On this date in 1864 President Lincoln receives a Christmas gift.

[Bull Snipe]

"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." General William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" was over. During the campaign General Sherman had made good on his promise d “to make Georgia howl”. Atlanta was a smoldering ruin, Savannah was in Union hands, closing one of the last large ports to Confederate blockade runners. Sherman’s Army wrecked 300 miles of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills. In all, about 100 million dollars of damage was done to Georgia and the Confederate war effort.

[OIFVeteran]

I am confused by your post. Are you saying it wouldn’t have been better for our country if the founding fathers had been able to get rid of slavery, or put in a definitive time frame for its ending, when they wrote the constitution?

[DiogenesLamp]

1897-1947--Active military outpost (50 years)

Well see? There's where the error lies. I rightly recognize that it's only possibility of service was prior to this era, and that afterward it had no use at all.

During the time period it might have mattered it stood empty. What happened after 1900 is irrelevant. It was really only a threat to ships coming up the channel, and to WWI era craft, none at all. They draughted too much to even come within range of it's guns.

It was built to defend Charleston from the British, and it actually never did performed any useful service.

[DiogenesLamp]

Unless you can cite orders to the contrary. The mission was to resupply Sumter.

Which is why they had five warships and a troop carrier with 200 riflemen. To quote Lincoln here, "Just because you call a tail a 'leg', doesn't make it so."

The ships were not authorized to use force (i.e. start shooting) unless Charleston authorities resisted (i.e. opened fire) on the resupply effort.

"Resisted" has many possible interpretations, and the fact that they had sunk ships in the channel and ran chains across various points to prevent ships from coming up the channel can be interpreted as resistance.

But we don't need to play this sort of game, because you and I both know that they were going to resist and every member of that force also knew the Confederates were going to resist, so let's just dispense with that fig leaf and acknowledge the facts that actually existed at the time.

That Fleet was ordered to use it's entire force to place reinforcements into Sumter.

You mean Seward. He is the person that failed to mention, in Porter’s recall order, that it was by direction of the President.

Porter immediately set out to engage in war with the Confederates in Pensacola. As has been pointed out to you before, one can only surmise that his actions were consistent with the secret orders he received from Lincoln.

Lincoln paralyzed the expedition while making them appear to be a serious belligerent threat, and deliberately leaving the confederates with the belief that an attack by these ships was imminent. If you read the Confederate telegraph messages of this time, you will find they had knowledge of a bunch of ship movements and troop movements of Union forces, and that they were expecting marine landing forces to also engage at the same time this fleet was threatening the entrance to their harbor.

[Bull Snipe]

“That Fleet was ordered to use it’s entire force to place reinforcements into Sumter.”

Of course you can produce a copy of that order signed by Lincoln. If not, seems like pure speculation or wishful thinking on your part.

“they were expecting marine landing forces”

200 hundred artillerymen unschooled in the use of rifles or bayonets constitutes a “marine landing force”?

[DiogenesLamp]

Your assertion that it was a suggestion is just your opinion and not supported by the writing and the actions of both the revolutionary war era and constitutional era founding fathers.

Let's analyze this sentence.

"Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed."

The operative words here are "prudence" and "should not".

Is "prudence" a command or a suggestion?

Is "should not" a command or a suggestion?

The words are English and they speak for themselves. The observation that they are a suggestion is an objective acknowledgement of reality.

I have been re-reading the notes on the constitutional convention and the federalists and anti-federalist papers. I would not characterize the federalists arguments as fluff but they certainly downplayed the fears of the anti-federalists.

It's been years since I read the Federalist and Anti Federalist papers, but at the time, I observed that the Anti-Federalists accurately predicted a lot of the abuses that would eventually be forthcoming.

I completely agree with you that the anti-federalist were right about a lot of things and am glad their push for amendments was successful, but also glad they failed in stopping the ratification of the constitution. One of the leading Anti-federalist, Patrick Henry, gave a speech at the Virginia ratification convention arguing against adoption of the constitution. In it he states the constitution will do exactly what you and the rest of the lost cause brigade claim it didn’t do. Take away the states sovereignty.

Wait, what? Prayer in public schools ring a bell? Laws banning abortion ring a bell? Laws banning homosexuality ring a bell?

