Posted on 07/30/2013 7:15:08 AM PDT by NotYourAverageDhimmi
Conservatives are grabbing popcorn and lining up to catch a new historical drama with modern connections.
“Copperhead,” the new film from director Ron Maxwell, focuses on the Northern opponents of the American Civil War and stars Billy Campbell, Angus MacFadyen and Peter Fonda.
At least one conservative — Richard Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com — emailed his audience to tell it about the movie “that every conservative needs to see.”
“[W]hile Copperhead is about the Civil War, believe me, it will hit close to home for every conservative fighting to preserve our Constitution and our American way of life,” Viguerie wrote. “Because Copperhead is about standing up for faith, for America, and for what’s right, just like you and I are doing today. In fact, I’ve never seen a movie with more references to the Constitution, or a movie that better sums up our current fight to stand up for American values and get our nation back on track.”
The movie, which is based on the novel by Harold Frederic, follows Abner Beech, a New York farmer who doesn’t consider himself a Yankee, and is against slavery and war in general.
Asked about whether he sees his film as conservative, Maxwell told POLITICO, “I think if ‘Copperhead’ has any relevance at all, in addition to illuminating a time and place from our common heritage, it’s as a cinematic meditation on the price of dissent. I’ve never thought of dissent as a political act belonging to the right or left. It’s an act of liberty, expression of the rights of a free person — free not just in law but free from the confines and pressures of the tyranny of the majority.”
Maxwell said while the concept of dissent is as “old as time,” in the U.S., “it’s protected in the Constitution.”
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
Based on what rule of law?
The refusal of new governments to honor the previous agreements of the old, has such a long history as to be considered the norm.
And an even longer history of starting wars. Which the South did.
Had there been no war, the Fortress would have eventually been let go anyway. That being said, the Confederates were foolish to attack it. If they could have just kept their pride in check, they would have eventually had it anyway.
And you are most likely correct in that. But they didn't keep their pride in check, they resorted to war, and are responsible for all the death and destruction that followed.
Slavery was a very major portion of their reasons for leaving, but it was not the only one. There were a whole host of issues in which Northern Domination of the legislature yielded undesirable results for the South.
However only slavery was the issue that motivated them to rebellion. The other issues were irrelevant by comparison.
How do I answer this? This is cockamamie nonsense, yet it is obvious that you somehow believe it. Seven states seceded before Ft. Sumter. Did they chose war? Does the act of peacefully seceding equate to choosing war?
The act of bombarding a fort into surrender equates to choosing war. It was the avenue they chose, for whatever reason, to further their secession. You cannot divorce the two.
Did they gin up their troop levels when they seceded? Did they show any other indication that they were wanting to pick a fight with an entity four times more populous and far wealthier?
Yes they did. The Confederate Congress passed legislation in February 1861 authorizing an army of 100,000 men. That was 6 or 7 times the size of the U.S. army at the time.
Once again, they didn't CHOSE war, they were just so foolish as to think they could bombard a Union fort without getting one.
Once again, that is insane. To believe that you could launch an attack on another country and that it would not lead to war is the height of stupidity. Are you saying that the Confederate leadership were stupid men?
The War Started at Ft. Sumter. Unless you can demonstrate some sort of connection between Ft. Sumter and slavery, then you ought to quit asserting that they started the war to defend slavery. It's just dishonest.
Far from being dishonest, it's accurate.
The Large period of inactivity can only be interpreted as a tacit "yes." Had the Union opinion been as you seemed to believe, that Secession was illegal, then they would have immediately began taking steps to counteract it.
Buchanan believed secession was illegal. Lincoln believed it. But both men hoped for a peaceful solution. You seem to be blaming them for not resorting to war and robbing Jeff Davis of the opportunity to start one first.
I very much doubt you gave it a 1/2 seconds worth of thought. Knee Jerk reaction, i'm sure. When the idea was first mentioned to me, I asked to hear his argument for such (at the time) a fantastical notion. Some of us weigh the facts before we arrive at a judgement.
