The REAL cause of the Civil War.

Vanity | 1957 | Ayn Rand

[DiogenesLamp]

For some time I have wondered how to explain the cause of the Civil War in simple terms that are easy to understand. I now see that Ayn Rand did it years ago. Laws passed by a Northern controlled Congress routed all the money produced by the South into Northern "elite" pockets.

[DiogenesLamp]

Bullshit stupid. He sent on resupply ship.

You are entitled to your own opinions, but not your own set of facts. He sent 4 warships, 3 tugboats, and an ocean going passenger ship loaded with Union troops and munitions.

"Some of the preparations were completed with relative ease. Fox immediately engaged the services of the large civilian steamer Baltic to carry the bulk of his expedition. Other elements of Fox’s plan did not come together so easily, however. The Navy had placed all its commissioned ships in the Atlantic waters at Fox’s disposal, ordering the naval warships Powhatan, Pocahontas and Pawnee and the revenue cutter Harriet Lane to be placed in readiness for sea service."

"Hiring the tugboats for the mission proved to be the most difficult task of all for Fox. Because obvious danger surrounded the endeavor, Northern shipowners were reluctant to lend their tugs to the cause. Only the payment of the most exorbitant rates, Fox complained, finally secured the services of three tugs– Yankee, Uncle Ben and Thomas Freeborn."

"Finally, when all preparations for Fox’s mission were complete, the various vessels sailed for Charleston. Each made its way south separately. On April 6 the frigate Powhatan, under the command of Captain Samuel Mercer, prepared to sail from New York. Other vessels, including the revenue cutter Harriet Lane and tugs Uncle Ben and Yankee, soon made their way south. The sloop of war Pawnee, under the command of Commander Stephen C. Rowan, sailed from Norfolk, Va., on April 9. Baltic, with Fox on board, dropped down to Sandy Hook at the mouth of New York Harbor on the evening of April 8 and put out to sea the following morning."

Link.

It was an attack. The ship's orders said to use force if resisted.

[DiogenesLamp]

Nothing wrong with me Poindexter. My side won the war yours started.

Your "side" started it, as I explained to you in the previous message. If you send warships to fight people, you just started a war.

[DiogenesLamp]

Our Founders believed in a "right of secession" under two, but only two conditions:

Here you go again, trying to make up history when the real history doesn't support what you wish to believe.

[DiogenesLamp]

The whole truth is, it didn't matter to Jefferson Davis if Lincoln sent only a rowboat,

Well we will never know, because Lincoln sent a belligerent force with belligerent orders, and if there is one thing that is very certain, if you send warships with orders for them to fight, you are going to start a war.

Lincoln started the war. Deliberately.

[DiogenesLamp]

And from the same provenance as an unlimited "right" to abortion...

No, that's just made up crap by the 1973 Supreme court and theoretically based on the 14th amendment, which was also made up crap that was never properly ratified because of Union guns pointed at people's backs.

The Right to Independence is expressly articulated in the Declaration of Independence. The document says the right comes from God.

It's written down in black and white and signed by all the representatives of the 13 original states.

So no, it's not like "abortion rights" at all.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "When did the Union troops arrive? [in Maryland]"

Irrelevant, there were no arrests of Maryland politicians before Confederates declared war on May 6, 1861.
Marylanders were solidly opposed to secession on April 29, by vote of 53 to 13, and more Marylanders served in the Union Army than Confederate by a factor of about 2-1.

DiogenesLamp: "We see that same sort of thuggery still today.
Protesting a stolen election is now regarded as "insurrection" and some people go so far as to claim "treason."
Same old lies. Same old corruption."

Democrats! It's always the Democrats, and Confederates were nothing if not Democrats.
In 1861 Democrats declared & waged war on the United States and in 2020 they did it again!!.

Why you, DiogenesLamp would ever want to be on the side of Democrats... just boggles the mind, FRiend.

[DiogenesLamp]

Guarenteed it makes it to over 1000 posts. LOL

I am aware of an old Civil War thread that was before my time but which has nearly 5,000 posts in it.

