very harmful to the Southern economy in order to serve their own interests AND that the Southern states did not have enough votes to prevent this exploitation. He explained how this was exactly the same as the situation the 13 colonies found themselves in when they seceded from the British Empire in 1776. But of course you knew that and were trying to obfuscate.

Important to remember that South Carolina’s secession produced three principle documents:

Ordnance or Secession, which provides no reasons or “wherefores”.
Reasons for Secession, which explains the threat to slavery as perceived by South Carolinians.
Rhett’s address to other Slave-holding states, which expands the reasons to include taxes as well as slavery.
Taxes Rhett claims were paid by Southerners to benefit the North.
Rhett’s claim is false.

South Carolina laid out the legal case for saying the Northern states violated the compact. That alone was sufficient. Even though it was not unconstitutional they attached Rhett’s Address in which he accurately laid out the economic exploitation of the Southern states by the Northern states via the tariff and via grossly unequal federal expenditures.

Right, slavery, which Georgia mentioned or referred to 40 times in their 3,300 word document — in all but three of the 14 paragraphs.
Complaints about “bounties” for “fishing smacks” are restricted just one paragraph.
The Georgia Reasons for Secession document does not mention tariffs or taxes.

Georgia laid out the legal case for accurately saying the Northern states violated the compact - namely, their refusal to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. It also went on to talk about the grossly unequal expenditures and partisan sectional legislation which served to enrich the Northern states at the Southern states’ expense even though this was not unconstitutional.

But slavery was not a “wedge issue” until people like Rhett made it one by supporting slavery where it wasn’t wanted and then splitting apart their national Democrat party over the issue of slavery.
So many Northern Democrats normally sympathetic to slavery in the South came to believe that voting Democrat would re-impose slavery in their own states.

This is an outright lie. Rhett didn’t make slavery a wedge issue. Northern politicians and business interests did in order to unite Northern votes for a sectional party which would favor ruinously high protective tariffs to be levied on goods owned by Southern importers. It had the added benefit of raising more federal money the Northern states could then continue lavishing on themselves for more “public works” and corporate subsidies.

No I simply quoted what they said:

“the act of 1846 was passed.
It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people...”

and you conveniently left out the next part where it explains how Northern protectionists then started using the slavery issue as a wedge issue to try to build enough political support to jack the tariffs back up again.

But the North never “voted as a block” until Southern Fire Eaters like Rhett split apart their national Democrat party, making a vote for Northern Democrat Douglas a wasted vote.
Even Northern Republicans didn’t vote against slavery in the South, but only in territories which didn’t want it.
As for “enrichment at the South’s expense”, that is pure unadulterated nonsense.

They voted as a block for a high protective tariff. That was the central plank of the Republican party platform in 1860. The northern states had been enriching themselves at the Southern states’ expense since the beginning. The only debate was would they do so in a more modest way which had been the case after the Tariff of Abominations was repealed following the Nullification Crisis, or would they go for super high tariffs again and really dig their paws deeply into Southern wallets again. They opted for the latter. The Southern states had seen this before and had had enough.

Right, the questions forced on them by aggressive slave-power promoters like Rhett.

Nope! It was pushed by Northern Protectionists like Abe Lincoln.

Which had been defeated by Democrats in 1860 and would be again in 1861 had Dems remained united in the November elections.
But Fire Eaters like Rhett & Toombs made certain that didn’t happen.

It had passed the House in the Spring of the previous year. All that was needed was a little log rolling to pick off a vote or two in the Senate. That could easily be achieved by throwing in a sweetener like high tariffs on Hemp grown in one state or similar back room deals. That’s the way it always works in Washington DC. They were going to get it past the Senate and with a Pennsylvanian like Buchanan in the White House followed by Lincoln it was sure to get the president’s signature and become law. Everybody knew that.

Of course Texans would blame Lee, since Lee was the finest officer the Union army had, in command of the largest contingent of Union troops anywhere — Texas.
And Lee failed in Texas.
Just as he later failed in West Virginia, in North Carolina and in Virginia.
A truly remarkable record!