The incorporation doctrine of the 14th amendment was responsible for a h3ll of a lot of the loss of state sovereignty. The States are now shadows of their former authority.

The Federal government has way overflowed it's banks and has now flooded the entire nation with Federal excess in everything we do.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

It was really only a threat to ships coming up the channel, and to WWI era craft, none at all. They draughted too much to even come within range of it's guns.

Wow, who knew that the water was that shallow five miles out to sea? The guns that were placed in Sumter in 1897 were 12" M1895s, with a range of 18,400 yards.

[Bull Snipe]

“troop carrier with 200 riflemen”
Those 200 men were artillerymen, not riflemen. Their function would have been to man the big guns at Sumter.
They were not schooled or drilled in the use of shoulder weapons or infantry tactics.
This practice would not begin until mid 1862.

[Kalamata]

>>BroJoeK wrote: "Americans in 1861 had only two choices -- were they going to accept Confederate aggressions against the United States or not? Their decision to resist Confederate aggression had nothing to do with their own "perfection" or not, and everything to do with their perception of existential threats Confederates posed."

That is the most insane thing I have read from you, Joey. Every historian of that era knows the South seceded to get away from the greedy, radical, and even blood-thirsty Northern leadership in order to pursue their own economic interests.

Did I tell you that I didn't fully understand the concept of "Damn Yankee" until I started studying Antebellum and Civil War History. I was blessed to have studied Constitutional history -- the history of our founding, beforehand; but nothing could have prepared me for the shock of finding out that Pennsylvania's Thaddeus Stevens was a scheming psychopath, while Buchanan (whose historic home was about an hour away from mine) was not such a bad President, after all. I also learned that Andrew Johnson was both honorable and a sound leader who was possibly trying to recover Lincoln's legacy from the rabid psychopaths, like Stevens and Charles Sumner. The late Historian and Lincolnite James Truslow Adams left us this analysis:

"Two men of considerable contemporary importance had already, before Lincoln's death, given the keynote to the policies which the Republicans were to follow —Thaddeus Stevens, the vindictive fanatic born in Vermont whose ironworks in Pennsylvania had been burned by the Confederates, member of the lower House of Congress, and Charles Sumner, Senator from Massachusetts. Sumner had claimed that secession had deprived the South of every right under the Constitution, and that it lay absolutely at the mercy of Congress, which was another way of naming the Republican Party. Stevens had declared that Congress must treat the Southern States as "conquered provinces, and settle them with new men, and drive the present exiles as rebels from this country." Under such leadership, Congress undertook the task of punishing the South, making places and spoils for its henchmen, and ensuring for a generation the national domination of the Republicans. The vindictiveness of Stevens and the fanaticism and egotism of Sumner combined to despoil the nation of that peace which Lincoln would have brought. The electorate gave them all-too-ready backing. For the next decade the South lived under a military despotism from which almost every trace of self-government was obliterated."

"In only six of the Northern or Western States did the negroes, whose numbers there were small, possess the franchise, and in 1865 Connecticut, Minnesota, and Wisconsin voted against granting it in their own domains. The next year Congress, as part of its plan to Republicanize the South, drafted the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, heavily reducing the basis of representation in Congress of such States as did not allow the negro to vote. This was adopted two years later. The Fifteenth Amendment, adopted in 1870, forcibly enfranchised, without the slightest preparation, the slaves, who formed about 70 per cent of the Southern population. Just as both political parties in the North had debauched the immigrant voters and led them to the polls in shoals, so the Southern black was now to be debauched."

"In 1867, Congress passed the Reconstruction Act, which divided the South into five districts to be administered by Generals of the Federal army. It also provided for the holding of elections, in which the ex-slaves should vote, for delegates to constitutional conventions which should adopt constitutions providing for negro suffrage. These had to be submitted to the blacks as well as the whites for adoption. Until these constitutions had been drafted, approved by Congress, and the Fourteenth Amendment adopted, the Southern States were to continue to be ruled by the army under supervision of Congress. [President Andrew] Johnson vetoed the Act, but it was passed over his veto, and when he had proved himself sufficiently a defender of the Federal Constitution and of Lincoln's policy against the radicals in Congress, that body undertook to disgrace the nation and itself by impeaching him on a trumpery charge. The impeachment, under the lead of Stevens, broke down, but Congress continued its mad course."