Their actions weren’t thoughtful or measured, it wasn’t a proportional response, it was arbitrary and unilateral and it was done with a maximum amount of belligerence.
And no doubt the Founders would have been regarded with similar epithets from the British. But this is beside the point. If people have a natural right to Declare Independence, then their reasons for doing so are immaterial to the exercise of that right. Foolish speech is also protected under our rights. Foolish Religions are also protected under our rights. What *YOU* regard as foolish, is your affair to do or not do, but you have no right to tell other people that they ought not do something because *YOU* think it is foolish.
Smoking is foolish. Drinking is Foolish. Tattoos are foolish. Piercings are foolish. All manner of thing are foolish, but this does not address the question of rights. Rights do not end with sensibility. They proceed right across the line into foolish territory, but they remain the domain of those who exercise them.
He tried to avoid confrontation and hoped that southerners would come to their senses and return to the fold.
He didn't TRY to avoid confrontation, he COUNTED on it. One of the things my friend told me was that the Military had presented Lincoln a plan with resupplying Fort Sumter covertly by sea at night so as not to stir anything up. Lincoln wanted none of it, and decided to send an explicitly confrontational letter to the Confederate Government. (If he didn't regard them as legitimate, why did he address them as such?) He informed them that he would be sending a supply train to the Fort on a certain date.
It was this letter which fired up the passions for an Attack on the Fort. At the same time, he had Secretary of War Stanton send a letter to Commander Anderson informing him that he would likely soon be attacked. He was to take all precautions to protect the lives of those inside the Fort, and then surrender it at his discretion.
Lincoln shrewdly played the Confederates into a trap. Lincoln knew there was no sentiment in the North for a confrontation with the South, and the only way he could gin up a sentiment was to incite an attack from the Confederates. NOTHING ELSE WOULD HAVE STOPPED THE SECESSION.
Imagine now if assassins had gotten him on his way to Washington on the first days of his presidency. What do you suppose the reaction to such an outrage would be?
It wouldn't have been war. It would have been a massive effort to track down the guilty parties and hang them. Had Lincoln been assassinated in Baltimore before he took office, it may very well have saved 600,000 lives.
It may, in fact, have preserved the Union. The States that seceded were motivated by Lincoln's election and their perception that they would never get a fair treatment in a government so dominated by Republicans.
1 man v 600,000.
Now that is foolish.
You are the "lost Causer" here. You simply have no idea what is coming down the river. I dare say you will wish that there was some way to separate yourself from the coming madness, but no, you are going to be part of the Glorious Abortion/Homosexual/Communist/Big-Brother/Financially Broke/Taxpayer-Slavery/Mother-May-I Union.
I’m thinking that replying to you is a waste of my time.
Then why deny people the right to leave your plantation? It's not free will if they have to do what YOU want.
I’m thinking the same of you. How completely imbecilic to rationalize that assassination would be an acceptable or welcome thing.
I do thank God that you opinion is an outlier one.
You are like one of those eco freaks burning down buildings because they hurt GAI or something, or perhaps an anti-fur crusader flinging blood on people who wear coats. Nobody is defending slavery, it is an idea which is incompatible with civilization, but you are waving a bloody shirt for no other reason than to screech an emotional argument at me.
But you do touch upon a point which occurred to me over the weekend. The Southerners did not believe that what they did was wrong. The Northerners did, yet took no action. Which of the two were wickeder, the ones who didn't believe they were doing wrong, or those who stood by and watched it?
It is a higher power than the constitution. It is a natural right, and it is the very right invoked by our founders when they wrote the Declaration of Independence.
I don't think anyone regarded it as a trap. Had they done so, they might have prudently avoided it.
Every president takes an oath "to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution." If the president feels that secession is unconstitutional and the ruination of the country, then he or she is honor bound to at least take a stand against it. If you are president and you feel that the nation is in danger, you can't just do nothing.
What is the constitution but a document that gets whatever authority it possesses from the will of the People? When you have a group of people who no longer wish to associate with you, why would you point to a document as a rationalization to force them to associate with you anyway?