Yawn. A weak attempt to blame Lee due to your personal bitterness. The Federal government simply did not provide enough troops or resources as they had agreed to do when Texas joined the US. Texans understood the Northern states acting through the federal government were to blame and furthermore that they had failed to provide the promised border security out of spite,

Of course the South got its fair share and we know this for certain because Southerners ruled in Washington, DC, and made certain their interests were addressed.
How could that not be when Southern Democrats ruled the majority party the vast majority of time between 1800 and 1861??
So claims otherwise are just stuff & nonsense.

For actual Federal spending by region, see this link which summarizes data from John van Deusen’s 1928 book, “Economic bases of Disunion in South Carolina”.
If you exclude pensions, the numbers are almost exactly 50% each to slave & non-slave states.
And this despite non-slave states outnumbering slave-states in white population about two-to-one.

This is complete BS. The Southern states never had the population or representation of the Northern states. To claim they ran things despite being in the minority is patently absurd.

.” In a pamphlet published in 1850, Muscoe Russell Garnett of Virginia wrote:
The whole amount of duties collected from the year 1791, to June 30, 1845, after deducting the drawbacks on foreign merchandise exported, was $927,050,097. Of this sum the slaveholding States paid $711,200,000, and the free States only $215,850,097. Had the same amount been paid by the two sections in the constitutional ratio of their federal population, the South would have paid only $394,707,917, and the North $532,342,180. Therefore, the slaveholding States paid $316,492,083 more than their just share, and the free States as much less.

South Carolina Senator James Hammond had declared that the South paid about $50,000,000 and the North perhaps $20,000,000 of the $70,000,000 raised annually by duties. In expenditure of the national revenues, Hammond thought the North got about $50,000,000 a year, and the South only $20,000,000.

Sure, it was a propaganda campaign to make old Joseph Goebbels proud, but it was all a Big Lie.
The true numbers show that by 1860 any previous imbalances had been long since corrected.

Complete BS. All the commentators at the time, as well as several Northern Newspapers, foreign commentators and Charles Adams all say otherwise. On your side you have one 1928 book.

More false propaganda.
In fact, the Federal government sent its best officers (RE Lee, T Jackson) to command the troops which put down Brown’s rebellion, captured Brown & company, then tried & hanged them for treason.
As for the “secret six” who backed Brown, most fled the country, one was arrested, one checked himself into an insane asylum and only one, Higginson, remained free.
During the Civil War, Higginson commanded a black regiment of Union soldiers.

You neglected to mention 3 only briefly fled to Canada. Northern sympathizers prevented the arrest of one who had been apprehended by federal marshals by mob violence and got a sympathetic judge to issue a writ demanding his surrender. Another remained and was never arrested. So of the 6, none were arrested and that was due to the support of locals in Massachusetts as well as sympathetic local officials. Texas was absolutely right to say that Northerners sympathize with financial backers of terrorism directed against the South.

In what way were any of Brown’s actions “not about slavery”??

I was talking about the refusal of the Southern states to accept the Corwin Amendment and the subsequent war Lincoln started. Had it been “about” slavery, the Corwin amendment would have sufficed.

We’ve already reviewed the first four “Reasons for secession” documents and established they are almost exclusively about slavery.
So you trotted out a fifth document by Rhett, which does mention taxes and compares the US to Britain in 1776.
But even Rhett devoted twice the attention to slavery (45 mentions) that he did to taxes (23 mentions).
And Rhett says nothing about the Morrill Tariff.

So even when all gussied up with a lot of hokum talk about “despotism” and “plunder and oppression”, Rhett’s number one concern, by a factor of two to one, was still slavery.

We’ve already reviewed the 4 declarations of secession and reasons provided by the 4 states which issued them and determined that refusal to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the constitution provided the legal basis for saying the Northern states had violated the compact. We have furthermore seen how 3 of those 4 had extensive economic grievances relating to tariffs and grossly unequal federal government expenditures while Texas added inadequate border security and supporting terrorism against Southerners to the list of abuses committed by the Northern states.

