Posted on 01/23/2003 6:06:25 PM PST by one2many
GOP cap: Mansfield, Chickamauga, and Sabine Pass say otherwise.
Also, though it was actually after the war ended (and so Walt will say it was not significant), the Battle of Palmetto Ranch near Brownsville, Texas, was won by the Confederate Cavalry of the West under old Texas Ranger John Salmon "RIP" Ford on May 13, 1865. This was called by some the last battle of the war.
The Confederates also won the 1863 Battle of Galveston by covering the decks of two ships with bales of cotton and using these "cottonclads" to recapture Galveston and capture or drive off a six-ship Union fleet, a battle feat even Walt's marines would have been proud of. In the process, the Confederates captured the Harriet Lane of Charleston and Fort Sumter fame. See: Cottonclads
Mansfield, Chickamauga, and Sabine Pass say otherwise.
I usually mention Chickamauga. Thanks for the correction.
As I indicated (except for Chickamauga) the rebels had no major success west of the mountainsthroughout the whole war.
Let me append this:
"The North had a potential manpower superiority of more than three to one (counting only white men) and Union armed forces had an actual superiority of two to one during most of the war. In economic resources and logistical capacity the northern advantage was even greater. Thus, in this explanation, the Confederacy fought against overwhelming odds; its defeat was inevitable. But this explanation has not satisfied a good many analysts. History is replete with examples of peoples who have won or defended their independence against greater odds: the Netherlands against the Spain of Philip II; Switzerland against the Hapsburg empire; the American rebels of 1776 against mighty Britain; North Vietnam against the United States of 1970. Given the advantages of fighting on the defensive in its own territory with interior lines in which stalemate would be victory against a foe who must invade, conquer, occupy, and destroy the capacity to resist, the odds faced by the South were not formidable.
Rather, as another category of interpretations has it, internal divisions fatally weakened the Confederacy: the state-rights conflict between certain govern on and the Richmond government; the disaffection of non-slaveholders from a rich man's war and poor man's fight; libertarian opposition to necessary measures such as conscription and the suspension of habeas corpus; the lukewarm commitment to the Confederacy by quondam Whigs and unionists; the disloyalty of slaves who defected to the enemy whenever they had a chance; growing doubts among slaveowners themselves about the justice of their peculiar institution and their cause. "So the Confederacy succumbed to internal rather than external causes," according to numerous historians. The South suffered from a "weakness in morale," a "loss of the will to fight." The Confederacy did not lack "the means to continue the struggle," but "the will to do so." --BCF, P. 855
His sources:
Richard E. Beringer, Herman Hattaway, Archer Jones, and William N. Still jr., Why the South Lost the Civil War (Athens, Ga., 1986), 439, 5S; Kenneth M. Stampp, The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War (New York, 1980),255 Clement Eaton, A History of the Southern Confederacy (Collier Books ed., New York, 1961), 250
My emphasis
Walt
BTTT.
The congressional record indicates otherwise in very clear terms.
You don't need to rehash a long winded speech from a two-bit southern politician, when you have an excellent primary source like the Georgia Statement of Secession. Here is another excerpt from it, and once again, slavery not tariffs is described as a Cause.
The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity. This question was before us. We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end.
ref: Georgia Statement of Secession, January 29, 1861
The Georgia secession statement is an excellent example of 19th century white supremist demogogery. Have you even read it? Georgia Secession
No, the website is unattributed. Was that someone's high school term paper you referenced?
While I believe that Maryland Governor Hicks was ultimately a friend of the Union, his actions in the weeks immediately after the start of the Civil War are suspect.
Why not post em both when they offer complimentary positions on the tariff? Hunter's speech states the same grievances with the tariff that are in the part of the Georgia document I posted for you.