"In the South, conditions developed as might have been expected. A disgraceful horde of office and spoils seekers from the North, known as "carpetbaggers," swarmed over it. Combining with the riffraff of Southern whites, known as "scalawags," and the utterly ignorant negroes, they formed parties, elected the legislatures, and stole with the complete abandon of Boss Tweed and his gang in New York. The taxes rose tenfold and fifteenfold, and debts were created, not for improvements or other legitimate purposes, but to line the pockets of these political shysters. Rhodes, who made as good a case as he could for the North, notes, for example, that in four years of Republican rule in Louisiana the State tax rose 400 per cent and the State debt from $14,000,000 postwar to an indeterminate amount estimated anywhere from $24,000,000 to $50,000,000 post-Republican. Of the $22,000,000 debt of the city of New Orleans, $17,000,000 had been issued at 35 cents on the dollar. One estate in that city which even after the war, in 1867, was bringing in $70,000 income, could not be rented five years later for enough to pay taxes, insurance, and repairs."

"Scenes in the legislative halls of all the States would have been laughable had they not been tragic. Crowds of Northern muckers, and blacks who had been slaves a short time since, swaggered about, smoking and drinking at the States' expense, ruling the South. There is no parallel for the situation in the history of modern civilized nations, and it is almost incredible that it occurred within our own country. No civilized victor was ever more ungenerous. The war had left the South prostrate; Reconstruction left it maddened."

"Little by little, however, the South began to pick itself up. The new constitutions and the Fourteenth Amendment were ratified, and one by one, from Tennessee in 1866 to Virginia in 1870, the Southern States again became members of the Union."

[James Truslow Adams, "The Epic of America." 3rd Ed, 1938, pp.284-286]

For the record, the reason Lee singled out the ironworks of Thaddeus Stevens was probably because of his sub-human pre- and early-war rhetoric:

"In the Congress, there was a significant group of South haters, with murderous demands. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens, was willing that the South "be laid waste, and made a desert, in order to save this Union from [economic] destruction." Before a Republican state convention in September 1862, he urged the government to "slay every traitor-bum every Rebel Mansion.... unless we do this, we cannot conquer them."

"The New York Times wrote in March 1861 that the North should "destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate states," and this was BEFORE the bombardment at Fort Sumter."

"Congressman Zachariah Chandler expressed the spirit of so many in the Congress: "A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty, property, or the pursuit of happiness. Everything you give him, even life itself, is a boon which he has forfeited."

"Such sentiments found their way to the European observers of the war, who found them hard to believe from a civilized people. A correspondent for the pro-Northern Macmillan Magazine, in December 1863, wrote, "How can you subjugate such a people as this? And even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth century the civilized world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race."

"On 5 May 1861, this genocidal passion against the South found analysis in the New York Herald. It quoted the views of the abolitionists: "When the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the field, and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes. They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers, and the rags of children."

"Another radical editor noted that the New York Herald called "for the punishment of all individuals in the South by hanging, and the confiscation of everybody's property in the seceding States." "Richmond," said another, "must be laid in ashes," and as for Baltimore, "it must become a heap of cinders and ashes, and its inhabitants ought either to be slaughtered, or scattered to the winds." Virginia and Maryland deserve to be "laid waste and made desolate" and 500,000 troops should "pour down from the North, leaving a desert track behind them." "The editor responded, "Submission on the part of the South would not satisfy these bloody journalists of the Republican party. Far from it. They cry out: 'We mean not merely to conquer, but to subjugate.'" The editor then adds, "The people of the North are prepared for no such extremities as the brutal, bloodthirsty journals of the abolitionist school suggest."

"On 24 May 1861, the Daily Herald in Newburyport, Massachusetts, said that "if it were necessary, we could clear off the thousand millions of square miles so that not a city or cultivated field would remain; we could exterminate nine millions of white people and re-settle-re-people the lands. There is no want of ability; and if such a work is demanded, there would be no want of a will." "It is no wonder that the Civil War generated hatred for the North and the Republican party among Southerners for well over a hundred years the bloodthirsty rhetoric of the radicals in the North in time found expression in the devastation of civilians and civilian property by Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and the commander in chief-Lincoln. It didn't end with the war, for it was then carried on in a less violent form in the Reconstruction laws for the South by the radicals. The object was to exterminate the culture of the Southerners, and to subjugate then destroy the political force of the Southern establishment, and not just the planter-slave owner class. There was to be a new order in the South, excluding the established Southerners of all classes. The radicals succeeded for a while and then moved on, leaving a wasteland in which secret societies and lawlessness prevailed. Thus, in a sense, the Northerners did exterminate a society in every way except genocide. By contrast, no such genocidal threats were made by Southerners against the North."

