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...............
Well, there was that famous (and unquoteable) line from Blazing Saddles.
Disagree.
The British approachd Tecumseh (not the other way around) in 1811 with offers of military aid, weapons, support, etc. to keep the U.S. off balance in the Northwest Territory, in an effort to reverse the verdict of the 1783 Treaty of Paris.
If that doesn't meet your definition of an invasion so be it.
I’ve decided ILL stays with the Union, not the Eastern Soviet Socialist Republic. Chicago DEM-mob can then be dismantled. For now, I am prepared to give Southern Michigan to the ESSR. Which means Cleveland-Erie-Buffalo goes with it to create contiguity. Penn stays with Union, not sure about Philly. Changing borders of states is very problematic.
Fact is, if the 20 Senators in Mid-Atlantic & New England were expelled, Reagan’s America would be permanent. But, the money-interests would still find a way to infiltrate the Senate elections of Montana-Dakotas the way they do now.
When Virginia pretended secession it meant nothing, as they had not the legal authority to break the union of all the states. When they made war against the US, they made their state government invalid, but did not removed the territory and people of the state from the union, as again, they had no authority to accomplish that. The state became a territory, and the Congress had authority to redraw the boundaries and to set up local government just as the Congress has authority to set up local governments in any US territory. Subsequent to that, the Congress admitted WV as a state, just as other states (like Vermont) had been accepted as states, despite failed claims by both NY and NH.
Glad I could help you with that.
If all states agreed to go, there would be no controversy. If even a single state objected, that would signify a controversy, and per Article III of the constitution, controversies between states, or between the federal government and any state are to be resolved with the Supreme Court as original jurisdiction. That is why the recent federal suit against the Arizona immigration law was pursued at the SCOTUS.
It was interesting that the slave power seemed to think that peace and harmony between the races would be assured if as Chief Justice Taney asserted, their was no law regarding the Negro that the White man needed to honor. Of course that was myth, since free Negros of North Carolina had the vote until 1835, and Negroes were permitted to sue and defend them selves from assault in various states.
Slavery was not withering away, but rather was becoming more onerous, and more profitable since the invention of the Cotton Gin by northerner Eli Whitney.
In fact, Grant’s Wilderness strategy was selected to convince Lee to fight outside fixed fortifications. Richmond was fortified via slave labor to a depth of about 10 miles. If Grant could have dropped outside them without loss of a man, his battles before those fortifications would have cost him his entire army, and lost only a few hundreds of the Confederates. Think the battle of the Crater writ large and repeatedly, but without the innovation of the mine.
Lee was suckered in. Grant won. Lee acknowledged Grant as the superior general.
I think his comments fair, except that the slave power did more damage to the US than the Jihadists have as yet. They do display the same tendency to get all riled up about a pretext, while pursuing their own evil ends.
I can’t seem to locate it, but in one of his speeches Lincoln talks about how slavery had been made more harsh in recent years. To be fair this was largely because southerners felt their institution was under attack and natural human tendency is to crack down in defense.
That it was becoming more profitable is easily seen by prices, which reached their all-time high in 1860. Even slaveowners don’t bid up the price of a capital asset unless they think its future prospects for income are also increasing.
________________________________________
To be fair??? To whom??? The Southerners holding the whip (what do you think crack down means)?
“To be fair” refers to the slaveowners. As Jefferson had said many years before, “we have the wolf by the ear and feel the danger of either holding or letting him loose.”
As southerners felt more and more insecure, they reacted in the natural human way of cracking down on slaves and, to the extent they could, abolitionists.
Lincoln himself sympathized with the slaveowners, and agreed that if he had all power on earth he would not know how to go about ending the institution safely.
I believe, with Lincoln, that not all or even most southerners were evil. They were (almost) as trapped in the institution as their slaves.
The truly evil ones were those like Calhoun and the later fire-eaters who initially put forth and then spread the notion that slavery was a positive good and should be expanded and perpetuated.
