Happy Secession day!

“Listen Reb, stop with the bs about The Mexican War . . .”

I was quoting from President Grant's Personal Memoirs; a passage which referenced his participation in the Mexican war and the war he led against the South.

I didn't think there would be anything wrong in quoting General Grant.

“Just so we’re clear on this — Grant, like Lincoln, was a Northern Whig and Whig’s opposed “Mr. Polk’s war”, Pres. Polk being a Southern Democrat who provoked & fought the Mexican war to largely benefit partisan Democrat political interests.”

But Whigs, too, fought for what Grant thought was an unjust, partisan, Democrat war. Grant did.

Perhaps at that time U.S. officers did not have the ability to resign their commissions.

In any event, in terms of unjust war, you can argue Grant was “just following orders.”

woodpusher: "Lincoln never claimed the power to free slaves other than as a war power as Commander-in Chief of the army and navy, and then only when absolutely necessary.
As late as May 1862, Lincoln counter-mandered miliary proclamations freeing slaves taken by the Union army, rendering such proclamations null and void."

As early as May & June of 1861, Union Gen. "Beast" Butler declared runaway Confederate slaves "contraband of war" and refused to return them to Confederate slave masters.

In July, 1861 Congress passed the First Confiscation Act, -- "An Act to confiscate Property used for Insurrectionary Purposes." -- which did not free runaway Confederate slaves, but did make them "property" of the US Government, and thus not legal to return to Confederate slave masters.

Such fugitives were, however, treated as if freed and paid for their Union work.

Later, on May 9, 1862, Union Gen. Hunter issued proclamation #10, freeing all slaves under his responsibility in GA, SC & FL.

"Lincoln immediately countermanded the order, thus returning the slaves to their former status as property in the care of the federal government."

In July, 1862 Congress responded with the Second Confiscation Act -- "An Act to suppress Insurrection, to punish Treason and Rebellion, to seize and confiscate the Property of Rebels, and for other Purposes." --

"The most significant change over the first confiscation act was the final status on escaped slaves.
While the first act did not make any determination on the final status of slaves after the war was over, the Second Act explicitly said that all slaves covered under it would be permanently freed.[5]
The Second Confiscation Act also prohibited anyone in the military from returning escaped slaves, even slaves that had escaped from Union states that still had legal slavery."

"Section 11 of the act formed the legal basis for President Abraham Lincoln's [1862] Emancipation Proclamation."

woodpusher: "The war to abolish slavery was apparently fought for over a year while acknowledging there was no existing lawful authority to abolish slavery, even using military power under martial law."

Not true, see above.

woodpusher: "It is notorious that the initial reason fiven for the war was to preserve the Union.
It was not until that fell from favor, and a draft was to become necessary, that the justification changed to a war to abolish slavery."

That is not true.
The July 1862 Militia Act allowed states to draft men to fill their ranks, and the February 1863 Enrollment Act simply strengthened draft laws.

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation was written at the about same time as the July 1862 Confiscation Act, and was legally based on it, but Lincoln delayed until a significant enough military victory (Antietam) strengthened the Union cause.

But the key point to grasp here is that emancipation was known from the beginning (1861) as necessary to break the economic, military and political power of the Confederate slavocracy.
And once it became clear the war would not end quickly, then the question became only when and how to abolish Confederate slavery, not whether.

Slavery in Union states & territories was a different matter, but even there, Lincoln did what he could to end slavery:

April 16, 1862 Washington, DC, compensated emancipation imposed by Congress.
June 19, 1862 Congress abolished slavery in every Union territory.
Summer, 1862 Lincoln drafts Emancipation Proclamation, but delays release until military victory (Antietam) made it more appropriate.
Fall 1862 Lincoln offered compensated emancipation to Delaware. Delaware rejected it.
1863 to 1865 -- West Virginia abolished slavery.
January 11, 1865 -- Missouri abolished slavery.
October 13, 1864 Maryland abolished slavery.

In the end, of the South's ~4 million slaves in 1860, only about 50,000 in Kentucky and Delaware remained to be freed by ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865.

Antietam. Sept. 17, 1862. Sharpsburg to the Rebs. Deadliest one day battle in US military history. It showed the Union Army could hold it's own with The Army Of Northern Virginia. It gave ground to Lincoln to put into place a ‘’pre Emanaciapation Act if you will. Sounds like simple Yankee bs I'm sure or “Southern friends’’ would think but there is none the less. The CSA would still be a formidable force as 1862 led into 1863. They sure did that well and hard. I'll give them that. Sept. 17, 1944 would be a real bad couple of days for the US military. History can repeat itself.

jeffersondem referring to US Grant in 1846: "Perhaps at that time U.S. officers did not have the ability to resign their commissions.
In any event, in terms of unjust war, you can argue Grant was “just following orders.”"

In early 1846, 24-year-old Lt. Grant was happy in the US Army, serving in Louisiana under future Whig President, Zachary Taylor.
While the US and Mexico were still at peace, Democrat Pres. Polk ordered Gen. Taylor to move his 2,200 man force to the mouth of the Rio Grande in Texas.
On April 25, Mexican forces crossed the Rio Grande and attacked Taylor's forces (including Grant) at Palo Alto.

