Posted on 06/09/2009 8:47:35 AM PDT by Davy Buck
My oh my, what would the critics, the Civil War publications, publishers, and bloggers do if it weren't for the bad boys of the Confederacy and those who study them and also those who wish to honor their ancestors who fought for the Confederacy?
(Excerpt) Read more at oldvirginiablog.blogspot.com ...
Yea, that’s so much better...(snicker)
How? Madison opposed colonization, Lincoln supported it. Where does the Constitution deal with the subject?
General Lee's view is more in line with the founders than any Radical Republican and you know it!
Probably, especially the Southern ones. Lee never had any real problem with slavery.
15 Dec., 1866
And Lee was engaging in full blown, post-rebellion revisionism. Prior to the rebellion he was calling secession illegal and rebellion and opposed by the founders.
The STFU. Get a life. Leave us to our “lost cause” fantasy. Go and book your flight to DC so you can genuflect at the monument of your hero, the Illinois Butcher™ “over 600,000 served”.
No
Well then go on back to bed and pull the covers over your head and plot your secession. The last thing I wanted to do was scare you.
Actually you are more accessible than my wife and kids. It’s no problem contacting you. All I do is click FR, look to a thread like this and bing there you are real time.
Well then I'll just consider this a public service that keeps you from annoying your wife and kids, too.
The new yankee tactic, bore the south into submission.
[You]: In his speech, Lincoln was doing nothing more or less than staying the government would continue. Government facilities would be retained. Offices would be filled, mail delivered, taxex collected, all as they had done before. Lincoln also made it clear that, with the exception of continuing to retain government property, none of this would be done in a manner that would inflame passions.
Of course, you left out the collecting of revenue from imports to the South. Here's what Lincoln said in his speech [my red bold]:
In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence; and there shall be none, unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided in me, will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property, and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion—no using of force against, or among the people anywhere.
That New York Day Book interpretation of Lincoln's speech was pretty accurate, IMO.
His [Lincoln's] goal was a peaceful resolution. If only Davis' goal had been the same.
Peaceful resolution? Let's review what Lincoln did.
- Lincoln ignores the offer of the Confederate Commissioners to negotiate on all and any issues.
- Lincoln cabinet member Seward keeps reassuring the Southern Commissioners that Sumter would be evacuated.
- Lincoln sends Lamon down to Charleston to tell the governer that Sumter would be evacuated.
- Lincoln's cabinet and military advisers tell him Fox's plan to send a relief fleet down to Charleston will result in a shooting war.
- Lincoln's military advisers tell him an expedition would need 20,000 men (or thereabouts) to successfully protect/invade/relieve/whatever Fort Sumter.
- Lincoln tells the Senate he has nothing of importance to tell them before they adjourn that day, then the next day in secret he starts the effort to send an armed fleet down to Charleston.
- Lincoln does not provide nearly enough force to relieve Sumter if force is necessary. And in secret even from Gustavus Fox who heads the Sumter expedition, Lincoln, perhaps in error, diverts the largest warship, the Powhatan, away from the Sumter fleet, leaving the Sumter expedition even more likely to fail to force supplies/men into Sumter.
- Lincoln springs the Sumter relief expedition of the South Carolina governor a few days before the armed fleet arrives.
- The Confederate Commissioners learn that the Lincoln Administration has been lying to them about the evacuation of Fort Sumter and call it gross perfidy.
- Anderson learns the armed fleet is on the way and responds with a letter back to Washington [Link; my bold]:
I had the honor to receive by yesterday's mail the letter of the honorable Secretary of War, dated April 4, and confess that what he there states surprises me very greatly, following as it does and contradicting so positively the assurance Mr. Crawford telegraphed he was authorized to make. I trust that this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.
It is, of course, now too late for me to give any advice in reference to the proposed scheme of Captain Fox. I fear that its result cannot fail to be disastrous to all concerned. ...
... I ought to have been informed that this expedition was to come. Colonel Lamon's remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be carried out. We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. That God will still avert it, and cause us to resort to pacific measures to maintain our rights, is my ardent prayer.