Lincoln ignored the constitution when it suited him.
Assuming that Lincoln's stand was all about his "Ego" or power is "begging the question," that is to say, you set up the problem by excluding any constitutional grounds for his position and actions
See previous comment.
and having excluded all legal and constitutional reasons for his stand, you "conclude" what you've already assumed, namely that there were no valid reasons for his behaving as he did.
By "Valid" I assume you mean based on principles and not on Emotional umbrage? Once again, I am at a loss to understand how a country founded on the principle that People can "dissolve the political bonds" can claim a principle superior to that one.
From my perspective, it's axiomatic that the Invasion was the retaliatory response to the attack on Ft. Sumter. Had there been no attack, there would have been no invasion. What "Principle" can be deciphered from this? Had the invasion force been in the planning stage when Lincoln Assumed office, you could discern from this that he was acting on the principle that he believed secession was illegal, and that it was his duty to oppose it, but he did no such thing. Indeed, it would have been politically unpalatable for him to start forming an invasion force at this time. Not even the Northern States would have tolerated it. Instead, he waited till he had an incident around which to rally political support, and then he launched an invasion.
Once you recognize that you can do this to any politician or public official, it gets tired really fast.
That Lincoln acted out of Emotion and not Principle is a pretty good theory which has quite a lot of evidence to support it. That he NEEDED some sort of confrontation to get any further with his goals, is also supported by the available evidence. Without the Attack on Ft. Sumter, what has he got to work with? No support in the North for a confrontation, Defacto Southern Government taking over Sovereign responsibilities in those states. Time will only solidify these circumstances. A War is the only thing which could rescue his situation.
One of the few women posters on this thread said that the Civil War was about testosterone. Both sides wanted to prove their manhood and wouldn't back down.
I think that's a pretty fair assessment. I agree. It was a pissing contest which got way out of control.
If we consider the words in a more neutral light as having to do with self, self-image, the defenses of the self against the world, honor, reputation, recognition, feelings of adequacy or inferiority, there may be something in it.
Testosterone sums it up quickly, even if it's not precisely accurate. The South fired on Ft. Sumter because it offended their sense of pride, honor, or what have you.
The North sent an invasion force to teach them a lesson for doing it. Revenge is salve to a wounded pride.
Then it got so bloody neither side could back out without losing face. Then the losses became so great, they dared not, for fear of having shed so much blood for nothing. At that point it HAD to be for some larger cause.
For the South it was "Freedom" and "Defending your Homeland." For the North it was "Preserving the Union, and Freeing the Slaves." (Neither of which had any emotional significance prior to the war.)
Respect was important to the North. If Southerners in Congress had said that they wanted to work out a settlement in Washington to dissolve their ties to the union, there might not have been a war. Not being involved in decisions affecting the fate of the country may have been a blow to Northern pride.
I agree. This is a point that a lot of your allies in this discussion don't seem to grasp. At this time in History, there was no big outcry from the North about secession. Most people didn't regard it as Anti-Constitutional, or illegal. They were perfectly willing to let those Southern states go and have their own government. Like you said, it would probably have gone a lot smoother if they had worked out an agreement in Congress, but the Southern Hot heads wanted to make a big show of walking out, and so they did. It's that PRIDE stuff again.
Once the fort and the flag were assaulted -- this in an age where symbols mattered much more than today -- Unionists weren't going to take the insult lightly.
Exactly. It was all about Insults and hurt feelings on both sides. (at first.) Then it became Revenge(North) and Survival(South) respectively.
Some would say this reflected the absolute master mentality of some of the secessionist firebrands.
That, and that Aristocratic Mind set was dominant among the monied interests in the South. This may be a side effect of having large quantities of servants/slaves to do your bidding. Human nature being what it is, there is probably something in the Psyche that gives people airs when they command large groups of their fellow humans. We are facing a similar problem with Government Bureaucrats today.
But this is not to dismiss how much that Lincoln wanted a war. Lincoln NEEDED a war. To let the South leave peacefully would leave him as the jilted bridegroom of history.
