Posted on 04/24/2017 5:49:29 AM PDT by rktman
New Orleans officials removed the first of four prominent Confederate monuments early Monday, the latest Southern institution to sever itself from symbols viewed by many as a representation racism and white supremacy.
The first memorial to come down was the Liberty Monument, an 1891 obelisk honoring the Crescent City White League.
Workers arrived to begin removing the statue, which commemorates whites who tried to topple a biracial post-Civil War government in New Orleans, around 1:25 a.m. in an attempt to avoid disruption from supporters who want the monuments to stay, some of whom city officials said have made death threats.
(Excerpt) Read more at nbcnews.com ...
I read these two sentences:
“Experience has proved that slave-holding States can not be safe in subjection to non-slaveholding States. Indeed, no people ever expect to preserve their rights and liberties unless they are in their own custody.”
And then my head exploded. My dry cleaning bill is going to be enormous.
Nonsense. What should Lincoln have done? You probably believe that any effort to stand in the way of the secessionists, any effort to hold on to some federal property was an act of war or an act justifying war by the other side. Jefferson Davis thought the same way.
But any US president worth his salt wouldn't simply stand back and let the rebels seize all federal property. First of all, some firmness was needed to hold off the panicked rush to secession or rebellion. If the US did nothing, it would invite still bolder grabs by seditionists. Secondly, any president would want to stand firm in hopes that the rebellion itself might crumble. At the time, the breadth and depth of secessionist sentiment wasn't clear, and firmness on the part of the federal government Could provide a rallying point for unionists. Third, the US would need bargaining chips in any future settlement. Fourth, the country and the president would need to save face by holding on to some shred of dignity, and doing something they could take pride in. Fifth, maintaining positions in the rebel states would allow the government to maintain that secession hadn't, didn't, and couldn't happen -- grasping at straws, perhaps, but that's what people do in desperate times. Sixth, the federal government bought the land -- in Sumter's case they even made the land -- the forts stood on and built the forts, so they were federal territory. Seventh, given the uncertainty of the situation, it wasn't advisable to surrender the fortifications at a time when foreign powers might exploit America's troubles.
So that's seven reasons why Lincoln might want to retain Sumter or Pickens, and none of them involve provoking a war. People who remember the Cold War will understand these reasons. Superpowers took bold, defiant stands and feared losing face. They were willing to go to the brink of war without actually making war. You can see that way of thinking reflected in Lincoln's actions. Davis, by contrast, apparently believed that not getting what he wanted when he wanted it was cause for war. He was playing a much simpler game than Lincoln. What was wrong with the man? He'd been Secretary of War. He'd fought in the Mexican War. He knew that any US president would put obstacles in his way. That was what governments do in tense situations. That was the way the US operates in foreign affairs. But still he regarded what he had every reason to expect Lincoln to do as a casus belli. It's as if he wanted war and wanted to blame it on Lincoln.
Good point. You'll hear people saying that Lincoln was willing to offer never to do anything against Southern slavery, so therefore secession and war couldn't be about slavery.
But the secessionists didn't trust him. They didn't believe that their slave property would be secure in a country that was half-slave and half-free.
Plus, they had unrealistic expectations about how a new Southern Confederacy could expand slave territory into Central America or the Caribbean.
You just skipped right over all that verbiage on their economic problems caused by the current status quo till you found something that you could pigennhole into your argument?
Yes, the United States of 1860 had no difficulties in promoting their own "liberties" while holding other people in bondage. If you have any grasp of the zeitgeist of that era, you know this dichotomy was ubiquitous for "four score and seven years."
You want your head to explode again? Read the Declaration of Independence where it says "All men are created equal" and then contemplate this was written by slave holder Thomas Jefferson who never did free his own slaves.
If you are so easily rattled by the comparison between your modern sensibilities and those of the first "four score and seven years" of this nation's existence, I recommend you lose an interest in history.
A lot of bad things happened in the past, and if you explode your head every time you run across something anachronistic to the present, you will hardly be a functional human being.
What should he have done? That's a tough question. I have put forth a very good argument that he should have done exactly what he did. Create a Pretext for war, and then get it over with quickly.
My economic argument is no Joke. Southern independence was a serious economic threat to the North and to Lincoln's government. Were I in Lincoln's shoes, I very likely would have done what he did.