Next you desperately try to do a simple word count to claim Rhett’s #1 concern was slavery which is of course patently false. Here is another statement demonstrating this to be so:

“The great object of free governments is liberty. The great test of liberty in modern times, is to be free in the imposition of taxes, and the expenditure of taxes.... For a people to be free in the imposition and payment of taxes, they must lay them through their representatives.” Consequently, because they were being taxed without corresponding representation, the Southern States had been reduced to the condition of colonies of the North and thus were no longer free. The solution was determined by John Cunningham to exist only in independence:

The legislation of this Union has impoverished them [the Southern States] by taxation and by a diversion of the proceeds of our labor and trade to enriching Northern Cities and States. These results are not only sufficient reasons why we would prosper better out of the union but are of themselves sufficient causes of our secession. Upon the mere score of commercial prosperity, we should insist upon disunion. Let Charleston be relieved from her present constrained vassalage in trade to the North, and be made a free port and my life on it, she will at once expand into a great and controlling city.

That fantasy is all yours.
Lincoln “orchestrated” nothing regarding Corwin’s amendment.

False Propaganda on your part. Read Doris Kearns Goodwin’s nauseating hagiography of Lincoln which was the basis for an equally sycophantic film a few years ago. She praises Lincoln for orchestrating it. Others have noted that he was pulling the strings on this as well.

In Lincoln’s mind, as he said, slavery was already protected in the Constitution, so Corwin changed nothing.

WHat the Corwin Amendment did do was demonstrate conclusively that the Northern states were quite willing to protect slavery effectively forever in the Constitution and that the original 7 seceding states were obviously not motivated by fears over the protection of slavery because they indicated no willingness to return upon being offered the Corwin Amendment.

If slavery was “just the excuse” that makes all the “Reasons for Secession” documents a Big Lie, because they said slavery was the main, if not the only, reason.

It doesn’t make them a lie. The Northern states really had violated the compact by refusing to enforce the fugitive slave clause of the Constitution. It wasn’t the original 7 seceding states’ primary motivation but it was clearly true and provided them the legal basis for saying the other side broke the agreement. This happens in business all the time. One side breaks a clause in the contract allowing the other side to claim breach and walk away even if that breach was not their primary motivation for walking away from the contract.

No doubt some Southerners also had other reasons, but those “other reasons” were not felt strongly enough by anything close to a majority needed to pass declarations of secession.
Only perceived threats against slavery were strong enough motivators to convince majorities to support secession.

Was it? Or was it the excuse they had been looking for to do what they wanted to do anyway since they saw a huge hike in the tariff coming and the northern population continuing to grow at a faster pace due to immigration? I think it was the latter. Slavery was something most white Southerners did not participate in.

Once secession was a fait accompli Confederate leadership had no interest in reconciliation, slavery or no slavery.
At that point it became an question of their survival, pure & simple.
They were not going to reunite short of military defeat and Unconditional Surrender.

They simply did not want to remain in given that they felt they had been economically exploited and could look forward to nothing but even more egregious economic exploitation.

So Northerners gave up nothing in 1861 by offering to make slavery more explicit.
But once Jefferson Davis launched & declared his Civil War against the United States, the military advantages of emancipation became clear, and with them the moral imperative for abolition became, for the first time, doable.

Obviously slavery and protection of it was not the price of holding the union together in 1860. The Northern states tried to pay with that coin and it was rejected.

Oh and of course it was Lincoln who launched the war and for the same reason the Southern states wanted out - he and his corporate fatcat supporters needed their cash cow ie the Southern States to finance their huge tariffs and infrastructure projects and corporate subsidies. It was a war for empire and money. Foreign observers saw that quite clearly.

“For the contest on the part of the North is now undisguisedly for empire. The question of slavery is thrown to the winds. There is hardly any concession in its favor that the South could ask which the North would refuse provided only that the seceding states re-enter the Union.....Away with the pretence on the North to dignify its cause with the name of freedom to the slave!” London Quarterly Review 1862

“The contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions…are the general opinions of the English nation.” London Times, November 7, 1861

Oh and let us not forget that at the same time and shortly thereafter the Federal government was busy ethnically cleansing and committing genocide against the Plains Indians to gobble up their land and resources. So much for moral imperatives.

244 posted on 04/18/2018 8:57:44 PM PDT by FLT-bird (.)

Sure, and I’ll believe that as soon as you produce a quote from the time of any recognized Southern leader who said as much.
Until then, what you say here is total fantasy, or, dare I say it, “Laughable BS”.

