Posted on 11/18/2017 6:36:43 AM PST by iowamark
On or around this day in 1861, Julia Ward Howe is inspired to write the Battle Hymn of the Republic. Did you know that this much-loved patriotic song has its roots in the Civil War years?
Julia was the daughter of a Wall Street broker and a poet. She was well-educated and was able to speak fluently in several languages. Like her mother, she loved to write. She also became very interested in the abolitionist and suffragette causes.
Samuel Howe was progressive in many ways, but he wasn’t too keen on expanding women’s rights. He thought Julia’s place was in the home, performing domestic duties. Interesting, since he proceeded to lose her inheritance by making bad investments.
One has to wonder if she could have managed her own inheritance a bit better?
After a while, Julia got tired of being stifled. She had never really given up writing, but now she published some of her poems anonymously. Samuel wasn’t too happy about that! The matter apparently became so contentious that the two were on the brink of divorce. Samuel especially disliked the fact that Julia’s poems so often seemed to reflect the personal conflicts within their own marriage.
In fact, people figured out that Julia had written the poems. Oops.
Events swung in Julia’s favor in 1861. Julia and Samuel had decided to attend a review of Union trips, along with their minister, James Freeman Clarke. The Union soldiers were singing a tune about the abolitionist John Brown, who had been killed before the Civil War. The lyrics included such lines as: “John Brown’s body lies a-mouldering in the grave, His soul is marching on!”
Clarke wasn’t too impressed. He suggested to Julia that she try to write more inspirational lyrics for the same melody. Julia proceeded to do exactly that. She later remembered that she “awoke in the gray of the morning twilight; and as I lay waiting for the dawn, the long lines of the desired poem began to twine themselves in my mind. Having thought out all the stanzas, I said to myself, ‘I must get up and write these verses down, lest I fall asleep again and forget them.’”
Perhaps you will recognize the lyrics that she wrote that morning.
“Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord:
He is trampling out the vintage where the grapes of wrath are stored;
He hath loosed the fateful lightning of His terrible swift sword:
His truth is marching on.”
Julia’s hymn supported the Union army and challenged the Confederate cause. One historian notes that she “identifies the Army of the Potomac with the divine armies that would crush the forces of evil and inaugurate the millennium. . . .”
In February 1862, Julia’s “Battle Hymn of the Republic” was published in the Atlantic Monthly. The song was a hit and Julia’s fame spread quickly. In the years that followed, she traveled widely, lecturing and writing more than ever. She was President of a few associations, and she later became the first woman elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Julia’s song began as a morale-booster for Union troops. Today, it has grown beyond that to such an extent that most people do not remember its beginnings.
Primary Sources:
You just directly contradicted yourself.
Then where did you get it?
This is factually incorrect. It was the arrival of a second ship at the rendezvous point that triggered the notification that if the fort was not evacuated immediately, General Beauregard was going to open fire with his batteries.
Presumably the "rendezvous point" wasn't at the fort but about ten miles out, so do we really know which ships were to be sent to the fort and which were to be held back at sea? And if only two ships had arrived when Beauregard gave his ultimatum or order, how could he have gauged the true intentions of the fleet?
I have little doubt that the Confederates read everything.
If that was the case, then they would have gotten enough information to put the Scott order in its proper context.
I don't think so. That "agent" was communicating with Governor Pickens, Not General Beauregard.
Did you really miss the "and myself" in Beauregard's message?
I didn't cite it because that agent was not communicating with Beauregard. Why should I cite it? Walker was with Governor Pickens (as noted in your message) and he was communicating with Beauregard by Telegraph.
That makes no sense. Walker dates his message "MONTGOMERY, April 10, 1861" and he's sending it to "General BEAUREGARD, Charleston." Presumably, Pickens was also in Charleston which is why Beauregard wrote "An authorized messenger from President Lincoln just informed Governor Pickens and myself that provisions will be sent to Fort Sumpter[sic], peaceably, or otherwise by force."
Talk about the "fog of war." This is sort of like the game of "telephone" (or maybe "telegraph"). And so it was at the time. The message that a peaceful reprovisioning was sought by the US got lost as the Confederate leaders communicating with each other adapted it to their belief that a forcible attack was coming. That would have provided a pretext for war and that would have served their own interest.
The Confederate leaders interpreted the situation as they did because it created the opportunity for a shooting war which would finally and permanently sever the tie to the US, and which might eventually help draw other slave states into the Confederacy.
Did they have reason not to trust Lincoln? Maybe. Maybe not. But the more immediate and more important thing is that they weren't going to trust any union leader who didn't give them what they wanted. They were going to interpret any backbone on the part of the US president as a war-like move, either because they actually wanted war or just because they wanted to have everything their own way and would start shooting if they didn't.