That is hindsight.
Lincoln had foresight. He could see it. He was a brilliant man.
It would have been natural for him to think that a little firmness on his part would eventually make cooler heads prevail.
I don't see time as being on his side. The longer a distinct Southern Government existed in Peace with the North, the more solidified did everyone's acceptance of this status quo become.
the secessionists couldn't work out a peaceful settlement without trying to humiliate the other side?
Apparently. About this they were fools. Looking at the Stats between the two regions, it was extremely foolish for the South to provoke the North. Once again, I can only attribute their spectacular bad decision to be the product of too long a period spent ordering people about, and the sense of ingrained superiority which must have been produced by such experience.
What really pisses me off is that they have poisoned the well for a modern attempt at secession. We will all fall together now, not just the states that deserve it.
In any case: Davis didn't want or need a war? He didn't need a war to shore up his own power base. He didn't want war to snag the Upper South for his Confederacy? He didn't start a war to slam the door on the past and make a country out of the seceded states?
I've heard that theory, and there may be something to it. If so, then Davis and his people were too clever by half.
Cleverer maybe than you or me or Davis. Lincoln was making legitimate moves to maintain some authority and some pretense of continuity.
Yes, by maintaining the Garrison at Ft. Sumter (and that other one further South) he was quietly maintaining his position that he didn't recognize the South's Secession. That was probably what was infuriating them. They craved recognition of their legitimacy.
It was up to Davis and South Carolina to decide how they wanted to respond to those moves. They didn't have to make a war out of it. They could have responded in kind with less inflammatory measures.
As i've said numerous times, had they just sat on their hands, they would have eventually gotten everything they wanted. The longer the Confederates ran their states while keeping the peace with the Union, the more people would have come to accept it as the new normal.
You could say that Lincoln was playing "brinksmanship," the Cold War game of assertive but not aggressive or irreversible moves. Davis was apparently too bullheaded and narrowminded to recognize this, but does that make the war Lincoln's fault?
The argument my friend presented to me was that Lincoln knew full well what he was doing, and how the South would respond to it. Lincoln was the "Napoleon" of political maneuvering, and he was counting on that bullheadedness of the Southern Gentry to give him what he needed; An excuse to send an army to put a stop to their nonsense. Indeed, a lot of people in power simply thought this "Southern Government" was just a bunch of posturing and nonsense that would cease immediately when a real threat showed up to confront them.
In this, they were sadly underestimated.
If Davis had freedom of action, if there were other alternatives available to him that might have had better results, then the idea of Davis being "forced" or "fooled" into war starts to look a lot shakier.
I'm not following you here. The Two key pieces of evidence my friend told me about are this. Lincoln dismissed a plan to resupply the fort Covertly by sea, and instead insisted on sending a letter notifying the Confederate government that a wagon supply train would be sent to supply the fort on a certain date.
Another letter was sent to Commander Anderson (From Sec War Stanton) informing him that he would likely soon be attacked, and that he was to take all necessary steps to preserve life, and then surrender his Fort if his position was untenable.
It is that letter informing the Commander that he would soon be attacked that makes it appear as if Lincoln knew full well what was to be the likely result of his Supply letter, and according to my friend (His name is Richard) was EXACTLY what Lincoln wanted.
The two letters taken together cast an ominous shadow on this bit of history. Were you aware of this letter sent to Major Anderson?
To say that Lincoln accepted that war might come and wanted to put the South in the wrong and make them the guilty party might be more like the truth.
That is pretty close to my position. Lincoln recognized that the Southern Government was full of hot headed belligerents, and played them like a fiddle into doing what he wanted/needed to happen anyway.
Yes, the Southerners were stupid to attack the Fort, but had Lincoln sent that supply train and had they done nothing to stop it, they would have been laughed at. Some people would rather die. Seriously.
Once again, the war was started over Pride.