Georgia Senator Robert Toombs echoed the sentiments of both in his own speech from late 1860:
"Even the fishermen of Massachusetts and New England demand and receive from the public treasury about half a million of dollars per annum as a pure bounty on their business of catching codfish. The North, at the very first Congress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft, and calling which they pursue, and there is not an artisan in brass, or iron, or wood, or weaver, or spinner in wool or cotton, or a calicomaker, or iron-master, or a coal-owner, in all of the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his government on his industry to the extent of from fifteen to two hundred per cent from the year 1791 to this day. They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the government. No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union; they have the same reason for praising it, that craftsmen of Ephesus had for shouting, "Great is Diana of the Ephesians," whom all Asia and the world worshipped. By it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor. It is true that this policy has been largely sustained by the South; it is true that the present tariff was sustained by an almost unanimous vote of the South; but it was a reduction - a reduction necessary from the plethora of the revenue; but the policy of the North soon made it inadequate to meet the public expenditure, by an enormous and profligate increase of the public expenditure; and at the last session of Congress they brought in and passed through the House the most atrocious tariff bill that ever was enacted, raising the present duties from twenty to two hundred and fifty per cent above the existing rates of duty. That bill now lies on the table of the Senate. It was a master stroke of abolition policy; it united cupidity to fanaticism, and thereby made a combination which has swept the country. There were thousands of protectionists in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New-York, and in New-England, who were not abolitionists. There were thousands of abolitionists who were free traders. The mongers brought them together upon a mutual surrender of their principles. The free-trade abolitionists became protectionists; the non-abolition protectionists became abolitionists. The result of this coalition was the infamous Morrill bill - the robber and the incendiary struck hands, and united in joint raid against the South. Thus stands the account between the North and the South. Under its ordinary and most favorable action, bounties and protection to every interest and every pursuit in the North, to the extent of at least fifty millions per annum, besides the expenditure of at least sixty millions out of every seventy of the public expenditure among them, thus making the treasury a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands."
Here is another excerpt from it, and once again, slavery not tariffs is described as a Cause.
If you go about quoting the parts of it that pertain to slavery and not to the tariff, it should be of little surprise to anyone that the tariff issue is absent from your excerpt. I've already directed your attention to the paragraphs in it about the tariff, which you have since ignored on the grounds that it uses the synonyms "duties" and "protection," rather than "tariff," to describe the Morrill tariff act. I suppose it is a nice try from one who holds the embarrassing debating skills of Walt in high regards, but that kind of semantical nonsense simply will not fly around here without somebody calling you on it.
LOL. No, it is part of a masters thesis at the College of William and Mary. Looks like it is designed to be used by teachers in primary and secondary education. From what I could tell, the information on the link I provided was developed by the person who did the thesis. The link was a link within the masters person's site.
More importantly, do you have any problems with the information it contains? Are the facts there correct?
Such a statement neglects the entire trans-mississippi theater of the war. Confederates won major one sided victories in many battles there. The most notable are Mansfield and Sabine Pass.
As for your quote, you can appeal to the opinions og "Noam" McPherson to your heart's content. But since doing so is nothing more than an appeal to authority, and since many good reasons exist to question both the factual basis and objectivity of his opinions, I may and will choose to reject them as intellectually fraudulent nonsense from a rabid south hating marxist and third rate historian.
From this site, here is an excerpt from the report of the Colonel of the 6th Massachusetts:
The mayor of Baltimore placed himself at the head of the column beside Captain Follansbee, and proceeded with them a short distance, assuring him that he would protect them, and begging him not to let the men fire; but the mayor's patience was soon exhausted, and he seized a musket from the hands of one of the men and killed a man therewith, and a policeman, who was in advance of the column, also shot a man with a revolver.
Also from this site, here is Lincoln refusing to provide justification to the Maryland House of Representatives for his arrest of the police commisioners. The police had protected the troops going through the city.
WASHINGTON, July 27, 1861.To the House of Representatives:
In answer to the resolution of the House of Representatives of the 24th instant, asking the grounds, reason, and evidence upon which the police commissioners of Baltimore were arrested and are now detained as prisoners at Fort McHenry, I have to state that it is judged to be incompatible with the public interest at this time to furnish the information called for by the resolution.
ABRAHAM LINCOLN
Is that a Clinton moment, or what?
The trans-mississippi theater of the war is almost entirely forgotten and neglected by modern histories. The reasons for this cannot be pinpointed to any one case, but there seem to be three that offer a good explanation.
First off, practically everything in the war gets overshadowed by the Virginia theater. It's where all the big-name battles like Chancellorsville, Fredericksburg, and Gettysburg were fought. It is also where the most famous commanders, Lee and eventually Grant, squared off. It is also the site of some of the worst bloodletting.