On May 13, Congress approved a declaration of war:

"Sixty-seven Whigs voted against the war on a key slavery amendment,[74] but on the final passage only 14 Whigs voted no,[74] including Rep. John Quincy Adams.

Later, a freshman Whig Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, challenged Polk's assertion that American blood had been shed on American soil, calling it "a bold falsification of history."[75][76]"

It appears that nobody at the time, certainly not young Lt. Grant, understood whatever maneuvering Democrat Pres. Polk was doing before Congress declared war on Mexico.

Bottom line is that Democrat Presidents Madison (1812), Polk (1846) and Jefferson Davis (1861) all started wars for which their reasons are at least debatable, and in every case their political opposition -- Federalists (1812), Whigs (1846) and Republicans (1861), responded with loyal military service, even when, as in 1861, it was Democrats themselves Republicans were forced to fight.

😂

woodpusher: "Lincoln never claimed the power to free slaves other than as a war power as Commander-in Chief of the army and navy, and then only when absolutely necessary.
As late as May 1862, Lincoln counter-mandered miliary proclamations freeing slaves taken by the Union army, rendering such proclamations null and void."
As early as May & June of 1861, Union Gen. "Beast" Butler declared runaway Confederate slaves "contraband of war" and refused to return them to Confederate slave masters.

An unlawful declaration by Ben Butler would not override an official Proclamation of the President of the United States, except perhaps in the minds of Ben Butler and BroJoeK. Butler did not emancipate slaves. He seized Confederate property.

Nothing after early 1862 is relevant to my post, or to showing that the Civil War began as a war to free slaves. When the War to Preserve the Union sales pitch petered out, the War to Abolish Slavery was substituted. That was a few years into the war.

CW 4:506

To John C. Fremont
Private and confidential.
Major General Fremont:
Washington D.C. Sept. 2, 1861.
My dear Sir: Two points in your proclamation of August 30th give me some anxiety. First, should you shoot a man, according to the proclamation, the Confederates would very certainly shoot our best man in their hands in retaliation; and so, man for man, indefinitely. It is therefore my order that you allow no man to be shot, under the proclamation, without first having my approbation or consent.
Secondly, I think there is great danger that the closing paragraph, in relation to the confiscation of property, and the liberating slaves of traiterous owners, will alarm our Southern Union friends, and turn them against us—perhaps ruin our rather fair prospect for Kentucky. Allow me therefore to ask, that you will as of your own motion, modify that paragraph so as to conform to the first and fourth sections of the act of Congress, entitled, "An act to confiscate property used for insurrectionary purposes,'' approved August, 6th, 1861, and a copy of which act I herewith send you. This letter is written in a spirit of caution and not of censure.
I send it by a special messenger, in order that it may certainly and speedily reach you. Yours very truly
A. LINCOLN
[Endorsement]
Copy of letter sent to Gen. Fremont, by special messenger leaving Washington Sep. 3. 1861.

CW 5:222

Proclamation Revoking General Hunter's Order of Military Emancipation of May 9, 1862
May 19, 1862
By the President of The United States of America.
A Proclamation.
Whereas there appears in the public prints, what purports to be a proclamation, of Major General Hunter, in the words and figures following, to wit:
Headquarters Department of the South,
Hilton Head, S.C., May 9, 1862.
General Orders No. 11.—The three States of Georgia, Florida and South Carolina, comprising the military department of the south, having deliberately declared themselves no longer under the protection of the United States of America, and having taken up arms against the said United States, it becomes a military necessity to declare them under martial law. This was accordingly done on the 25th day of April, 1862. Slavery and martial law in a free country are altogether incompatible; the persons in these three States---Georgia, Florida and South Carolina—heretofore held as slaves, are therefore declared forever free.
(Official)
David Hunter,
Major General Commanding.
Ed. W. Smith, Acting Assistant Adjutant General.
And whereas the same is producing some excitement, and misunderstanding: therefore
I, Abraham Lincoln, president of the United States, proclaim and declare, that the government of the United States, had no knowledge, information, or belief, of an intention on the part of General Hunter to issue such a proclamation; nor has it yet, any authentic information that the document is genuine. I further make known that whether it be competent for me, as Commander-in-Chief of the Army and Navy, to declare the Slaves of any state or states, free, and whether at any time, in any case, it shall have become a necessity indispensable to the maintainance of the government, to exercise such supposed power, are questions which, under my responsibility, I reserve to myself, and which I can not feel justified in leaving to the decision of commanders in the field. These are totally different questions from those of police regulations in armies and camps.
On the sixth day of March last, by a special message, I recommended to Congress the adoption of a joint resolution to be substantially as follows:
Resolved, That the United States ought to co-operate with any State which may adopt a gradual abolishment of slavery, giving to such State pecuniary aid, to be used by such State in its discretion to compensate for the inconveniences, public and private, produced by such change of system.
The resolution, in the language above quoted, was adopted by large majorities in both branches of Congress, and now stands an authentic, definite, and solemn proposal of the nation to the States and people most immediately interested in the subject matter. To the people of those states I now earnestly appeal. I do not argue. I beseech you to make the arguments for yourselves. You can not if you would, be blind to the signs of the times. I beg of you a calm and enlarged consideration of them, ranging, if it may be, far above personal and partizan politics. This proposal makes common cause for a common object, casting no reproaches upon any. It acts not the pharisee. The change it contemplates would come gently as the dews of heaven, not rending or wrecking anything. Will you not embrace it? So much good has not been done, by one effort, in all past time, as, in the providence of God, it is now your high previlege to do. May the vast future not have to lament that you have neglected it.
In witness whereof, I have hereunto set my hand, and caused the seal of the United States to be affixed.
[L.S.]
Done at the City of Washington this nineteenth day of May, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-two, and of the Independence of the United States the eighty-sixth. ABRAHAM LINCOLN.
By the President:
WILLAM H. SEWARD, Secretary of State.