And Lincoln? Did he really expect that the rebels would let him peaceably reprovision the fort without firing on the fort or the ships? Maybe. Maybe not. But before we conclude that he was conspiring for war and "tricked" Davis into starting one, consider that the question for Lincoln and the union was whether they were going to give in on everything -- to just lie down and let the Confederates roll over them -- or take a firm stand.
That was the choice they faced, and my guess is Lincoln gambled that Davis and Pickens, and Beauregard would take him at his word and let him resupply the fort. If they didn't, what happened would be on their heads.
Whether Lincoln left it at that, or somehow "knew" they weren't going to let the ships isn't something we can know for certain, though that won't stop people from forming opinions.
The choice and the argument was about taking action or not taking action, drawing a line or just giving up, and once Lincoln had figured that out I suspect he crossed his fingers and hoped things will work out for the best.
Of course Dred Scott was a liberal, activist interpretation. What was the idea that “The negro has no rights which the white man is bound to respect” but a stunning act of judicial overreach.
To use that old secessionist argument, if states thought ratifying the Constitution would mean that slave owners could come and live permanently in free states and still own and keep slaves, they would never have ratified it.
While slaveowners were allowed to bring their slaves to free states for short periods, if they moved for a longer period to a free state or territory they became residents and citizens of that or territory and subject to the laws of that free state or territory. Nobody questioned that until Taney and his court stuck their oar in.
How did you get that from what I said? I didn't say anything remotely like that. Slavery was an indirect factor for the war, because slaves created the export revenue from the European trade, over which they were really fighting. It was all about MONEY, and it was all about the POWER to keep getting the MONEY.
Angry, angry Diogenes. We've been talking about slavery. I cited documents largely about slavery. You've been talking about law cases that deal with slavery. Now you're saying we weren't talking about that at all.
You just said "they were afraid of anything that questioned the legitimacy of their wealth, the bulk of which was tied up in slaves." Slavery was about the money and the money was about slavery. You can't easily separate the two.
And you also admitted that "losing face" -- more a mental/ideological thing than something crudely material -- was a factor. Cultural power, remaining an elite: these are things that aren't simply reduced to dollars and cents.
But now, as soon as I draw the logical conclusion, you draw back in capitalized anger and rage.
Nobody in power in the North or South gave a sh*t about the welfare of the slaves.
You've demonstrated over and over again that if you'd been around back then you probably wouldn't have, but you can't speak for everybody in 19th century America.
Plus, caring about slavery can mean many different things. It could mean caring about the blot on the nation's conscience or fearing for the loss of liberty or worrying about competition from a slave economy.
Caring about slavery doesn't necessarily mean wanting to live among freed slaves and share their fate, but that doesn't mean that nobody in America felt ashamed or offended by what was going on. People can "care" about what's happening elsewhere in the world without wanting to live there or wanting the victims to move next door.
OK so I'm home and I looked up the quote in my copy of Foote's book. Two things I noticed. One, in Foote's book it's not one quote. It's two separate quotes, probably from two separate occasions and two separate audiences. And two, Foote does not source any of his quotes. We don't know who Chase was addressing, when they were supposedly made, nothing. Foote could have made them up and we wouldn't have a clue. Finally, in my book the quotes were on page 1035.
So I have no idea what neo-confederate tribute site you got the quote from but they obviously doctored it to make it sound like one long quote. And without any source, either from Foote or your website, we have no idea of context. So as far as supporting evidence goes it's up to your usual standards.
You may have missed it, but I had mentioned previously that Lieutenant David Porter informed the President that anything going through official channels would be conveyed to the Confederates as fast as they could flash the message down the telegraph wires.
The military and presumably a lot of government departments were riddled with spies and sympathizers. Everything the Union was doing (except Lincolns critical secret orders) was being conveyed to Beauregard.
The Ships showing up at the designated rendezvous point merely confirmed what the previously leaked orders said.
If that was the case, then they would have gotten enough information to put the Scott order in its proper context.
When one is potentially on the receiving end of a hostile force, it is prudent to accept the worst case scenario as the one that will occur.
Did you really miss the "and myself" in Beauregard's message?
I missed that it was Beauregard's message. I got the sender and receiver reversed. Now that I think about it, Walker was likely in Montgomery at this time. So yes, You are correct, it was Beauregard there with Governor Pickens, and the Agent was Capt. Theo. Talbot.
Davis into starting one, consider that the question for Lincoln and the union was whether they were going to give in on everything -- to just lie down and let the Confederates roll over them -- or take a firm stand.
Of what use was the fort to them other than to threaten the entrance to Charleston and keep a thumb in the eye of the Confederacy? There was no real military value to the fort in the defense of anything but Charleston, and insisting on possessing it for no real purpose served only to create a conflict where no other reason for such existed.
