On this date in 1864 President Lincoln receives a Christmas gift.

[Kalamata]

>>BroJoeK wrote: "It's estimated that, all told, about 70,000 books have been written on the US Civil War, 15,000 on Lincoln alone. Of those, in his post #665 Kalamata regales us with quotes from three. Looking those three up, we can find basic information on them:"

#1: James Randall, "Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln" -- 1926 (Revisionist School)
#2: Clinton Rossiter, "Constitutional Dictatorship: Crisis Government in the Modern Democracies" -- 1948 (Revisionist)
#3: Edmund Wilson, "Patriotic Gore: studies in the literature of the American Civil War" -- 1962 (literature, Lost Causer)

>>BroJoeK wrote: "With help from these scholars, Kalamata claims that Lincoln was a dictator and tyrant."

Ignorance is bliss:

"We northerners like to read about Lincoln the martyr and the dying god, but do we want to know about Lincoln the dictator who circumvented the Constitution to wage war on the South? His best generals would have a difficult time avoiding conviction by a war crimes tribunal according to the laws of war at that time for their plunder of Southern civilization. Would such a treatise find favor with the dyed-in-the-wool northern apologists who don't want to see any tarnish on the northern assault and conquest of the South? Is America ready for that kind of insight and history? I think so. I for one, as a northerner educated in sanitized Civil War history, find a more truthful account of that war as refreshing as our honest accounts of Vietnam."

[Charles W. Adams, "When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession." Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, p.3]

Joey has never read either of the three books he listed; but he knows he doesn't like them because the authors do not kiss Lincoln's behind 100% of the time.

Joey's posts are always deceitful. This is more from Adams on Lincoln the dictator:

"There are other similarities between Caesar 's story and that of Lincoln. Both held command of the military. Both suspended civilian authority. Both had indeed ridden roughshod over their respective constitutions. Both set up military rule and dictatorship. Both intimidated the civil authorities and tossed the constitution out the window in the interest of public safety. Both were assassinated as tyrants..."

"After the attack on Fort Sumter, Lincoln assumed dictatorial powers. He circumvented his constitutional duty to call Congress in times of emergency by delaying the meeting for almost three months. In the meantime, he made the decisions, which, according to the Constitution, the Congress should have made. The first thing he did was to call out the militia from the states to put down what he said was an insurrection in the South. Even assuming this to be true, it is the duty of Congress to make such a decision according to Article 1, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution: "The Congress shall have the power... To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppressing Insurrections and repel Invasions."

"Lincoln, through his secretary of state, called out the militia of twenty-four states, using as authority a 1795 act of Congress that gave the president authority to do so, providing that the authority would cease thirty days after the beginning of the next session of Congress. In other words, it was a temporary measure in the case of an emergency, to be ruled on by Congress as the Constitution requires. With the craft of an attorney, Lincoln delayed calling Congress for almost three months, in effect giving him four months to operate his military forces without any determination by the Congress. By then, he had the war in full operation, and the Congress could do little else than sanction his caesarian acts. Six of the governors saw through this subterfuge, refused his call for troops, and rebuked his constitutional gamesmanship…"

"If Lincoln had respected the provision in the Constitution that puts the power of calling out the militia with the Congress and not the president on his own, who knows what would have happened? The border states that joined the Confederacy after Lincoln 's call for troops would have had a voice in the Congressional debate that would have followed. War may have been averted, for it seems clear that an abundance of the people in both the North and South did not want war but a peaceful solution to the crisis."

"Under the Constitution, it is the duty of the president to call the Congress into session during "extraordinary occasions." Sumter, like Pearl Harbor, was such an occasion. Why didn 't Lincoln follow the commands of the Constitution and call the Congress forthwith? Why did he, on 15 April 1861, call Congress to meet almost three months later in July? And then only after he had driven the nation headlong into war? Obviously, he did not want Congress to get involved-did not want the Constitution to get involved. Lincoln was assuming all the powers of a dictator." [Ibid. pp.36-37]

Joey has never read either of the three books he listed; but he knows he doesn't like them because the authors do not kiss Lincoln's sorry behind 100% of the time.