CW 5:420

[excerpt]

Reply to Emancipation Memorial Presented by Chicago Christians of All Denominations
September 13, 1862
[...]
"What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet! Would my word free the slaves, when I cannot even enforce the Constitution in the rebel States? Is there a single court, or magistrate, or individual that would be influenced by it there? And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within our lines? Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us. And suppose they could be induced by a proclamation of freedom from me to throw themselves upon us, what should we do with them? How can we feed and care for such a multitude? Gen. Butler wrote me a few days since that he was issuing more rations to the slaves who have rushed to him than to all the white troops under his command. They eat, and that is all, though it is true Gen. Butler is feeding the whites also by the thousand; for it nearly amounts to a famine there. If, now, the pressure of the war should call off our forces from New Orleans to defend some other point, what is to prevent the masters from reducing the blacks to slavery again; for I am told that whenever the rebels take any black prisoners, free or slave, they immediately auction them off! They did so with those they took from a boat that was aground in the Tennessee river a few days ago. And then I am very ungenerously attacked for it! For instance, when, after the late battles at and near Bull Run, an expedition went out from Washington under a flag of truce to bury the dead and bring in the wounded, and the rebels seized the blacks who went along to help and sent them into slavery, Horace Greeley said in his paper that the Government would probably do nothing about it. What could I do? [Here your delegation suggested that this was a gross outrage on a flag of truce, which covers and protects all over which it waves, and that whatever he could do if white men had been similarly detained he could do in this case.]
"Now, then, tell me, if you please, what possible result of good would follow the issuing of such a proclamation as you desire? Understand, I raise no objections against it on legal or constitutional grounds; for, as commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in time of war, I suppose I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy. Nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South. I view the matter as a practical war measure, to be decided upon according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion.''

CW 4:531

[excerpt]

To Orville H. Browning
Private & confidential.
Hon. O. H. Browning
Executive Mansion
Washington
Sept 22d 1861.
My dear Sir
Yours of the 17th is just received; and coming from you, I confess it astonishes me. That you should object to my adhering to a law, which you had assisted in making, and presenting to me, less than a month before, is odd enough. But this is a very small part. Genl. Fremont's proclamation, as to confiscation of property, and the liberation of slaves, is purely political, and not within the range of military law, or necessity. If a commanding General finds a necessity to seize the farm of a private owner, for a pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he has the right to do so, and to so hold it, as long as the necessity lasts; and this is within military law, because within military necessity. But to say the farm shall no longer belong to the owner, or his heirs forever; and this as well when the farm is not needed for military purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the savor of military law about it. And the same is true of slaves. If the General needs them, he can seize them, and use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition. That must be settled according to laws made by law-makers, and not by military proclamations. The proclamation in the point in question, is simply "dictatorship.'' It assumes that the general may do anything he pleases—confiscate the lands and free the slaves of loyal people, as well as of disloyal ones. And going the whole figure I have no doubt would be more popular with some thoughtless people, than that which has been done! But I cannot assume this reckless position; nor allow others to assume it on my responsibility. You speak of it as being the only means of saving the government. On the contrary it is itself the surrender of the government. Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S.—any government of Constitution and laws,—wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?
[...]

https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/abraham-lincoln-and-emancipation">

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation

Some Union commanders took matters into their own hands, declaring emancipation by proclamation. In September 1861, General John C. Frémont attempted to address the "disorganized condition" in the Department of the West by declaring martial law and proclaiming free the slaves of active Confederate sympathizers in Missouri. Frémont failed to inform first President Lincoln, who requested Frémont amend his proclamation to conform to the 1861 Confiscation Act. When Frémont refused, Lincoln publicly ordered him to do so, which helped calm anxiety expressed from the border states, but angered those who supported Frémont's actions. Although he knew Frémont had exceeded his authority in freeing slaves in Missouri, Lincoln continued to urge the border slave states to explore legal emancipation measures of their own. He also remained hopeful that voluntary colonization options for former slaves would address the concerns of many white Americans about where emancipated slaves would go. While several pieces of emancipation-related legislation included funds for colonization outside of the United States, the few actual attempts at colonization during the Civil War failed. Furthermore, most former slaves had no interest in leaving their homeland.
Like Frémont, General David Hunter also tried his hand at emancipation when in May 1862 he declared slaves free in his Department of the South, which included Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. Once again, Lincoln felt compelled to overrule a commander who overstepped his authority with regard to emancipation. Although in revoking Hunter's action, Lincoln suggested that the power to determine such military necessities belonged to the president.

Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Reminiscences (1892), p. 577-78

In the spring of 1863, I had another conversation with President Lincoln upon the subject of the employment of negroes.
[...]
We then talked of a favourite project he had of getting rid of the negroes by colonization, and he asked me what I thought of it. I told him that it was simply impossible; that the negroes would not go away, for they loved their homes as much as the rest of us, and all efforts at colonization would not make a substantial impression upon the number of negroes in the country.

https://thelincolnlog.org/Results.aspx?type=CalendarDay&day=1865-04-11&r=L0NhbGVuZGFyWWVhci5hc3B4P3llYXI9MTg2NSZyPUwwTmhiR1Z1WkdGeUxtRnpjSGc9

Lincoln Day by Day

Tuesday, April 11, 1865.
Washington, DC.
President consults with General Benjamin Butler on freedpeople problem. Daily National Republican (Washington, DC), 11 April 1865, 2d ed., 2:5; Butler, Correspondence, 5:589; CW, 8:588; Daily National Republican (Washington, DC), 12 April 1865, 2d ed., Extra, 1:5-6.

Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Reminiscences (1892), p. 903.

In April 1865, Lincoln to General Butler,

But what shall we do with the negroes after they are free? I can hardly believe that the South and North can live in peace, unless we can get rid of the negroes. Certainly they cannot if we don’t get rid of the negroes whom we have armed and disciplined and who have fought with us. . . . I believe that it would be better to export them all to some fertile country with a good climate, which they could have to themselves.

Congressional Globe, 39th Congress, Second Session, pp. 576-581

On January 17, 1867, Representative Andrew Jackson KUYKENDALL, Republican of Illinois, rose to address the House at page 576 and ended his stemwinder at page 583 with the following:

Pass the bill, adopt this system, separate the races, colonize the African, elect General Grant President in 1868, then peace, prosperity, and happiness will reign over our glorious country.

Good letters, but your problem will be to get him to read them and to acknowledge what they say.

Good luck.

Not my problem. Everyone else can read them and make up their own mind.

“In early 1846, 24-year-old Lt. Grant was happy in the US Army, serving in Louisiana under future Whig President, Zachary Taylor . . . It appears that nobody at the time, certainly not young Lt. Grant, understood whatever maneuvering Democrat Pres. Polk was doing before Congress declared war on Mexico.”

I'd like to see your data on that.

In his Personal Memoirs Chapter 3, General Grant says the opposite:

“There was no intimation given that the removal of the 3d and 4th regiments of infantry to the western border of Louisiana was occasioned in any way by the prospective annexation of Texas, but it was generally understood that such was the case. Ostensibly we were intended to prevent filibustering into Texas, but really as a menace to Mexico in case she appeared to contemplate war. Generally the officers of the army were indifferent whether the annexation was consummated or not; but not so all of them. For myself, I was bitterly opposed to the measure, and to this day regard the war which resulted as one of the most unjust ever waged by a stronger against a weaker nation.”

Young Mr. Grant knew, even at the time of his participation.

woodpusher: "An unlawful declaration by Ben Butler would not override an official Proclamation of the President of the United States, except perhaps in the minds of Ben Butler and BroJoeK.
Butler did not emancipate slaves.
He seized Confederate property."

In early 1861 there was no proclamation from Pres. Lincoln on slaves, nor was there a Confiscation Act from Congress -- those both came later.

In early 1861 Confederate slaves escaping to Union lines were not "seized" by Union Gen. Butler, rather, they were not returned to their Confederate "masters" and were employed (paid) to work for Union forces.
Exactly how "free" they were is debatable, but what's 100% certain is that they themselves preferred conditions with Union forces to those with their previous Confederate "masters".
On May 30, 1861 Lincoln approved Gen. Butler's Contraband of War policy.
So, it was about slavery, even in the war's earliest days.

woodpusher: "Nothing after early 1862 is relevant to my post, or to showing that the Civil War began as a war to free slaves."

Nobody has ever claimed that the fighting at Fort Sumter began as a "war to free slaves", or that freeing slaves was to be the mission of Lincoln's original 75,000 troops called up.

What's 100% true is that slavery became a wartime issue -- as "Contraband of War" -- in early 1861, and that by July 1861 Congress addressed it in the First Confiscation Act.

woodpusher: "When the War to Preserve the Union sales pitch petered out, the War to Abolish Slavery was substituted.
That was a few years into the war."

From beginning to end, the "War to Preserve the Union" was always the main goal, while "War to Abolish Slavery" was understood by many from the beginning as a necessary condition for preserving the Union.
Preserving the Union was not controversial, while abolishing slavery was, so emancipation was emphasized less in the beginning, more and more as the war progressed.

Why any of that should be so hard for you guys to grasp is beyond me.

woodpusher quoting: "To John C. Fremont Private and confidential. Major General Fremont: Washington D.C. Sept. 2, 1861."

Here Lincoln refers Fremont to the July 1861 First Confiscation Act, which treats runaway slaves as Contraband of War.
It was not yet full emancipation, but it was certainly better treatment than they received at the hands of their Confederate "masters".

woodpusher quoting: "Proclamation Revoking General Hunter's Order of Military Emancipation of May 9, 1862 May 19, 1862
By the President of The United States of America."

Same thing, yet another Union general getting out, as we'd say today, "ahead of his skis", meaning going further towards abolition than Lincoln was yet willing to go.

