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®.
Pelham (post #238): "I have no idea where you got that.
Reading problems? "
I was responding to your remark about "the 1860 episode", which I took you to mean the actions of Democrats to destroy the United States.
I disagree if you think Marx supported those.
Pelham: "Marx is all yours.
Marx supported Lincoln.
Marx was a featured columnist in the main Whig/GOP newspaper for a dozen years."
It looks like Marx wrote weekly columns for Horace Greeley's New York Tribune from 1852 until 1862.
Marx's contact was Tribune editor Charles Dana and when Dana left in 1868 to start the New York Sun, Marx began again to contribute.
I take that to mean Dana was the more "progressive" and so unhappy or forced out by Republican Greeley.
Here is a listing of Marx's articles.
So far as I can tell, only one, this one, from October 1, 1861, discusses anything American and it deals with Civil War politics in England:
The US banned the slave trade in 1807 and our navy, like the British, did a lot to put the remaining slavers out of business. Whatever illegal slave trading was going on out of Northern or Southern ports was rather small scale. Given that Africa was still largely unexplored, there was nothing that we could do about slavery in Africa (or in Asia or Arabia). Nor would anyone then have expected us too.
And yet, I'm not sure that "The North" did become "indifferent to the worldwide problem of slavery." There were abolitionist and colonization organizations and activities. And certainly there was more concern about putting slavery behind us in the North than in the South. Beyond stopping slave ships at sea, we weren't going to have human rights interventions around the world, but more people in the North were trying to set our house in order when it came to slavery than in the South.
If you're persistent, it's in ducking the question that slavery was the South's problem to deal with in mid-century America. Southern elites failed to deal with it. They failed to hold on to their power over the country. They failed to make their separation from the country work. It's not that they lost the war. It's that they failed to achieve their goals without war, and pushed the country into civil war.
So stop being a pissant and deal with that. Why this failure to cope with what everyone could see was an explosive situation?
The left has a lot of criticism of Lincoln and the Republicans for not being woke and anti-racist enough. Historically, too, there was much criticism of Lincoln and his party for being capitalists.
For a long time, Democrats felt much attachment for Jefferson, Jackson, and the Southern roots of their party. They don't anymore, but much of what they say about Lincoln is an effort to appeal to Northerners who grew up thinking highly of Lincoln. There's always been at least a little ambivalence about Lincoln, his party and his army, though. So no, it's not approval without qualification.
I don't know about today's Southerners hating the US of the Civil War period either. Not everybody is as in to the Civil War as people on this thread are, and a lot has changed in recent decades.
Connecticut passed a law for gradual emancipation of slaves in 1784. Slaves born then would become free at the age of 25. Final abolition came in 1848 and freed the last 50 or so slaves. By 1850, there were no slaves in the state.
So "the North" wasn't perfect. But contrast these numbers to those of the 7 Southern states that had over 300,000 slaves.
"The lady doth protest too much, methinks"
Way too much.
My impression is that Pelham here inadvertently describes himself, and too many others on these threads.
Your response has absolutely nothing to do with the message to which you responded. The North did not invade the South because "between 1774 and 1804 the North abolished slavery." (Which is factually incorrect as well. Slavery persisted in the "North" till 1865.)
You provide this "answer" to a question which wasn't asked, and completely skipped over answering the question which was asked. (Why was the North invading the South?)
No matter how many times you get your head handed to you, you come back for more.
And this is where you and I are reading two entirely different exchanges. Mine is in the real world, and yours is in some sort of fantasy land where you think you are right.
The truth, and jeffersondem well knows the truth but just loves, loves toying with people, truth is just a bit... "complicated".
What President Lincoln and Congress had full legal authority to do was seize "contraband of war" in states under rebellion.
So he did, and set the "contraband" free.
But Lincoln did not have legal authority to seize "contraband of war" in loyal Union states, so he didn't.
Two Union slave-states, Missouri & Maryland, passed their own abolition laws.
The other two, Kentucky & Delaware, refused to ratify the 13th Amendment which constitutionally freed their slaves in December 1865.
All of which jeffersondem completely understands, but just can't resist confusing people about it at any opportunity.
And what percentage of the black population was in the North? I know Illinois and other Northern states had laws explicitly keeping blacks out. In Illinois, it was legal to sell undocumented blacks into slavery.
So let's see. Small black populations because they were driven out and terrorized by racist Northerners, and so yes, there would be less segregation because there were less opportunities for segregation.
The Northerners were more racist than the Southerners, but because they deliberately kept their black populations so small, there was less opportunities for them to demonstrate how racist they were.