Mr. Kalamata

[Bull Snipe]

dry docks without ships are of little direct value. Airstrips equipped with obsolete aircraft are of little value.
Without the battleships, the carriers, cruisers and destroyers of the Pacific fleet parked at Pearl Harbor, the IJN would not have wasted their time with an attack on Pearl Harbor.

[Bull Snipe]

“Nobody was stationed there by actual orders”

Not the case. Anderson, as the senior Army officer on scene, had the authority to order his troops to a position that was more defensible. Sumter was more easily defended with 100 or so troops, than the open batteries he had occupied.

[Kalamata]

>>BroJoeK wrote: "Beginning with Clinton Rossiter, who in 1948 argued positively that "Constitutional Democracies" must in emergencies act like the ancient Roman Republic and appoint dictators to rule temporarily. He cites Lincoln as his example. The problem for both Rossiter and Kalamata is that Lincoln's actions were not those of a "dictator", but rather were built into the President's job description by the Constitution (i.e., habeas corpus), Federal Laws (i.e, 1792 Militia Act, 1807 Insurrection Act) and Founders' historical precedents against rebellion, secession & treason, etc."

Joey's posts are always deceptive. The powers he listed are powers delegated to the Congress, not to the President:

Article I, Section 8 - Powers of Congress:

To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;

Article I, Section 9 - Limits on Congress:

The privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

Lincoln usurped those powers from the Congress, which is tyranny, no matter how you squeeze it; but his actions were far, far more tyrannical. He was truly a dictator.

It is difficult to determine who was more blood-thirsty: Lincoln and his brutal generals, or the Congress and media that controlled the Northern narrative:

"In the Congress, there was a significant group of South haters, with murderous demands. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens, was willing that the South "be laid waste, and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction." Before a Republican state convention in September 1862, he urged the government to "slay every traitor-bum every Rebel Mansion.... unless we do this, we cannot conquer them." The New York Times wrote in March 1861 that the North should "destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate states," and this was before the bombardment at Fort Sumter."

"Congressman Zachariah Chandler expressed the spirit of so many in the Congress: "A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty, property, or the pursuit of happiness. Everything you give him, even life itself, is a boon which he has forfeited."

Such sentiments found their way to the European observers of the war, who found them hard to believe from a civilized people. A correspondent for the pro-Northern Macmillan Magazine, in December 1863, wrote, "How can you subjugate such a people as this? And even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth century the civilized world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race."

"On 5 May 1861, this genocidal passion against the South found analysis in the New York Herald. It quoted the views of the abolitionists: "When the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the field, and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes. They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers, and the rags of children."

"Another radical editor noted that the New York Herald called "for the punishment of all individuals in the South by hanging, and the confiscation of everybody's property in the seceding States." "Richmond," said another, "must be laid in ashes," and as for Baltimore, "it must become a heap of cinders and ashes, and its inhabitants ought either to be slaughtered, or scattered to the winds." Virginia and Maryland deserve to be "laid waste and made desolate" and 500,000 troops should "pour down from the North, leaving a desert track behind them." The editor responded, "Submission on the part of the South would not satisfy these bloody journalists of the Republican party. Far from it. They cry out: 'We mean not merely to conquer, but to subjugate.'" The editor then adds, "The people of the North are prepared for no such extremities as the brutal, bloodthirsty journals of the abolitionist school suggest."

"On 24 May 1861, the Daily Herald in Newburyport, Massachusetts, said that "if it were necessary, we could clear off the thousand millions of square miles so that not a city or cultivated field would remain; we could exterminate nine millions of white people and re-settle-re-people the lands. There is no want of ability; and if such a work is demanded, there would be no want of a will."