Davis repeatedly talked about the South “and their industry” and how the money being bled out of the South slowed down economic development in the Southern states. Its laughable BS to think they did not see that industrialization was the way things were going in the world by 1860

Only in the propaganda from certain Southern sympathizers.

The denial is only from Northern sympathizers and PC Revisionists.

Totally irrelevant.
What matters is that Southern Democrats ruled the national Democrat party which ruled over Washington, DC, almost continuously from 1800 to secession in 1861.
Throughout those years Southern Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the Presidency, Supreme Court and Military.
And Southerners had a name for those Northern Democrat allies who made their rule in DC possible — they called them “Doughfaced”, and not with affection.

Laughable propaganda and BS to claim that the North which had more representatives was ruled over in the federal government by the South which had fewer....especially in light of how federal economic policy consistently took money from Southern states and transferred it to Northern states via the Tariff and federal expenditures.

Never happened.
The 1828 “Tariff of Abominations” was originally supported by Southerners like John C. Calhoun and Andrew Jackson, while opposed by many New Englanders.
When it passed, then Calhoun announced he’d somehow been tricked and really didn’t want it.
But President Jackson kept most of it because he wanted to pay off the national debt — the only US president to ever do so.
Regardless, over the following years Southern Democrats steadily reduced the Tariff of Abominations until by 1860 tariffs were about as low as they had ever been.

As for alleged “unequal Federal expenditures”, the facts say otherwise.
So Southerners always got what they truly wanted, even if it wasn’t always instant gratification.

Most certainly did happen.
George McDuffie of South Carolina stated in the House of Representatives, “If the union of these states shall ever be severed, and their liberties subverted, historians who record these disasters will have to ascribe them to measures of this description. I do sincerely believe that neither this government, nor any free government, can exist for a quarter of a century under such a system of legislation.” While the Northern manufacturer enjoyed free trade with the South, the Southern planter was not allowed to enjoy free trade with those countries to which he could market his goods at the most benefit to himself. Furthermore, while the six cotton States — South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Arkansas — had less than one-eighth of the representation in Congress, they furnished two-thirds of the exports of the country, much of which was exchanged for imported necessities. Thus, McDuffie noted that because the import tariff effectively hindered Southern commerce, the relation which the Cotton States bore to the protected manufacturing States of the North was now the same as that which the colonies had once borne to Great Britain; under the current system, they had merely changed masters.

and as has already been discussed, the facts show that federal government expenditures for corporate subsidies and “internal improvements” massively favored the Northern states.

False, and the absolute proof of it came in 1861 when all products from the Confederate South were deleted from Union exports, especially cotton, whose exports fell 80% that year.
But overall exports fell only 35% and some alleged “Southern products” (i.e., clover seed & hops)actually increased significantly in 1861.
Typical was the second largest export crop — tobacco.
With Confederate products deleted, tobacco exports fell only 14%.

It tells us all that yammering about “Southern products paying for Federal government” was just propaganda stuff & nonsense.

False. As has been shown by numerous quotes from both sides as well as foreign observers as well as Tax Expert Charles Adams. The South provided the overwhelming majority of exports.

“The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it? Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more than all other trade. It is very clear the South gains by this process and we lose. No, we must not let the South go.” The Manchester, New Hampshire Union Democrat Feb 19 1861

That either revenue from these duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad. If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed, the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up. We shall have no money to carry on the government, the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe....allow railroad iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten percent which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York. The Railways would be supplied from the southern ports.” New York Evening Post March 12, 1861 article “What Shall be Done for a Revenue?”

December 1860, before any secession, the Chicago Daily Times foretold the disaster that Southern free ports would bring to Northern commerce: “In one single blow our foreign commerce must be reduced to less than one-half what it now is. Our coastwide trade would pass into other hands. One-half of our shipping would lie idle at our wharves. We should lose our trade with the South, with all of its immense profits. Our manufactories would be in utter ruins. Let the South adopt the free-trade system, or that of a tariff for revenue, and these results would likely follow.”Chicago Daily Times Dec 1860

Referring to your own arguments, of course.

No. Referring instead to your BS and propaganda.

245 posted on 04/18/2018 9:14:34 PM PDT by FLT-bird (..)