But Congress had already passed the First Confiscation Act which prevents return of runaway slaves to Confederate "masters" and would soon pass the Second Confiscation Act -- first introduced May 14, 1862 -- which will declare them freed at war's end.

At the same time in 1862, Lincoln began working on his Emancipation Proclamation, which moved up the date of freedom, from the end of the war to January 1863.

So the facts remain clear and don't change with whatever spin you put on them.

woodpusher quoting Lincoln from Sept 1862: "And what reason is there to think it would have any greater effect upon the slaves than the late law of Congress, which I approved, and which offers protection and freedom to the slaves of rebel masters who come within our lines?
Yet I cannot learn that that law has caused a single slave to come over to us.
And suppose they could be induced by a proclamation of freedom from me to throw themselves upon us, what should we do with them?"

These words are oddly contradicted in the very next sentences by Lincoln's reports on fugitives being fed by Gen. Butler in New Orleans.
Even more curiously, just a week later Lincoln will issue his preliminary Emancipation Proclamation, following Union victory at the Battle of Antietam.

Again, what's clear is that slavery was always important and that, from the beginning, many saw freeing Confederate slaves as necessary to preserving the Union.

woodpusher: "Hon. O. H. Browning Executive Mansion Washington Sept 22d 1861.
My dear Sir"

Here Lincoln simply explains the law as written in the 1861 Confiscation Act, which does not yet contemplate permanent freedom for "Contraband of War".

The 1862 Confiscation Act will correct that.

woodpusher quoting Butler from 1863: "We then talked of a favourite project he had of getting rid of the negroes by colonization, and he asked me what I thought of it.
I told him that it was simply impossible; that the negroes would not go away, for they loved their homes as much as the rest of us, and all efforts at colonization would not make a substantial impression upon the number of negroes in the country."

Here woodpusher ends by shifting topics from emancipation to colonization, the only point about which that matters is, Lincoln expected voluntary recolonizations.
Here Butler claimed he advised Lincoln that's just not going to happen.

But the idea of voluntary recolonization had been "mainstream" since Thomas Jefferson's time, and it did not entirely disappear even after the Civil War was over.

DiogenesLamp: "Good letters, but your problem will be to get him to read them and to acknowledge what they say. Good luck"

This is a most curious comment coming from DiogenesLamp, who refuses to acknowledge the possible existence of, much less respond honestly to, facts which contradict his own beloved anti-American narratives.

As best I can tell, woodpusher's quotes above are genuine history, not just Lost Causer lies, and they help demonstrate what is well known about the Civil War -- that it began as a War to Preserve the Union, but that slavery, beginning in the form of Contraband of War, was important almost from Day One.

Indeed, Lincoln first approved "Beast" Butler's Contraband policy on May 30, 1861.

jeffersondem: "Young Mr. Grant knew, even at the time of his participation."

What Grant says he "bitterly opposed" was the 1845 Annexation of Texas.

"To this day" he considered the resulting war as "unjust", but that war had not started when Gen. Zachary Taylor's forces, including Grant, were ordered to move from Louisiana to Texas, just north of the Rio Grande River's mouth.
Grant's first experience of war came at the Battle of Palo Alto, May 8, 1846, when Taylor's forces were attacked inside Texas, north of the Rio Grande.

Whatever his views on Annexation of Texas, there's no evidence that Grant did or said anything at the time outside the bounds of his patriotic duty.

Like I said, when Democrats call Republicans to war, we always respond, even though Democrats don't aways return the service.

In early 1861 there was no proclamation from Pres. Lincoln on slaves, nor was there a Confiscation Act from Congress -- those both came later.

So what?

In early 1861, there was no general state of combat. First Manassas occurred on July 16, 1861 with an attempted Union invasion of the Confederacy which ended with the Union force being routed by the smaller Confederate force.

Butler accepted three runaway slaves (Frank Baker, James Townsend, and Sheppard Mallory) at Fort Monroe on May 23, 1861.

https://www.saturdayeveningpost.com/2023/01/freedoms-fortress-and-the-contraband-decision/

The next day, Maj. John Cary of the 115th Virginia Militia arrived at the fort under a white flag. Speaking on behalf of Col. Mallory, Cary asked that the slaves be returned under the provisions of the Fugitive Slave Act. “Do you mean, then, to set aside your Constitutional obligation to return them?” Cary asked.
Butler pointed out that the Fugitive Slave Act applied only between states in the Union. “I mean to take Virginia at her word, as declared in the ordinance of secession passed yesterday,” he said. “I am under no constitutional obligation to a foreign country, which Virginia now claims to be.”
Furthermore, Butler added that he would keep the men “as contraband of war, since they are engaged in the construction of your battery and are claimed as your property. The question is simply whether they shall be used for or against the government of the United States.”

Butler taking Virginia at her word that she was a foreign nation is legally meaningless, as he surely knew. The United States did not take Virginia to be a foreign nation, and General Butler was not in charge of foreign policy decisions.

Seizure as contraband of war was a novel idea by Butler, the lawyer. Its drawback as a national policy was that it inescapably entailed the U.S. Government recognizing the slaves as property. The Government could not seize them as property unless the Government considered them to be property. In the war for the aboloition of slavery, it sort of made the Federal government the largest slaveholding entity in the country.