Second, the very nature of the trans-mississippi battles was such that they tended to occur at coastlines and borders where a yankee invasion force was repulsed. Because of this the yankees never really got a foothold in this theater, meaning there were no great inland battles between massive armies beyond those that halted the invasions in their infancy. Naval battle sites are, for obvious reasons, difficult to mark with monuments and historical parks, meaning you can't "visit" the battle of Galveston in the same sense you can "visit" Lookout Mountain. This makes their presence less known and less immediate to the people of today.
The third reason that the trans-mississippi theater is neglected seems to be political. Of the war's three theaters, it was the one where victory after victory after victory went to the confederates. Despite numerous well-funded and heavily supplied tries the yankees kept getting kicked out at the coast or border in some of their most lopsided and unlikely defeats of the entire war. Since modern historians are keen on portraying the south as evil, and since they are keen on presenting some of the north's nastiest, cruelest, and even in some cases the most incompentant of the northern commanders as "heroes" of the union. That doesn't fly well with the trans-mississippi theater, where every time any commander of any number of yankee troops and ships tried to invade the Texas coast, they found themselves repulsed by the the fiery irishmen of the Davis Guards and the converted civilian steamboats that rammed and captured fully outfitted ships of war.
From time to time you will likely encounter some, such as FR's Wlat brigade, who attempt to downplay and belittle this theater of the war, most often due to their own subscription to that last reason I stated. Such claims are utter nonsense considering the size of the expeditions that were repulsed in that theater.
The Red River campaign had some 45,000 troops committed to it plus the largest inland fleet of warships ever assembled, 58 in total, on the north american continent up to that time. They loaded up ironclads and warships to navigate up river and converge in northern Louisiana for the invasion of Texas and the confederacy's cotton reserves contained within it. Lincoln had personal stakes in the attack as he needed the cotton, needed to rob the confederates of it, and desired strongly to establish a union presence in Texas. An inferior number of confederates, roughly half the union strength, charged the yankee line at Mansfield and overwhelmed it. It turned the tide on the Red River campaign, which withdrew in defeat shortly after the battle.
Though a one sided against the odds confederate victory, Mansfield does not even begin to compare with what happened at Sabine Pass. In another of Lincoln's attempts to invade Texas for the same purposes, this time by way of the gulf, the yankees assembled a fleet of two dozen warships to converge on the Texas border, sail through the pass, and invade from the east of the port of Beaumont. Standing in their way at the pass was an earthen fort with six cannon. It was manned by 44 irish dockworkers under the command of a single lieutenant. They were virtually all that stood between the yankees and the landing point. The yankee fleet, carrying 5,000 soldiers on hand with some 20,000 more to follow after them, entered the pass expecting virtually no resistence. As soon as the ships came into gun range though, the tiny confederate garrison commenced firing under directive to make every shot count. The first two ships in range were hit dead on with precision and immobilized with massive casualties. The next two were run aground and the remainder set in for retreat to New Orleans. The confederates suffered not one casualty in the entire battle.
Nice try. I specifically referenced the first section of the Georgia Secession Statement that mentions protection here 748 and provided my analysis. Did you even read it, before posting more boring speeches that took place years before Secession?
Your intellectual dishonesty is becoming more apparent. Your inability to quote from the Georgia Secession document to support your position that tariffs were a Cause for Secession speaks volumes. Those reading along can make up their own minds.
Such a statement neglects the entire trans-mississippi theater of the war. Confederates won major one sided victories in many battles there. The most notable are Mansfield and Sabine Pass.
Neither of those was a major success. Despite the myth, the rebels didn't do a very good job. Winning their independence should have been relatively easy, but they muffed it.
It's often noted how the seige warfare at Petersburg presaged the trench fighting in World War One. No WWI general gets a very good press, and yet Lee is lionized as this great general when he had all the cards of waxing defensive power against waning offensive power on his side.
Of course he showed his grasp of modern offense when he ordered the attack on 7/3/63.
Walt
Yes they were, Walt. Fibbing about them won't go away. The victory at Mansfield turned back an army comparable in size and importance to any in the east save the largest of the large forces in Virginia.
Mansfield turned back a 45,000 men invasion force along with the largest inland fleet of warships ever assembled on the North American continent (58 in total).
Sabine Pass prevented the landing of a planned 25,000 men invasion force along with 20 warships.
By any reasonable standards, both were glaring defeats for the yankees of significant consequence to their battle plans.