As discussed previously, if we include Rhett’s address as the fifth original “Reasons for secession” document (along with SC, MS, GA & TX), it is the only one which focuses serious attention on reasons other than slavery.
But even in Rhett’s address, slavery is discussed twice as much as the other alleged reasons combined.

Desperate attempt to tapdance noted. Rhett laid out in exhaustive detail the economic exploitation of the Southern states by the Northern states and how the slavery issue was used as a wedge issue by Northern interests to accomplish and further their sectional partisan economic legislation.

Totally irrelevant, if not technically bogus.
That’s because no slave-holder lived by himself, all had families and in those days most were quite large families.
This site gives a realistic estimate as to how many families, and what percent of the totals, owned slaves.
Mississippi and South Carolina lead the list at 49% and 46% respectively — almost half.

What it means is that everybody who could afford to owned slaves and everybody who didn’t had close family & friends that did.
In that culture slave-holding was not simply economics, it was a “way of life” that all aspired to participate in.

Those are the actual numbers from the US Census. They are directly relevant - its just that they are damned inconvenient for you and your bogus propaganda.

I’ve seen these ridiculous estimates of a large percentage of families owning slaves before. They are the product of PC Revisionists trying to pull numbers out of their azzes by baking in a bunch of assumptions......among them that there could only be one slaveholder per family. Anecdotally we know this was often not the case as children were gifted slaves, wives inherited slaves etc etc. There could and often were multiple slaveowners in one family. Of course if that were to be admitted, the percentage of families estimated to own slaves would plummet and we obviously can’t have that now can we!

You do realize, right, that in those two sentences you contradicted yourself?
My point was that in 1860 average Deep South whites were better off than anyone else on Earth.
First you claim that “is simply false” then substantially affirm it.

The South was prosperous by and large. It had been far more prosperous in relative terms during the early years of the republic but as Senator Thomas Hart Benton explained, the North benefited greatly by using federal legislation to transfer Southerners’ money into their own pockets.

“Before... the revolution [the South] was the seat of wealth, as well as hospitality....Wealth has fled from the South, and settled in regions north of the Potomac: and this in the face of the fact, that the South, in four staples alone, has exported produce, since the Revolution, to the value of eight hundred millions of dollars; and the North has exported comparatively nothing. Such an export would indicate unparalleled wealth, but what is the fact? ... Under Federal legislation, the exports of the South have been the basis of the Federal revenue.....Virginia, the two Carolinas, and Georgia, may be said to defray three-fourths of the annual expense of supporting the Federal Government; and of this great sum, annually furnished by them, nothing or next to nothing is returned to them, in the shape of Government expenditures. That expenditure flows in an opposite direction - it flows northwardly, in one uniform, uninterrupted, and perennial stream. This is the reason why wealth disappears from the South and rises up in the North. Federal legislation does all this.” ——Missouri Senator Thomas Hart Benton

First, there was no “exploitation” that Southerners did not themselves agree to — see previous posts on Democrat rule in Washington, DC.
Second, claims of “unfair” or “undue” burdens on the South are simply false.
Third, it’s hard to have any sympathy for claims of “exploitation” from people whose whole economy is based on exploiting slave-labor.

Firstly BS. Southerners had long bitterly complained about high tariffs and unequal federal government expenditures. Those were hardly passed because they controlled everything as you claim...somehow....despite the fact that they were in the minority. Secondly, BS. As I’ve amply demonstrated the South was being economically exploited by the Northern states and everybody knew it. I’ve provided numerous quotes supporting this. Thirdly, most Southerners did not own slaves. And how much sympathy should anybody have for Northern slave traders who derived enormous profits from slave trading which continued illicitly long after it was prohibited in 1810 and who were only too happy to profit again servicing goods produced in part at least by slave labor?

Just as today Democrats pass “sanctuary cities” laws, and so long as Democrats rule in Washington, DC, they get away with it.
When the other party takes over, it becomes more difficult.
And that was the case until 1861: Democrats ruled Washington, DC, and enforced the laws they considered important, including fugitive slave laws.

The attempt to draw parallels with the political parties of today are ridiculous. Neither party in the mid 19th century were remotely like either party today. Your argument that Southerners controlled everything in Washington DC despite not having as many votes is pure fantasy.

