Posted on 08/16/2017 1:08:55 PM PDT by PeaRidge
"History, by apprising [citizens] of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." ---Thomas Jefferson
From the time of the middle of the 19th Century, the deep Southern States’ governments and the Southern people have been depicted as being totally preoccupied with the survival of slavery, while Northern people were to become the defenders of universal freedom.
Those reading many of the dominant post-era authors of the history of this period are often led to the absolute conclusion that the controversies which arose between the states, and the war in which they culminated, were caused largely by efforts on the one side to extend and perpetuate human slavery, and on the other side to resist it and establish human liberty.
Generations of Southern people and many historians would vigorously disagree with these views. Based on records of the time, that construct is substantially devoid of important historical facts, and fails to include the issues, which produced the secession, and those that caused President Lincoln to send Federal troops to the harbors in Charleston and Pensacola to initiate war.
This is a great disservice to generations of Americans who have not been urged to study the records of the period produced by authors writing at the actual time of the events. However, having been consistently presented in modern schoolbook, film, and television media accounts of the American Civil War, these notions have now spread to become the commonly accepted thesis of that era in US history.
The prevailing views of the practice of slavery in the US have been fashioned by authors and historians primarily from the accounts of first and second-hand observers of the slave South. Since such observers lacked the hard data needed to determine the scope and nature of this relationship, they could only convey their impressions. Unfortunately, these impressions are far from uniform, and incorrectly stereotype the people of the time.
With the acceptance of the media driven concept of slavery, it has then become logical to argue that it was necessary for the US government to wage a four-year war to abolish slavery in the United and Confederate States, one that ravaged half of the country and destroyed a generation of American men.
At the beginning of the history of the country, the founding fathers were opponents to empire, a policy that Lincoln and the incoming Republican Party’s platform turned on its head less than 150 years later. In 1860 Southern economic interests understood the effects of these policies and decided to leave the union.
The war was clearly tied to slavery, but in the sense that Republican tariffs would have squeezed the profitability out of the slave-based cotton plantation economy to the benefit of Northern industry, especially Union textiles and iron manufacturing.
Lincoln claimed the war was to "save" the Union, but this was only true in a geographic sense. The country ceased being a Union, as it was originally conceived, of separate and sovereign states, and sovereign people bound together by common interests and a Constitutional republican form of government.
Instead, America became an "amalgam" of states dominated by a powerful and centralized federal government. Although the war freed four million slaves into poverty, it did not bring about a new birth of freedom, as Lincoln later claimed in the Gettysburg Address.
As the thirteen colonies, did when they seceded from Britain, the South sought separation to attain peace and security, not warfare among the people. The Confederacy had no intent to occupy or attack the Union states.
Violence was brought to the soil of the South by the only human being of the time that had the power to do so, Abraham Lincoln.
It is happening all over again.
Those "Supply Ships" carried 285 cannons and 2,444 men and they had orders to attack the Confederates if they didn't allow them to land those "supplies". (Which contained arms, powder and more men for the fort in complete contradiction to the letter Lincoln sent to SC Gov Pickens)
you’re surmising what Lincoln’s orders were; you have no idea...if you do, please reproduce them here, and I’ll be happy to say I’m wrong...
I wasn't making it up.
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EXECUTIVE MANSION, March 29, 1861.Honorable SECRETARY OF WAR:
SIR: I desire that an expedition, to move by sea, be got ready to sail as early as the 6th of April next, the whole according to memorandum attached, and that you co-operate with the Secretary of the Navy for that object.
Your obedient servant,
A. LINCOLN.
[Inclosure Numbers 1.]
NAVY DEPARTMENT. Preliminary orders.-Steamers Pocahontas at Norfolk, Pawnee at Washington, Harriet Lane at New York (Treasury Department), to be under sailing orders for sea, with stores, &c., for one month. Three hundred men to be kept ready for departure from on board the receiving ships at New York.
[Inclosure Numbers 2.]
WAR DEPARTMENT. Preliminary.-Two hundred men to be ready to leave Governor's Island in New York. Supplies for twelve months for one hundred men to be put in portable shape, ready for instant shipping. A large steamer and three tugs conditionally engaged.
MARCH 28, 1861.
