The Confederate flag is not enough: Why our new race debate misses the point

FACT: April 15, 1861...Lincoln called for 75,000 volunteers to “suppress the rebellion.” (Seen throughout the country as a declaration of war against the seceded states.)
FACT: April 19, 1861...Lincoln ordered the blockade of Southern ports. (In and of itself an act of war against the South.)
FACT: April 27, 1861...Lincoln ordered an expanded blockade to include North Carolina and Virginia; (Another act of war against the South.)
May 6, 1861...The South declares war against the North.

So, who started the war? Don’t say the South when it fired on Fort Sumter, because Fort Sumter was in South Carolina, which had seceded, and thus was not a part of the United States, and a United States military force was occupying South Carolina territory and refused to vacate it. So, who actually initiated aggression against an independent country? Lincoln’s federals did when they blockaded Southern ports. All prior to the South declaring war. It’s like December, 1941. Did the war with Japan begin when Japan attacked Pearl Harbor? Or did it begin when Roosevelt asked for and Congress issued a Declaration of War a few days later? Of course that war began on December 7, 1941 with the Japanese attack on pearl Harbor.

Did WWII in Europe begin on September 1, 1939 with the German attack on Poland? Or did it begin later when the Poles could make a declaration of war? It began on September 1, 1939 with the German invasion of Poland.

Finally, you snidely assert that my country is NOT the USA. You can kiss my white ass, bub, because USA is my country, a country I proudly served during Vietnam while in the US Air Force.

But you don’t defend the USA whenever there’s an opportunity to to trash us in favor of your real heartthrob, the CSA.

FRiend, the facts are indisputable.
First the Confederacy provoked war dozens of times by unlawfully seizing by force US Federal properties —forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.
Outgoing Democrat President Buchanan did nothing to stop secessionist lawlessness, but in those few cases where there were actual Union troops, Buchanan held the forts, and attempted to resupply them.
Dough - faced and sympathetic as Buchanan was to the Southern cause, he never agreed that Confederate seizures of Federal properties was lawful.
After his inauguration on March 4, 1861, Lincoln merely continued Buchanan’s policy of supplying Union troops in Southern forts.
But by now the Confederacy was going berserk, demanding immediate surrender, and when the Union commander at Fort Sumter tried to delay a few days longer, Confederates launched a military assault that began the Civil War as certainly as the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor began US direct participation in WWII.

Those are facts which cannot be disputed.
It’s also factual to report that the Confederacy soon formally declared war and sent military aid to pro-Confederates in the Union state of Missouri, all before a single Confederate soldier was killed directly by any Union force, and before any Union Army invaded a single Confederate state.

As for whether Lincoln ever “declared war”, insane Confederates were saying his Inaugural Address on March 4, was a “declaration of war” when in fact it offered an olive branch of peace.
But Confederates had no interest in peace, and called everything Lincoln said war declarations.
In the meantime, all of the actual warfare was being conducted be the Confederacy against the United States.

Out of timr, must run...

Lincoln saw the firing on Fort Sumter as an attack on his revenue collection interests. Prior to Sumter’s bombardment, in his first inaugural address, Lincoln had this to say about Sumter and other forts and federal properties:

“The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.”

What exactly is he saying in that passage? He is saying he will invade and use force against and among the people to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government and to collect the duties and impost (i.e., the revenues).”

It is clear that Lincoln is saying he will take up arms to collect taxes and revenues and to retake governmental (federal) property and holdings. Prior to the bombardment of Sumter in mid-April, 1861 federal property in the seceded states had been taken over by those states, without violence, including customs houses and military and naval installations. Indeed, the seceded states even offered to pay the federal government for those properties. It is also clear that Lincoln was obsessed with collecting revenues (taxes).

In his first inaugural address, Lincoln basically gave the South the option of taxes or war. Historian Charles Adams said: “The mere suggestion that the South could secede unmolested as long as it paid taxes to the U.S. Government was a demand for tribute, which was an outrage. Such tax policy would never be tolerated. War was a certainty.”

Lincoln knew that federal installations in the seceded states, especially those in the harbors, were essential for revenue collection, even if they held little or no military value. He also knew he would lose those revenues if the seceded states were allowed to stay out of the Union. The Philadelphia Press, in mid-January, 1861, said the following:

“In the enforcement of the revenue laws, the forts are of primary importance. Their guns cover just so much ground as is necessary to enable the United States to enforce their laws….Those forts the United States must maintain. It is not a question of coercing South Carolina, but of enforcing the revenue laws….The practical point, either way, is – whether the revenue laws of the United States shall or shall not be enforced at those three ports, Charleston, Beaufort, and Georgetown, or whether they shall or shall not be made free ports, open to the commerce of the world, with no other restriction upon it than South Carolina shall see proper to impose….Forts are to be held to enforce the revenue laws, not to conquer a state….It is the enforcement of the revenue laws, not the coercion of the State, that is the question of the hour. If those laws cannot be enforced, the Union is clearly gone; if they can, it is safe.”

That same newspaper, immediately after South Carolina seceded in December, 1860, said that:

“The government cannot well avoid collecting the federal revenues at all Southern ports, even after the passage of secession ordinances; and if this duty is discharged, any State which assumes a rebellious attitude will still be obliged to contribute revenue to support the Federal Government or have her foreign commerce entirely destroyed.”

Sounds almost like a declaration of war, and would have been if uttered by the Congress instead of a newspaper.

The New York Evening Post said, in early March, 1861:

“That either the revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the port must be closed to importations from abroad, is generally admitted. 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 next crop pf corn is ripe.”

Fort Sumter, located as it was in the middle of Charleston Harbor, commanded the passages into the interior harbor and port. As such, it could easily have interdicted Southern commerce by closing down a free trade port (the prohibitive Morrill Tariff went into effect in early March, 1861, so commerce and trade had a choice between paying low taxes in Confederate ports or high taxes in Union ports, which would have been wholly unfavorable to Northern interests). Economics demanded that Sumter be defended by the Union on the one hand and on the other hand rendered inoperable by the Confederacy.

In a nutshell, the North saw a free and independent South as an economic threat that could be fatal to the nation.

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