[Charles W. Adams, "When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession." Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp.54-56]

And now you know why the terms "Damn Yankees" and "Southern Gentlemen" stuck! But, frankly, the label "Damn Yankee" is much too kind. My Pennsylvania ancestors would be rolling in their graves.

Mr. Kalamata

[DiogenesLamp]

Of course you can produce a copy of that order signed by Lincoln. If not, seems like pure speculation or wishful thinking on your part.

You know very well that the orders were signed by Lincoln's officials. Only David Porter's super secret hand written orders were signed by Lincoln.

200 hundred artillerymen unschooled in the use of rifles or bayonets constitutes a “marine landing force”?

As I said, if you read the Confederate messages, they thought there would be thousands of men landing. They also believed there would be more ships than were actually sent. The telegraph messages mention the names of some ships they thought were coming, and some of the troops they thought were coming along with them.

With Lincoln's generals saying a force of 20,000, and with the knowledge of how many men it would take to successfully attack them, it wasn't unreasonable for them to believe a lot more force was coming than actually came.

Nobody expected a token force to just show up and be all show and no fight. They thought it was real, which i'm sure was Lincoln's intent.

[DiogenesLamp]

Wow, who knew that the water was that shallow five miles out to sea? The guns that were placed in Sumter in 1897 were 12" M1895s, with a range of 18,400 yards.

My recollection is that the entire entrance to Charleston Harbor was very shallow, and that only shallow draught ships could navigate it. Was it shallow out to five miles? I don't know, but I could find out if I really wanted to know, but it is beside the point. Why would a WWI era capital ship try to come up Charleston's harbor? And if it did, would two guns stop it? The Geography of Charleston harbor was a sufficient defense all of it's own.

"Fort Sumter was designed to mount 135 guns and provide living space for 650 officers and soldiers. "

650 men? That's what it was designed to house, and when did it ever have such a garrison?

Never. Just two coastal guns after 1897, and which never saw combat. Pointless. Big waste of money. Never amounted to anything useful.

[Bull Snipe]

“Only David Porter’s super secret hand written orders were signed by Lincoln.”

Then how do you know what they said. Or is that your imagination, hope?

The Confederates, if they thought Lincoln could send forces of thousands against Charleston, were stupid.

Only 16,000 men in the entire U.S. Army. Over 14,000 of them stationed West of the Mississippi River. The remainder posted all over the United States at that time. No call up of the militia had been issued. They would have known that the Navy could not support a large scale operation, because it did not have the ships to do so. The Navy had 42 ships in commission at the time. Twenty or so were in distant seas on patrol. Half of the remainder were in Naval Shipyards and unavailable. That left Lincoln about 10 warships. Some of them were sail powered and unsuitable for the task. It may well have been that the three naval vessels and the revenue cutter were the only ships available for the enterprise. These facts would have been known to the Confederate Government.

[DiogenesLamp]

Those 200 men were artillerymen, not riflemen.

I recall reading that they were riflemen, but whether they were or were not is irrelevant to the larger point of why they were there. They were "reinforcements" sent along on a supposed "resupply" mission that looked suspiciously like a reinforcement mission.

And I would dare say that even artillery men knew how to be a rifleman if they were in the army.

[DiogenesLamp]

Then how do you know what they said. Or is that your imagination, hope?

One can only surmise that what they said is what Porter did. Porter never let anyone see them, which is a sharp contrast with Captain Mercer's orders from Lincoln. You can find copies of those, but you cannot find a copy of Lincoln's orders to Porter.

Porter wrote all about himself in several books, but for some reason he didn't see fit to provide a copy of the text of his orders.

It may well have been that the three naval vessels and the revenue cutter were the only ships available for the enterprise. These facts would have been known to the Confederate Government.

Just telling you about what I have read. The message traffic during the Fort Sumter event demonstrated that they were expecting invaders from various places, and had the cannons and troops ready to repel them.

