Posted on 07/08/2013 5:37:15 AM PDT by Old Teufel Hunden
Just south of Gettysburg, a young soldier named John Nevin leads a Pennsylvania regiment across fields freshly scarred by a horrifically violent, three-day clash between two great armies. Trees are shattered and pocked with holes, crops and orchards mowed down by flying lead, fields trampled by tens of thousands of marching men, fences torn apart. A barn and a house, trapped between the two armies, have burned to the ground.
Nevin sees human slaughter on a massive scale, with an estimated 8,000 killed, many as yet unburied. The dead, Nevin writes, are "strewn around in various forms of horror," the bodies blackening in the summer heat. Rising from the battlefield is a stench that sickens Gettysburg’s residents.
(Excerpt) Read more at newsinteractive.post-gazette.com ...
I assume you mean to say Congress.
But of course Congressional approval is not required for the President to move troops between US facilities.
For it to be an act of war it would have required the president to agree that SC had actually seceded and was now (part of) another country.
Which of course neither Buchanan nor Lincoln ever conceded.
Your argument that it was an act of war is therefore a classic example of a well-known logical fallacy.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
I know that I appreciate it every time someone gives you a swat with a rolled up newspaper ;-)
Not quite, Washington DC was one of the most heavily defended cities on the planet at the time. It was ringed with over 50 forts, with 800 cannon, with 20 miles of rifle trenches and hundreds of battery emplacements. Nearly 40,000 men manned these works. this large concentration of troops in Capitol meant that these men were not available to reinforce Army of the Potomac as it marched north. General Hooker resigned as the AOPs commander because Washington would not release any of the garrison to the AOP.
Actually, Hooker “resigned” over the Harpers Ferry garrison.
agree about the South losing in the End. Grant had just captured Vicksburg, Bragg was retreating before Rosecrans.
Heard someone liken Lee’s efforts in the East as saving the front porch while the rest of the house burnt down.
Doubt that lee could have “sacked Washington DC” The city was heavily fortified and well manned. Besieging the City would have required a steady supply line for ammunition, provisions. It would also have locked lee into a position that he could not defend Richmond from the Union forces already on the Peninsula. Lee probably would not have even considered attacking Pittsburg, geographically 150 miles from Gettysburg over the Alleghany mountain. No line of communication with the Confederacy and no clear retreat path back to Virginia. Though he would probably endorsed this action by Bragg and the Army of the Tennessee.
“Union stores Where? The Allegany Arsenal was at Pittsburg, 150 miles away over the Allegany Mountains,
The Harpers Ferry Arsenal had been in Confederate hand since September 1862 all of its machinery had been moved to Richmond and was no longer in the arms manufacturing business. The Washington Arsenal is a possibility, but only if General Lee could bust through the fortified lines around DC. Unlikely because if for no other reason, he had expended most of his artillery ammunition at Gettysburg.
And failure to keep Lee out of Washington DC would have meant murder of government officials, burning of government buildings, and destruction of government records.
They didn’t want to ‘just be left along’. They wanted the whole US to be subject to the slave power.
Washington’s defenses were second to those at Richmond, built by slave labor and at the direction of RE Lee.
Sherman know at the time of Gettysburg that you didn’t need a supply line: Grant operated without a supply line at Vicksburg, as did Grierson’s raid.
Yay!
Wack a mole winner!
That is accurate, but Lee also intended to raid Harrisburg PA. Harrisburg was an important spot both strategically -- major rail center, and psychologically -- the capital of the 2nd largest Union state.
Only the confrontation at Gettysburg, a day or two march south of Harrisburg stopped Lee from getting there.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question
If I understand the term correctly, a lot of that goes on. Some people assume that everything that the secessionists or the Confederates did in the run-up to war was legitimate and put the blame on Lincoln. The questions they set up -- what they ask about and what they don't ask about, what they consider debateable and what they consider beyond debate -- determines they answers they get.
