Posted on 09/09/2019 9:42:11 AM PDT by NKP_Vet
Nearly all modern historians agree with Professor James McPherson’s conclusion that the Civil War was caused by Southern objections to the 1860 Republican Party’s resolve to prohibit slavery’s extension into any of the federal territories that had not yet been organized as states. The resolution originated with the Wilmot Proviso fourteen years earlier before the infant GOP had even been formed. In 1846 Pennsylvania Congressman David Wilmot introduced a rider to a $2 million appropriation intended for use in a negotiated settlement to end the Mexican War. The rider stipulated that the money could not be used to purchase land that might be acquired in the treaty if slavery was allowed in such territories. After considerable wrangling, the bill passed without the rider.
Contrary to first impressions, the Proviso had little to do with sympathy for black slaves. Its purpose was to keep blacks out of the new territories so that the lands might be reserved for free whites. As Wilmot put it, “The negro race already occupy enough of this fair continent . . . I would preserve for free white labor a fair country . . . where the sons of toil, of my own race and color, can live without the disgrace which association with negro slavery brings upon free labor.”
The same attitude prevailed during the Civil War. Abraham Lincoln readily admitted that his September 1862 Emancipation Proclamation was a necessity of war. Major General George McClellan, who then commanded the North’s biggest army and would become Lincoln’s opponent in the 1864 presidential elections, believed it was a deliberate attempt to incite Southern slave rebellions. Lincoln was himself aware that such uprisings might result.
(Excerpt) Read more at civilwarchat.wordpress.com ...
Fort Sumter was not South Carolina territory. It belonged to the United States of America.
No it wasn’t. States are sovereign and never agreed to bind themselves forever. All the evidence points to the exact opposite conclusion.
It lay within South Carolina’s sovereign territory. It’s government was this legally entitled to claim it.
The property for the fort was granted to the United States, in perpetuity, by the Legislature of the State of South Carolina. The State legally relinquished all claim to that of land.
Executive Mansion, Washington, August 22, 1862.
Hon. Horace Greeley:
Dear Sir.
I have just read yours of the 19th. addressed to myself through the New-York Tribune. If there be in it any statements, or assumptions of fact, which I may know to be erroneous, I do not, now and here, controvert them. If there be in it any inferences which I may believe to be falsely drawn, I do not now and here, argue against them. If there be perceptable in it an impatient and dictatorial tone, I waive it in deference to an old friend, whose heart I have always supposed to be right.
As to the policy I "seem to be pursuing" as you say, I have not meant to leave any one in doubt.
I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause. I shall try to correct errors when shown to be errors; and I shall adopt new views so fast as they shall appear to be true views.
I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free.
Yours, A. Lincoln.
And that belief, that all men every where should be free, put him morally head and shoulders above every leader of the pretend confederacy, and a lot of northern leaders too.
Nonsense. States enjoyed the illusion of sovereignty while colonies of the crown, and regarded each other as technically sovereign in anticipation of forming the union. They then ceded a portion of their sovereignty when they ratified the Constitution.
Oh, and yes they did agree to bind themselves together forever - in The Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union.
Actually the slaves themselves forced the issue. Soon after the firing on Fort Sumter three slaves escaped from and went to Fort Monroe where they were declared contraband of war.
“The three slaves, Frank Baker, James Townsend and Sheppard Mallory, had been leased by their masters to the Confederate Army to help construct defense batteries at Sewell’s Point, across the mouth of Hampton Roads from the Union-held Fort Monroe. They escaped at night and rowed a skiff to Old Point Comfort, where they sought asylum at Fort Monroe.”
These escapes to the Union lines continued to accelerate as the Union Army pushed south. African-Americans were not just passive recipients of freedom but active participants in seeking freedom out.
They’ll even deny the plain wording in the Declaration’s of secession by the states themselves. They are completely deluded or outright lying when they slavery was not the root cause of the civil war.
Not any more after South Carolina seceded. It and the land it sat in belonged to South Carolina. Imagine trying to claim a fort on Staaten Island really still belonged to Britain after 1776. Same thing.
Relinquished all claim.....so long as South Carolina was part of the US. It no longer was. It’s sovereign government just like any other sovereign government has the power to lay claim to any land within its territory necessary for national defense.
No. States were not sovereign when they were colonies. After the Treaty of Paris their sovereignty was recognized individually by Britain. Nowhere in either the Articles of Confederation or the constitution did states agree to surrender their right to unilateral secession. The 10th Amendment makes clear all powers not delegated by the states to the federal government remain with the states. Three states including the two biggest passed express reservations of their right to unilateral secession at the time the constitution was ratified. Nobody said this was in any way inconsistent with the constitution.
Interesting that this stipulation appears nowhere in the official records. You're just making it up as you go, aren't you?!
Once they’re out.....they’re out. The sovereign can lay claim to any land within their sovereign borders.
has Cuba ever fired on Guantanamo Bay?
Gitmo is sovereign Cuban territory held under lease agreement.
It’s also not in Havana harbor in a position to interdict all shipping entering or exiting Havana harbor.
And how did that work out?
Might and right are two different things.
So the insurrectionists learned (but some of their ancestors failed that lesson).
Defined sovereignty was conveyed via charters issued by the crown. This assured independence of each colony to rule as they sought fit. All under the auspices of the crown of course.
The crown allowed this latitude (more or less) for generations to the effect that individual colonies considered themselves sovereign from one another even though they recognized that they were wholly beholden to the crown.
This series of inter-relationships was what the individual colonies brought to the Continental Congress when hammering out the Articles of Confederation.
It is here that I should take note at how utterly wanting this arrangement (union under The Articles Of Confederation) was and how imperative the Founders realized correcting it via the US Constitution became.
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