When the Southern states walked out of the Union they repudiated responsibility for their share of the national debt, walked away from national obligations, stole every bit of federal property they could get their hands on, and were in a position to cut off large sections of the country from access to the sea. All of which caused financial and economic harm to those states who stayed. And in your view all the remaining states could do is sit back and take it.
The Confederacy posed NO threat to the North. It did not even enter Northern territory in any force until the Summer of 1863, more than two years after the start of hostilities.
Hostilities they themselves initiated by firing on Sumter.
You will recall that it was Lincoln who in the Spring of 1861 called for 75,000 troops to be mustered for the invasion of Southern states.
Prior to that the confederate government had authorized an army of 100,000 men, six or seven times the size of the U.S. army at the time.
No serious historian would refute the fact that it was the North who was the true aggressor in that conflict.
Any serious historian would recognize that it was the confederacy who chose war for whatever reason. War got them Sumter...and lost them everything else.
“When the Southern states walked out of the Union they repudiated responsibility for their share of the national debt, walked away from national obligations, stole every bit of federal property they could get their hands on, and were in a position to cut off large sections of the country from access to the sea. All of which caused financial and economic harm to those states who stayed. And in your view all the remaining states could do is sit back and take it.”
You’re joking, right? Let’s take your comments in order. (1) The South, wih a smaller population, paid more into the fedeal treasury than the North, yet the vast majority of tax revenues were spent on Northern projects and Northern interests; thus the Southern states got screwed. (2) Stole what? They paid for every federal installation except Sumter. (3) Cut off large parts of the country from access to the sea? I know you surely must be joking with that one. What about Philadelphia? New York? The vaunted New England seafaring tradition? The Confederacy’s navy was a pathetic shadow of the Union navy, and hardly made a dent on Northern shipping interests (unlike the Union blockades of Mobile and New Orleans and even Galveston).
The fact of the matter is your hero Lincoln took secession as a personal insult, and being the petty man he was he could not abide such a blow to his ego, and decided to plunge half of the North American continent (sans Canada) into a bloody and costly war. The Confederacy DID NOT want such a war, but when Lincoln over-reacted and called for the invasion of the South it had no choice but TO fight.
“Prior to that the confederate government had authorized an army of 100,000 men, six or seven times the size of the U.S. army at the time.”
Like any sovereign nation, the Confederacy needed a military. But it NEVER said it wanted to raise an army to invade the North. Lincoln called for an army for the specific purpose of invading the South.