As Lincoln wrote, "If the General needs them, he can seize them, and use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition." ... "Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S.—any government of Constitution and laws,—wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?"

Take your ridiculous nonsense elsewhere.

I repeat from my #186:

https://www.loc.gov/collections/abraham-lincoln-papers/articles-and-essays/abraham-lincoln-and-emancipation">

Abraham Lincoln Papers at the Library of Congress

Abraham Lincoln and Emancipation

Some Union commanders took matters into their own hands, declaring emancipation by proclamation. In September 1861, General John C. Frémont attempted to address the "disorganized condition" in the Department of the West by declaring martial law and proclaiming free the slaves of active Confederate sympathizers in Missouri. Frémont failed to inform first President Lincoln, who requested Frémont amend his proclamation to conform to the 1861 Confiscation Act. When Frémont refused, Lincoln publicly ordered him to do so, which helped calm anxiety expressed from the border states, but angered those who supported Frémont's actions. Although he knew Frémont had exceeded his authority in freeing slaves in Missouri, Lincoln continued to urge the border slave states to explore legal emancipation measures of their own. He also remained hopeful that voluntary colonization options for former slaves would address the concerns of many white Americans about where emancipated slaves would go. While several pieces of emancipation-related legislation included funds for colonization outside of the United States, the few actual attempts at colonization during the Civil War failed. Furthermore, most former slaves had no interest in leaving their homeland.
Like Frémont, General David Hunter also tried his hand at emancipation when in May 1862 he declared slaves free in his Department of the South, which included Florida, Georgia, and South Carolina. Once again, Lincoln felt compelled to overrule a commander who overstepped his authority with regard to emancipation. Although in revoking Hunter's action, Lincoln suggested that the power to determine such military necessities belonged to the president.

And very soon thereafter, Fremont was out of a job, in 1861.

Hunter tried that stunt and had his orders declared null and void. By Lincoln.

Repeating from my #186, Lincoln to Browning:

Genl. Fremont's proclamation, as to confiscation of property, and the liberation of slaves, is purely political, and not within the range of military law, or necessity. If a commanding General finds a necessity to seize the farm of a private owner, for a pasture, an encampment, or a fortification, he has the right to do so, and to so hold it, as long as the necessity lasts; and this is within military law, because within military necessity. But to say the farm shall no longer belong to the owner, or his heirs forever; and this as well when the farm is not needed for military purposes as when it is, is purely political, without the savor of military law about it. And the same is true of slaves. If the General needs them, he can seize them, and use them; but when the need is past, it is not for him to fix their permanent future condition.
[...]
Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S.—any government of Constitution and laws,—wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?

Confiscating property is not the same as permanently emancipating slaves. It is strictly and solely a WAR MEASURE. The property does not become permanent U.S. Government property. Rather than chattel for life, the U.S. Government held the property as chattel for the duration of the war. When the war ends, such property reverts to its lawful owner, as recognized and written by Lincoln.

At the same time in 1862, Lincoln began working on his Emancipation Proclamation, which moved up the date of freedom, from the end of the war to January 1863.

As Lincoln said on September 7, 1862 to a group proposing a proclamation of emancipation:

"What good would a proclamation of emancipation from me do, especially as we are now situated? I do not want to issue a document that the whole world will see must necessarily be inoperative, like the Pope's bull against the comet!

Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free anyone, anywhere. It had no claimed application anywhere in the Union states, nor anywhere under Union control, nor anywhere in Tennessee, the home state of Vice President Johnson. It pronounced free those slaves in Confederate territory under the conrol of the Confederacy. As Lincoln himself admitted, it had no legal authority.

Had the Proclamation truly emancipated the slaves, there would not have been such a later need for the 13th Amendment to free the slaves.

As the U.S. Constitution then in effect stated:

No person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.

Running away did not change the status of anyone from slave to free. Military proclamations could not do so either. Nor could Presidential proclamations. No proclamations override the Constitution. The People declared that any person held to service or labor in one state, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due. Any laws enacted which were repugnant to the Constitution were null and void ab initio, and of no effect.

Only the tiniest fraction of the slave population was ever taken into custody by the U.S. Army.

Emancipation Proclamation:

the Executive Government of the United States, including the military and naval authority thereof, will recognize and maintain the freedom of such persons, and will do no act or acts to repress such persons, or any of them, in any efforts they may make for their actual freedom.

Whatever is that legal distinction between being free and attaining actual freedom? There is some potent wordsmithing going on there. A runaway slave, while remaining within the jurisdiction of the United States, did not become a free person. If he made it across the border to Canada, removing himself from the jurisdiction of the United States, that would do it.

Now, therefore I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly proclaimed....

It was eventually deemed a fit and necessary war measure using the authority of the Commmander-in-Chief in time of actual armed rebellion. And when the time of actual rebellion went away, so to did the authority for wartime measures.

As for the permanence of property confiscation, or lack thereof, I refer you to the ancestral estate of the wife of Robert E. Lee, and the lawsuit won in the U.S. Supreme Court by her heir, George Washington Parke Custis Lee, returning title to the Lee family. This was quite distressful to the government as the Lee property was called Arlington, and it included what is known as Arlington National Cemetery, which had been started during the war, and which surely constituted a war crime, its purpose being to make the land uninhabitable. As the Lee family did not actually want to inhabit the land again, but pursued the litigation as a point of honor, they then sold Arlington to the government. Arlington House is the Robert E. Lee Memorial, maintained by the U.S. Government.