As i've said before, when there comes a conflict between morals and the pocketbook, the pocketbook usually wins.
You probably believe that any effort to stand in the way of the secessionists, any effort to hold on to some federal property was an act of war or an act justifying war by the other side.
Yeah, pretty much. The Union admitted those forts were useless to them. Why hold them but for a pretext to start a war? (Did you see what the "National Republican" said on the issue on March 11, 1861?)
But any US president worth his salt wouldn't simply stand back and let the rebels seize all federal property. First of all, some firmness was needed to hold off the panicked rush to secession or rebellion. If the US did nothing, it would invite still bolder grabs by seditionists. Secondly, any president would want to stand firm in hopes that the rebellion itself might crumble. At the time, the breadth and depth of secessionist sentiment wasn't clear, and firmness on the part of the federal government Could provide a rallying point for unionists. Third, the US would need bargaining chips in any future settlement. Fourth, the country and the president would need to save face by holding on to some shred of dignity, and doing something they could take pride in. Fifth, maintaining positions in the rebel states would allow the government to maintain that secession hadn't, didn't, and couldn't happen -- grasping at straws, perhaps, but that's what people do in desperate times. Sixth, the federal government bought the land -- in Sumter's case they even made the land -- the forts stood on and built the forts, so they were federal territory. Seventh, given the uncertainty of the situation, it wasn't advisable to surrender the fortifications at a time when foreign powers might exploit America's troubles.
All of these are good arguments, except for part of number six, and all of number seven.
Yes, from Lincoln's point of view, the consequences of letting the South go would be severe, and you can see where he wanted to do anything he could to avoid it.
Now the thought occurs to me that perhaps his best course of action would have been to do what he actually tried to do. Trade Ft. Sumter for Virginia. I think the problem was that he wanted some assurance that he would keep Virginia and he didn't want to take a leap of faith.
Possibly had he given up Sumter and Pickens, Virginia would have stayed, and without Virginia the rest of the South would have been a much lesser problem. Perhaps the tensions would have lessened between the North and the Deeper South, and perhaps they would have eventually reunited.
I dunno. I think keeping Sumter backfired. I think had he let it go, he probably would have kept Virginia, and the deeper South would have been content to have Virginia as a buffer zone, so most of the tensions would have likely dissipated.
People who remember the Cold War will understand these reasons. Superpowers took bold, defiant stands and feared losing face.
And this I think is much of it. Pride on both sides led to an inevitable pissing contest between the "elite" of both sides.
Davis, by contrast, apparently believed that not getting what he wanted when he wanted it was cause for war. He was playing a much simpler game than Lincoln.
I believe that is absolutely true. I've read much of Lincoln. He was a canny bastard, and I mean that in a complimentary way. He was smooth as greased silk in his manner of speaking and in his politics. He was a very successful trial lawyer in Springfield. He had the gift of gab and he was devilishly smart.
And I think that was a lot of the problem. I think he was "too smart by half" as the British say.
What was wrong with the man? He'd been Secretary of War. He'd fought in the Mexican War. He knew that any US president would put obstacles in his way. That was what governments do in tense situations. That was the way the US operates in foreign affairs. But still he regarded what he had every reason to expect Lincoln to do as a casus belli. It's as if he wanted war and wanted to blame it on Lincoln.
I think your "face" explanation pretty well sums it up. It is quite likely that the Union Troops could have sat there in Fort Sumter and Charleston could have kept it's trade going in and out and kept enjoying it's independence from the Higher tariffs and the gouged New England Shipping charges, and eventually the Fort would have become a source of amusement for the locals and the foreign ships, and eventually the garrison would have been withdrawn.
But the symbolism of it was probably unbearable to such stiff-necked "Aristocratic" thinking people as ran the South in those days. It was an affront to them, and I think that is most of what convinced them it was intolerable.
Pride goeth before a fall.
I think the speech is interesting, but finding one secessionist clever enough to hide the true issue is not persuasive. South Carolina’s Declaration of Secession mentions taxes one time - in regards to taxation of slaves.
Slavery is mentioned 21 times.
http://www.civil-war.net/pages/southcarolina_declaration.asp
Did they forget the BS about the taxes when they wrote this?
I think the non-slave population would have developed more industry because the rich would be swimming in money and the middle class would want to get some of that, and so they would make products and services that the rich wanted to buy. I think the capitalization would have resulted in a boom of industry.