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NAVY DEPARTMENT, Washington, April 1, 1861.To the COMMANDANT OF THE NAVY-YARD, Brooklyn N. Y.:
Fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible moment under sealed orders. Orders by a confidential messenger go forward to-morrow.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
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WAR DEPARTMENT, Washington, April 4, 1861.Captain G. V. FOX, Washington, D. C.:
SIR: It having been decided to succor Fort Sumter you have been selected for this important duty. Accordingly you will take charge of the transports in New York having the troops and supplies on board to the entrance of Charleston Harbor, and endeavor, in the first instance, to deliver the subsistence. If you are opposed in this you are directed to report the fact to the senior naval officer of the harbor, who will be instructed by the Secretary of the Navy to use his entire force to open a passage, when you will, if possible, effect an entrance and place both troops and supplies in Fort Sumter.
I am, sir, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
SIMON CAMERON,
Secretary of War.
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HEADQUARTERS OF THE ARMY, Washington, D. C., April 4, 1861.Lieutenant Colonel HENRY L. SCOTT, A. D. C., New York:
SIR: This letter will be landed to you by Captain G. V. Fox, ex-officer of the Navy, and a gentleman of high standing, as well as possessed of extraordinary nautical ability. He is charged by high authority here with the command of an expedition, under cover of certain ships of war, whose object is to re-enforce Fort Sumter.
To embark with Captain Fox you will cause a detachment of recruits, say about two hundred, to be immediately organized at Fort Columbus, with a competent number of officers, arms, ammunition, and subsistence. A large surplus of the latter-indeed, as great as the vessels of the expedition can take-with other necessaries, will be needed for the augmented garrison of Fort Sumter.
The subsistence and other supplies should be assorted like those which were provided by you and Captain Ward of the Navy for a former expedition. Consult Captain Fox and Major Eaton on the subject, and give all necessary orders in my name to fit out the expedition, except that the hiring of vessels will be left to others.
Some fuel must be shipped. Oil, artillery implements, fuses, cordage, slow-march, mechanical levers, and gins, &c., should also be put on board.
Consult, also, if necessary, confidentially, Colonel Tompkins and Major Thornton.
Respectfully, yours,
WINFIELD SCOTT.
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NAVY DEPARTMENT, Washington, April 5, 1861.Captain SAMUEL MERCER,
Commanding U. S. S. Powhatan, New York:
SIR: The United States steamers Powhatan, Pocahontas, and Harriet Lane will compose a naval force, under your command, to be sent to the vicinity of Charleston, S. C., for the purpose of aiding in carrying out the objects of an expedition of which the War Department has charge.
The primary object of the expedition is to provision Fort Sumter, for which purpose the War Department will furnish the necessary transports. Should the authorities at Charleston permit the fort to be supplied, no further particular service will be required of the force under your command, and after being satisfied that supplies have been received at the fort, the Powhatan, Pocahontas, and Harriet Lane will return to New York, and the Pawnee to Washington.
Should the authorities at Charleston, however, refuse to permit or attempt to prevent the vessel or vessels having supplies on board from entering the harbor, or from peaceably proceeding to Fort Sumter, you will protect the transports or boats of the expedition in the object of their mission-disposing of your force in such manner as to open the way for their ingress and afford, so far as practicable, security to the men and boats, and repelling by force, if necessary, all obstructions towards provisioning the fort and re-enforcing it; for in case of resistance to the peaceable primary object of the expedition a re-enforcement of the garrison will also be attempted. These purposes will be under the supervision of the War Department, which has charge of the expedition. The expedition has been intrusted to Captain G. V. Fox, with whom you will put yourself in communication, and co-operate with him to accomplish and carry into effect its object.
You will leave New York with the Powhatan in time to be off Charleston Bar, ten miles distant from and due east of the light-house, on the morning of the 11th instant, there to await the arrival of the transport or transports with troops and stores. The Pawnee and Pocahontas will be ordered to join you there at the time mentioned, and also the Harriet Lane, which latter vessel has been placed under the control of this Department for this service. On the termination of the expedition, whether it be peaceable or otherwise, the several vessels under your command will return to the respective ports, as above directed, unless some unforeseen circumstance should prevent.
I am, respectfully, your obedient servant,
GIDEON WELLES,
Secretary of the Navy.
Also, to get a better understanding of the situation, the plan of Gustavas Fox was a reinforcement by force, and Major Anderson himself said it was a bad plan and would trigger a war. In fact he was very upset when he had heard that it was to be implemented.
The Confederates knew of the Gustavas Fox plan (because there were spies and sympathizers all through the Navy and Army departments) and they understood that it would be an attack, because that is what the plan called for.