Had Lincoln immediately set to raising a punitive expedition it would have garnered outcries from the North as well as the South. It would have been the principled (not political) thing to do, if one truly believed that Secession was an illegal act, prohibited by our constitution and requiring of a President to prevent it.
It would have started the war earlier, but the North would have been seen as the aggressor, and this would very likely have hurt the war effort, possibly to the point of wrecking it. It would probably have provoked massive Rebellion in other previously Union-Friendly states.
You are faulting the US for not doing things (calling up troops, using force) that you would definitely have blamed them for if they did do them.
It is difficult to say with accuracy how I would imagine things to be with a different history. I made a stab at it above.
I think if Lincoln believed the principle that secession was illegal, and that it was his duty to prevent it, he would have ordered an immediate call up of sufficient force to prevent it, though, of course this begs the question of why James Buchanan didn't see fit to do this.
An immediate call up, on assuming the reigns of power, would solidify this as being a principled move, rather than a politically calculating one. It would have been popular with no one, and it would very likely have failed. It might have even gotten him impeached, because at this time, no one was wanting to hear these "secession is illegal" arguments. Everybody was pretty much okay with the situation.
After pondering it for a bit, I can't think of a more plausible alternative scenario. I yield the paintbrush to you for your view as to a potential alternative history.
The Declaration of Independence is not. It is quite clear about it.
I do indeed "think that the law, passed by the Congress, elected by the people, is crazy." It gets crazier and crazier every year, from Amnesty, through Obamacare and up to Don't ask Don't tell, and so on.
The nation is daily losing moral legitimacy. We are moving towards a time when the law will have no respect at all, and we won't be able to tell the good guys from the bad. And the Union will drag sane states down with the insane.
People sometimes believe what they WANT to believe. It seems hard to imagine that he could not have known that it would lead to war, but anyone looking at the comparative weight between the Northern Union and the Southern Confederacy would have concluded that War would have been suicidal.
To answer your question, I don't know. Maybe he thought he could just drive the garrison out and that would be it. They certainly ACTED like that's what they thought. On the other hand, perhaps he thought there would be a war, but that it would be inconsequential, or that the North wouldn't have the Stomach for a long and protracted war.
Actually, I think both sides underestimated the other's stomach for war.
But Lincoln didn't offer them slavery.
My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.
.
and since they started the war to further those aims,
How do you people seriously say this stuff? Yes, the South believed in Slavery, we got that. How did attacking Fort Sumter strike a blow for Slavery? What is the association between Fort Sumter and Slavery? You just repeat emotional gobbledygook, apparently not realizing how unconnected with reality it sounds.
They attacked Fort Sumter because they regarded it as a humiliation to have a Union Fort in their territory. They had issues with another Fort further south too, but neither Fort had anything to do with Slavery.
The war (from the Southern side) had everything to do with slavery.
You are simply brainwashed into repeating slogans. Fort Sumter had nothing to do with Slavery.
From the Northern side it was fighting the war that the South initiated.
Revenge. Yup, that part you got right. Still nothing to do with Slavery. Get Slavery off your brain. It may have been an issue in contention, but it isn't what started the war, and it wasn't why the North was fighting it, that's for sure.
I’ve heard of outcome-based “logic” before but I had never really seen it applied until this guy. Incredible.
Sigh. I might as well have written nothing. You certainly didn't understand what I wrote.
and are responsible for all the death and destruction that followed.
No, they are responsible for some of it, but it is dishonest to place all the blame on one side. Had Lincoln evacuated Fort Sumter, there would have been no war. It's also Northern Pride and stubbornness that is to blame.
However only slavery was the issue that motivated them to rebellion. The other issues were irrelevant by comparison.
The Issue of Slavery was the dominant issue which motivated them to secede. I'm not sure where you count the start of "Rebellion" at the point where they seceded, or at the point where they fired on Fort Sumter.
Fort Sumter was a land and pride dispute, not a slave dispute.
The act of bombarding a fort into surrender equates to choosing war.
So you don't count the secession as part of the "Rebellion"? Only the bombardment? Fine, the war was over revenge, not "Preserving the Union" or "Slavery", it was revenge, plain and simple.
