Posted on 08/30/2012 2:40:56 PM PDT by PeaRidge
On 6 November 1860, the six-year-old Republican Party elected its first president. During the tense crisis months that followed – the “secession winter” of 1860–61 – practically all observers believed that Lincoln and the Republicans would begin attacking slavery as soon as they took power.
Democrats in the North blamed the Republican Party for the entire sectional crisis. They accused Republicans of plotting to circumvent the Constitutional prohibition against direct federal attacks on slavery. Republicans would instead allegedly try to squeeze slavery to death indirectly, by abolishing it in the territories and in Washington DC, suppressing it in the high seas, and refusing federal enforcement of the Slave Laws. The first to succumb to the Republican program of “ultimate extinction,” Democrats charged, would be the border states where slavery was most vulnerable. For Northern Democrats, this is what caused the crisis; the Republicans were to blame for trying to get around the Constitution.
Southern secessionists said almost exactly the same thing. The Republicans supposedly intended to bypass the Constitution’s protections for slavery by surrounding the South with free states, free territories, and free waters. What Republicans called a “cordon of freedom,” secessionists denounced as an inflammatory circle of fire.
Continued...............
Sure, in your mind and mine.
But in the minds of our never-say-die lost causers, any appeal, no matter how far fetched or outrageous, is worth a try if there's a chance somebody gullible will buy it.
;-)
The great potato famine was centered in Ireland & Scotland, where 90% of the deaths (1 million total) happened.
Yes, other parts of northern Europe also suffered, but to a far lesser extent.
So, immigrants from Germany were not so much driven here by hunger as by politics -- i.e., the 1848 Revolution.
Some of these German immigrants played an especially important role in keeping the border state of Missouri in the Union.
Also, remember that German immigration -- i.e. Pennsylvania "Dutch" --goes back to the early 1700s.
They were nearly all farmers and, so far as I know, did not suffer the same levels of discrimination as some other groups.
Your bank contract/war analogy fails.
The Articles of Confederation government which preceded the current regime provided that it could not be amended without unanimous agreement of all 13 states. The Constitutional Convention of 1787 produced a proposed constitution which by its terms and, quite contrary to the limitations imposed by the Articles of Confederation, did NOT require unanimity. In fact, Rhode Island rejected the new constitution on March 24, 1788 and did not ratify it until May 29, 1790 and North Carolina did not ratify it until November 21, 1789. Nonetheless, by a vote of the Congress of the Articles of Confederation (not authorized to do so), the "new government" took effect on March 4, 1789. That would seem to be a breach of the original contract---The Articles of Confederation. no? If not, why not?
Secondly, if there was a "contract" among the states, it would have to be the Constitution itself which, by the time of Fort Sumter had been in effect for about 72 years. It does not make provision for restraining any state from leaving, forcing any state to remain, or whatever. Therefore, the resolutions of the 11 Confederate States, acting individually, to secede from the Union was no breach of contract. Henceforth, what had previously been referenced as "these" United States suddenly became "the" United States as though it was only a single entity.
Third, since you nonetheless like the contract analogy, suppose that you were to join a reputedly fine and respectable gentlemen's club and mutually agreed that membership was "for life at least." Ten years after you join, at a meeting when only a few miscreants attend but enough to form a quorum, the members have apparently decided that one qualification for membership is sleeping with one another's wives after monthly parties at the club to be conducted thereafter. Everyone shows up with wives in tow for the first scheduled monthly party (billed on;y as a party) and each is told to drop a set of house keys in a basket one set for each couple's home. Whomever's keys you draw blindfolded is the lady whom you will be paying your amorous attentions to that evening until the next sunrise.
Some couples are morally horrified by such proposed behavior. Some wives but not their husbands seem interested in trying out the experiment. Some of the gentlemen but NOT their wives object. Some members and their wives (the men who attended the meeting and their wives) are looking forward to some variety (however adulterous). You and your wife are among the moral folks who are horrified. You promptly announce that your personal membership is at an end. The club members favoring the party scheme remind you that membership, by mutual agreement of all, is "for life at least.
Can you morally resign and walk away? Or do you just reach into the basket for tonight's set of keys and wave your wife goodbye for the evening as she departs unwillingly with another member? I think resignation is allowable. Don't you? No matter what the terms of membership.
There is a better argument for forcing continued membership in that gentlemen's club (not a valid one to be sure) than there is for forcing the 11 Confederate states to remain in the Union at gunpoint.
