Posted on 11/19/2018 9:27:11 AM PST by harpygoddess
Everyone has posted the speech itself (and it's included here), but the background information is also interesting - not only the situation in America at the time, but also the extent to which the structure of the speech mimics (draws from?) Thucydides' account of Pericles' 430 B.C funeral oration at the end of the first year of the Peloponnesian War.
Today is the anniversary of President Lincoln's delivery of his few "brief remarks" at the dedication of the new national cemetery at Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, only four or so months after the great Civil War battle there that emerged as "the high-water mark of the Confederacy."
At the time, the final issue of the war was still in some doubt, and Lincoln received second billing to a lengthy speech by Dr. Edward Everett, then president of Harvard University and reputedly America's greatest orator.
Everyone's familiar with the Gettysburg Address - didn't we all have to memorize it in grammar school? But in these troubled times, its mere 272 words remain well worth reading again.
The United Kingdom was also a Union. Why was it okay to quit one Union and create a different Union?
The founders declared that people had a right to do so if they wished. They established this principle through the Declaration of Independence.
Adding to that Union was considered noble and keeping it together was Lincoln's sacred duty.
Why was it a sacred duty to keep together the young Union that was only "four score and seven years" old, and it was also George Washington's sacred duty to break the Union that was 1 thousand years old?
He made that abundantly clear.
He made it clear that he wasn't going to allow the South to trade directly with Europe outside of Washington DC's control and collection of money on it.
Whoa there. I do not have to read his mind when I have read his words. Correct me if I am wrong, but he made it clear that his position was that secession was illegal regardless of the reason.
Am I mistaken? Was there some reason for secession that Lincoln would have accepted?
Let me know what you see Jefferson Davis doing if Lincoln had not tried to reinforce Sumter. Which Federal property would he have chosen to fire on.
I very much doubt he would have attempted to fire on anything. The Confederate congress had sent representatives to Washington to negotiate for settling any disputes between the two countries.
Now I would think you have kept up well enough about what really happened at Sumter to know the truth of it.
In case you haven't, i'll give you a quick synopsis. The Confederates knew a war fleet was coming as early as March of that year, (I found the documentation for that!) They had also been telegraphed from a "friend" in Washington DC that a war fleet was coming to attack them. They finally got official acknowledgement from a man sent by Lincoln to inform them that a war fleet was coming.
General Beauregard sent a message to Major Anderson at Fort Sumter informing him that if he refrained from firing at them when those warships arrived and began attacking Beauregard's forces, he would refrain from firing on Ft. Sumter.
Anderson responded that if anyone fired at any ships flying the flag of his country, he would attack with his guns.
Beauregard gave him the opportunity to avoid being attacked, and Anderson refused to refrain from attacking him. Beauregard then did the only reasonable thing he could do. Defeat one enemy before the other arrived to present him with a two front conflict.
Lincoln sent those warships and his war department ordered them to use their entire force to accomplish their mission.
*THAT* was the cause of Fort Sumter being attacked. Had Lincoln not sent that fleet of warships, they were going to give Anderson as many days as he needed to decide to evacuate the fort. Anderson had even started writing the order to do so.
One more day of no warships, and the matter would have been resolved peacefully.
Except one was not a country. The U.S. didn’t recognize them as such and neither did the rest of the World. Nor would they ever recognize them as a country.
“I very much doubt he would have attempted to fire on anything”
“The case of Pensacola then is reduced the more palpable elements of a military problem and your measures may without disturbing views be directed to the capture of Fort Pickens and the defense of the harbor.
“You will soon have I hope a force sufficient to occupy all the points necessary for that end.”
“As many additional troops as may be required can be promptly furnished.”
[excerpt of Jefferson Davis letter to Braxton Bragg, 3 Apr 1861]
Neither was the US when it first left the United Kingdom.
The case of Pensacola then is reduced the more palpable elements of a military problem and your measures may without disturbing views be directed to the capture of Fort Pickens and the defense of the harbor. “You will soon have I hope a force sufficient to occupy all the points necessary for that end.
And yet the only shots fired in Pensacola were those of Lieutenant David Porter shooting at the Confederates ships.
Lincoln’s orders to his “war fleet” was that force was only to be used if the South Carolina forces in Charleston Harbor opposed the peaceful resupply of provisions to the garrison at Fort Sumter. This was know to the Confederate President and to General Beauregard. They learned of that fact from a letter sent to the Governor of South Carolina On the 8th of April.
MONTGOMERY, April 8, 1861.