But the Compromise of 1850 shifted responsibility from states to Federal enforcement, and Democrats ruled Washington, DC.
If they truly wanted stricter enforcement, they could have done it.
Even in 1860, state laws did not nullify Federal law.

But the key point here is that South Carolina specifically had no standing in the Fugitive Slave case because, so far as we know, there were no South Carolina runaway slaves being protected by Northern state personal liberty laws.
Indeed, there were no court cases period brought by South Carolina to redress its grievances against those deplorable, irredeemable baskets of Northern Republicans.

Various Northern states refused to cooperate with federal authorities, passed laws that hindered the work of federal agents etc etc. South Carolina and all the other Southern states could accurately say that the Northern states had deliberately obstructed recapture and return of escaped slaves as the Fugitive slave clause of the Constitution required.

Sorry, but there are no legitimate quotes from any Founder supporting unilateral unapproved declarations of secession at pleasure.

Your claim that states themselves can determine their own “necessity” might be worth considering, except that in late 1860 there was no “necessity” of any kind remotely resembling the conditions of 1776 to which our Founders referred by their word “necessary”.
Even a highly sympathetic Doughfaced Northern Democratic like President Buchanan could not agree that secessionists had any constitutionally valid reasons.

This artificial distinction you are trying to draw between necessity and at pleasure is entirely fictitious. Each state determines necessity for itself. Obviously the Southern states in 1860 and 61 felt the necessity was as great as they had felt it was in 1776.

There were numerous statements by Jefferson and various other presidents as well as the New England Hartford Convention as well as a textbook used at West Point saying a state may unilaterally secede.

To coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised…. Can any reasonable man be well disposed toward a government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself – a government that can only exist by the sword? ~ Alexander Hamilton, during the Constitutional Convention.

“The future inhabitants of [both] the Atlantic and Mississippi states will be our sons. We think we see their happiness in their union, and we wish it. Events may prove otherwise; and if they see their interest in separating why should we take sides? God bless them both, and keep them in union if it be for their good, but separate them if it be better.” – Thomas Jefferson

“If any State in the Union will declare that it prefers separation” over “union,” “I have no hesitation in saying, ‘let us separate.’” Thomas Jefferson

It depends on the state itself to retain or abolish the principle of representation, because it depends on itself whether it will continue a member of the Union. To deny this right would be inconsistent with the principle on which all our political systems are founded, which is, that the people have in all cases, a right to determine how they will be governed. —William Rawle, Chapter 32, A View of the Constitution of the United States of America

“If they had foreseen it, the probabilities are they would have sanctioned the right of a State or States to withdraw rather than that there should be war between brothers.” (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, Old Saybrook, Connecticut: Konecky & Konecky, 1992, reprint, p. 131)

“If there had been a desire on the part of any single State to withdraw from the compact at any time while the number of States was limited to the original thirteen, I do not suppose there would have been any to contest the right, no matter how much the determination might have been regretted.” (The Personal Memoirs of Ulysses S. Grant, p. 130)

President John Tyler likewise believed a state had the right to leave the Union. So did President John Quincy Adams who tried to organize the New England states to secede in the 1820’s.

The Northern Federalists’ Hartford Convention declared in 1814 that a state had the right to secede in cases of “absolute necessity” (Alan Brinkley, Richard Current, Frank Freidel, and T. Harry Williams, American History: A Survey, Eighth Edition, New York: McGraw-Hill, Inc., 1991, p. 230).

“Any people anywhere being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit.” Abraham Lincoln January 12, 1848 in a speech in the US House of Representatives. OOPS! How did that one get there? How embarrassing!

246 posted on 04/18/2018 9:45:39 PM PDT by FLT-bird (..)

To: DiogenesLamp; x; SoCal Pubbie

DiogenesLamp: "You think sending a war fleet with orders to attack (if impeded) but paralyzing it so it would just sit there in a menacing fashion, was a military exercise? "

The plan came from Lincoln's military adviser, former navy Captain Gustavus Fox.
It was to land supplies in boats under cover of darkness.
The plan did not require a large naval force, far from it.
If it went off as planned, the navy ships would sit well out of range and only become engaged if the resupply boats met serious resistance.
The orders were, in effect: no first use of force, and for that the Powhatten was irrelevant.
It could easily be sent on another task with Fox's mission not jeopardized.