Oh, and where was what you call a crime (secession) defined? From English common law to our own day, criminal law is to be strictly and not expansively construed or are we giving up that freedom to punish the departing states?
Google: Did U. S. Grant own slaves? and you will find that he owned one and his wife Julia owned five.
Sorry, FRiend, but my bank contract analogy (post #173) is precisely correct, and your Gentleman's Club analogy ludicrous beyond any point of further discussion -- so I'm not going there.
BlackElk: "The Articles of Confederation government which preceded the current regime provided that it could not be amended without unanimous agreement of all 13 states."
By your own time line, the new Constitution of 1787 was rigorously debated, then unanimously approved in just over two years.
At no point during those years (through 1790) did any state commit what we would call "unfriendly acts" against other states: there were no seizures of US property, no threats against US officials, no battles fought with US forces, no states' military sent to other states.
So the old Articles died a quiet and natural death.
Starting in November 1860, everything was different.
As secessionists called for state conventions, they simultaneously began committing many acts, large and small, of rebellion, insurrection and war against the United States.
These included seizures by armed force of dozens of Federal forts, armories, arsenals, barracks, customs houses, ships and mints.
They also included threats against, detaining of and firing on, Federal officials -- though none on either side were killed in battle until after the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
All these secessionist acts had Union voters riled up and calling for war as early as January, 1861, but out-going Democrat President Buchanan refused to lead, ordering instead that the Federal forces take no actions to provoke secessionists violence.
Even incoming President Lincoln announced in his First Inaugural (March 4, 1861): there could be no war unless secessionists started it.
But even before Lincoln's took office, Confederate Jefferson Davis ordered military preparations to begin war, by raising another 100,000 Confederate troops and assaulting Federal Fort Sumter.
Again, to make a long story short: secession by itself did not cause war in 1861.
War was caused by numerous increasingly violent acts of secessionists' rebellion, insurrection and war, even before the Confederacy formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
BlackElk: "Secondly, if there was a "contract" among the states, it would have to be the Constitution itself which, by the time of Fort Sumter had been in effect for about 72 years.
It does not make provision for restraining any state from leaving, forcing any state to remain, or whatever.
Therefore, the resolutions of the 11 Confederate States, acting individually, to secede from the Union was no breach of contract."
The new Constitution makes no specific provisions for "disunion" or "secession", but our Founders' Original Intent was expressed clearly and consistently.
Disunion was only authorized by mutual consent or "usurpations" and "oppression" having that same effect -- in Madison's formulation.
In legal terms: absent mutual consent, there had to be a "material" breach of contract to justify secession.
But in November 1860, just days after Lincoln's election, when South Carolina called for its secession convention, there was no "breach of contract", material or otherwise.
This alone makes those secession declarations unconstitutional.
BlackElk: "Oh, and where was what you call a crime (secession) defined?"
I'll say it again: secession alone was not the "crime" which started the Civil War.
Secessionists' numerous acts of rebellion and formal declaration of war on the United States started it.
That's why my bank contract analogy (post #173) fits these circumstances precisely.
I’m curious why you bring this up? It doesn’t seem to serve a responsive purpose to post #179 and presents only a sliver of the true story.
Yes Grant made some use of slaves that his wife’s father held title to - so what? And yes, Grant purchased a slave - which he then manumitted at a time when he was hard-pressed to eke out a living for himself and his family.
To claim him as a “slave owner” as compared to someone like Thomas Jefferson is disingenuous.
I agree - the “gentleman’s club” analogy was sorta creepy ;-)
That means comparing Grant's performance to Grant's words. The dreaded liberal "h" word: hypocrisy.
There is a history of Texas: "Lone Star" which claims that, as Andrew Jackson closed out his presidency, he had invited Sam Houston, President of the Texas Republic, to the White House as his guest and that, presuming that Texas would become one of "these United States" and noting that Houston was among his youngest proteges and likely to long outlive Jackson, they discussed the future of slavery and of these United States.
Jackson observed that slavery would die an economic death even in the Southland, that the beginnings of its decline could already be observed in the Outer South and that economic reality would kill it off, however slowly, in the cotton belt. What concerned Jackson was that slavery might occasion a civil war in the future long after he was gone. He regarded such a war as the worst calamity that might befall the republic and that, regardless of outcome, the political wounds would take a century or more to heal. He charged Houston to prevent such a war at all costs, to run for POTUS if necessary and to declare war on as many foreign nations as necessary to compel both sides to rally around the flag and avoid fighting each other. When the time came and Texas had been admitted to the Union, Houston, as governor sternly resisted secession to no avail because the legislature acted to secede over his objection, and he had sought but failed to obtain the Democratic Party nomination for POTUS to attempt to carry out Jackson's wishes and to stop any outbreak of civil war. By the time of those events, Houston's age and old war wounds had sapped his health and he died in 1863.