"It is no wonder that the Civil War generated hatred for the North and the Republican party among Southerners for well over a hundred years the bloodthirsty rhetoric of the radicals in the North in time found expression in the devastation of civilians and civilian property by Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and the commander in chief-Lincoln. It didn't end with the war, for it was then carried on in a less violent form in the Reconstruction laws for the South by the radicals. The object was to exterminate the culture of the Southerners, and to subjugate then destroy the political force of the Southern establishment, and not just the planter-slave owner class. There was to be a new order in the South, excluding the established Southerners of all classes. The radicals succeeded for a while and then moved on, leaving a wasteland in which secret societies and lawlessness prevailed. Thus, in a sense, the Northerners did exterminate a society in every way except genocide. By contrast, no such genocidal threats were made by Southerners against the North."

[Charles W. Adams, "When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession." Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp.54-56]

Is it any wonder the Southerners wanted to secede from that bunch of psychopaths?

Mr. Kalamata

[DiogenesLamp]

Not the case. Anderson, as the senior Army officer on scene, had the authority to order his troops to a position that was more defensible.

Am aware that Anderson took it upon himself to move his force there. He wasn't ordered to be stationed there by his superiors.

[DiogenesLamp]

Fort Sumter was repaired and rearmed after the war, and was extensively reworked in 1897, remaining in service until 1947, when it was retired along with most coastal fortifications that outlived their usefulness in an era of missiles and jets.

"From 1876 to 1897, Fort Sumter was used only as an unmanned lighthouse station. "

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter#After_the_war

Yeah, they put in some new guns during the Spanish American war, but it was still useless and never saw combat.

People want to pretend it had some use because they feel the need to justify why armies invaded the South and why 750,000 people needed to die fighting a pointless war.

[Kalamata]

>>BroJoeK wrote: “Finally, Kalamata quotes from Edmund Wilson’s (d. 1972) 1962 Lost Cause literary compilation. Edmund Wilson was a Big Deal in the world of literature — editor of Vogue and New Republic, a prolific author and critic of other writers: . . . Wilson was big into Marx & Freud, an anti-Cold Warrior, he was fined by the IRS and rewarded by President Kennedy. Wilson’s book, Patriotic Gore: . . . “Wilson almost entirely ignores writers who are African-American, with Forten as an exception, notably lacking mention of Frederick Douglass.

The last clause is Joey’s obligatory link to the left-wing Wikipedia.

Did you notice he rarely gives references?

****************
>>BroJoeK wrote: “Wilson was a leftwing racist.”

So was Lincoln. Lincoln was also a white seperatist who sought to keep the blacks out of Illinois, and sincerely wanted them out of our nation. His goal of keeping slavery out of the territories was “code” for keeping all blacks out — for making the territories lily-white.

Mr. Kalamata

[DiogenesLamp]

"Even assuming this to be true, it is the duty of Congress to make such a decision according to Article 1, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution: "The Congress shall have the power... To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppressing Insurrections and repel Invasions."

Reminds me of this.

October 23, 1787

"Thirdly, the absolute command of Congress over the militia may be destructive of public liberty; for under the guidance of an arbitrary government, they may be made the unwilling instruments of tyranny. The militia of Pennsylvania may be marched to New England or Virginia to quell an insurrection occasioned by the most galling oppression, and aided by the standing army, they will no doubt be successful in subduing their liberty and independency. But in so doing, although the magnanimity of their minds will be extinguished, yet the meaner passions of resentment and revenge will be increased, and these in turn will be the ready and obedient instruments of despotism to enslave the others; and that with an irritated vengeance. Thus may the militia be made the instruments of crushing the last efforts of expiring liberty, of riveting the chains of despotism on their fellow-citizens, and on one another. This power can be exercised not only without violating the Constitution, but in strict conformity with it; it is calculated for this express purpose, and will doubtless be executed accordingly."

https://thefederalistpapers.org/antifederalist-paper-29

Great foresight they had.

[DiogenesLamp]

I think it’s a silly point, because nobody builds a critical military base without intending to use it. The scale of Pearl Harbor and the scale of the destruction wrought there dwarfs Sumter and it’s zero casualties.

