Battle of Appomattox: Understanding General Lee's Surrender

Ammo.com ^ | 7/26/2021 | Sam Jacobs

[DiogenesLamp]

So did the Confederacy.

Yes, it's quite a shock to see that a government which believes in forcing people to work against their will would resort to conscription.

The real conundrum is how one which considers forced servitude to be evil, would do it.

Actually it's just more evidence that the Northern government didn't really have a problem with forced servitude, so long as the forced servitude served their own interests.

That's been my thinking for quite some time.

[SoCal Pubbie]

At least you’re finally admitting your post is about horse shit.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“ The United Kingdom also wanted to preserve the Union!”

We, the people of the Confederate States, each State acting in its sovereign and independent character, in order to form a PERMANENT federal government, establish justice, insure domestic tranquillity, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity invoking the favor and guidance of Almighty God do ordain and establish this Constitution for the Confederate States of America.

[DiogenesLamp]

Always got a chuckle out of Andrew Jackson, but he is not addressing rights or legality, he is simply making a threat as he was wont to do his entire life.

Jackson was literally a bad @$$, and he would not hesitate to act when he thought it necessary.

In a fight between all the presidents in their prime, Jackson wins.

[Pelham]

here’s what one Lincoln fanboy had to say about the War as he congratulated Abe on his re-election:

Address of the International Working Men’s Association to Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States of America

Presented to U.S. Ambassador Charles Francis Adams
January 28, 1865

Written: by Karl Marx between November 22 & 29, 1864
First Published: The Bee-Hive Newspaper, No. 169, November 7, 1865;

Sir:

We congratulate the American people upon your re-election by a large majority. If resistance to the Slave Power was the reserved watchword of your first election, the triumphant war cry of your re-election is Death to Slavery.

From the commencement of the titanic American strife the workingmen of Europe felt instinctively that the star-spangled banner carried the destiny of their class. The contest for the territories which opened the dire epopee, was it not to decide whether the virgin soil of immense tracts should be wedded to the labor of the emigrant or prostituted by the tramp of the slave driver?

When an oligarchy of 300,000 slaveholders dared to inscribe, for the first time in the annals of the world, “slavery” on the banner of Armed Revolt, when on the very spots where hardly a century ago the idea of one great Democratic Republic had first sprung up, whence the first Declaration of the Rights of Man was issued, and the first impulse given to the European revolution of the eighteenth century; when on those very spots counterrevolution, with systematic thoroughness, gloried in rescinding “the ideas entertained at the time of the formation of the old constitution”, and maintained slavery to be “a beneficent institution”, indeed, the old solution of the great problem of “the relation of capital to labor”, and cynically proclaimed property in man “the cornerstone of the new edifice” — then the working classes of Europe understood at once, even before the fanatic partisanship of the upper classes for the Confederate gentry had given its dismal warning, that the slaveholders’ rebellion was to sound the tocsin for a general holy crusade of property against labor, and that for the men of labor, with their hopes for the future, even their past conquests were at stake in that tremendous conflict on the other side of the Atlantic. Everywhere they bore therefore patiently the hardships imposed upon them by the cotton crisis, opposed enthusiastically the proslavery intervention of their betters — and, from most parts of Europe, contributed their quota of blood to the good cause.

While the workingmen, the true political powers of the North, allowed slavery to defile their own republic, while before the Negro, mastered and sold without his concurrence, they boasted it the highest prerogative of the white-skinned laborer to sell himself and choose his own master, they were unable to attain the true freedom of labor, or to support their European brethren in their struggle for emancipation; but this barrier to progress has been swept off by the red sea of civil war.

The workingmen of Europe feel sure that, as the American War of Independence initiated a new era of ascendancy for the middle class, so the American Antislavery War will do for the working classes. They consider it an earnest of the epoch to come that it fell to the lot of Abraham Lincoln, the single-minded son of the working class, to lead his country through the matchless struggle for the rescue of an enchained race and the reconstruction of a social world.

Signed on behalf of the International Workingmen’s Association, the Central Council:

George Odger, President of the Council; P.V. Lubez, Corresponding Secretary for France; Karl Marx, Corresponding Secretary for Germany; G.P. Fontana, Corresponding Secretary for Italy; J.E. Holtorp, Corresponding Secretary for Poland; H.F. Jung, Corresponding Secretary for Switzerland; William R. Cremer, Honorary General Secretary.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/iwma/documents/1864/lincoln-letter.htm

[SoCal Pubbie]

Speaking of Jackson,

“Now, therefore, I, Andrew Jackson, President of the United States of America, do hereby declare and proclaim that such evidence has been received by me, and that by the operation of the act of Congress passed on the 29th day of May, 1830, the ports of the United States are from the date of this proclamation open to British vessels coming from the said British possessions, and their cargoes, upon the terms set forth in the said act. The act entitled “An act concerning navigation,” passed on the 18th day of April, 1818, the act supplementary thereto, passed the 15th day of May, 1820, and the act entitled “An act to regulate the commercial intercourse between the United States and certain British ports,” passed the 1st day of March, 1923, are absolutely repealed, and British vessels and their cargoes are admitted to an entry in the ports of the United States from the islands, provinces, and colonies of Great Britain on or near the North American continent and north or east of the United States.”