Of course the New York riots give a pretty good example of how racist they were.
Wikipedia always let the liberals edit things to reflect a "progressive" narrative. The Northern states did not give up their slavery until December of 1865, but advocates for the "War to end Slavery" don't want to look at that fact.
It undercuts what they wish to believe.
Methinks thou doth obsess too much.
New Jersey had “apprentices for life” who were not free to leave in 1860.
FRiend, you'll need to learn to appreciate & beware of jeffersondem's...ah...humor.
He loves, loves nothing more than confusing anyone willing to take him on.
It's easy to get...ah... tripped up.
That is exactly correct. So long as any state wanted to have slavery, Slavery in the United States would have continued to be legal.
Do you not know what the word "indefinitely" means? It means of no known definite time.
That is exactly what the Lincoln/Corwin amendment would have done.
it was a last ditch effort by the North to give the South no reason to leave and one final attempt to preserve the Union.
Why would they possibly want to preserve a Union with all those nasty slaveholders in it? What possible reason would they have to force people they hate to remain in their Union?
Now I keep pointing out that the slaveholders were putting 200 Million dollars per year of European money into the US economy, and this was paying about 73% of all the taxes in the nation, but you people would rather believe they had some *OTHER* reason for wanting to keep the Southern states in their Union.
What was that reason again?
To say it would have preserved Slavery indefinitely is a terrible judgement by you on the Southern States. Not to mention that you are contradicting yourself, as you have told us (in other threads) that Slavery was surely going to die out on its own.
Both are true. "Indefinitely" means of "no defined time." (look it up.)
Slavery would have gone away on it's own, and one only need look at the progress of the states since 1776 in giving it up. It was tougher to give it up in states that had more economic benefit from it, but this would wane over time and eventually they would have all given it up voluntarily.
There was no reason to kill 750,000 people and establish a Washington DC supremacy over the states.
The trouble with avoiding war is that the enemy gets a vote too, and Lincoln voted that he would have a war. This is what happens when you send a fleet of warships to subjugate people who do not want to be subjugated. They tend to get shooty.
I’m not speaking of FR only. I’m speaking all my life living in a Dem stronghold how much the regular Dems love Lincoln. That ambivalence is literally like the last year, as BLM realized no white is good enough. I don’t count the last year, I count what I saw over decades living with commies who worship him while despising and ignoring Washington; history books, historians and politicians opining on documentaries. That is my Gods honest observation.
There is this "mote in thy brother's eye" thing going on here.
Right, but it still fits into my rubric of: Democrats doing what Democrats naturally do.
Many Democrats in the 1860s taught their children to hate the United States, just as many Democrats do today.
Out of power, Democrats resist, rebel, insurrect & commit violence against us.
Once in power, Democrats work like crazy to "transform" us into something they might like better -- such as obedient slaves to them.
Now our FRiend, rockrr, doesn't like when I call them "GD Democrats", am pretty certain he thinks that's way too strong a term.
On the other hand, what would you call the damage to our nation and the Constitution done by Democrats these past centuries?
jeffersondem (post #245): "Can you say which year slavery stopped being a significant worldwide problem?"
x (responding #251): ". . . by and large, slavery was the South’s problem to deal with by the mid century.”"
jeffersondem (#254): "I hate to be persistent, but at what point did the North become indifferent to the worldwide problem of slavery?"
We should notice, first, that in this particular exchange jeffersondem has actually asked two separate questions, not the same question twice.
The first time, in post #245 he inquires, in effect, when did slavery stop being a worldwide problem and became just a Southern problem?
Of course, FRiend "x" implied no such thing, was discussing only the United States, North vs. South, and the fact that by mid-1800s Northern states had abolished slavery, making it "largely a Southern problem".
As for a direct answer to jeffersondem's first question: "slavery" broadly defined is still a huge worldwide problem.
And even beyond such obvious issues as child-slavery and sex-trafficking, our Bible condemns all forms of "slavery", including slavery to sin!
So, which of us is entirely free of such slavery?
In that sense, jeffersondem's point is well taken, or would be had our FRiend "x" been discussing "slavery" in some larger sense, which he wasn't.
The second time (#254), jeffersondem, apparently thinking his first pointed question wasn't pointed enough, modified it to ask, not when did worldwide slavery stop being significant, but rather when did Northerners stop caring about worldwide slavery?
FRiend "x" answers: it was US law & policy to oppose worldwide slave trading, sending US ships to stop slave-ships as early as 1808.
So the direct answer is: certainly after 1808, never.
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