On this day in 1864

[Bull Snipe]

Leading elements of Union Major General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac cross the Rapidan River. With a few hours they would clash with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Battle of the Wilderness. Lieutenant General Grant's Overland Campaign had begun.

[jeffersondem]

“And we’ll ignore for now the fact that Castro was very popular among average Cubans, in the beginning.”

Sounds like you are contemplating a future combining of the Marxist Card with a Castro-length argument.

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy: "The meme of a spinning ballerina has already been invoked, but you know that."

jeffersondem: "Probably was just a member of the supposed in-group trying to influence you to establish a disqualifying out-group stereotype. "

No, least we so soon forget, jeffersondem's "logical lutz" refers to the airborne turns by which he converts the Great Emancipator into "racist Lincoln" and such ultimate racists as, say, John Wilkes Booth, into "freedom fighters".
Related but more difficult is the triple axel whereby secession declared to protect slavery is turned into "freedom from tyranny" -- IOW typical Democrat propaganda.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "In a previous post I taunted you to play the Marxist Card and you have."

Depending on your ethnicity, it's not clear if 1861 slavers were masters preferable to 1961 Commie Cubans.
I'd have to think about that, long & hard.

[DiogenesLamp]

Which is why I don’t even bother arguing with you or reading your rants.

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy: "I drove a ‘97/‘98 F-250HD for at least 15 years."

Nothing against Ford, I'm a Chevy guy (that's Chevy, not chivvy), my 2006 Silverado 2500HD has been pulling trailers over highways, back roads, mud & snow, powerfully, quietly and with a minimum of repairs for 12 years.
Duramax & Allison -- what a beautiful combination!

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy quoting: "The principal element of their plan required use of the steam frigate USS Powhatan, which would be commanded by Porter and would carry reinforcements to the fort from New York."

I contend that even without Powhatan the Lincoln/Fox plan could succeed if Anderson held out a few days longer, allowing resupply boats to approach Fort Sumter at night, under cover of darkness & even fog.

[DoodleDawg]

I don’t know if I ever said anything, but the Ft. Sumter incident reminds me of the homeowner who found the former owner of the property despoiling the place.

When the former owners despoil the place by bombarding it into rubble with the current owners in it, you have to expect the current owners to be a bit miffed about it, don't you?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Some time earlier in one of these discussion threads I posted a quote from Captain Abner Doubleday of the US Army, and he said that it would have been pointless for the Navy to engage and that if they had done so, all the ships would have been sunk.
That is one expert Military opinion on the topic."

Except that's not really what Capt. Doubleday said, as you've now been reminded several times.
Instead, Doubleday said, in effect, "that's why resupply had to be done by small boats at night."
And that was the Doubleday/Fox/Lincoln plan, in a nutshell.

DiogenesLamp: "So we have two military experts with knowledge of the situation saying this mission was literally impossible and would have resulted in the loss of many men and all the ships who engaged."

No, none of those who said "impossible" referred to the plan recommended by Doubleday and adopted by Fox & Lincoln: small boats to resupply at night.

DiogenesLamp: "So was President Lincoln some sort of blithering idiot? Had the mission went as the men aboard those ships (and the Southerners) had been led to believe, it would have been an utter and humiliating disaster."

Seems to me Lincoln's people made a major effort to keep others from understanding their plans.
Maybe you've heard somewhere: "Loose lips sink ships"?

DiogenesLamp: "To quote David Dixon Porter above, 'a more foolish expedition was never dispatched.' "

But Porter was assigned to the Fort Pickens mission, which did not fail.
So you are misusing the Porter quote to indict Lincoln's Fort Sumter mission.

DiogenesLamp: "Yeah, it was very foolish, but it somehow managed to achieve everything Lincoln wanted in giving him power to stop the Confederates from becoming independent of the Washington DC/New York "establishment." "

You conveniently forget the fact that Jefferson Davis had issued orders to Beauregard at Fort Sumter and Bragg at Fort Pickens to take those Union outposts, one way or another, by hook or by crook, by starvation & surrender or military assault -- whatever it took, whether it started civil war or not was immaterial to Davis.

