Posted on 08/11/2015 1:11:21 PM PDT by iowamark
What caused the Civil War? That seems like the sort of simple, straightforward question that any elementary school child should be able to answer. Yet many Americans—including, mostly, my fellow Southerners—claim that that the cause was economic or state’s rights or just about anything other than slavery.
But slavery was indisputably the primary cause, explains Colonel Ty Seidule, Professor of History at the United States Military Academy at West Point.
The abolition of slavery was the single greatest act of liberty-promotion in the history of America. Because of that fact, it’s natural for people who love freedom, love tradition, and love the South to want to believe that the continued enslavement of our neighbors could not have possibly been the motivation for succession. But we should love truth even more than liberty and heritage, which is why we should not only acknowledge the truth about the cause of the war but be thankful that the Confederacy lost and that freedom won.
(Excerpt) Read more at blog.acton.org ...
1861 evil domination
Absolutely right, but it is a shock to see you come over to our side. Yes, the Union, as ruled by that dictator Abe Lincoln, did in fact engage in evil domination to an extent that King George III never did.
I don’t think that you’ll ever get numbnutz to recognize that the DOL isn’t law - the United States Constitution is that instrument.
And most adults are smart enough to ignore the child when he has cried "look at me, look at me" for the upteenth time.
Rockrr referring to PeaRidge ‘ s alleged quotes of Lincoln regarding the loss of Southern tariff revenues: “No matter how you slice it, it is still a 3rd hand anecdote to an alleged conversation.”
I have several books at home covering exactly this period and mentioning this meeting, with its discussion of using Maryland to transfer troops to Washington DC.
None include the apocryphal quote by Lincoln on the loss of tariff revenues.
So I take that to mean the question has been studied and rejected by historians more serious than our own PeaRidge.
However, we should take note of the claim, yet again, that 75% of Federal revenues derived from income earned by exports of Southern agricultural products.
I’ve seen this elsewhere and it suggests the claim was accepted by some at the time.
But that does in no way make it accurate, and the best numbers I can find tell us the real percent was closer to 58% — a hugely important share, but, as it turned out, not indispensable.
The loss of import tariffs based on Southern cotton & tobacco exports in no way impeded the Union war effort.
Euphemisms were not used....direct language was. All of those issues were examples of violations of the Constitution.
When the secession of the first seven Southern states came about, it was a great shock to the North.
The South had been threatening to secede ever since the Tariff of Abominations of 1828, but the North thought that those threats were just so much hot air, because the advantages of remaining in the Union were so great that the North had really believed that the South would hold still for being squeezed dry economically and turned into the agricultural colonies of the North.
The secession of the Southern states hit the Northern capitalists heavy blows in their pocketbooks, in two ways. First, the capitalists had expected to squeeze the Southerners with big import-tariffs, to finance the rapid industrialization of the U.S.
Second, many of the Northern capitalists had been earning fortunes by factoring the Southern cotton crops; by transporting the cotton in their coastal shallow draft packets and green-water ships; and by buying cotton cheaply to process in their New England textile-mills. Now the British stood ready to take over all those chores at competitive prices.
The Northern capitalists decided that this situation was all Lincoln’s fault. Until he was elected, everything had gone fine; but now—following the election—seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, essentially based on what he said in his inaugural, and nobody knew how many more might follow. If Lincoln wanted the continuing support of the capitalists, he would have to bring those Southern states back into the Union, now!
This was a very serious problem for Lincoln, because the Northern capitalists were his sole support-base. He was a Whig, not a Republican. His goal was to implement Henry Clay’s “American System,” to convert the U.S. from a federation of states into a nation-state with an all-powerful central government, which would tax the citizenry (but primarily the Southerners) heavily to speed up the industrialization of the U.S.
Chase and Seward—both abolitionists—were the Republicans’ real heroes; if the capitalists now deserted Lincoln, Chase and/or Seward—who both had respectable support-bases of their own—would slice him up like chopped liver the first time he made a wrong move. So he would now have to conquer the South in war and drag it back into the Union to appease the Northern capitalists.
from a documentary
You seem to argue out of ignorance...and you expect that to stand up to logic and truth?
The context was a Federal ruling from the Court.
It ruled that the war began in Lincoln's office with his actions.
There is no evidence to support your contention. Your failure to acknowledge proven, valid information does not mean it does not exist.
Your continued denials are not evidence of truth.
