Posted on 04/02/2021 9:04:55 AM PDT by gattaca
On April 12, 1861, Confederate troops fired the opening shots of the Civil War at Fort Sumter in South Carolina. This month marks the 160th anniversary of the beginning of the war, the deadliest conflict ever fought on American soil. The Civil War lasted four years and resulted in an estimated 620,000 deaths and 1.5 million casualties. Approximately one in four soldiers that went to war never came back home. This impacted families, communities, and the entire country for generations to come.
Historical photograph of Fort Sumter The years leading up to the beginning of the Civil War were filled with increasing tensions between northern and southern states. In 1860, Abraham Lincoln was elected president by a strictly northern vote. The election was the impetus for southern states, who were already wrangling with the North on issues like slavery, states’ rights, and westward expansion, to begin the process of secession. Four days after the election, South Carolina Senator James Chesnut resigned his Senate seat and began drafting secession documents. Before long, six more states joined South Carolina to form the Confederate States of America on February 8, 1861. That number increased to 11 states after the fall of Fort Sumter. Four border states (Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri) held enslaved persons but remained loyal to the Union.
Exterior view of Fort Sumter Fort Sumter, originally built as a coastal garrison, was located at the entrance to Charleston Harbor. Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard, from the newly formed Confederate States Army, demanded federal officials turn over the fort. He claimed the fort was located in Confederate territory and thus belonged to the South. President Lincoln refused and made attempts to send a ship to resupply the fort. The ship was turned away by Confederate guns.
Tensions grew, and Beauregard finally sent US officials an ultimatum – abandon the fort or face destruction. At 4:30 a.m. on April 12th, some 500 soldiers from the South Carolina Militia opened fire on 80 Federal soldiers inside the fort. The bombardment continued for 34 hours until the afternoon of April 13th, when the garrison commander, Major Robert Anderson, surrendered the fort. Though there were no fatalities on either side during the Battle of Fort Sumter, the conflict marked the beginning of more than 10,000 military engagements that occurred between 1861-1865.
Interior View of Fort Sumter Fold3® has an extensive collection of Civil War records including:
Brady Civil War Photos: The Civil War is considered the first major conflict to be photographed extensively. Mathew Brady led a photography team that captured images of the war using a mobile studio and darkroom. Civil War Maps: This collection of 2,000 detailed battle maps provides insight into Civil War engagements. Some maps show the placement of regiments and the movement of troops. Civil War “Widows Pensions” Files: Only 20% of Civil War pension files are digitized, but if you are lucky enough to find the pension file for your ancestor, you’ll uncover a treasure trove of information. Civil War Service Records: We have service records for both Union and Confederate troops. These records are organized by state. Service Records for US Colored Troops: Approximately 179,000 Black men served in the US Army and another 19,000 in the US Navy. Despite facing racism and discrimination, the US Colored Troops served with valor and honor. These records are organized by regiment. Southern Claims Approved: After the war, the US government established the Southern Claims Commission. This office accepted petitions for compensation for items taken by Union troops during the war. In addition to these collections, Fold3 has more than 150 additional collections that contain 43 million Civil War records. Start searching our Civil War collection today on Fold3®.
You free the slaves, they enlist in your army, they enlist in your navy. They run away and no longer make cannon, cartridges or rifles for your enemy.
Winning their rebellion allowed them to do that.
So you use enemy slaves as tools for your own goals and keep your own slaves to make you money.
So isn't this just a tactic to win the war, and not a goal?
So if the goal isn't "ending slavery", why do you keep bringing up "ending slavery" as an impetus for the war?
No one has to "negotiate" regarding a fundamental right recognized by the founding document of the nation. The negotiations were about the disposition of the property and debt. Independence was right, and it didn't need anyone's permission.
Why Not. Lincoln worked throughout the war years to get MO, KY, MD and DE to end slavery in those states. To that end MO and MD ended the institution.
I have never implied “ending slavery” was the impetus for war. Slavery ended in this country as a result of the war.
And Lincoln's successful overthrow of the U.S. Constitution allowed his successors to create the government we have today complete with the hastily adopted and ill-written pro-abortion 14th amendment.
I've read the number of children killed under the aegis of the 14th amendment is now approaching 50 million. Do you know if that is an exaggeration?
The Power of the Commander in Chief of the Armed Forces of the United States in time of war.
The president has the right to suspend the constitution during a war? It's a wonder we are ever out of a war then.
Silly me, I thought constitutional law still compelled obedience, even during a war.
Slaves were absolutely necessary to the Confederacy effort.
Not after the war was over, yet they continued doing it.
If the powers to free slaves evaporated with the end of the war, then by what power were they able to keep them freed? This is clearly a violation of both state law and Constitutional law, yet they kept doing it.
If Constitutional law had been followed, every slave would have been returned back to the "person to whom such labor is due", yet the government refused to do this.
Where did they get the power to defy the US Constitution on this point?
But you aren't explaining how the power to end it was legal.
Lincoln himself repeatedly said he had no legal power to do this, so how was it done without violating constitutional law?
hastily adopted and ill-written pro-abortion 14th amendment.
Where in the XIV Amendment is abortion mentioned? It is not. That is a USSC interpretation of the amendment written about a hundred years after the Amendment was ratified.
Then we can forever dismiss the popular notion that Lincoln and the North “fought to free the slaves.”
But fight they did. Probably because destroying the South was in the North's best economic and political best self-interest.
Now we are getting somewhere.
The North’s objective was to force the Southern States back into the Union. To do that, they had to take the war to the South. Which the did rather well.
The results of the disaster at Appomattox. After the disaster, we all lost our rights and our remedy.
The blue-state culture won the war. Now you must own it.
You may not like abortion, but there are many important positives you can proudly cite like the right of the federal government to step in and regulate the size of mudflaps on trucks using state roads.
If that mud flap is on a vehicle used in interstate commerce, the Constitution allows the Federal government to regulate it. Bo and Luke, running around in the General Lee, are not regulated in the size of their mud flaps because they are not engaged in interstate commerce.
The war was about control of the Mississippi River but I don’t have time to teach Lot’s wife about that.
Amen
I knew you would rise to the bait. I suppose to your way of thinking the power to regulate mudflaps alone is worth 750,000 dead.
And don't forget that bubble bath is sold across state lines too.
One day I hope to be the czar of the Federal Inter-Agency Research, Development, Green Manufacturing, Transportation, Safety and Visioning Task Force regulating interstate bubble bath with an emphasis on emerging under-served communities.
I knew you would rise to the bait. I suppose to your way of thinking the power to regulate mudflaps alone is worth 750,000 dead.
The Constitution of the Confederate States of America grants that Government the same power. Why don you think it would have been any different. That government interfered in the commerce of the states. It press ganged state citizens into its army. It unilaterally voided the enlistment contracts of several hundred thousand of its citizens. If you think that the Confederate Government would have been a paragon of states rights and individual freedoms, you are seriously mistaken.
I suppose in your way of thinking the preservation of slavery was worth the lives of the 300,000 men that died in supporting the Confederate cause.
I suspect he’s one of your heroes.
Every Biden executive order is another shell lobbed by a union cannon on the 13 year old boys and old men starving in the trenches of Petersburg in March 65. These people never owned slaves but were the 1865 version of anti federalists. The civil war was the beginning of the end for us. A big part of that war was the definition of federalism and how that should look in America. Unfortunately we can never have that argument because we can’t unbundle that discussion from slavery
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