It was the avenue they chose, for whatever reason, to further their secession.
But we've already decided the reason is very important. You say it's "Slavery" and I say it's Pride. When you can come up with a cognizant argument of how Fort Sumter has some connection with advancing Slavery, i'll concede the point, but till then, i'll continue to believe they attacked the Fort because of Pride and Arrogance.
Yes they did. The Confederate Congress passed legislation in February 1861 authorizing an army of 100,000 men. That was 6 or 7 times the size of the U.S. army at the time.
I stand corrected. Do you have a link?
Once again, that is insane. To believe that you could launch an attack on another country and that it would not lead to war is the height of stupidity. Are you saying that the Confederate leadership were stupid men?
One way or the other, I think History bears this out. That they could think this would not provoke a war is just as stupid as believing that provoking a war with a far larger and more powerful adversary was a good idea. It's stupidity either way.
But maybe not. Willful blindness, more like. Arrogance, excessive pride. Sometimes this stuff achieves the same result as rank stupidity.
The War Started at Ft. Sumter. Unless you can demonstrate some sort of connection between Ft. Sumter and slavery, then you ought to quit asserting that they started the war to defend slavery. It's just dishonest.
Far from being dishonest, it's accurate.
How is it accurate to keep linking Fort Sumter with Slavery? How? How do you even believe stuff like that?
Buchanan believed secession was illegal. Lincoln believed it. But both men hoped for a peaceful solution. You seem to be blaming them for not resorting to war and robbing Jeff Davis of the opportunity to start one first.
If your position is that secession is illegal, and it is your duty to stop it, and it is required that you use deadly force to do so, then yes, the War should have started immediately.
As a matter of fact, had they immediately sent troops to seceding states, it might not have gotten out of hand. By tacitly allowing it, they encouraged it. Nipping it in the bud would certainly have been preferable to killing 600,000 people.
The Problem was, there was absolutely no public support for such a measure anywhere in the country. The Northern public would have objected loudly to such a heavy handed tactic. It would have been regarded as dictatorial at THAT point in history. Later, people were willing to put up with ACTUAL dictatorial behavior.
The James Gang? Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid? A lot of people could declare that they no longer want to associate with the rest of the country. The country doesn't take that declaration as a severing of ties between that group and the rest of us.
What "Principle" can be deciphered from this? Had the invasion force been in the planning stage when Lincoln Assumed office, you could discern from this that he was acting on the principle that he believed secession was illegal, and that it was his duty to oppose it, but he did no such thing. Indeed, it would have been politically unpalatable for him to start forming an invasion force at this time. Not even the Northern States would have tolerated it. Instead, he waited till he had an incident around which to rally political support, and then he launched an invasion.
You're really stuck on that. Rightly or wrongly, John Kennedy thought Cuba shouldn't have missiles pointed at the United States. Would he have been justified in immediately attacking Cuba with nuclear missiles or invading it? Or was it wiser to give negotiations a try?
It also looks like you are channeling Jefferson Davis. Davis believed he was right and believed that his principle justified his beginning a war. Lincoln didn't (or at least, he didn't let his convictions convince him to shoot first). Perhaps because he recognized that in real life different principles conflict. Perhaps he recognized that believing you're right doesn't mean acting immediately and forcefully on that conviction is always the wisest thing to do. Give him some credit for that. I can believe that something is right in principle but reject vigilante action, because that is against another of my principles.
Without the Attack on Ft. Sumter, what has he got to work with? No support in the North for a confrontation, Defacto Southern Government taking over Sovereign responsibilities in those states. Time will only solidify these circumstances. A War is the only thing which could rescue his situation.
Again, you are putting your conclusion in your premise. Everything that I've seen suggests that Lincoln assumed that unionist sentiment in the South was stronger than it actually was, and that time was on his own side. He was wrong, I'm pretty sure, but his belief suggests that he thought time was on his side and that if he held out cooler heads would prevail and reconcile the two regions. With hindsight we can say that wouldn't happen, but that doesn't change what he thought. I suppose it's possible that it was all talk and that Lincoln didn't really believe it, but for now I'm going by what he said, and not by some image of "Evil Abe."