[Kalamata]

>>Kalamata wrote: "Lincoln was the aggressor and self-appointed dictator."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Unlike Jefferson Davis, Lincoln was elected and served constitutionally.

Joey's posts are always deceptive. Lincoln may have served a week constitutionally, but that is debatable. He was a tyrant and a butcher at heart, and he never found a law or power he didn't want to usurp.

Show us your references that show Lincoln served constitutionally.

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "Lincoln arrested most everyone who disagreed with him. That is not exactly republicanism."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Jefferson Davis arrested proportionately as many pro-Union Confederates as Lincoln arrested pro-Confederate Union citizens."

Only fool would believe you, Joey. Show us your references.

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "You are pretending the Constitution actually existed at the time of the secession. It didn't. Otherwise, the legacy of Lincoln, his merry gang of thugs, and the rubber-stamp Congress, would have been: "They hung by ropes until dead."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "That is a complete lunatic lie."

Only fool would believe you, Joey. Prove me wrong.

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "A survivor would have been Chief Justice Taney, who ruled against Lincoln's tyranny regarding habeas corpus"
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Judge Crazy Roger Taney expressed his lunatic opinion in a lower court. The US Supreme Court never agreed with him."

Only fool would believe your deception, Joey. Show us your references.

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "Lincoln would not even recognize them. He couldn't recognize them and maintain his LIE about the Confederacy being an insurrection:"
>>BroJoeK wrote: "In fact, Lincoln never called secession an "insurrection" until after Fort Sumter."

Only fool would believe you, Joey. Show us your references.

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "However, the dictator Lincoln was in "fashionable" company in those days"
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Leftist racist Edmund Wilson in 1962 comparing Lincoln with Bismarck & Lenin."

Lincoln was a leftist racist, Joey. Did you never wonder why the Far-left political hacks disguised as historians, such as Eric Foner, Allen Guelzo, and the late Harry Jaffa, have swooned over Lincoln?

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "But, ironically, both Lincoln and Bismarck pretended to be republicans, the complete opposite political theory to statism."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "Young Bismarck was a royalist, a politically reactionary, who believed the Kaiser had a divine right to rule. Older Bismarck was appointed Chancellor by the Kaiser, and dominated both the Reichstag (House) and Bundesrat (Senate) due to the strength of his personality and successes of his policies.

My point was, the two statists, Lincoln and Bismark, pretended to be republicans.

****************

>>Kalamata wrote: "Both Hitler and Lincoln had dictator-speak down to a science. Face it. Lincoln, your hero, was a power-hungry psychopath who despised the constitution and liberty."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "All of that is just insane ranting, illustrating that our new FRiend Kalamata is mentally one sick little SOB."

When Joey uses the "FRiend" label, he is trying to deceive you. It is always a good idea to have your historical facts down-pat before conversing with a deceiver like Joey.

That said, historical facts are historical facts, and Lincoln was a blood-thirsty psychopath, as were many Northern Congressmen and in the media in those days. See for yourself (reposting):

"In the Congress, there was a significant group of South haters, with murderous demands. The chairman of the Ways and Means Committee of the House of Representatives, Thaddeus Stevens, was willing that the South "be laid waste, and made a desert, in order to save this Union from destruction." Before a Republican state convention in September 1862, he urged the government to "slay every traitor-bum every Rebel Mansion.... unless we do this, we cannot conquer them." The New York Times wrote in March 1861 that the North should "destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate states," and this was before the bombardment at Fort Sumter."

"Congressman Zachariah Chandler expressed the spirit of so many in the Congress: "A rebel has sacrificed all his rights. He has no right to life, liberty, property, or the pursuit of happiness. Everything you give him, even life itself, is a boon which he has forfeited."

Such sentiments found their way to the European observers of the war, who found them hard to believe from a civilized people. A correspondent for the pro-Northern Macmillan Magazine, in December 1863, wrote, "How can you subjugate such a people as this? And even supposing that their extermination were a feasible plan, as some Northerners suggested, I never can believe that in the nineteenth century the civilized world will be condemned to witness the destruction of such a gallant race."