The only thing Lincoln's mission really required was for Anderson to hold out until weather conditions were right for Fox.
But it turned out that Anderson did not think honor required him to hold out even one more day.

And the rest, as they say, is history.

DiogenesLamp: "Besides, he had a lot of military experts telling him that it was impossible to succor Sumter, so his idea didn't make any military sense anyway."

They said an invasion of Charleston didn't make military sense, but as you well know, Lincoln did not intend to invade only to resupply Union troops in Fort Sumter.
The plan was proposed by Fox and Lincoln bought it.

DiogenesLamp: "Only ships with drafts of less than 7 feet could reach Sumter, and they could only come up through the channel closest to the cannons on the one side. "

The Fox plan was shallow draft ships' boats which could go wherever they wanted, not restricted to main channels.

DiogenesLamp: "They had barges loaded with firewood that would be lit on fire in the approach.
Did you even seriously look at what they had ready to deal with those ships?"

Boats, row boats under cover of darkness and, ideally, fog.
The distance from shore batteries at, say, Cummings Point is about a mile, very long range for canons of that era.

DiogenesLamp: "They had a lot of mortars, and they had had lots of time to get their range and elevation."

Still very long range to hit many small moving targets at night.
Furthermore:

"Under orders from Beauregard, the

guns fired in a counterclockwise sequence around the harbor, with 2 minutes between each shot; Beauregard wanted to conserve ammunition, which he calculated would last for only 48 hours."

So Anderson needed only hold out for 48 hours and Fox could sail in with impunity.
But Anderson's honor was satisfied after just 34 hours so Fox was left only to remove the Union troops after their surrender.

247 posted on 04/18/2018 11:17:55 PM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)

I'm out of time again, so detailed responses will have to wait, but one point seems quick & easy to clear up:

FLT-bird: "The fort [Barrancus] sat on sovereign Florida territory and was being illegally held by federal troops....and they are the ones who fired first."

If you will note the incident at Fort Barrancus (near Fort Pickens) happened the night of January 8, 1861, two days before Florida declared secession.

"...decided to abandon Fort Barrancas when, around midnight of January 8, 1861, his guards repelled a group of local civilians who intended to occupy the fort.
Some historians claim that these were the first shots fired in the Civil War.
On January 10, 1861, the day Florida declared its secession from the Union..."

So their was nothing -- repeat nothing -- lawful about the secessionist civilians assault on Fort Barrancas and nothing illegal about the Union guards' response, period.

248 posted on 04/18/2018 11:39:05 PM PDT by BroJoeK (a little historical perspective...)

Their own countries’ or embassies’ current travel advisories.

249 posted on 04/18/2018 11:57:31 PM PDT by AmericanInTokyo

To: SoCal Pubbie

You mean let you focus exclusively on your virtue signaling instead of acknowledging the reality of that era? Yes, we all get it. You really really really hate slavery, and you wish to take every opportunity offered to make sure you can send out your virtue signals that you are absolutely opposed to this thing that was part of the United States and protected by it's constitution for "four score and seven years".

You didn't agree with the Constitution about this, and you've seemingly never been faced with the conundrum of cf being required to choose between what is constitutional and what is moral.

So let's put the question to you now. Which do you chose? Constitutional law, or Moral law?

250 posted on 04/19/2018 5:36:20 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

The plan came from Lincoln's military adviser, former navy Captain Gustavus Fox.

Yeah, but a lot of other military officials considered it Bollocks, among them the man who would most know; Major Anderson.

I had the honor to receive by yesterday's mail the letter of the honorable Secretary of War, dated April 4, and confess that what he there states surprises me very greatly, following as it does and contradicting so positively the assurance Mr. Crawford telegraphed he was authorized to make. I trust that this matter w ill be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.
It is, of course, now too late for me to give any advice in reference to the proposed scheme of Captain Fox. I fear that its result cannot fail to be disastrous to all concerned. Even with his boat at our walls the loss of life (as I think I mentioned to Mr. Fox) in unloading her will more than pay for the good to be accomplished by the expedition, which keeps us, if I can maintain possession of this work, out of position, surrounded by strong works, which must be carried to make this fort of the least value to the United States Government.