- After the Sumter expedition fails, Lincoln consoles Gustavus Fox saying basically the mission accomplished what we wanted [Link].
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.
Geeze, what a warmongeror.
You've been in submission for 144 years.
Whoops, I guess your “taxex” meant collecting revenue from imports coming into Southern ports.
And from the North, too. Mail would be deliverd in the South, and in the North, too. Offices would be filled and facilities retained in all parts of the country. The only reason that would be seen as threatening was if the South was looking for an excuse. Which, of course, it was.
- Lincoln ignores the offer of the Confederate Commissioners to negotiate on all and any issues.
There was no offer to negotiate from Davis. There was a demand for recognition, an ultimatum. Only if Lincoln surrendered to this demand was there a vague offer to talk, but only if the matter was of interest to the South.
- Lincoln cabinet member Seward keeps reassuring the Southern Commissioners that Sumter would be evacuated.
Was Seward delivering Lincoln's words? Or acting on his own. I believe the evidence supports the later.
- Lincoln sends Lamon down to Charleston to tell the governer that Sumter would be evacuated.
There is absolutely no evidence supporting the idea that Lincoln told Lamon to tell Pickens the fort would be evacuated. Lamon was a bit of a loose cannon and his partner on the trip, Stephen Hurlburt, abandoned him soon after arriving in Charleston.
- Lincoln's cabinet and military advisers tell him Fox's plan to send a relief fleet down to Charleston will result in a shooting war.
Lincoln's cabinet and military advisors approved the sending of the resupply mission before it left port. And I would also point out that a member of Davis' cabinet also warned him what would happen if he fired on Sumter as well.
- Lincoln does not provide nearly enough force to relieve Sumter if force is necessary. And in secret even from Gustavus Fox who heads the Sumter expedition, Lincoln, perhaps in error, diverts the largest warship, the Powhatan, away from the Sumter fleet, leaving the Sumter expedition even more likely to fail to force supplies/men into Sumter.
Lincoln's goal was resupply, not war.
- Lincoln springs the Sumter relief expedition of the South Carolina governor a few days before the armed fleet arrives.
Lincoln's messenger met with Governor Pickens on April 8, six days before the resupply effort would arrive. How much time was needed?
- The Confederate Commissioners learn that the Lincoln Administration has been lying to them about the evacuation of Fort Sumter and call it gross perfidy.
And?
Colonel Lamon's remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be carried out.
Obviously Lamon was misleading everyone.
“....The people of North Carolina, more perhaps than those of any of the eleven seceding States, were devoted to the Union. They had always regarded it with sincerest reverence and affection, and they left it slowly and with sorrow. They were actuated by an honest conviction...that their constitutional rights were endangered, not be the mere election of Mr. Lincoln, as others did, but by the course which subsequent events were compelled to take in consequence of the ideas which were behind him. The Union men of the State, of whom I was one, whatever may have been their doubts of the propriety of secession, were unanimous in the opinion that it was neither right nor safe to permit the general government to coerce a State.
But when Fort Sumter was fired upon, immediately followed by Mr. Lincoln’s call for “volunteers to suppress the insurrection,” the whole situation was changed instantly. The Union men had every prop knocked from under them, and by stress of their own position were plunged into a secession movement. I immediately, with altered voice and manner, called upon the assembled multitude to volunteer, not to fight against but for South Carolina. I said, if war must come I prefer to be with my own people. If we had to shed blood, I preferred to shed Northern rather than Southern blood. If we had to slay, I had rather slay strangers than my own kindred and neighbors; and that it was better, whether right or wrong, that communities and States should go together and face the horrors of war in a body-—sharing a common fate, rather than endure the unspeakable calamities of internecine strife.
To those at all acquainted with the atrocities which have been inflicted upon the divided communities of Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee, the humanity of my action will be apparent. I went and shared the fate of the people of my native State, having first done all I could to preserve the peace and secure the unanimity of the people to avert, as much as possible, the calamities of war. I do not regret that course. I do not believe there is an honorable man within my hearing to-night who, under the same circumstances, would not have done as I did...”