United States v. Lee, 106 U.S. 196 (1882)

Syllabus

3. The constitutional provisions that no person shall be deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process of law, nor private property taken for public use without just compensation, relate to those rights whose protection is peculiarly within the province of the judicial branch of the government. Cases examined which show that the courts extend protection when the rights of property are unlawfully invaded by public officers.
4. In ejectment, the title relied on by the defence was a certificate of sale of the demanded premises to the United States by the commissioners under the act of Congress for the collection of direct taxes. The certificate was impeached on the ground of the refusal of the commissioners to permit the owner to pay the tax, with interest and costs, before the day of sale, by an agent, or in any other way than by payment in person. Held, that when the commissioners had established a uniform rule that they would receive such taxes from no one but the owner in person, it avoids such sale, and a tender is unnecessary, since it would be of no avail.
5. Bennett v. Hunter, 9 Wall. 324, Tacey v. Irwin, 18 id. 549, and Atwood v. Weems, 99 U. S. 183, re-examined, and the principle they establish held to apply to a purchase at such a tax sale by the United States as well as by a private person.

The Goverment never obtained good title and the subsequent sale at auction was void.

In early 1861 Confederate slaves escaping to Union lines were not "seized" by Union Gen. Butler, rather, they were not returned to their Confederate "masters" and were employed (paid) to work for Union forces.

They were explicitly seized as enemy property, their seizure being no different than the wartime seizure of enemy horses or cannons.

Benjamin F. Butler, Autobiography and Reminiscences (1892), pp. 128-29:

The institution of slavery was imposed upon the United States by the mother country; but it had, for economic reasons, substantially ceased in the northern part of the colonies at the close of the Revolution, except so far as domestic servitude was concerned. Yet the right to hold negro slaves was fully recognized and provided for by the Constitution of the United States in several ways, but more especially by the provisions of Article 4, Section 2: —
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
That provision imposed upon every State the duty of returning fugitive slaves.
Slavery was further recognized in the Constitution by the provisions of Article 1, Section 2:
Representatives and direct taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole number of free persons, including those bound to service for a term of years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three-fifths of all other persons.
Without these recognitions of the institution of slavery, as established by the laws of the various States, the Constitution could not have been adopted.
These provisions convinced me as a lawyer that the right of the people of any State to hold slaves, where the institution was established by law, was clearly a Constitutional right, and that nothing could be done by any State to interfere with that right in any other State without a violation of the Constitution; and, of course, anything done to take away that class of property by State or nation from the owner, was in violation of the Constitution.

Butler, like Lincoln, was correct. Slavery was a constitutional right pursuant to an act of the People, the Constitution. No element of the Federal government, a servant of the People, created by the People, was empowered, or delegated authority to override any provision of the Constitution. A declaration, proclamation, or statute law repugnant to the Constitution was null and void. That is why Lincoln and the Congress did not emancipate the slaves. They had no lawful authority to do it. Going through the forms of doing it would not make it so. Neither Lincoln nor the Congress could free the slaves in the Union because they lacked the legal authority to do so. The Constitution was not set aside by the war.

Indeed, Lincoln was correct in stating, "Can it be pretended that it is any longer the government of the U.S.—any government of Constitution and laws,—wherein a General, or a President, may make permanent rules of property by proclamation?"

https://www.nps.gov/articles/fort-monroe-and-the-contrabands-of-war.htm

National Park Service
Fortress Monroe and the "Contrabands of War"
When a Virginia slave owner demanded the return of three slaves that had escaped to Fort Monroe, Butler refused, on the grounds that these persons were being used to wage war against the Union
No one wanted war; that much is certain.
Least of all Abraham Lincoln. But he would have the government's property secured and its excise taxes collected. And so the Civil War began with those limited goals in mind.
During his campaign for the presidency in 1860, Lincoln made this point repeatedly to a disbelieving South: he had no intension of disturbing the institution of slavery where it already existed, whatever his personal opinion on the morality of slavery. And when war came at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, he remained steadfast. Return to the Union on the old terms, he said, and all will be forgiven.
But weeks turned into months and the South remained defiant. In the field, abolitionist officers were chaffing under this moderate policy. In the west, General John C. Frémont, commander of the Union Army of the West, issued a proclamation on August 30, 1861 that effectively freed all slaves in the state of Missouri.
Lincoln was horrified. The loyal, slave-holding states of Missouri and Kentucky were not yet firmly under Federal control and Frémont's order might tip them into the Confederate camp. Lincoln ordered the general to rescind his proclamation and when Frémont refused, Lincoln publically revoked it and removed Frémont from command.
Lincoln reacted in like fashion when General David Hunter issued a similar proclamation in his Military Department of Georgia, South Carolina and Florida.
Meanwhile, in the east, General Benjamin Butler had devised a much more politically astute policy. When a Virginia slave owner demanded the return of three slaves that had escaped to Fort Monroe, Butler refused, on the grounds that these persons (or property, as the Confederacy considered them) were being used to wage war against the Union (the term "contraband of war" will soon be used to describe such escaped slaves, though Butler himself does not use the phrase per se). No mention was made of emancipation.
Congress registered its approval of Butler's policy when it passed the First Confiscation Act. This law stated that if slaves are, in fact, property and if this property is owned by any person in active rebellion against lawful Federal authority, then the U.S. military has every right to deny its use to any such person. Any slave that could be wrested from the Confederacy would therefore, in a technical sense, become the property of the United States government.
Within days of Butler's announcement, the flood gates opened. By the time General Frémont was sacked and General Hunter reprimanded, there were hundreds of runaway slaves sheltering under the guns of Fort Monroe. That the federal government would one day repatriate or even sell this confiscated property soon became unthinkable. But then what?
At this point, public opinion in the North regarding the institution of slavery began to shift. Would these runaway slaves and their descendants become forever the property of the federal government, or would they, at some point, be released to make their own way in the world? By the time Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation on January 1, 1863, the people of the North are decided. The Civil War will be about more than collecting taxes and securing public property.
It will be about freedom.