Coincidentally, Abraham Lincoln's chief rival for the Republican POTUS nomination had been William Seward of New York who became Lincoln's Secretary of State. There is no credible evidence that Seward had any awareness of the Jackson/Houston conversation of 1837 but, if you look at Seward's published papers as Secretary of State, one of his first memoranda to Lincoln was to give him essentially the same advice as that previously given by Jackson to Houston. Seward urged international war, as necessary, to make Americans, North and South rally around the flag to fight common foreign "enemies." Regrettably, Seward failed to convince Lincoln. Many hundreds of thousands of Americans of the Union and of the Confederacy died and many others were maimed so that Lincoln (previously an "anti-war" member of Congress for one term during the Mexican War who complained in Congress: this chamber stands knee deep in blood") unleashed the most ruinous war in this nation's history. Arguably, the wounds of that war to the fabric of this nation will never heal.
Ironically, it has been sensibly speculated that the Confederacy would have eventually returned to again merge with the North when slavery had faded and other international issues and wars would have required a restoration of unity. However, the abolitionist firebrands just HAD to shed oceans of blood on both sides to prove their righteousness. The worst of them were centered in my native New England (John Brown was a product of Torrington, CT, and the Bill Ayres/Bernardine Doehrn/Mark Rudd of his time until justly hanged by U. S. military forces under Robert E. Lee and J. E. B. Stuart at Harper's Ferry in 1859).
It was a good thing for Lincoln's war effort that John Brown did not discover Ulysses S. Grant and his wife Julia before John Brown was hanged, or he might have dispatched the Grants by hacking them to death with broadswords as he did to pro-slavery farmers in Kansas (including one actually named William Sherman).
General McClellan might have been in charge instead of Grant in which case he would probably still have been postponing action and calling for more troops and more supplies lest he might have to fight before the outbreak of World War I.
The “game” is called “Westport” after the CT town where it was practiced by an avant garde few in the 1950s-1960s. See also the movie “The Ice Storm” which located such behavior in New Canaan, CT (another uber wealthy town near the Gold Coast). Creepy, unquestionably, but far less homicidal than the invasion of the Confederacy to illegally conquer it and compel its citizens to submit to the “Union” yoke. Fortunately, military occupation of the south ended with the accession of Rutherford B. Hayes (one of our better presidents).
Nonetheless, the terms of any original agreement had been the subject of a sustained campaign of Northern industrial economic interests against the agrarian South and, still worse, such mild-mannered folks as John Brown and his ideological and homicidal kinfolk. Brown and his minions, not only slaughtered the five farmers at Potawatomie, KS, but then murdered five Virginians and then killed seven more people seizing the arsenal at Harper's Ferry in an attempt to steal its weapons and distribute them to slaves for armed rebellion to slaughter Southerners. Regardless of purpose, no matter how apparently noble the purpose, we would presumably not put up with such behavior today much less then and do a lot more than frown on it in response. Brown and others were justly hanged after Harper's Ferry and the response of the radical abolitionists was to write songs and poems in his "honor."
Like Rahm Emmanuel in our own time, the abolitionists were not about to waste the opportunity provided by sectional crisis.
What is truly ludicrous is your "legal analysis."
1. The Tenth Amendment specifically limited the federales to those powers and only those powers specifically granted to the federales by the constitution. Specific language of the CONSTITUTION delegating to the federales the power to force the 11 departing states to rejoin the "Union?"
2. Ignoring the rule of law (the Articles) and specifically the requirement of Article XIII of the Articles of Confederation that any change required a vote of Congress AND ratification by each and every state, may be many things but "a natural death" of the Articles of Confederation is not one of them. The "old" Articles were a decrepit twelve years old when murdered. Your discussion of "unfriendly acts" is utterly irrelevant. The law was the law even if such as Hamilton found the law inconvenient to commercial interests and centralizing power for the advancement of those interests. One figure resisting such schemes was Virginia Governor Patrick Henry and there were numerous anti-Federalists. Just because "we" can get away with it is not compliance with the rule of law. Conquering the Confederacy and forcing its residents under the federal yoke was an echo of this original lawlessness by which the constitution had been imposed in 1789 in derogation of law.