I've read newspaper accounts from the time period talking about the massive economic growth Charleston was experiencing just prior to the war. They couldn't build warehouses fast enough, and population had started streaming in with diverse talents and abilities.
I think population and industry will travel to where the money is, and when Southern money increased dramatically, there would be those people there who wanted to capitalize on it.
I think the world should probably be pretty thankful that the South lost for the simple reason that by the 1930s you could have had mechanization in agriculture, a worldwide economic depression, AND widespread acceptance of eugenics possibly meeting in a Southern cotton field.
I think at that point in history, eugenic theory was already common place. In that era, the whites of the North and the South all thought they were superior to Blacks, (Certainly Lincoln thought so) and selective breeding was already being practiced. I don't think it would have ever gone in the direction of the Nazis, because all of these people, both North and South, were mostly devout Christians. The Northerners mostly hated blacks unequivocally, but a lot of the Southerners regarded their slaves as family.
It is possible that after mechanization, they would have eventually manumitted their slaves and possibly set them up with some kind of trade. Mechanization would have made too little work for too many hands.
I think some would have done one thing while others may have done another, but at some point it would have no longer been profitable to keep so many people. It would have become George Washington's problem all over again.
I think had the South remained independent, there is a possibility that Charleston might have become the Southern New York with it's "high society" and it's wealth. It may have become a major financial city of the World, and we might all be bitching about the liberals of Charleston instead of those of Boston, New York and San Fransisco.
I think it's hard to say exactly what would have happened.
Joe Johnson was an excellent general particular in defensive warfare. Yo must be thinking of Braxton Bragg!
The North had little economic use for slaves, and so it cost them a lot less to give up labor they didn't need anyways, and in many cases they simply "sold them down the river" to plantations in the South and thereby recovered whatever money they had spent on them.
In the South, the slaves were the largest component of their economic engine. To suggest that they quit using them would be like someone suggesting we quit using gasoline and diesel today.
Remember that pocketbook/morals thing? Well this was a pocketbook thing for them, and like I said, the pocket book usually beats a moral argument.
But the trend is obvious. If you plot abolition in the US since 1776, it was slowly taking over, state by state. It occurred first in the North where slave labor was less useful and more costly, and proceeded West and South. As it encountered areas where slavery was profitable, the urge to free them became less intense because the morality of it started cutting into the money of it.
I believe the social pressure would have continued encroaching over more and more territory, and there were even abolitionists in the South. I think with the advent of some level of wealth, the social pressure to free them would have become stronger and stronger.
I think it was just a matter of time. Perhaps as soon as forty years, but more likely 80 or 100 years.
As the man said of bankruptcy when asked how he went bankrupt. He said: "Slowly at first, then very quickly." That is how slavery would have ended in the South short of a war.
No more idiotic than the Colonists who thought they could oppose the most powerful Navy in the world at that time.
No, pretty idiotic when the first thing the North did was blockade Southern ports. The Colonists defeated England. The South was doomed the moment they got the idea in their heads to go to war.
First iome I have ever heard criticism of Joe Johnson.
I will have to research this.
Typo
First time....
Typo
First time....
I agree.
To wit: the cotton gin.
That is exactly right. That is the first thing they did. This stopped the Europeans from seeing any increased profits from direct trade with the South. When I was in Junior high learning about this stuff, I never understood the blockade. I figured they just did it to give the Navy something to do, because the only way to take and hold territory was with land battles.
But the economic angle makes it crucial to have that blockade. That blockade was the single most important reason why the North won that war. It kept the South from obtaining European allies, because European businesses hadn't yet felt the much greater profits they would have made by trading directly with the South.
You want the truth of something, look at the money flow.
Cui bono?
It prevented the South from exporting and importing war materials and food stuffs.
Not really. They grew their own food and made their own cannons. Small arms such as rifles got smuggled in anyways.
What they needed was manpower, but I don't think a lot of Europeans would be lining up to volunteer to be cannon fodder. The North solved this problem by forcing destitute and impoverished immigrants from Ireland to go kill people whom had never done them any harm. That was several levels of evil.
The war raged on for years, and it is doubtful the blockade prevented any of the battles that were fought. Arms and food didn't seem to be their primary problems. Lack of bodies to throw into the conflict did.
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