(Life of Zebulon B. Vance, Clement Dowd, Observer Publishing and Printing House, 1897, pp. 439-442)
OK, so they joined the rebellion. And look what happened to them? Was it worth it?
And the far larger number of imports coming into Northern ports as well. What of it?
ROTFLMAO!!!!!
Forced submission is better than willing in your case! It's better to fight and get whipped than be to cowardly to pipe up.
Nancy Emerson diary
In March of 1863, having heard of Northern depredations in the South, Emerson confided to her diary:
“For months we were under frequent apprehensions that the Yankees would come in & get posession (sic) of the Valley, but the Lord mercifully preserved us from the danger, & has delivered us from the fear. In our circumstances it would probably have been death to some of us.
“How many pleasant homes have these barbarians desolated, strewing the gardens with fragments of glass & china, filling the air with feathers from the beds, hewing up for wood, or boxing them up to send home? How have they soaked our soil with the blood of our noblest & best & then to cap the climax of injury & insult, talk of reconstructing the union.”
Emerson then called upon God to “plead our cause against an ungodly nation.”
“A just God,” she predicted, “will visit sooner or later, & there will be no escape but by deep repentance.”
But a little more than a year later, in June of 1864, Staunton and Augusta County fell to invading Union forces, and Emerson's diary began to reflect encounters with the enemy. In July 1864, she recounted a June 9 and 10 foray by Yankee raiders.
The 40 to 50 raiders swept onto the Emerson place from the west, dismounted and rushed into the house. According to Emerson, they demanded — “with plenty of oaths” — whiskey, flour and bacon.
“Come on, boys,” said one of the raiders, “we'll find it all.”
Emerson wrote that they then pushed rudely past a “terribly alarmed” Catharine Emerson, and “spread themselves nearly all over the house.”
She wrote, “Finding their way to a fine barrel of flour which a neighbor had given us, they proceeded to fill their sacks & pillow cases, scattering a large percent on the floor, till it was nearly exhausted. The last one told us, on our remonstrating, to hide the rest.”
Other members of the raiding party went upstairs, opened every trunk and dresser drawer and tossed the family's belongings onto the floor. Emerson said the soldiers threw “even my nice bonnets” onto the floor, “pretending to be looking for arms.”
Finding no weapons, the Yankees stole her cousin Samuel's gold sleeve buttons and a pin, his best shirt, a good coat and a pair of shoes. She noted in her diary that Cousin Samuel later persuaded the marauder to sell him back the shoes for an Ohio $10 note.
“We did not say anything to provoke them, but did not disguise our sentiments,” Emerson noted. “They went peeping under the beds, looking for rebels ... Baxter told them there were no rebels here (meaning rebel soldiers).
“Cate then said, ‘I am a rebel & I glory in it.’”
Emerson wrote that when Catharine remonstrated with them about taking the shoes, asking them why they injured non-combatants, one of the Yankees replied:
“You need not tell me that, I know all the people along here have sons in the army.”
Catharine Emerson then pointed to her son, Baxter, and said, “That is my only son.”
Ellen Emerson spoke up and said, “I have no brothers in the army, I wish from my heart I had.”
The Yankee soldier replied, “Now, Sis, I don't wish you had brothers in the army. I wouldn't like to kill one of your brothers.”
When the raiders had gone, the family received a visit from a lone Union officer and learned, firsthand, that all Yankees weren't alike. The officer, said Emerson, appeared a gentleman and asked civilly if he could obtain some flour. Catharine Emerson related how the raiding party had taken everything, but told him he could “go & see what they had left & help himself.”
The officer said no — that he had never searched a house and never would.
That night the raiders camped on the road a mile or two from the Emerson house, and procured “a fine supper” from the farms around them. Catharine Emerson, she wrote, was afraid to undress, but managed to lie down “quite exhausted” for two or three hours that night while the children kept watch.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the South's gonna rise again...someday...maybe...any time now...
Then why did Congress go to the trouble of passing that protective ordinance?
No, Congress did think he overstepped his boundary, and retroactively absolved the President.
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