General BEAUREGARD, Charleston:
Under no circumstances are you to allow provisions to be sent to Fort Sumter.
L. P. WALKER.
Pretty obvious by the Secretary of War’s direction to Beauregard, that regardless of the intention of the ships. Confederate forces in Charleston were to prevent resupply of Fort Sumter.
That they would be opposed was a foregone conclusion. Every member of Lincoln's cabinet but one advised him that if he sent those ships, it would cause a war.
Lincoln knew he was triggering a war when he wrote up the orders setting those ships in motion. One does not need 300 riflemen with munitions and gunboats to deliver food.
Of course his backup plan was to have Porter start the war in Pensacola, which he almost did.
Davis knew if he opposed resupply it would trigger a war. He wrote the orders to Beauregard anyway. Even though his Secretary of State advised him that it would be war and the world would view it as his fault. Davis decided on war.
“was fought over the requirement in the Constitution that states could not just leave when they got unhappy.”
Where exactly is that stated in the Constitution? I must have missed it.
Thanks,
L
You truly are that naive, aren't you? Holding to that "logic" Fort Sumter belonged to the United States government before the "divorce" and remained their property afterward. Of course there was a short period where it was stolen from them, but fortunately it was recovered.
The American colonists did dissolve the political bands which connected them the British monarchy, but I don't see what that has to do with the Gettysburg Address.
For example, the Obama White House denied a state’s right of secession, on the following claims:
Our founding fathers established the Constitution of the United States “in order to form a more perfect union” through the hard and frustrating but necessary work of self-government. They enshrined in that document the right to change our national government through the power of the ballot — a right that generations of Americans have fought to secure for all. But they did not provide a right to walk away from it. As President Abraham Lincoln explained in his first inaugural address in 1861, “in contemplation of universal law and of the Constitution the Union of these States is perpetual.” In the years that followed, more than 600,000 Americans died in a long and bloody civil war that vindicated the principle that the Constitution establishes a permanent union between the States. And shortly after the Civil War ended, the Supreme Court confirmed that “[t]he Constitution, in all its provisions, looks to an indestructible Union composed of indestructible States.”
Here’s you some reading on the subject you raise.
see the post I just made to Lurker a couple mins ago.
I agree with a lot of what you said but if your trying to argue that the Constitution was not at all involved in the controversy called the Civil War lots of people disagree with you.
It’s either in the Constitution or it isn’t in the Constitution.
Correct answer: It’s not in the Constitution.
SCOTUS also says there’s an inviolable “Right” to abortion. Is that in the Constitution, too?
L
So your telling me the founding fathers put into the constitution a way to add states, and gave the President the power to suppress insurrections and rebellions, but left out the part on how states leave the Union. I don’t think so. Just as the articles of Confederation state that it was a perpetual Union when they made the constitution to “make a more perfect union”, they didn’t drop the perpetual part.
Thanks for making my point.
The Founding Fathers didn’t put abortion in there, either.
“they didn’t drop the perpetual part.”
Except it’s not in the Constitution anywhere.
L
It's been 160 years. You don't need to keep repeating the propaganda. A bunch of warships and a troop carrier are Not a "resupply mission." They are a deliberate and intentional provocation to trigger a war.
Even though his Secretary of State advised him that it would be war and the world would view it as his fault.
It was *ALL* of his secretaries except one that told Lincoln this would trigger a war. Lincoln knew what he was doing. He needed a war to justify stopping Southern trade with Europe. If he didn't, the money would shift from New York to the South, and the power would have eventually shifted with it.
Davis decided on war.
Lincoln decided on war in his Inaugural address. The confederates naively thought they could negotiate to settle matters. Any result that didn't include New York and Washington DC controlling their entire export income, wasn't going to be accepted.
Lincoln would accept strengthening slavery. He would not accept the loss of control over Southern produced money, or the economic competition for his backers in New York.
The marriage was the ratification of the US Constitution. The territory upon which Fort Sumter stood belonged to South Carolina long before the US existed.
They must. What would be the justification for it if not the claim the constitution made them do it?
The only possible moral claim for doing what was done is the assertion that the constitution, even though it says nothing on the subject, prohibits states leaving in the manner of the Colonies from the United Kingdom.
From the time of the Gettysburg Address, "Four Score and Seven Years ago" refers to 1776, when the Declaration of Independence was put forth.
Lincoln is calling forth the memory of when those political bonds were being dissolved.
Rather silly when you are doing your utmost to *STOP* people from dissolving similar political bonds.
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