I'm not at all certain that Lincoln would have been desperate to avoid a stand-off that eventually was resolved peacefully, though. That's your conclusion with hindsight, but I'm not sure that if both sides had avoided a shooting war and if the situation was going badly for the Union, a peaceful solution of the stand-off might not have been engineered. Who can answer that with any authority?
A negotiated settlement might have involved Davis having to do without the Upper South states, which could be why he started the war. I'm not so sure that time actually was on Davis's side, else why did he try to accelerate things with a war?
The South fired on Ft. Sumter because it offended their sense of pride, honor, or what have you.
Also, rage, anger, and a concept of sovereignty.
For the South it was "Freedom" and "Defending your Homeland." For the North it was "Preserving the Union, and Freeing the Slaves." (Neither of which had any emotional significance prior to the war.)
Read Daniel Webster's speeches and Henry Clay's. Preserving the union was an idea that had had a grip on many for years, even decades. Why do you think the Compromise of 1850 was such an impassioned event?
While we're at it, "Defending your Homeland" may have been a twist the war brought. There were fears of slave revolt, racial wars, and abolitionist subversion long before there was a Union Army threat to any Confederate "Homeland." There's a very complicated relationship between the passionate fear of abolitionists, slave revolts, and race war that was brewing before the war and any simple straightforward "Defense of the Homeland" that common soldiers might have believed in. Also, for "Freedom" you might say "Independence." Otherwise it can get very complicated.
Exactly. It was all about Insults and hurt feelings on both sides. (at first.) Then it became Revenge(North) and Survival(South) respectively.
Hurt feelings and revenge went together in the beginning. Afterward the conviction grew in the North that it was a war for freedom or liberation. I think we agree a lot about this, but I'm a little wary about the way that we diminish or dismiss feelings and convictions that we don't share today. Modern day libertarians who don't understand 19th century national feeling (and sometimes don't actually care much about the liberty of some groups of people) are naturally going to brush aside emotions that were passionately felt at the time. You could say our war with Japan was all about revenge for Pearl Harbor, but that was only one aspect of what we were fighting for.
The Two key pieces of evidence my friend told me about are this. Lincoln dismissed a plan to resupply the fort Covertly by sea, and instead insisted on sending a letter notifying the Confederate government that a wagon supply train would be sent to supply the fort on a certain date.
Another letter was sent to Commander Anderson (From Sec War Stanton) informing him that he would likely soon be attacked, and that he was to take all necessary steps to preserve life, and then surrender his Fort if his position was untenable.
I don't understand. The fort was at sea, wasn't it? And the federals didn't control land nearby, did they? So how could resupply have been by wagon train -- even at low tide?
Lincoln did send a letter to Governor Pickens letting him know that the supplies were on their way, and that he wouldn't reinforce the garrison with new troops if the governor didn't fire on the fort. He also wrote a letter to Major Anderson. The likely context is that war could start, but I don't see any overt mention of a possible attack or war or anything nefarious in it.
I haven't seen a letter from Stanton to Anderson, but presumably various contingencies have to be considered beforehand. Strategists and historians talk about the "fog of war" -- all the uncertainties and unknowns involved in large scale campaigns. Polemically and with hindsight you may be able to "find" some straight line of maneuvering carried to success, but if you're looking at what people knew or could expect at the time such conclusions look very, very "iffy."
Of course anyone in the south was free to leave. They were not free to start a war against the United States, or to pretend that their home owner’s association could secede from the US.
That they committed their crimes in an attempt to extend, and protect the institution of human slavery and their organized crime syndicate is pretty damning.
The Cherokee removal was in accordance with a treaty signed by at least pretended representatives of the Cherokee Nation.
Winfield Scott supervised the first phase of the removal, and gave explicit orders to make the removal as humane as possible.
Do you assert that a state has a right to overweening price, contrary to law and custom?
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