Confiscation had nothing to do with emancipation. There was no authority whatever to cange the status of the slave. Seized as property, the slaves were held as property as a war measure to deprive the Confederates of the use of said property during the war. When the war ended, so did the authority.

But the idea of voluntary recolonization had been "mainstream" since Thomas Jefferson's time, and it did not entirely disappear even after the Civil War was over.

Indeed, as documented, Lincoln was an officer of the African Colonization Society, had always considered emancipation and colonization or deportation as inextricably intertwined, and was still looking for a way to implement colonization or deportation days before his death. He had always expresed his desire for the territories to be for White people with no slave labor being present, altthough Lincoln liberally dropped the N-bomb in publicly describing who he did not want present.

Lincoln also did not want those with enhanced melanin invading the North. This was a great fear of Lincoln and the Northern people who had sold their slaves south and erected Black laws to ensure the Undergrund Railway went all the way to Canada.

Lincoln addressed such Northern fears of a Black post-war invasion in his State of the Union address of December 1, 1862:

CW 5:519-20, President Lincoln, December 1, 1862, Annual Message to Congress

I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization. And yet I wish to say there is an objection urged against free colored persons remaining in the country, which is largely imaginary, if not sometimes malicious.
It is insisted that their presence would injure, and displace white labor and white laborers. If there ever could be a proper time for mere catch arguments, that time surely is not now. In times like the present, men should utter nothing for which they would not willingly be responsible through time and in eternity. Is it true, then, that colored people can displace any more white labor, by being free, than by remaining slaves? If they stay in their old places, they jostle no white laborers; if they leave their old places, they leave them open to white laborers. Logically, there is neither more nor less of it. Emancipation, even without deportation, would probably enhance the wages of white labor, and, very surely, would not reduce them. Thus, the customary amount of labor would still have to be performed; the freed people would surely not do more than their old proportion of it, and very probably, for a time, would do less, leaving an increased part to white laborers, bringing their labor into greater demand, and, consequently, enhancing the wages of it. With deportation, even to a limited extent, enhanced wages to white labor is mathematically certain. Labor is like any other commodity in the market--increase the demand for it, and you increase the price of it. Reduce the supply of black labor, by colonizing the black laborer out of the country, and, by precisely so much, you increase the demand for, and wages of, white labor.
But it is dreaded that the freed people will swarm forth, and cover the whole land? Are they not already in the land? Will liberation make them any more numerous? Equally distributed among the whites of the whole country, and there would be but one colored to seven whites. Could the one, in any way, greatly disturb the seven? There are many communities now, having more than one free colored person, to seven whites; and this, without any apparent consciousness of evil from it. The District of Columbia, and the States of Maryland and Delaware, are all in this condition. The District has more than one free colored to six whites; and yet, in its frequent petitions to Congress, I believe it has never presented the presence of free colored persons as one of its grievances. But why should emancipation south, send the free people north? People, of any color, seldom run, unless there be something to run from. Heretofore colored people, to some extent, have fled north from bondage; and now, perhaps, from both bondage and destitution. But if gradual emancipation and deportation be adopted, they will have neither to flee from. Their old masters will give them wages at least until new laborers can be procured; and the freed men, in turn, will gladly give their labor for the wages, till new homes can be found for them, in congenial climes, and with people of their own blood and race. This proposition can be trusted on the mutual interests involved. And, in any event, cannot the north decide for itself, whether to receive them?

It is important to see what Lincoln was selling in December 1862. It was gradual emancipation, with deportation, and the ability of Northern states to prohibit any freed slaves from entering their state.

Let's review.

In your post 185 you claim: “It appears that nobody at the time, certainly not young Lt. Grant, understood whatever maneuvering Democrat Pres. Polk was doing before Congress declared war on Mexico.”

But Grant says otherwise in his Memoirs: "There was no intimation given that the removal of the 3d and 4th regiments of infantry to the western border of Louisiana was occasioned in any way by the prospective annexation of Texas, but it was generally understood that such was the case.”

Either you repudiate Grant or Grant repudiates you.

It is not that big a deal. There was no way for you to have known what General Grant wrote in his Personal Memoirs.

If you want to fight it out on this line all summer, let me suggest: move further to your left and attack General Grant's version of history from a different angle.

If you want to fight it out on this line all summer, let me suggest: move further to your left and attack General Grant's version of history from a different angle.

:)