We know from at least five sources that Dr. Richard Fuller, pastor of Seventh Baptist Church in Baltimore, led a group representing the 5 Christian Associations of Young Men in Baltimore, in a meeting with Lincoln in Washington on 22 Apr 1861. That meeting was written up both in the Baltimore Sun and Baltimore Exchange the next day, and in the Baltimore Dispatch on the 26th (the same accounts were published in the National History of the War for the Union, Civil, Military and Naval: Founded on Official and Other Authentic Documents published in 1861, and in the Southern Literary Messenger in 1862). That's more than one newspaper account.
It is also widely documented that after Colonel Baldwin appeared in the White House to meet with Lincoln regarding the disposition of the Virginia Congress, John F. Lewis testified in sworn testimony that Lincoln "informed Mr. Botts that he [Lincoln] had made this comment to Colonel Baldwin." Botts being John Minor Botts, who wrote that "Mr. Lincoln made the comment ‘And what is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government, no resources!’ “ [regarding his conversation with Baldwin] to me." This incident occured during Botts four hour meeting with Lincoln 7 Apr 1861.
The Baldwin meeting which occurred 4 Apr 1861, the Botts meeting 3 days later, and that of Reverend Fuller and a plethora of witnesses are separate incidents; in all three Lincoln bemoans the lack of revenues flowing into Northern coffers with the exodus of the Southern states.
Since you allege that you cannot find that information, look back and see the references.
We can play this game all you want.
What made them official?
April 27, 1861
By the President of the United States of America,
A Proclamation.
Whereas, for the reasons assigned in my Proclamation of the 19th. Instant, a blockade of the ports of the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Alabama, Louisiana, Mississippi and Texas, was ordered to be established:
And whereas, since that date, public property of the United States has been seized, the collection of the revenue obstructed, and duly commissioned officers of the United States while engaged in executing the orders of their superiors have been arrested and held in custody as prisoners or have been impeded in the discharge of their official duties without due legal process, by persons claiming to act under authorities of the States of Virginia and North Carolina, an efficient blockade of the ports of those States will also be established. In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed. Done at the City of Washington, this twenty-seventh day of April, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty one, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-fifth.
Abraham Lincoln
Virginia did not secede until almost a month later. Neither did North Carolina.
4/29/1861 “We feel that our cause is just and holy; we protest solemnly in the face of mankind that we desire peace at any sacrifice save that of honour and independence; we ask no conquest, no aggrandizement, no concession of any kind from the States with which we were lately confederated; all we ask is to be let alone; that those who never held power over us shall not now attempt our subjugation by arms.”
President Jefferson Davis
One leader was making a plea for peace while the other was making a case for war.
Georgia: “(The Northern States) have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and refused to comply with their constitutional obligations to us in reference to our property..."
That's a euphemism for northern states refusing to get involved in fugitive slave hunting.
"... and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic."
That's a euphemism for not being allowed to take their chattel anywhere they damned well please and have it be regarded as chattel (woe is me!).
“(The North) has given indubitable evidence of its design to ruin our agriculture, to prostrate our industrial pursuits and to destroy our social system."
That's a euphemism for the Peculiar Institution.
(Texas): “The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretenses and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean..."
That's another euphemism for not being allowed to take their chattel anywhere they damned well please and have it be regarded as chattel (more woes!).
Louisiana: “The people of Louisiana are unwilling to endanger their liberties and property by submission to the despotism of a single tyrant, or the canting tyranny of pharisaical majorities..."
Even you must have figured out what they're referring to when they say "property", right?! They are euphemistically referring to slaves and slavery.
All of those issues were examples of violations of the Constitution.
Hardly.
"I have never had a feeling politically that did not spring from the sentiments embodied in the Declaration of Independence.. Abraham Lincoln 1861.
BS. Everyone knew secession was nearly inevitable. There was no surprise.
Mollypitcher1: “Seward repeatedly assured South Carolina that Fort Sumpter was going to be abandoned.
How then, I ask you, can the North then legitimately “resupply” a fort which they had promised would be closed?”
At the time Secretary Seward was talking to a Supreme Court Justice, Lincoln was talking to representatives from the Virginia secession convention.
Lincoln ‘ s offer to them was, basically: a fort for a state.
Lincoln would give up Fort Sumter in exchange for adjournment of the Virginia convention, and a pledge not to return.
In the end, Virginia rejected Lincoln ‘ s offer, and so his administration went back to Plan B, which just like President Buchanan had, was to resupply and if necessary reinforce Forts Sumter & Pickens.