It was finally locked by the moderator. I guess they were tired of the long running argument.

Lots of good information in that old thread. Lots of good information in a lot of old Civil War threads.

[DiogenesLamp]

Carrying troops and being armed are two different things. They call those transports.

There were 200 soldiers on that "supply" ship. That's pretty "armed" if you ask me. Presumably every soldier had a rifle.

[Bull Snipe]

Tell the whole truth.

excerpt of orders to the senior naval officer of the Sumter mission from the Secretary of the Navy

“Should the authorities at Charleston, however, refuse to permit or attempt to prevent the vessel or vessels having supplies on board from entering the harbor or from peaceably proceeding to Fort Sumter, you will protect the transports or boats of the expedition in the object of this mission — disposing of your force in such a manner as to open the way for their ingress, and afford, so far as practicable, security to the men and boats, and repelling, by force if necessary, all obstructions to provisioning the fort and reinforcing it; for in case of resistance to the peaceable primary object of the expedition, a reinforcement of the garrison will also be attempted.”

Nothing in these orders directs an attack against Charleston or Confederate forces surrounding Charleston. Force is authorized only if the resupply effort is opposed by Confederate forces. That is the whole truth.

The naval forces followed the orders to the letter. Even when Sumter was being bombarded, they would not fire on the Confederate Forces because their orders authorized force only to aid the resupply effort, which was never attempted.

[DiogenesLamp]

“The Harriot Lane immediately fired on the Nashville.” is part of the 10% I couldn’t find.

I will have to find that, but if you want confirmation, other freepers on the "Union" side have acknowledged that the Harriet Lane did indeed fire "warning shots" at the Nashville. If you won't take my word for it, perhaps you will take theirs?

I know Buchanan sent the ships.

If you are referring to the Charleston Mission, Lincoln sent those ships. Buchanan sent the Star of the West loaded with 200 soldiers to sneak them into the fort.

Anderson did not maliciously sneak there.

He told no one he was going there. He did so in the middle of a dark December night. He burned everything he could at Fort Moultrie, and he kidnapped a ship's captain and his ship and forced him to sail there where he immediately arrested all the workmen who were there.

He took his men to Sumter for their own safty.

He took his men there because he believed Moultrie was indefensible from land. Were his men in any danger? Very doubtful. Nobody was going to harm him or his men *UNTIL* he started acting as an enemy.

[DiogenesLamp]

Every Founders' expression of a "right to secede" was couched within the term "necessary"...

Their collective expression as written in the Declaration of Independence says nothing of necessity. It says that it's up to the people for whatever reason they wish.

or, as Virginians said, powers "may be resumed by them whensoever the same shall be perverted to their injury or oppression...".

And who gets to decide whether or not they were "injured"? The people "injured", or the people doing the "injuring"?

Clearly Virginia thought they were injured in April of 1861 when Lincoln called for troops to attack the Southern states.

"Injury" is in the eye of the beholder.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thank you for staying so civil throughout this “civil” thread.

I am not angry and I have no ill will directed at anyone. I am just trying to make people aware of the history I wasn't taught, and aware of the fact we are all being taught history that isn't correct.

I used to believe all the same things that most people believe. I was shocked and saddened to learn it wasn't that way at all.

[DiogenesLamp]

There were no Confederate colored regiments, but the numbers of slaves serving Confederate armies in non-combat roles could easily match the 200,000 Union colored troops.

I have never seen you opine on Nathan Bedford Forest's Black Cavalry men.

Black Confederate soldiers on horseback would seemingly be an interesting story from the perspective of Civil War history buffs.

[DiogenesLamp]

What DiogenesLamp truly means by those words is: "I, DiogenesLamp hate black people with a passion bordering on insanity,

Now that's a smear, and I expected better of you. I am thick skinned and I don't really care what people say about me, but if you were saying this to another person I would demand that you apologize for saying such a nasty thing.

I posted a link to examples of just how badly the Northern state of Illinois hated black people. I did not make it up, there is real evidence to show there was widespread hatred for blacks in the North. Insane levels of hatred.