It is impossible to imagine a doctrine more inimical to the American creed that “all men are created equal.” It is, in fact, the exact same doctrine (master race and slave races) on which the Nazis later based their racial policies.
Unfortunately, by the time of the war these evil men had obtained an entire dominance in the South, and slavery as a positive good had become very widely accepted there. As Lincoln pointed out, the only thing that would have satisfied the South by 1860 would be for the North to join in proclaiming slavery a positive good.
I do not understand why you think this way.
The precipitating issue, or so they said, behind secession was the denial of "equal rights" in the territories, which they defined as requiring a federal slave code by which slavery would be imposed and protected in every territory by federal power.
So here they are seceding over the issue of exclusion from the territories, but meekly accept an even more definitive exclusion by international boundary?
Does not compute.
Many southerners, being delusional, believed they could expand slavery to the south, into Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central and South America.
The transportation technology of the time meant any such expansion could realistically only be by sea. And the Royal Navy, leaving US Navy out of the issue, would never have allowed any such expansion.
BlackElk post #355: "If you actually believe that last sentence, there is nothing to discuss."
Sorry, BlackElk, but those Southern Fire-Eaters were the bad guys, they are the villains of this history, and to ignore their misbehavior is to misunderstand everything that happened in 1860 and 1861.
Fire-Eaters began 1860 by first splitting their previously dominant majority Democrat party in half -- northern and southern -- thus engineering the election of minority Republican Abraham Lincoln.
Fire-Eaters then spread propaganda to convince average Southerners that all Northerners, especially Republicans were responsible for crimes like those of John Brown, that Republican Northerners intended to outlaw slavery, even in the South, and that the mere election of Abraham Lincoln was adequate justification -- a material breech of contract -- for declaring slave-states' secession.
Finally, Fire-Eaters urged the assault on Fort Sumter as necessary for Virginia and other Upper South slave-states to secede.
So they are the real "bad guys" of this history, and if you can't acknowledge that, then you'll never really understand what happened.
BlackElk post #358: "Sometimes, I get the impression that you are looking for a fight over anything and everything including the fact that I share a computer with my wife."
I'm pretty sure that most people reading my comment would understand it as I intended: a friendly personal expression.
BlackElk from post #347: "When Grant was on offense in Virginia or anywhere, he seemed not to care as much about casualties as he did about prompt and effective results.
Given the outcome, it is hard to disagree with his tactics."
BlackElk post #358: "I don't see where you see #347 as a criticism of Grant, much less a statement that he was "Grant the Butcher." "
I'll take that as your agreement that Civil War armies fighting on offense often took far higher casualties than those dug in on defense.
BlackElk: "Just as I think that Lee's decision against the advice of Longstreet to insist on the disastrous "Pickett's Charge" but nonetheless regard Lee with great respect..."
Yes, Pickett's Charge ended in disaster, but some argue it was actually well conceived, and only failed for reasons outside Lee's control.
To succeed, Pickett's Charge needed full support from Longstreet in the South, Ewell in the north, Alexander's artillery and Stuart attacking from behind.
But all of those concurrent attacks failed, thus dooming "Pickett's Charge".
Gettysburg showed Lee's strengths in planning, weakness in execution.
Let me put it this way: in all my life, I've never had a seriously unpleasant experience with anyone from a different race, ethnic group, nationality or religion, etc.
I only know about such things from the nightly-news, so based on my personal experience, I'd say we all live together in "perfect harmony", just like the song says. ;-)
Of course, radicals and criminals do exist in every group.
However, nobody believes we should judge individuals by the crime rate in their ethnicity or religious affiliation.
That's all I'm saying here.
The one from Olson Johnson?
Amazing you would remember that, I certainly didn't.
;-)
The US 1812 declaration of war on Great Britain does not include any reasons, but historians list them as:
Since Americans began the war by invading Canada, the word "possible" above is ludicrous.