Do you know of any "history books" that weren't published in the North East? Of course the "history books" say this, because if they told the rest of the story, people would be a lot more hesitant to buy the official narrative of what happened. The Union wouldn't look so much like the "good guys" anymore. They would look like a bigger man that deliberately picked a fight with a smaller man.
Another tactic which King Lincoln adopted from the British. By declaring them "rebels", even though they took a vote, and the people of these states voted for "Brexit", and it was all done peacefully and democratically, Lincoln still stuck the word "Rebel" on them, because it gave him power which he wouldn't have been able to use if they were regarded as a foreign government. (Which they were at the time, by pretty much everyone in the Nation except for Abraham Lincoln.)
By calling them "Rebels", Lincoln did not have to go to congress for permission to start a war with them. In fact, he deliberately waited until congress was out of session before he assembled his group of warships to go down there and attack them. Had he tried it while congress was in session, sympathizers would have notified the congress of what he was doing, and the congress would have told him to stop it.
I’m not arguing with your silly distortions again.
You have quite enough silly distortions with which to contend already, and most of them are the consequence of being taught to you over the years.
Had King George III been running the Civil War instead of King Lincoln I, they would not have lost, but since Lincoln was far more fanatical, and was willing to allow far more people to get killed, he eventually ground them down.
They just decided the bloodshed wasn't worth it?
No, Lincoln decided the bloodshed WAS worth it. The people trying to defend their homeland didn't have any choice about it. All they could do was bleed.
Just like Trump, Lincoln fights.....
Your feelings towards Lincoln appear to grow more rabid with every passing day. I do believe that your dealings with the other folks on this topic are beginning to get to you.
Don't care. Their declarations have no bearing on why the Union invaded their land. The South was a slave owning section of the Country when it was part of the Union, so the fact that it was going to continue slavery as an independent Nation is irrelevant. Slavery would have continued had it remained part of the Union.
So why did the Union feel it had to invade the South?
The Union attacked the Confederate States to force what Lincoln regarded as an open rebellion into submission.
Lincoln attacked first. He started his attack on March 28, the Confederates didn't respond to his attack until April 12.
In ths instance, the wife had filed for divorce and then she told the husband to get out and the husband said that he wasn’t going anywhere.
Did the house belong to the Husband or the Wife before the marriage?
No they don't, they just want to cheerlead what they regard as their team. They refuse to recognize any wrongdoing on the part of their team because they are emotionally invested in believing their team was the good guys.
They simply won't accept an accurate understanding of history if it tarnishes their teams reputation as the "good guys."
I don't have an emotional stake in this debate because none of my ancestors were here when the Civil War occurred, and they didn't settle in one of the Confederate states.
I don't have a dog in this fight, and so I can see things more clearly than those that do. That is why I can recognize the different perspectives occurring in that era of history.
In the context of this discussion, "northern states" refers to those that remained in the Union as opposed to "southern states" that did not. It is a normal and regular usage of the "North/South" method of labeling the conflict.
Yes, I am aware that the border states were culturally Southern, (except for Delaware, which could hardly be viewed as a "border state") but the point here is to demonstrate that "Union" states practiced slavery, so it makes it a ridiculous claim to assert that they were fighting to end slavery.
They obviously were not fighting for this reason, they were fighting to end the efforts by a group of states to be independent from Washington DC.
you were quite clever in using ‘northern’ to attempt to buttress your weak argument, but in the end, you failed...and by the way, you’re wrong about Jersey; slavery until 1804...
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" In 1830, of the 3,568 Northern blacks who remained slaves, more than two-thirds were in New Jersey. The institution was rapidly declining in the 1830s, but not until 1846 was slavery permanently abolished. At the start of the Civil War, New Jersey citizens owned 18 "apprentices for life" (the federal census listed them as "slaves") -- legal slaves by any name.""New Jersey's emancipation law carefully protected existing property rights. No one lost a single slave, and the right to the services of young Negroes was fully protected. Moreover, the courts ruled that the right was a 'species of property,' transferable 'from one citizen to another like other personal property.' "[10]
Thus "New Jersey retained slaveholding without technically remaining a slave state."[11]
And they ended the draft in 1973. Apparently the nation decided that forcing people into the Army was wrong.
Tell your father (if you are able) that we thank him for his service. I have nothing but respect for those who served and nothing but contempt for the draft dodgers and for Jimmy Carter who pardoned all those cowards.