This site covers both Union and Confederate messages before during and after the Operations in Charleston and Operations in Florida.

It's actually a pretty neat site. It originally released the message traffic on the same date as it occurred back in 1861. If you like reading the history of this era, you will like going through this site.

[Kalamata]

>>DiogenesLamp wrote: “Over the years i’ve come to realize that many of the arguments of the Anti-Federalists did indeed come to pass, while many of the assurances of the Federalists were shown to be so much fluff.”

The “Federalist” label was hijacked by the the central-government-loving Hamilton, much like the modern “Blue State” label has been hijacked by the Commie-Red Party. The true Federalists were those labeled as Anti-Federalists.

Mr. Kalamata

[BroJoeK]

In his post #645 Kalamata launches yet another time-warpingly long response which will have to be split into smaller pieces, this is the first.

Kalamata: "Obviously, the 10th Amendment didn't help Joey's understanding, revealing he is more legally-challenged than most.
Perhaps if the framers had also explained that the delegated and prohibited powers are found in Article I, Sections 8 and 9, respectively, it would have been easier for him to understand them?"

Nonsense, the truth is that no Founder ever explained the 10th Amendment, or any other section, as somehow justifying an unlimited "right of secession" in the way our Lost Causers fantasize.

Kalamata: "Rebellion is not secession, Joey, except in the rhetoric of tyrant and their groupies."

But rebellion is rebellion, and waging war against the United States is treason.

Kalamata: "Besides, I am not referring to the secessionists, who were states within a foreign nation at the time Lincoln invaded.
Rather I am referring to Lincoln making war on the state of Maryland to keep them from seceding.
That was treason:"

And there it is, a typically insane Democrat mindset -- make up look down, dark look light, left look right, it's what being a Democrat is all about.
Here's the real truth: by the Constitution's definition, when the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, that made every pro-Confederate action in Union states acts of treason.

Kalamata: "A reasonable person could make a case that Lincoln also committed treason when he usurped power to suspend habeas corpus from the Congress, and then used that usurped power to arrest Union citizens at gunpoint without charging them with a crime, and to imprison them without due process."

No reasonable person would ever argue such nonsense, only insane Democrats, the same people who today want to remove another great Republican president based on similarly absurd charges.

Kalamata: "Secession can never be rebellion or insurrection, except in the warped minds of tyrants and their groupies."

Pretended secession immediately becomes rebellion, insurrection and treason when secessionists begin threatening and firing on United States citizens.
That's not "tyranny", it's simple law enforcement.

Kalamata: "But there is no doubt Lincoln committed treason against Maryland.
All who gave and aid and comfort to Lincoln were also traitors."

That's just more lies, because there is no doubt that Marylanders who waged war against the United States committed treason.
The Maryland legislature voted four-to-one against secession, and those who later supported the Confederacy were never more than 1/3 of all Marylanders.
So Maryland, like Kentucky and Missouri, were majority Union states whose pro-Confederates met the Constitution's definition of "treason".

Kalamata: "Obviously Joey is confused about the definition of 'republican'.
I am a devout conservative republican."

Nonsense, you were never a Republican, you were born Democrat and learned all the Democrat Big Lies.
At some point (typically 1964) a lot of old Democrats turned their blue coats to red, but they remained Democrats at heart and have been trying to sell their Big Lies to actual Republicans ever since.

Kalamata: "The laws in a republican form of government are bound by a constitution, not by the ever-changing whims of power-hungry politicians."

Such as those who began declaring secession and war against the United States in 1860-61.

Kalamata: "The big-government, central-planning progressive policies of the Lincoln administration, became the modern-day policies of the Democrat Party.
That explains the love-affair of the progressive-Marxist democrats, like Joey, with Lincoln."

Yesterday we again saw the insane anti-American practices of Kalamata's fellow Democrats attacking a genuine Republican president, just as they did in 1861.

Kalamata: "The fact that Marxist "historians," such as Eric "Phony" Foner, are hard-core Lincoln groupies f."

At this point we might have some pity on poor Kalamata because he's now deployed every loser-argument in the book -- he's called us Nazis, Hitler, Marxists & communists.
And all of that to distract from the fact that Kalamata himself is a Democrat, born, bred, raised & trained as a Democrat, he can't control it or stop it.
All he can do is spew out Democrat lies.