Anderson fixes the blame for starting the war on the dishonesty of his own Government.

251 posted on 04/19/2018 5:48:15 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

So their was nothing -- repeat nothing -- lawful about the secessionist civilians assault on Fort Barrancas...

What was it they did to "assault" Fort Barrancas? My recollection is that they noticed activity, and simply went there to see what was going on, and then they got shot at by the Union soldiers there.

I hadn't heard that they tried to "assault" the place, so you can enlighten me by providing details of how they conducted this assault.

252 posted on 04/19/2018 5:52:37 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

Tax and Spend Liberals in New York? Say it isn't so!

253 posted on 04/19/2018 6:08:24 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

And today we see exactly these same fatcats in the same part of the country more or less controlling the Federal Government with their influence and their media empire (propaganda system) still headquartered in New York.

Back in 1995, after the Republicans had taken control of the Congress for the first time in 40 years, they had advanced a policy of balancing the budget. I was utterly shocked to see every single news broadcasting source (I generally watched ABC news at that time) ridicule and mock the very idea of cutting spending. They were overtly and actively hostile to the idea of cutting spending, and it was incomprehensible to me.

Why would anyone be against balancing the budget? What is wrong with these people?

It was only in this last decade that I realized the people who would oppose cutting excessive Federal spending are those people who benefit from excessive Federal spending. If the people who benefited from excessive Federal spending, owned the media system, then it would explain why all of their employees were extremely hostile to the idea of balancing the Federal budget by reducing spending.

There is a "Spending/Industrial complex" located mostly in New York, that has been influencing the Federal government to keep the spending fountain going, even though it is ruining the entire country.

The media supports liberal policies, because Liberal Senators and Representatives can be reliably counted on to keep that money river flowing, and it is through that river of money that so many of these people have their power and influence in the world.

Same sh*t, Different Century. The Empire of New York controls the rest of us.

254 posted on 04/19/2018 6:30:48 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

Lincoln also reiterated this right in 1852.

Resolved, 1. That it is the right of any people, sufficiently numerous for national independence, to throw off, to revolutionize, their existing form of government, and to establish such other in its stead as they may choose.

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/l/lincoln/lincoln2/1:184?rgn=div1;view=fulltext

He was for it before he was against it.

255 posted on 04/19/2018 6:43:04 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

To: DiogenesLamp

Actually. I just don’t want to put words in your mouth, so to speak. I just want you to clarify something you wrote. It’s a very simple request.

256 posted on 04/19/2018 6:59:06 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie

To: SoCal Pubbie

It is already clear. If you think it is unclear, see my reference to the intentions of the Northerners to make everyone eat New England Clam Chowder.

But on the economic point I made when you entered this discussion, I dare say you have been shocked to discover that the South was paying for the vast bulk of all Federal expenditures, and you did not know that before.

I didn't either a few years ago, and when I learned of it, I immediately realized there is something wrong with the story that I had been taught about the Civil War growing up.

If the South was producing the vast bulk of the European money, how was it all ending up in New York?

257 posted on 04/19/2018 7:08:15 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

To: DiogenesLamp

Your clam chowder comment was beneath you, really. A rather sophomoric defection for someone with such a depth of knowledge, despite your obvious misinterpretation of the facts you’ve accumulated. Since returning to your discussion of economic matters in the antebellum period will be both time consuming and a defection from the very simple matter I wish to clarify, I will not do so until you state in clear and concise terms exactly what social changes you were referring to.

258 posted on 04/19/2018 7:16:42 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie

To: DiogenesLamp

By the way, if you’re actually serious that efforts to get Southerners to eat clam chowder was the causation of Southern secession, then it makes Johnny Reb look even worse. The old Foghorn Leghorn stereotype of the hot headed, fire eating gentleman would be too milk toast a descriptive if Southerners got offended to the point of warfare over such an absurdity.

259 posted on 04/19/2018 7:20:42 AM PDT by SoCal Pubbie

To: SoCal Pubbie

You weren’t doing so before. I suppose it was too much to expect any objectivity.

260 posted on 04/19/2018 7:31:22 AM PDT by DiogenesLamp ("of parents owing allegiance to no other sovereignty.")

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