Rather than asking why the federal government or Lincoln behaved as they did and assuming that the secessionists or Confederates did nothing wrong or questionable or couldn't help acting as they did, I'd turn it around. It was possible that the federal government would take military action against secession. It was likely that if fired upon, the US would fire back and take the conflict to the next level. Given that -- knowing that -- why did the secessionist or Confederate leaders (who certainly did have various options available to them) behave as they did?
I’ve been thinking about this comment.
I think what the neo-Confeds see here is essentially what modern liberals see when they look at any conflict or disagreement between their good guys (minorities, women, Muslims, gays, 3rd world countries, radicals, revolutionaries, etc.) and their bad guys (white people, Americans, American conservatives, counter-revolutionaries, etc.).
In this worldview the bad guys are always responsible for anything at all negative that happens, since any apparently negative actions by the good guys are entirely a reaction to provocation by the bad guys.
IMO this infantilizes their good guys, since they lose all moral responsibility and become merely objects that react when subjected to a stimulus. Only the bad guys have true volition.
In actual fact, IMO, both sides have moral responsibility for their own actions, and the actual course of events is a complicated mixture of free decisions and reactions to the other side by both parties. But that’s too complex for those who insist on believing in 100% innocent good guys and 100% guilty bad guys.
Looking back at Sumter, where the neos firmly believe Lincoln “forced” Davis into firing the first shot.
Anderson had already informed his opponents that he would be forced to surrender for lack of provisions in just a few days (three if I remember correctly). Which means a peaceful resolution is at hand if the CSA was just willing to wait a little.
The ships coming to provision and possibly reinforce the Fort could have been driven off by gunfire without it necessarily starting a war, as had earlier attempts. For some reason, shooting at a ship didn’t carry the same connotations at the time as firing on a fort.
To my mind this means that Davis gambled that the outbreak of war, with the CSA firing the first shot, would cause the Upper South and Border states to climb down off the fence on his side.
Which to a considerable extent happened. It is very clear from contemporary accounts that Virginians and other Upper South peoples made their choice to secede as soon as they heard of the fighting at Sumter. Massive spontaneous demonstrations ensued.
This was followed several days later by Lincoln’s call for troops, which was then used as a convenient justification for secession by these states. But it’s pretty clear they made their decision before he sent out the call.
IOW, I think it’s clear the CSA made a conscious decision to precipitate war as a way of forcing the remaining slave states into a decision.
I am also always amused by those who seem to think that if the Union had just peacefully accepted the secession of the Deep South states that would have been the end of all conflict.
The crucial issue in the election of 1860 was southern outrage at the notion that they might be barred from taking slaves into the territories. They broke up the Democratic Party over the issue and thereby ensured Lincoln’s election.
Yet we are supposed to assume that once they seceded they would just drop the issue and calmly accept slavery being limited to the seven states of the CSA.
I think it’s perfectly obvious that from Day One the CSA intended to expand by whatever means necessary. They immediately sent envoys to the remaining slave state to try to induce them to secede and join the CSA. Actions which by one country against another are generally considered acts of war.
They also immediately began plans to expand by military force into the accessible territories, including Indian Territory, New Mexico and Arizona.
To my mind it is perfectly obvious that calm Union acceptance of secession would have merely ensure CSA becoming more aggressive until somebody drew a line in the sand to stop them. Including if necessary military invasion of the remaining slave states. After all, they could always find some purportedly legitimate group within any of those states to “invite” invasion.
Thanks for the thoughtful response.
The neo-confederates (or whatever they're calling themselves now) are playing the victim card. If you look at a lot of their books, as simplistic as the portrayal of the villain Lincoln is, his opponents are even less complicated and less real.
They're cardboard cutouts who have no will or motivations of their own -- just extras in the Lincoln drama. This is actually quite insulting to them, and in a way it's quite a back-handed tribute to Lincoln.
If Jefferson Davis had won his war and established his country, he'd be respected -- or vilified -- as a nation-builder or state-builder, as a national hero or as a Machiavellian monster. But since he lost, he can just become a passive victim. For some people it's easier to just throw out all the complexities and ambiguities.
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