"On 5 May 1861, this genocidal passion against the South found analysis in the New York Herald. It quoted the views of the abolitionists: "When the rebellious traitors are overwhelmed in the field, and scattered like leaves before an angry wind, it must not be to return to peaceful and contented homes. They must find poverty at their firesides, and see privation in the anxious eyes of mothers, and the rags of children."

"Another radical editor noted that the New York Herald called "for the punishment of all individuals in the South by hanging, and the confiscation of everybody's property in the seceding States." "Richmond," said another, "must be laid in ashes," and as for Baltimore, "it must become a heap of cinders and ashes, and its inhabitants ought either to be slaughtered, or scattered to the winds." Virginia and Maryland deserve to be "laid waste and made desolate" and 500,000 troops should "pour down from the North, leaving a desert track behind them." The editor responded, "Submission on the part of the South would not satisfy these bloody journalists of the Republican party. Far from it. They cry out: 'We mean not merely to conquer, but to subjugate.'" The editor then adds, "The people of the North are prepared for no such extremities as the brutal, bloodthirsty journals of the abolitionist school suggest."

"On 24 May 1861, the Daily Herald in Newburyport, Massachusetts, said that "if it were necessary, we could clear off the thousand millions of square miles so that not a city or cultivated field would remain; we could exterminate nine millions of white people and re-settle-re-people the lands. There is no want of ability; and if such a work is demanded, there would be no want of a will."

"It is no wonder that the Civil War generated hatred for the North and the Republican party among Southerners for well over a hundred years the bloodthirsty rhetoric of the radicals in the North in time found expression in the devastation of civilians and civilian property by Sherman, Sheridan, Grant, and the commander in chief-Lincoln. It didn't end with the war, for it was then carried on in a less violent form in the Reconstruction laws for the South by the radicals. The object was to exterminate the culture of the Southerners, and to subjugate then destroy the political force of the Southern establishment, and not just the planter-slave owner class. There was to be a new order in the South, excluding the established Southerners of all classes. The radicals succeeded for a while and then moved on, leaving a wasteland in which secret societies and lawlessness prevailed. Thus, in a sense, the Northerners did exterminate a society in every way except genocide. By contrast, no such genocidal threats were made by Southerners against the North."

[Charles W. Adams, "When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession." Rowman & Littlefield, 2000, pp.54-56]

That is blood curdling. No wonder the Southerners wanted to secede from that bunch of psychopaths. Did you notice that one of the most mentally-unbalanced of all was Thaddeus Stevens.

I am not sure if I told you this, Joey, but did you know that Woodrow Wilson was a fan of three of the historical figures that you admire the most?

"The active statesman is often an incomparable teacher, however, when he is himself least conscious that he is a teacher at all—when he has no thought of being didactic, but has a whole soul full of the purpose of leading his fellow-countrymen to do those things which he conceives to be right. Read the purposes of men like Patrick Henry and Henry Clay and Abraham Lincoln, men untutored of the schools—read their words of leadership, and say whether there be anything wiser than their home-made wisdom." [Woodrow Wilson, "The Papers of Woodrow Wilson Vol 05." Princeton University Press, 1966, p.398]

How about that?

Mr. Kalamata

[Kalamata]

>>BroJoeK wrote: "In his post #693, Kalamata again detours into a lengthy off-topic explanation of his theological beliefs regarding natural science and "Biblical Science".

Joey cross-posted this topic, from another thread, much earlier in this thread in a vain attempt to smear me; and now he accuses me of being off-topic when I respond. Like I said, Joey's posts are always deceitful.

****************

>>BroJoeK wrote: "The heart of it seems to be a quote by Colin Patterson, "Can You Tell Me Anything About Evolution? A Lecture by Colin Patterson." American Museum of Natural History, Nov 5, 1981, p.3" Iirc, I first heard that kind of talk in a Sophomore-year bull session, and I think the technical term for is actually "sophomoric solipsism" = "we can't know anything for sure, so everything is just an illusion"."