The correct word is "certainly".
And I would not call British arms supplies to American Indians an "invasion" -- except if you think that somehow those Indians "invaded" the United States!
I was doing some research from the Louisiana Purchase era and was surprised that a common perception of the time was that even the pre-purchase states were considered “too much territory” to properly govern. Many people wondered how we would ever attend to and govern such a spacious and far-flung country. It was sort of like “What will we ever do with all of this land”?!
Again it struck me that I had been viewing it with contemporary thinking and not “stepping into their shoes”. I wasn’t considering what it took to span the distances on horseback or pulling a wagon.
This prompted a reminder that in such a large (even then!) disparate country there were significant cultural differences. As a nationalist, the term “sectionalist” has always seemed an awfully dry and emotionless way to refer to those whose affections and allegiances were closer to home. I would read and assimilate the term but wasn’t emotionally connected to the feeling of it.
As a kid whose father worked in the aerospace business we traveled - a lot - when I was growing up. I got to experience a variety of geographical areas and cultures that most people do not experience. I suppose that this is what gave me the more expansive view of our country and nation. It is true what they say about most folks never traveling more than a hundred miles from the place of their birth (although ease of travel has widened that scope of that saying). No matter where I went I met people who had never been out of their state - and didn’t appear to have any interest in ever doing so.
This sense of regionalism (or sectionalism or provincialism or what have you) was played upon and exploited in the years before the Civil War. Lost was Franklin’s “We must hang together, gentlemen...else, we shall most assuredly hang separately” in favor of “They’re not like you” and (my favorite growing up) “You’re not from around here”. Growing up I was taught an appreciation for the ideals that we hold in common more than a sensitivity to our differences.
It is my personal opinion that this bias played a more instrumental part in decisions to raise arms against their fellow countrymen than almost any other consideration. They did so because they had been encouraged to believe that “those people” weren’t really their true countrymen.
One of the more popular posits from the lost causers is the question of why would the non-slaver of the south fight “for” the slavers? The answer becomes easier (and more honest) when one considers that they didn’t feel that they were fighting to defend the slavers - they were fighting a bogyman that they had been encouraged to fear - by the slavers. In their hearts and minds they were fighting for their country - closely defined down to their immediate surroundings.
It was the same in the north. The south was a long ways away for people who had never visited their neighboring state much less traveled the continent. It’s easy to become dismissive or indifferent about someone if you believe that you have nothing in common. About all the average yankee knew was that “the southerners” were trying to destroy the country. Framed in the abstract of “the slavers” or “the damn yankees” instead of neighbor or cousin emotionally charged people can be induced to some frightful things.
This is why I objected to the characterization of abolitionists as “jihadists” - it was offered insincerely and inaccurately. If BlackElk was still reading my posts I would ask if he considered the pro-life movement jihadists as well?
That’s some imagination you have there. Have you considered writing novels of fantasy or alternative realities? You seem well-qualified. As between us, you may feel free to have the last word.
Can D.C. be floated by river to the Atlantic? If so, better yet, can it be sunk when half way to Europe?
In other news, absolutely irrelevant to this thread, the Vatican has continued the improvement of California by replacing the execrable bishop of the Diocese of Orange, Tod Brown, with an actual Catholic, Bishop Kevin Vann of Fort Worth. When Vann was consecrated as a bishop, the honors were done by Archbishop Jose Gomez (now of Los Angeles and a priest of Opus Dei), Archbishop (now Cardinal) Raymond Burke of the Apostolic Signatura, and Archbishop George Lucas (now of Omaha). AND, although a permanent successor has not yet been named, Bishop Matthew Clark, if anything even worse than Brown, is no longer misgoverning the Rochester, NY, Diocese. Hopefully he will also be replaced by an actual Catholic with a steel spine and a strong stomach. Next up: Bishop Hubbard of Albany! Hang him high! I believe Archbishop Mansell's days in Hartford are also numbered.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.