Kalamata: "Maryland was one of the United States, Joey, and it never made war against it.
Rather, Lincoln usurped power from the people and made war against Maryland to strip it of its republican form of government."

And the Democrat lies against Lincoln just keep on coming, just as against our current Republican President.
The truth is that Maryland refused to secede, remaining a Union state and that made all Maryland pro-Confederates treasonous.
The claim that Lincoln waged war against Maryland is just cockamamie nonsense, worthy of Democrats like crazy Roger Taney.

Kalamata: "The Confederacy was a foreign nation when Lincoln invaded, and could not possibly have committed treason against the United States."

By 1865 many Union leaders like Lincoln, Grant and Chase were willing to forgive Confederate treason in order to restore "peace in the family."
Chief Justice Chase even advised Jefferson Davis' lawyer that the new 14th Amendment had already punished Davis and therefore a trial for treason would amount to double jeopardy.
But so far as I've seen, no Union leader pretended that Confederates had not committed treason, only that it was now time to live & forgive.

Enough for now, more later...

[jeffersondem]

“I am confused by your post. Are you saying it wouldn’t have been better for our country if the founding fathers had been able to get rid of slavery, or put in a definitive time frame for its ending, when they wrote the constitution?”

If my question confused you, wait until you read the exculpatory explanation of slavery being enshrined into the United States Constitution by some guy in post 1376.

Said he: “ . . . from what I’ve read of the constitutional convention we would have lost Georgia, South Carolina, and North Carolina if the hardline anti-slavery founders had pushed the issue. And the founders were more concerned about a fractured America fighting amongst itself or being influenced or taken over by foreign powers. So they kicked the can down the road.”

[DiogenesLamp]

The truth is that Maryland refused to secede, remaining a "Union state and that made all Maryland pro-Confederates treasonous. The claim that Lincoln waged war against Maryland is just cockamamie nonsense, worthy of Democrats like crazy Roger Taney."

The despot's heel is on thy shore,
Maryland!
His torch is at thy temple door,
Maryland!
Avenge the patriotic gore
That flecked the streets of Baltimore,
And be the battle queen of yore,
Maryland! My Maryland!

Dear Mother! burst the tyrant's chain, Maryland!
Virginia should not call in vain,
Maryland!
She meets her sisters on the plain-
"Sic semper!" 'tis the proud refrain
That baffles minions back again,
Maryland!
Arise in majesty again,
Maryland! My Maryland!

I hear the distant thunder-hum,
Maryland!
The Old Line's bugle, fife, and drum,
Maryland!
She is not dead, nor deaf, nor dumb-
Huzza! she spurns the Northern scum!
She breathes! she burns! she'll come! she'll come!
Maryland! My Maryland!

https://msa.maryland.gov/msa/mdmanual/01glance/html/symbols/lyricsco.html

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

Why would a WWI era capital ship try to come up Charleston's harbor? And if it did, would two guns stop it? The Geography of Charleston harbor was a sufficient defense all of it's own.

You clearly don't understand much about offshore bombardment and amphibious operations. To attack a coastal point, it's not necessary to sail your biggest battleships up to the docks. You sit offshore and shell, then you send in lighter craft. In WW2, battleships were able to provide a great deal of support for landing operations without ever having to tie up to a pier on, say, Okinawa.

Just two coastal guns after 1897, and which never saw combat. Pointless. Big waste of money. Never amounted to anything useful.

As I said before, our nuclear missile force has never seen combat. I suppose they're useless and a big waste of money that have never amounted to anything useful by the standards you set. There's this concept, maybe you've heard of it, called "deterence."

[DiogenesLamp]

You clearly don't understand much about offshore bombardment and amphibious operations. To attack a coastal point, it's not necessary to sail your biggest battleships up to the docks. You sit offshore and shell, then you send in lighter craft.

And two guns on Ft. Sumter was going to stop this?

As I said before, our nuclear missile force has never seen combat. I suppose they're useless and a big waste of money...

Wasn't funny the first time you told it.

[Bubba Ho-Tep]

And two guns on Ft. Sumter was going to stop this?

Smaller guns on Wake Island held off the Japanese for weeks.

Wasn't funny the first time you told it.

Good, because it's not a joke.