Patterson was dead serious, but Joey is too scientifically-illiterate to realize it. Other famous paleontologists have made similar statements (but, again, not for public consumption.) Yet, evolutionists continue to ram their junk science down our children's throats and brainwash them into believing it to be a fact. They simply cannot let a divine foot in the door, or they might lose their funding (and their power over the minds of our children):

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen." [Richard C. Lewontin, "Billions and Billions of Demons: Review of Sagan's 'The Demon Haunted World'." New York Review of Books, 1997]

Richard Lewontin, the author of that piece, is a professor of genetics at Harvard University. If you read carefully, you can see that atheist-evolutionists (he is not alone) are willing to believe complete, abject nonsense over a Biblical solution, whether the Biblical solution makes sense, or not. For example, Noah's flood was accepted as a historical fact, until this slick, weasel of a lawyer, Charles Lyell came along:

"I am sure you may get into Q. R. [Quarterly Review] what will free the science from Moses, for if treated seriously, the party are quite prepared for it. A bishop, Buckland ascertained (we suppose Sumner), gave Ure a dressing in the 'British Critic and Theological Review.' They see at last the mischief and scandal brought on them by Mosaic systems. Eerussac has done nothing but believe in the universal ocean up to the chalk period till lately. Prevost has done a little, but is a diluvialist, a rare thing in France." [Letter to Poulett Scrope, Esq., 9 Crown Office Row, Temple, June 14, 1830, in Charles Lyell, "Life, letters and journals of Sir Charles Lyell Vol I." John Murray, 1881, Chap. XI, p.268]

Evolutionary geology was, for all practical purposes, an invention of that lawyer (Darwin was a failed theologian.) The word diluvialist is a category of scientists who believe the earth's shape was formed during Noah's flood. I am a diluvialist.

Let us see how long it takes for Joey to respond to this post, and, again, accuse me of being off-topic.

Mr. Kalamata

[Kalamata]

>>BroJoeK wrote: “Sadly, Kalamata’s post #694 consists of nothing more than childish tit-for-tat.”

Sadly, Joey is still deceiving others.

Mr. Kalamata

[Kalamata]

>>Kalamata quoting Vicksburg Daily Whig, January 1860: "By mere supineness, the people of the South have permitted the Yankees to monopolize the carrying trade, with its immense profits. We have yielded to them the manufacturing business, in all its departments, without an effort, until recently, to become manufacturers ourselves... ...By means of her railways and navigable streams, she sends out her long arms to the extreme South; and, with an avidity rarely equaled, grasps our gains and transfers them to herself—taxing us at every step — and depleting us as extensively as possible without actually destroying us."
>>BroJoeK wrote: "We've ploughed this ground before, but it may still need some disk-harrowing."

If Joey didn't plow so crooked, perhaps his furrows would produce something digestible.

******************

>>BroJoeK wrote: "First, 1860 US GDP was about $4.4 billion (from total assets of $25 billion of which slaves were $4 billion) of which the entire South produced around $800 million of which $200+ million was Southern exports. Another $200 million was "imported" by the South from the North, and yet another ~$200 million was owed by Southerners to Northern banks. These numbers make the South important, but not necessarily as important as sometimes claimed."

Every serious economist and historian who studied that time period seems to say the same thing: that the Northern merchants and industrialists were scared the South was going to secede -- scared it would financially ruin them:

"Even before Lincoln's inauguration there were abundant signs that the general uncertainty was becoming intolerable. More and more it appeared that time was not on the side of the Union, that the secession movement was actually gaining in strength. After March 4, Republican leaders bombarded Lincoln with advice favoring decisive action, and with warnings that the people would not tolerate the abandonment of Sumter. Meanwhile, the differences between Union and Confederate tariff schedules frightened many conservative merchants into a mood for drastic remedies. By the end of March numerous businessmen had reached the point where they felt that anything—even war—was better than the existing indecision which was so fatal to trade. "It is a singular fact," wrote one observer, "that merchants who, two months ago, were fiercely shouting 'no coercion,' now ask for anything rather than inaction." Even anti-Republican and anti-coercion papers could bear the suspense no longer and urged that something be done." [Kenneth M. Stampp, "The Imperiled Union: Essays on the Background of the Civil War." 1981, p.181]

Mr. Kalamata

[Kalamata]

>>Mr. Kalamata wrote: "Even assuming this to be true, it is the duty of Congress to make such a decision according to Article 1, section 8 of the U.S. Constitution: "The Congress shall have the power... To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppressing Insurrections and repel Invasions."
>>DiogenesLamp wrote: "Reminds me of this. October 23, 1787. "Thirdly, the absolute command of Congress over the militia may be destructive of public liberty; for under the guidance of an arbitrary government, they may be made the unwilling instruments of tyranny. . . "
>>DiogenesLamp wrote: "Great foresight they had."

The Antifederalist Paper #29 you quoted also predicted Lincoln:

"A standing army in the hands of a government placed so independent of the people, may be made a fatal instrument to overturn the public liberties; it may be employed to enforce the collection of the most oppressive taxes; and to carry into execution the most arbitrary measures. An ambitious man who may have the army at his devotion, may step up into the throne, and seize upon absolute power."

Mr. Kalamata

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp post #629: "Once the New York based coalition couldn't control the economics of trade with Europe, first the border states would move to the stronger economic horse, and then the midwest would move there too.
With a successful independence, the South would have found numerous other states coming into their sphere of influence due to the economic advantages of doing so.
The only people who would have been hurt were the wealthy Northern manufacturers, shippers and so forth.
The very people backing Lincoln and his efforts to stop direct Southern trade with Europe.
If left alone, the Nation would have come to look like this relatively quickly."

Much of what DiogenesLamp posts on these threads is pure fantasy of his own concocting, but in this case at least, his fantasies do reflect an underlying reality: Confederate extreme economic and political aggressiveness.
In DiogenesLamp's fantasies, "the South" doesn't just want to be "left alone", but instead was aggressively out working to destroy the Union, and therefore represented, legitimately, an existential threat to it.

Economic threat? Yes, according to DiogenesLamp.
Political threat? Absolutely, some Lost Causers tell us the act of secession alone destroyed the Constitution, and therefore the Union, so only a "tyrant" could hold it together.
What about military threat? Here posters like central_va tell us that, yes, Confederates did want to hurt damn-yankees in a passive-aggressive sort of way, but they were never a serious military threat to the Union itself.
But if we see with DiogenesLamp the Confederacy aggressing the Union economically & politically, then eventually "minor incursions" like Gettysburg in 1863 become long-term occupation and territorial aggrandizement.

In short, Confederates represented an existential economic, political and military threat to the United States, so that when Confederates formally declared war, on May 6, 1861, the Union had no real choice except to destroy the Confederate military and also the economic system (slavery) on which it was based.

DiogenesLamp: "New York is still feeding streams of lies into our national consciousness.
They are fighting back against their eventual loss of power to the normal people of America."

And here DiogenesLamp returns to his usual la-la fantasyland.
In fact, the New York metropolitan area, at 20 million people, is only 6% of US population, producing about 8% of US GDP.
Even the entire Northeast Acela corridor, at 52 million, is only 17% of US population producing 20% of US GDP and is exceeded in size and population by the Great Lakes megalopolis (Upstate NY to Wisconsin), with 56 million people and 20% of US GDP.

US Megalopolis regions, #1 Great Lakes, #2 Northeast Acela, #3 Southern California, #4 Piedmont Atlantic, #5 Texas Triangle, #6 Florida, #7 Northern California, #8 Gulf Coast...:

[BroJoeK]

quoting BJK: "Younger Pinckney claimed a lot of credit for writing the Constitution, and he is acknowledged to have inserted the fugitive slave clause into it."