[DiogenesLamp]

Of those, roughly 25% were foreign born =~525,000.

Kinda like the Hessians.

Does anyone see anything wrong with using foreign troops to subjugate Americans?

[BroJoeK]

BJK: "And little revenue cutter Harriet Lane was the only Federal ship near Charleston Harbor at that time..."

DiogenesLamp: "I don't believe that is true.
I think the Baltic was already there, but I don't remember for certain.
I know the rest of the ships got there and waited for Captain Mercer in the Powhatan, but he was never coming."

I have the schedule for which Union ships arrived at Charleston Harbor and when:

1. USRC Harriet Lane arrived 8:00 PM April 11 (twilight)

2. Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter began at 4:30 AM, April 12 (dark).

3. SS Baltic (civilian transport ship) arrived 5:00 AM April 12 (dark)
4. USS Pawnee (sloop of war) arrived 6:00 AM April 12 (twilight)

5. Sunrise April 12 was approx. 7:00 AM

6. USS Pocahantas (small sloop) arrived 2:00 PM April 13

So, Confederate bombardment of Fort Sumter began at 4:30 AM, April 12, before the arrival of any Federal ship other than USRC Harriet Lane.

DiogenesLamp: "Why announce to the word that you are sending a battle fleet, and then quietly paralyze it by stopping the command ship from arriving?
Must have been a "mistake.""

All totally irrelevant! since Jefferson Davis had already decided he would "reduce" Fort Sumter if it failed to surrender immediately.
So it didn't matter which ships Lincoln did or did not send, Davis was determined on war regardless.

"There would be to us an advantage in so placing them that an attack by them would be a necessity, but when we are ready to relieve our territory and jurisdiction of the presence of a foreign garrison that advantage is overbalanced by other considerations.
[Jefferson Davis to Braxton Bragg, 3 Apr 1861] "

[BroJoeK]

You done? Self-important spew.

Typical Lost Causer response.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yes, the way that Diogenes insists on things like that does "border on insanity." It's hard for him to admit that things were more complicated than he imagines.

I've noticed people like to say things are "complicated" when "things" make their side look bad. In these cases, people don't like simplicity. They want to "complicate" things to rationalize the situation.

Some Northerners did hate Blacks. Some pitied them. Some sympathized with them and helped them.

This is absolutely true, but very misleading. It gives no scale about how many people hated blacks and how many people pitied them and wanted to help them.

In the 1860s, The vast majority, say 90% of the Northern population hated them. Perhaps 10% pitied them and wanted to help them. These people were considered extremist kooks for their time period. They were not unlike the modern Liberal loons we see trying to normalize LGBQ+ and "transgenders" nowadays.

Many of them just didn't think of them much al all.

Especially when they had no black people around.

Even in states that "officially" forbade African-American settlement, free blacks lived without much trouble from their neighbors.

So long as they got out of town before nightfall.

"Racism" as a concept didn't really exist back then.

That's funny. They didn't have a word for it, but the actual act of being racist was all too common.

Everybody in those days was by our standards somewhat racist.

Way more racist than modern people can even comprehend.

I remember reading about Lincoln telling a joke in which someone was using a young black boy's Johnson as a razor strop. (He didn't use the words "young black boy. He used the "N" word.)

It was more blatantly a matter of race in those days, but it wasn't necessarily hatred.

Threatening to hang them or sell them into slavery sure sounds like "hate" to me.

[rustbucket]

Am very much aware of that. Several years ago was involved in a discussion with someone who said their family was involved in the shipping business in the Northeast, and they explained how the whole thing worked. I think it may have been rust bucket.

You asked me that about a year ago, DiogenesLamp.

Here is a link to my reply back then: Link

And you did remember who had made the remark you were trying to remember: Link 2

You remembered that it was a poster named "WarIsHellAintItYall", who hadn't posted since 2016. I had been on the thread at the same time as that poster.

[DiogenesLamp]

DiogenesLamp: "When did the Union troops arrive? [in Maryland]"

Irrelevant,...

Ha! That must mean the answer doesn't fit your narrative! :)