By the way, just so we’re clear on this point, neither Seward nor Lincoln, nor for that matter Buchanan ever talked directly to Jefferson Davis’ emmisaries. All used middle men who may or may not have repeated their words accurately.
Finally, when Lincoln eventually did settle on “Plan B” he directly notified South Carolina’s governor of the new plan.
By the way, just so we’re clear on this point, neither Seward nor Lincoln, nor for that matter Buchanan ever talked directly to Jefferson Davis’ emmisaries. All used middle men who may or may not have repeated their words accurately.
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I would call that statement misleading, perhaps decidedly misleading, as I am certain you are aware that numerous emissaries of southern states went to Washington and requested audience with Lincoln which he ADAMANTLY REFUSED. Lincoln had no intention of listening to, negotiating with, or finding reason in any way with the representatives of the south. It was his way or the highway, regardless of the fact that all of his cabinet and advisers except his Postmaster General were AGAINST resupplying Fort Sumpter....including Gen Winfield Scott, because they all said such a move would lead to WAR. Lincoln rejected the south’s peace overtures because he was going to have his way, regardless of the consequences.
There are records and letters as well as written reports substantiating what I am stating. Your contention that there is only “hear-say” is a typical lawyer’s trick to tamp down the truth.
An interesting article was written a couple of years ago in THE JEFFERSONIAN regarding Ft. Sumpter which clearly shows Lincoln’s determination to subjugate the south through WAR. The south defending itself and its rights has been misrepresented throughout the years by the worshipers of Lincoln as is often the fact when winners write the history.
The WAR of NORTHERN AGGRESSION is exactly that.
Even Chief Justice Roger Taney was against using force against the south, but Lincoln WANTED war.
Mollypitcher1: “A lot of what we do today is Lincoln’s fault.”
Nothing we do today is “Lincoln’s fault”.
Lincoln deserves some credit for all the good he did, he deserves no blame for any of the crazy stuff people have since.
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I am not particularly aware of any outstanding good , let alone “all the good” that Lincoln accomplished. He succeeded in destroying a large part of the country and attempted to destroy all its traces of having existed. He succeeded in setting up the Big Government that Knows All which is destroying our freedoms today as it destroyed the freedoms of the south in 1861 and thereafter. Lincoln, for all his false humbleness, considered himself Caesar. His manipulation, deception, deaf ear to reason, and outright arrogance toward those who disagreed with him show his true makeup. Today his followers create havoc on the south again, all because they don’t like the sight of a Confederate Flag.
And if ignorance truly is bliss then how happy you must be.
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I have never been ignorant, so shall leave you to your bliss.
PeaRidge: “Until he was elected, everything had gone fine; but now—following the election—seven Southern states had seceded from the Union, essentially based on what he said in his inaugural, and nobody knew how many more might follow.”
Note the Big Lie here, “seven Southern status had seceded from the Union, essentially based on what he said in his inaugural.”
In fact, all seven Deep South states declared secession in the months before Lincoln ‘ s inaugural, so the inaugural had nothing to do with it.
Nor did Lincoln ‘ s campaign rhetoric, because like most presidential candidates in those days, Lincoln stayed home and did not give speaches.
The truth is: there was no specific reason for declaring secession, no “material breach of compact” the Fire Eaters could point to, except one: their generalized fear of a hostility in the North, and now in the Federal Government, to their “peculiar institution” of slavery.
So they seceded “at pleasure”.
PeaRidge’s analysis: “The South had been threatening to secede ever since the Tariff of Abominations of 1828, but the North thought that those threats were just so much hot air...”
Actually, that Tariff of Abominations was passed by the leadership of Tennessean Andrew Jackson’s supporters and South Carolinian Vice-president Calhoun.
Threats of Nullification came from South Carolina, to which now President Jackson said he would hang the leaders.
So that was not North versus South, but rather one group of Southern slave holders versus another.
And in the years following, the Southern slave power continued to dominate Federal Government, resulting in average tariffs reduced from their high of 35% in 1830 to 15% in 1860, same as in 1792 under President Washington.
So, as long as the South controlled Federal Government, it WAS NOT threatening to secede.
When they lost control in the 1860 election, the Deep South declared secession immediately, without waiting for any material cause - they seceded “at pleasure”.
And the rest of that “analysis” is also pure ball shut, ie, the claim that Lincoln was a Whig, not Republican.
The truth is that most Republicans in those days were former Whigs, and Lincoln soon won over loyal support of former rivals like Seward.
Anyway, there’s more to say on this but it will have to wait until later...
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