Despite the myth, the rebels didn't do a very good job.
4 years and 350,000 dead yankees from a better equiped, better funded, and better manned invasion army says otherwise. The Lincoln and his cohorts thought it would all be a quick march south to Richmond - a few weeks at most. They took four long years.
Battle casualties were 110,000 to 94,000. Just can't keep from lying, can you?
The insurgent area was 10% larger than the loyal area.
Given the ascendancy in this period of the defense over the offense, the rebels had a very good chance of winning their independence.
The rebel government was maladroit, the people's enthusiasm lukewarm, southern governor's hewed to states rights at all costs, the slave power couldn't be deprived of their slaves -- and the thirty year conspiracy died in defeat and disgrace.
Walt
Yeah. Your "analysis" quotes a preliminary paragraph and ignores the meat on the tariff issue, which I posted in an excerpt to you previously.
Did you even read it, before posting more boring speeches that took place years before Secession?
Toombs' speech was in November 1860, about a month before South Carolina seceded. Hunter's speech was in February 1861, after South Carolina and a few other states had seceded. Did you even read any of them? Seeing as you dated both years away from their actual occurence despite my having informed you of the timing, it would seem not.
Your intellectual dishonesty is becoming more apparent.
Project what faults you may onto others, just bear in mind that it was you, not myself, who just asserted two important tariff speeches to have occurred years before secession when in fact it was made known to him previously that both happened during that event.
Your inability to quote from the Georgia Secession document to support your position that tariffs were a Cause for Secession speaks volumes.
Much to the contrary as my ability to quote from that document has already been shown in the lengthy excerpt I previously provided. You virtually ignored that excerpt on the absurd grounds that it used synonyms like "protection" instead of the word "tariff." Since you are obviously having trouble in the area of basic comprehension, I'll happily provide the excerpt again for you:
"The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country. But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all. All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success."
Surely you cannot honestly read that and miss its tariff contents! The message is very clear - for years the yankees have been leaching off the government to protect their material wealth. That disastrous policy, they note, was abandoned for its failure in 1846 by the rest of the country. Yet the yankees kept pushing it and they "cast about for new allies" to reinstate their tariffs by uniting the north and taking the government. They found that ally in the anti-slavery movement, just as Robert Toombs said in his speech a few months before this resolution.
Those reading along can make up their own minds.
That they can and I welcome it. They will see your evasion of the part of the resolution I excerpted above. They will also see your attempts to avoid the secession-era speeches of Sens. Hunter and Toombs on the tariff issue. That being the case, I confidently invite them to weigh in.
But war casualties were 350,000 yankees to 250,000 confederates, and that with better medical treatment available on the northern side. Those 350,000 yankees didn't simply decide upon a random death when they got to the south, Walt. They died because of the war.
The insurgent area was 10% larger than the loyal area.
But only a fraction of the latter's population.
Given the ascendancy in this period of the defense over the offense
On what do you base that, Walt? Wars of both types occured throughout the world in the middle 19th century. And even if you think that to have been so, The Lincoln did not. His commanders thought they could make a quick march to Richmond and, as Seward said, everything would be back to normal in a month.
Don't forget that the yankees had to resort to uncivilized warfare - the targeting of innocent old men, women and children, and the destruction of non-military targets - because they couldn't whip a country 1/3 their population, with only a fraction of the resources. Instead of winning on the battlefield, they starved the South into submission.
Some victory </sarcasm>
Your quote from the Georgia Secession statement says "In the first years of the Republic...". Not exactly relavant to 1860 is it? The quote goes on to say that "the navigating interests begged for protection from Foreign Shipbuilders ...", not Southern shipbuilders! Whose fault is it that southerners didn't take advantage of the laws being passed to protect America from foreign competition?
The navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests that the Georgia supremists whine about in their secession document, were all avenues that were available for them to pursue if they chose to. Nothing was preventing the south diversifying its economy, except their own supremist attitudes.
What you're really not willing to admit, is that the South was dependent on the North for most of its finshed products. Southerners wore northern made clothes, shoes, and hats. They couldn't manufacture their own cloth, build their own ships, or make their own locomotives, because all their money was tied up in land and slaves.
But then thats the difference between free labor and bound labor isn't it? You would think that someone who claims to be a capitalist would be able to recognize the difference.
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