"My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right. "
-Senator Carl Schurz-
I actually have quite a lot of respect for Lincoln, but much of this discussion is just rhetoric. I sometimes refer to him as "King Lincoln" (but I have never referred to him as an "ape" or any of these other derogatory terms) but when I do so, it is to emphasize the point that in many cases he acted far outside of his legitimate constitutional authority.
Abraham Lincoln even admits this, but he justifies it by claiming it was necessary to protect the greater part of the Constitution.
I have also admitted that were I in Lincoln's position, I would have likely done the same thing he did. The economic, political and territorial threat to the Union was real, and Lincoln appears to have understood that, and he did what he believed was essential to preventing this threat from developing.
I think his argument that states didn't have a right to leave was just bullocks, and is no way supportable by the historical record and the example of the founders, but this is a philosophical point, and often times real world pragmatism results in having to let go of the theoretical in order to deal with the real.
Trump is an example of this. I've argued till I was blue in the face with "never Trumpers" who believe as a matter of "principle" that they must oppose him because he is insufficiently "conservative" to lead their party.
I point out that the alternative (Hillary Clinton) would have been far worse for the nation, and my first priority is making sure that I and my Family are capable of surviving, and of secondary concern to me are philosophical concerns about "purity" of ideology.
Yes, I would have preferred to nominate someone who is more clearly aligned with my beliefs, but when the choice is between a horribly evil psychotic hate-witch and a moderately liberal with some conservative leanings, I'll take the moderately liberal with some conservative leanings over the worse alternative.
As it turns out, Trump has been behaving in a more conservative manner than I had expected, and in many cases I am pleasantly surprised.
But this Civil War business is a philosophical discussion, because the real events already happened and are irrevocable.
I wish to take further issue with your effort to extend my analogy. You have the scale of things off by quite a lot. A woman hitting a husband with a frying pan for 12 straight hours would likely be fatal to the husband. Ft. Sumter is not analogous to the entire husband, it is analogous to a small part of the husband, such as a tiny finger of the husband.
12 hours of bombardment doesn't equate to 12 hours of beating a husband with a frying pan. On the time and size scale of nations, it equates more to a slap.
So a clearer and more proper extension of the analogy would have the husband refusing to remove his hand from the wife and so she slaps his hand. The husband than proceeds to beat the sh*t out of her and then leaves her bruised, battered, and with broken ribs and a broken jaw, lying helpless upon the floor.
He then says he did it because she was an "addict", and so therefore she needed the beating.
*That* is a better fitting analogy.
I can’t accept a bombardment with cannon balls as being analogous to a slap on the hand. Let’s say the wife doesn’t hit the husband on the head with the frying pan, but uses it like she’s spanking a child. No fatalities. But let’s not forget that the wife also tried to burn the house down with the husband in it.
“At 4:30 a.m. on April 12, 1861, Lt. Henry S. Farley, acting upon the command of Capt. George S. James, fired a single 10-inch mortar round from Fort Johnson. (James had offered the first shot to Roger Pryor, a noted Virginia secessionist, who declined, saying, “I could not fire the first gun of the war.”) The shell exploded over Fort Sumter as a signal to open the general bombardment from 43 guns and mortars at Fort Moultrie, Fort Johnson, the floating battery, and Cummings Point. 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. Edmund Ruffin, another noted Virginia secessionist, had traveled to Charleston to be present for the beginning of the war, and fired one of the first shots at Sumter after the signal round, a 64-pound shell from the Iron Battery at Cummings Point.”
“Although Sumter was a masonry fort, there were wooden buildings inside for barracks and officer quarters. The Confederates targeted these with Heated shot (cannonballs heated red hot in a furnace), starting fires that could prove more dangerous to the men than explosive artillery shells. At 7 p.m. on April 12, a rain shower extinguished the flames and at the same time the Union gunners stopped firing for the night.”
“The following morning, the full bombardment resumed and the Confederates continued firing hot shot against the wooden buildings. By noon most of the wooden buildings in the fort and the main gate were on fire. The flames moved toward the main ammunition magazine, where 300 barrels of gunpowder were stored. The Union soldiers frantically tried to move the barrels to safety, but two-thirds were left when Anderson judged it was too dangerous and ordered the magazine doors closed. He ordered the remaining barrels thrown into the sea, but the tide kept floating them back together into groups, some of which were ignited by incoming artillery rounds.”— Wikipedia
The Husband is 20 million people. What does a bombardment of ~100 of them in a fort (during which nobody was killed) equate to on that scale?