Whether Lincoln left it at that, or somehow "knew" they weren't going to let the ships isn't something we can know for certain, though that won't stop people from forming opinions.
They beseiged the place since January. On what line of thinking would you have us believe they were going to relinquish their efforts to evacuate the fort in April? One would think three months of surrounding it with cannons would convince even the hardest head that they meant to see what they regarded as a foreign presence expelled.
Any rational man would take it as a given that they would not allow people to resupply the fort without a fight. Lincolns own cabinet made this point clearly when they were asked about the Fox plan. All but one said it would cause a war, and all but one said they would rather see the fort given up than trigger a massive and horribly bloody civil war.
1880: Hey, we're all Americans!
1860: F@#% you America! Yankee go home!
Stuff like that is hard to process.
You live and work with people for years and it's hard to accept that they're ready to kill you all of a sudden.
As for the other side, you have to have something wrong with you to start shooting up the forts or ships of what used to be your country.
And as I said, the point for the federal government was to do something or to do nothing and they weren't going to just sit back and do nothing.
Also, you could make the same argument against Kennedy in 1962. Stop Cuban and Soviet ships and you could expect them to fire back. But they didn't.
Kennedy gambled that Khrushchev and Castro would stay calm, and he won that bet. Lincoln made the same bet and Davis's response was disappointing.
That part was overreach. The salient aspect of the decision; that traveling through a "Free State" did not emancipate a slave, was accurate so far as the Constitution of that time period said.
While slaveowners were allowed to bring their slaves to free states for short periods, if they moved for a longer period to a free state or territory they became residents and citizens of that or territory and subject to the laws of that free state or territory. Nobody questioned that until Taney and his court stuck their oar in.
Just because people had become accustomed to this methodology didn't make it constitutionally accurate. Article IV section 2 doesn't mention any such exceptions to it's requirements. You may say people believed that residency in a free state nullified Article IV, section 2, but what is the legal basis for believing this? I see no provision for suspending the requirements of this clause.
Angry, angry Diogenes. We've been talking about slavery. I cited documents largely about slavery. You've been talking about law cases that deal with slavery. Now you're saying we weren't talking about that at all.
You took what I said and replied "so it was about slavery." My point was that it was about money. Specifically the money that would be lost to the North if the South no longer had to obey the tariff and shipping laws of the US.
You just said "they were afraid of anything that questioned the legitimacy of their wealth, the bulk of which was tied up in slaves." Slavery was about the money and the money was about slavery. You can't easily separate the two.
In the South, the two things were connected, but they were not the same thing. However, you keep trying to steer the conversation back to the motivation of the South, instead of properly focusing it on the intentions of those people in the North who wanted and needed a war for economic reasons, and who did not at first give two sh*ts about the slaves in the South. (Or in the Union slave states.)
Without the North wanting, needing, and triggering a war, there would have been no War.
And you also admitted that "losing face" -- more a mental/ideological thing than something crudely material -- was a factor. Cultural power, remaining an elite: these are things that aren't simply reduced to dollars and cents.
I agreed with you that "face" was likely a large component of their decision making process. The presence of Union troops in a fort at the entrance of one of their primary harbors was also an affront as well as a real economic threat to their trade. That the existing conditions offended them does not repudiate the probability that it also cost them trade and therefore money.
Plus, caring about slavery can mean many different things. It could mean caring about the blot on the nation's conscience or fearing for the loss of liberty or worrying about competition from a slave economy.
That last was the primary motivation for the majority of people in the North who opposed slavery. They hated blacks, and didn't want them anywhere near them, but they most strongly objected to the possibility that they would have to compete with them for wages.
Opposing slavery for economic reasons and then later claiming you did it for moral reasons is disingenuous.
It wasn't. It was departure from precedent. That's why Dred Scott was such a powder keg.
Just because people had become accustomed to this methodology didn't make it constitutionally accurate. Article IV section 2 doesn't mention any such exceptions to it's requirements.
If you are referring to clause 3, the fugitive slave clause, that only applies to runaways, which Dred Scott wasn't. If you are referring to clause 1, the privileges and immunities clause, that says that "The Citizens of each State shall be entitled to all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States."
There is no explicit federal "right" to own slaves in the Constitution, so there is no "right" to own slaves in states that have forbidden slavery. If there were, it doesn't say much for federalism and "state's rights," does it?
There is no requirement, say, that Connecticut extend to its citizens the "rights" that Alabama extends to its citizens, only that Connecticut extend to visiting Alabamans the same rights that its own citizens have, and the rights that the Constitution guarantees to US citizens.
And there certainly is no requirement that Alabamans can move to Connecticut for a period of time that would make them Connecticut residents and continue to be slave owners and keep slaves in bondage in Connecticut.