3. President Buchanan did, in fact, lead. He simply did not lead as the hotheads of the North wanted him to lead. He had been elected by the entire nation when last it included the 11 soon to be Confederate States. He was not running again. As I understand it, Buchanan (without much if any objection from his Attorney General Edwin Stanton who was later to be Lincoln's Secretary of War) voluntarily turned over many forts located in the south (save Fort Sumter, South Carolina, and Fort Pickens, Florida) to the states in which they were located, and also voluntarily turned over weapons, food supplies, uniforms and other military material to the southern state militias. Presumably that encompassed armories, barracks and arsenals. Were not customs houses also located on the soil of Confederate States??? If not turned over, they were seized. Ships of the "Union" found in Confederate ports and waters were eligible for similar treatment, especially if warships. The Dahlonega, Georgia mint, had been opened there in 1837 during a gold rush nearby. Always a tiny factor in production of US coins, it was seized as being on property of Georgia at the outbreak of the Civil War (this will be a recurring theme as to Fort Sumter and Fort Pickens and other facilities on land of the Confederate States), was apparently used briefly to mint Confederate coinage and was never re-opened after the war. Essentially, the "Union" abandoned Dahlonega Mint. New Orleans Mint opened in 1838 in the State of Louisiana, and remained a federal mint until seized by the Confederacy in 1861. It minted Confederate coins during the war but was not re-opened until 1879 (until 1909) when Rutherford B. Hayes was POTUS. Were federal officials ordered to leave the Confederate States? Did they leave voluntarily.
4. In raising 100,000 troops, President Jefferson Davis was acting and doing his duty with wise foresight as to Yankee intentions.
5. The establishment of the new government in 1789 (regardless of the ultra vires provision of ITS constitution requiring less than unanimity) cannot honor the rule of law AND ignore the requirement of unanimity in the Articles.
6. The run up to the Constitutional Convention of 1787 included the Mount Vernon Conference of 1785 and the Annapolis Conference of 1786 both largely limited to a commercial gentry who wanted a more powerful central government (with power to tax, to raise a standing military, and to control "interstate commerce," and to control the currency to their benefit). The Mount Vernon Conference (Maryland and Virginia only) discussed matters having to do with navigation of the Potomac River allowing Virginia a say in its governance as a common waterway when previously it had been Maryland's jurisdiction alone. The Annapolis Conference brought a few other states to the table (including the ever government growing Alexander Hamilton) and called for a general convention at Philadelphia in 1787.
7. The Constitution of 1787 contains no provisions whatsoever as to disunion or secession or as to forcing states, against their will, to remain in the "Union." It does contain the Tenth Amendment reserving to the states and the people respectively those powers not specifically delegated by the constitution to the central government. That and not some crystal ball as to the intent of the Founders generally or of James Madison individually is dispositive.
8. Speaking of James Madison, where do you claim to find his "formulation?" Or his penumbras or his emanations or whatever? Are you referencing his contributions to the Federalist Papers, his notes as secretary of the constitutional convention or his speeches or his private or public papers? Anything OTHER than the specific language of the Constitution lacks the force of law, and that is assuming that the Constitution has the force of law. There were numerous great men involved in the Constitutional Convention and some, like Jefferson, who were not. Their personal opinions are just that: personal opinions and lack the force of law.
9. The Constitution is the Constitution and not a mere "contract," and likely not a "contract" at all, but, just to humor you, are you familiar with the concept of "anticipatory breach of contract?" Or estoppel? For just two examples.
His wife owned no slaves. They belonged to her father. But you knew that. There was/is no hypocrisy.
Do you honestly believe that? If you do then aren't you admitting that the sole reason for the Southern secession was slavery? Something other Confederate supporters adamantly deny?
Various schemes were advanced for taking territory from other nations south of the US to form new slave states to maintain the delicate balance of the Senate. That seemed a desperation move.
And I do believe that there would have been an amicable reunification of North and South by external pressures of foreign policy. It might have taken forty or fifty years. Even under the circumstances of our bloodiest war, there was good will among the veterans of the respective armies.