There was no evidence of any collapse of the Union.
There was no evidence of rebellion. No shooting, no rioting, no forceful occupation, no imprisonment, and no lawlessness.
With the one exception in Charleston, all Union facilities had been peacefully obtained with representatives sent to Washington to arrange repayment.
The only thing that Lincoln and the Union government did not have was any international trade on which to collect tariffs.
In fact, as Lincoln took office, there was only enough cash in the Treasury to run the entire government for about three months, with no source in sight.
That is when the Northern “Fire-eaters” began to visit his office in the White House to demand he stop the South's ability to trade directly with Europe.
“We can argue whether a rebellion against tyranny is as righteous as a rebellion to defend slavery...”
Well, you can. That’s not why the Southern states were leaving. Heck, the Confederacy didn’t even want to fight. They wanted to be left alone to rule themselves. EXACTLY as the colonies did. Keep talking in circles all you want...it doesn’t make you right...just silly.
Subsidies to Southerners included tariffs on hemp and sugar, which were very popular in Kentucky, Tennessee, and Louisiana. Southern ports and rivers were dredged multiple times to facilitate transportation. The federal government played a major role in acquiring, surveying, and selling new lands in both North and South. But the biggest subsidy -- the biggest departure from free markets -- was slavery, which outweighed other departures from free market economics.
Unprofitable rail lines were built in part because farmers wanted and needed them. The lines couldn't pay their way, so they charged more and the farmers complained about the freight charges. Eventually those lines, and many others, were closed down. But I wouldn't call them useless. At a time before automobiles and airplanes, railroads were extremely valuable to rural Americans. And while one line might prove to have little value, one built at the same time to a place that may have seemed equally unpromising in the beginning, might prove to be important to the state or national economy.
I have read that they were forced to use the railroads even when river barges were available and satisfactory. I read this recently, and I also recall reading this decades ago when I was learning about this period in history.
Somebody stuck a gun to their heads and told them to use the choo-choo? I don't think so. You'll have to provide some proof of that.
Barges were smaller in those days. Even today, it can be hard to handle massive barges. It couldn't have been easy in the old days.
Plus, not all rivers were navigable. Rapids and sandbars, falls and flooding could make transportation very difficult. If you wanted a water transport system to rival the rail system it could have ended up costing a pretty penny. Wikipedia says:
The barge and canal system contended favourably with the railways in the early Industrial Revolution before around the 1850s–1860s — for example, the Erie Canal in New York state is credited by economic historians with giving the growth boost needed for New York City to eclipse Philadelphia as America's largest port and city — but such canal systems with their locks, need for maintenance and dredging, pumps and sanitary issues were eventually outcompeted in the carriage of high-value items by the railways due to the higher speed, falling costs and route flexibility of rail transport.
They just wanted to be left alone with their slaves and their future slave colonies.
The only thing that Lincoln and the Union government did not have was any international trade on which to collect tariffs.
In fact, as Lincoln took office, there was only enough cash in the Treasury to run the entire government for about three months, with no source in sight.
That is when the Northern “Fire-eaters” began to visit his office in the White House to demand he stop the South's ability to trade directly with Europe.
And this explanation best fits the facts as I can ascertain them so far, but I recognize that the threat to the Northern Union was much greater than just the loss of trade revenue or government tariff collections.
Among other considerations, what would happen with the border states in a year or so if the South peacefully seceded? The Puritans in the North East were bitching about their slavery too, and they could see that the Confederate states were making a lot more money on their trades than they were.
The Border states would have seceded too.
As I have been trying to tell a lot of people, if Lincoln hadn't stopped them, the USA would have withered to a much smaller rump part of the Nation. The CSA would literally have acquired more states from the USA, and thereafter it would have likely acquired the newly created states to the west.
The Focus of economic power would have shifted from New York, and taken up residence in one of the large Southern Cities.
Nobody has that kind of clairvoyance. We make decisions based on what we can see at the time. We take possible future outcomes into account but none as remote or unlikely as that.
Historical outcomes aren't as predictable in prospect as they are in retrospect. Any historical outcome is the result of hundreds or thousands of factors and decisions. You'd probably kill people as babies because of what they might do later on, but there are many other less radical interventions that might prevent bad consequences.
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