That's why all DiogenesLamp's nonsense about "Lincoln's secret plan" is irrelevant.
In taking Union forts Davis was waging war, period.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "If true, then maybe Lincoln did plan to 'fight a war to free the slaves.'
But first Lincoln would need a pretext for war which he found in the Gulf of Tonkin incident."

There's no evidence I know of that Lincoln, in your words, did "plan to 'fight a war to free the slaves,' the key word being "plan".
There are suggestions that former President John Quincy Adams mentored young Congressman Lincoln in 1847 on the subject of abolition.
But the reality is that Lincoln opposed emancipation for the war's first year hoping for an early peace.
When that didn't happen, Lincoln took note of the tactical & strategic military advantages to doing the moral right thing: emancipation, abolition & suffrage for slaves.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "Secession is not an act of war."

Sure, "secession" from the old Articles of Confederation in 1788, by mutual consent of all parties was totally peaceful, lawful and endorsed by our Founders.
But no Founder ever endorsed unilateral unapproved declaration of secession at pleasure, which is what Deep South Fire Eaters did in 1860 & '61.

Fire Eaters then followed up their secessions with provocations, acts & formal declaration of war against the United States.

jeffersondem: "War started after U.S. Navy vessels were sent on the prod in the Gulf of Tonkin incident.
I mean, the Ft. Sumter incident."

"On the prod"?
So you chivvy your tally books while "on the prod", right?
Hmmmmm….

But sure... civil war started after Jefferson Davis was ready for military assault on Forts Sumter & Pickens, and realized nothing could be gained by any delay.

[BroJoeK]

rockrr: "His/her/its premise was so profoundly dishonest that I didn’t think it worthy of rebuttal."

;-)

[BroJoeK]

"...Steward's conversations with a US Supreme Court justice..."

Sorry for "typo".
"Steward" = William Seward, Lincoln's Secretary of State.

[BroJoeK]

HandyDandy: "I think he got hung up on his own 'bollix'."

;-)

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "None of the slave states allow slaves to vote."

Just as no state today allows slaves to vote, but that doesn't imply conditions are even remotely the same.

In fact, in 1787 there were three (not just two) Southern slave-states where freed-blacks could vote: Delaware, Maryland and North Carolina.
There were also four Northern states: New Hampshire, New York, Massachusetts & Pennsylvania.

By 1860 all voting by freed-blacks was eliminated in Southern states, so Confederate "freedom fighters" were fighting for a much different vision of "freedom" than our Founding Fathers had.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "You have never mentioned it, so I was shocked to learn what the Lincoln administration was doing to black soldiers as late as 1864."

Military discipline has always been... tough.
General Washington himself had some mutineers hanged, or shot.
Had the soldier in the incident been white, the results may well have been the same.

But we might also notice that by war's end "colored" troops received the same pay as their white fellow soldiers.
We don't know how much that particular incident had to do with it.

So tell us how many colored troops in the Confederate army received the same pay as their white fellow soldiers?

Yes, it's a trick question, so be careful.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "It is surprising you would return to those smoking craters where you staked and lost your reputation."

It is surprising you would return to doing your end-zone victory dance in your own end-zone.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "Sounds like you are contemplating a future combining of the Marxist Card with a Castro-length argument."

{sigh}

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Which is why I don’t even bother arguing with you or reading your rants."

Sorry, but your posts are pure nonsense and you just can't deal with the truth.

[HandyDandy]

You are speaking to an he/she/it that can’t make the distinction between British Colonies and the united States. But it tickles his “bollix” to keep repeating the same nauseating crap over and over and over and over.................

By the way, he mentioned that someone was just a member of the supposed in-group trying to influence me to establish a disqualifying out-group stereotype."

You wouldn’t do something like that to me would you? :)

[HandyDandy]

DL to BJK ”Which is why I don’t even bother arguing with you or reading your rants.”

Why are you here? Is it to pretend that you’ve spanked someone (and then run and hide from their rebuttal)?