My point was that it was about money. Specifically the money that would be lost to the North if the South no longer had to obey the tariff and shipping laws of the US.
BS. We were talking about slavery. You saw the documents about slavery. You referred to cases about slavery. You appeared to grasp what we were talking about. Now you're trying to weasel out of the implications of all that.
Opposing slavery for economic reasons and then later claiming you did it for moral reasons is disingenuous.
Of course, if that's true, it cuts both ways. Supporting secession for materialistic reasons and turning your movement into some kind of moral fight is hypocritical in the extreme.
But I wonder if one can really separate out the moral and the economic so easily. Did we oppose Britain's taxing us for moral or for economic reasons?
And even if we put a wholly economic interpretation on Northern opposition to slavery was it really less moral than colonial opposition to British taxation? Or somehow less moral than secession to preserve slavery -- or avoid taxes (which it wasn't).
You are applying a double standard here. Demanding some kind of high moral altruism from opponents of slavery while hallowing and enshrining sheer self-interest from slave owners and secessionists.
You are one of those people who justifies everything so long as it isn't "hypocritical." In that way, people justify and glorify some really bad stuff. But you know all that, as we've been talking about it for a very long time.
My, my, my, weakening on your admiration for the Scott decision? Who would have thunk it?
The salient aspect of the decision; that traveling through a "Free State" did not emancipate a slave, was accurate so far as the Constitution of that time period said.
And having ruled that at the beginning then the case was settled. Everything after that was not relevant to the underlying decision and formed obiter dictum. Not valid precedent.
Yeah, that Shelby Foote was obviously a liar. Terrible shame, that. And he's dead, so he can't defend himself, which is probably how you prefer it.
This seems to be the closest thing to a different authoritative source that I could find in a quick search.
http://muse.jhu.edu/chapter/1220328
The quote appears to be used in several other books as well. Here is another one.
I doubt you're all that devastated. Lack of source for it hadn't bothered you so far.
Yeah, that Shelby Foote was obviously a liar. Terrible shame, that. And he's dead, so he can't defend himself, which is probably how you prefer it.
But still no source. What Lost Cause website did you get it off of? Maybe they sourced it?
This seems to be the closest thing to a different authoritative source that I could find in a quick search.
Where is that any more authoritative that Foote? Neither one sources it.
I don't think anyone disputes that states have the right to nullify illegal supreme court decisions, or illegal acts of any branch of the federal government, but I had not heard that federal inferior courts could overrule the supreme court.
How, exactly does that work? Is that where the president suspends habeas corpus and then orders the inferior courts to overrule supreme court decisions that the president finds objectionable?
Just so you'll know, the Dred Scott decision was a 7-2 vote. Not even close.
I don't know that I approve of the decision; I only recognize that it was necessary given the US constitution.
Oh, how I wish New York, New Jersey, New Hampshire, Connecticut, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Delaware, Maryland and the other slave states had not enshrined slavery into the US constitution!
“Here is what Chase wrote in the Texas decision: “The Union . . . and our side won. And I’m not going to let anyone take back in court what we won on the battlefield. So there!” “
Victor’s justice.
There never is by Chicago authorities or the drive-by media.
As far as local residents: they didn't see nut’in.
Maybe my post was not clear. Over 60 people were shot down on the streets but many of these were just wounded. I don't remember for sure. I think maybe “only” 7 or 8 were killed outright.
The most recent figure, year-to-date, for gun murders in Chicago is just north of 600. The wounded for that time period is maybe three or four thousand. Just guessing.
Again, no known connection to the disaster at Appomattox.
No.
“So to say the North was the aggressor for invading the South when the South started the war in the first place is, to me at least, as ridiculous as saying the U.S. was the aggressor in World War II for invading Germany when Germany started the war to begin with.”
Are you now sated having played the Nazi Card twice in this thread?
The Nazi’s went wrong in every way I know because they pursued socialist policies and many of their leaders dabbled in the occult. They were bad guys.
Southerners were mostly good guys.
But they had this one little quirk. They believed: Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
Don’t ask me where they got such a crazy idea.
General Eisenhower knew about southerners. And he knew about Nazis. Unlike many today, he never confused the two.
General Eisenhower knew right from wrong. And so far as I know, he never lacked the courage to proclaim the difference.
“No.”
I am so proud of you for saying that. I’m serious.
LOL! The idea that states can nullify federal actions much less Supreme Court decisions died with South Carolina in 1832.
How, exactly does that work? Is that where the president suspends habeas corpus and then orders the inferior courts to overrule supreme court decisions that the president finds objectionable?
Far easier than that. Pass legislation, fight it out in lower courts, win in the Supreme Court. All nice and legal under the Constitution.
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