In 1913, on the fiftieth anniversary of Gettysburg, the Confederate Veterans of America and the Grand Army of the Republic held encampments simultaneously at Gettysburg. They re-enacted Pickett's Charge (without live ammo) and embraced their former enemies, often in tears, as they did so. A memorable event. Would that the politicians of each side of fifty years earlier have had the common sense to behave accordingly. All that having been said, there was also the matter of trade policy. The agrarian Southern slave states depended on agriculture to produce cotton, tobacco and indigo among other major crops and strongly favored free trade and low or no tariffs to facilitate accessing markets all over the world but particularly in Europe. The Northern manufacturing and commercial interests favored high protective tariffs to facilitate further high profits and to facilitate the North's growing economic dominance over the South. There was nothing very novel about this argument which had gone on for decades between the sections.
Therefore, NO, I am not "admitting that slavery was the sole reason for Southern secession. OTOH, I also believe that sufficiently disliking Lincoln was reason enough top secede if a state chose to do so. There were also cultural reasons that divided the sections. I believe it was a famous Kansas newspaper editor, William Allen White (?) who editorialized that the South had an advantage as a society of gentlemen over the North which was a culture of grubby mechanics. Personally, I think that gave the North a great strategic advantage in that manufactured goods and superior railroads were more necessary to victory in the late unpleasantness than cotton, tobacco and indigo, or a more devoted and widespread appreciation for chamber music.
The strategic advantage of the South (though not sufficient to overcome the North's industrial clout) was in a truly superior group of generals (Lee, Jackson, Stuart, the Johnstons, Longstreet and others).
I know no such thing. Apparently Julia Dent Grant knew no such thing either as she repeatedly referenced the slaves in question as hers.
BlackElk: "Seward urged international war, as necessary, to make Americans, North and South rally around the flag to fight common foreign "enemies."
Regrettably, Seward failed to convince Lincoln."
Thanks for connecting the dots between Jackson and Seward's wacky suggestion that Lincoln start a foreign war to make everyone "rally around the flag."
I was not previously aware of just where Seward's idea may have come from.
However, your suggestion that Lincoln shoulda or coulda followed Seward's advice hints at some malfunction in your own thought processes, FRiend.
You’re trying too hard.
You are speaking of yourself, of course, merely projecting your own mind-set onto someone else.
Again, that suggests something amiss in your thinking process.
Your Gentleman's Club analogy is over-the-top, out of line and in rockrr's word, "creepy".
You could easily have chosen any number of other analogies to suit your purposes, the fact you chose a Gentleman's Club to make your point yet again suggests something amiss between your ears, FRiend.
As for your remaining points in post #270, those will take some time for response, time which I am again out of for some days.
So, will pick up where left off later in this week...
The Civil War was and is about STATES RIGHTS! the slavery thing came about from destruction of the south.
Bravo!
Now, Lincoln is apparently your idol and not mine. He had good insights from time to time, particularly toward the end of his life after he had soaked the nation in an ocean of unnecessary bloodshed and when he was reportedly haunted by dreams in which the ghosts of hundreds of thousands of war dead on both sides were waking him by parading past the White House in the middle of his somewhat sleepless nights.
He gave a speech in Richmond (see Basler's collected works of Lincoln published by Rutgers in about 1949) a few days before he was assassinated in which he told Virginians that the loyalty oaths being circulated among the free white citizens of Virginia contained the signatures of a nearly sufficient number of them and that he expected to welcome Virginia back into the "Union" as a full-fledged sister state within the week (i.e. by approximately 4/20/65) which necessarily suggested that he would not engage in the military occupation and tyranny (called "reconstruction") insisted upon by such corruption seekers as Stanton and by the ideological abolitionist absolutists still thirsty for Southern blood. It was in this last stage of his life that Lincoln, in spite of his previous track record, earned the title "Father Abraham."
As soon as Lincoln was assassinated, the abolitionist jihad began anew. It only ended with the election of 1876, so closely fought, that neither the Electoral College nor even an unassisted Congress could choose the electoral winner. Congress then established a commission of six Democrats, six Republicans and one southern unaffiliated. The issue was decided in favor of Hayes in exchange for the end of "reconstruction."
That you are a Lincoln fan seems certain by your preference for a war in which all casualties were American in a very large war compared to fewer casualties in a foreign war with only a portion being American.
Finally, I believe I did not "connect the dots between Jackson and Seward..." but specifically stated that there was no credible reason to believe that Seward had known of Jackson's suggestion to Houston. Both of those distinguished Americans arrived at their conclusions quite separately. If you have evidence to the contrary, let's hear it.
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