Oops, your “Navigation Act of 1817” was repealed thirty years before secession. So there was nothing stopping Southerners from building or buying their own ships and dealing directly with British buyers.

[DoodleDawg]

I have no interest in what happened after the war started.

Of course you don't. Especially when you have no way of answering.

[DiogenesLamp]

I don’t know if the crowbar you got hit with sent you back to 1860 or to 2004, but that Bush-Kerry election was anything but typical in American electoral history.

1980:

1984:

1988:

1992 and 1996 were a schism because of H Ross Perot, but they show mostly the same overlap with previous maps. The great lakes areas and New York/New England vote as a block, and the West coast votes as a block. 2000:

2004:

2008:

2012:

Now if you are talking before 1980, this is true, because the southern states were democrat, and it took Reagan to flip them to Republican. Socially though, all the red states in the preceding maps represent an affinity for each other in terms of culture and income. They have a lot in common with each other, and the maps I post are meant to represent what would have happened to the Confederacy had it continued in absence of a war.

Those states would have flipped, and it would have left the Great Lakes/New York self interest zone which still controls our politics today.

In your own biased view westerners and midwesterners wouldn’t want African-Americans around any more than they wanted competition from slaves or haughty slaveowners so they’d tell the CSA to P.O. and FOAD.

There would have been no great migration of slaves into the western territories. Those areas cannot support large scale slave farming, and slaves were too valuable in the cotton growing regions to waste on the western territories.

As i've pointed out, there were only a dozen slaves in the entire New Mexico territory by the 1850s, and at that time no one was putting up any opposition to it.

[DoodleDawg]

Not going to try to explain it to you.

Because you can't.

Suggest you simply read this thread.

Poke through 1755 replies hoping for a rational explanation? No thank you.

[DoodleDawg]

Yes, it's quite a shock to see that a government which believes in forcing people to work against their will would resort to conscription.

It's a puzzlement to be sure. </sarcasm>

[DiogenesLamp]

They would not have fired on it anyway because they had precious little to fire on it with. Beyond that, it was a formidable gun platform for it's time, and it would have likely made short work of any ship attempting to molest it.

Clearly Porter was allowed some discretion, as was Ward Lamon in his arrest warrant for Judge Taney. And Porter did subsequently fire at Confederate ships while in Pensacola bay, and again with no knowledge on the events in Charleston.

Porter hid the ship to keep the Charleston mission from realizing it wasn't ever going to show up, and therefore they weren't ever going to try a foolhardy assault on the Confederates. Also to keep the Confederates from learning that it was never going to show up, and therefore those ships were never going to attack, and therefore there would be no actual need to bombard Sumter before the war fleet arrived to engage them.

[DiogenesLamp]

How did that act prohibit Southern shipbuilding?

I will have to try and find where all the particular effects are explained in detail, but the Navigation Act of 1817 was not the only means by which the Federal government helped destroy Southern shipping and ship building.

One I remember is by giving US mail contracts to Northern shippers who could then add that money to their bottom line, while the Southern shippers would have to actually compete for the remaining shipping contracts.

I think this material is discussed in detail in that thread I linked to up above.

[DiogenesLamp]

All you got out of that is an opening for a snarky retort?

If we're not have a discussion, I will stop bothering.

This is the thing. People pretend they are serious, but what they are really about is simply brow beating people into believing the same things they believe.

They don't care about objective truth, they simply want everyone to agree with what they wish to think.

[DiogenesLamp]

Because you can't.

You can find my explanation in the same message thread in which you posted your financial data for the 1860 era.

[DiogenesLamp]

Ha ha ha ha ha. You need to re-read exactly what that act is saying. It's saying that British Ships may use American ports. (This after the war of 1812) It does not repeal the Navigation Act of 1817, and many if not all of the particulars of that act remain in effect today.

[DiogenesLamp]

I have no doubt I could find the answer, but I just don’t care. What happened in 1863 is not germane to why the North invaded the South.

[SoCal Pubbie]

“All you got out of that is an opening for a snarky retort?”

Might want to be more specific. You think all my retorts are snarky.

[M Kehoe]

“Might want to be more specific. You think all my retorts are snarky.”

LOL.

My apologies, I’m not in this conversation.

LOL.

5.56mm

[SoCal Pubbie]

“Ha ha ha ha ha.”

Is that snark?

The repeal I linked shows that there was no prohibition on using foreign ships after 1830. Only the coastal trade was still prohibited, as it still is today.

Anyway, I will wait for you to show me how any legislation affected Southern ship building, shipping lines, or any other activity as regards the logistics of the cotton trade or other major business activity. I’ll grow old(er) but I’ll wait.

[SoCal Pubbie]

I’ll be here all week. Don’t forget to tip your server folks!