DiogenesLamp: "And all the states of the Union voted for it."

Sure, just as Lincoln did in 1861, our 1787 Founders put Union first, abolition second.

[BroJoeK]

quoting BJK: "The Constitution says nothing about secession, period, but no Founder ever agreed that disunion at pleasure, meaning without either "necessity" or "mutual consent", is legitimate."

DiogenesLamp: "Except for when they *ALL* said that rightful power is based on "consent of the governed."
Which means "At Pleasure" of the people."

No, of course that's not what they said, or intended.
What they said in their 1776 Declaration was that necessity from "a long train of abuses and usurpation" drove them "to dissolve the political bonds".
"Consent of the governed" was the ultimate consequence of that necessity.

Yes, in 1788 they did a second time dissolve their political bonds (the old Articles of Confederation), and this time "at pleasure", but only by mutual consent, not "necessity" and not from any list of "abuses and usurpations" -- rather, "to form a more perfect Union", their new Constitution.

1776 -- necessity from a long train of abuses & usurpations.

1787 -- at pleasure, by mutual consent, to form a more perfect Union.

1860 -- at pleasure, no mutual consent, no necessity, no long train of abuses & usurpations.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp to DoodleDawg: "Trying to switch the subject to what Davis did is another of those "Oh Yeah? Well this guy did far worse!" arguments. (Tu Quoque.)
It is an attempt to deflect from the point of Lincoln's abuses.
Whether or not Jefferson Davis did anything wrong, has no bearing on the wrong that Lincoln did."

It's ironic to see DiogenesLamp here carping about "Tu Quoque" since Tu Quoque is pretty much the core essence of the pro-Confederate critique -- whatever Confederates did is not important, they say, because Lincoln was much worse.
They say, don't look at the beam in Confederate eyes, nothing to see there, move along, only look at the splinter in Lincoln's eye.

But Americans in 1861 had only two choices -- were they going to accept Confederate aggressions against the United States or not?
Their decision to resist Confederate aggression had nothing to do with their own "perfection" or not, and everything to do with their perception of existential threats Confederates posed.

[BroJoeK]

OIFVeteran to DiogenesLamp: "Yes people can leave a country through the natural right of revolution or rebellion."

DiogenesLamp: "Except when a nation specifically says people have a right to leave without having to go through "revolution" or "rebellion."
When the nation says you have a right to leave, it is not "rebellion" to exercise the right the nation says you have."

Of course, no Founding document ever said what DiogenesLamp likes to pretend they said.
In fact, Founders were always careful to separate events of legal necessity (i.e., 1776) from those by mutual consent, at pleasure (i.e, 1788).

OIFVeteran to DiogenesLamp: "The founders never claimed they seceded from the British empire they knew they were rebelling."

DiogenesLamp: "The laws of Britain had no provision whatsoever to allow for subjects to throw off their allegiance to the King. Allegiance was "perpetual."
However, the founding charter of this nation expressly articulates that the right to independence is a natural right given by God, and that all people possess the right to "dissolve the political bonds joining them with another."
So you see, that's the difference between British Law and American Law.
Our law recognizes a right to have independence, therefore exercising this right is not rebellion.
It is consistent with our own founding principle."

This point is at the core of DiogenesLamp's Big Lie -- his claim that any Founder ever supported an unlimited "right of secession" at pleasure.
The truth is that "at pleasure" was always restricted by mutual consent and "right of secession" was always limited to necessity from "a long train of abuses and usurpations".

But in 1860 there was neither mutual consent nor necessity when Fire Eaters began to declare their unilateral secession at pleasure.

OIFVeteran to DiogenesLamp: "The founders even stated to the world that governments shouldn’t be changed for any old reason."

DiogenesLamp: "Operative word here being "should."
"Should" is in the eye of the beholder. Do you only do those things you "should" do, or do you ever do things you shouldn't do, but do so because that is what you want to do?
Do you have a right?
If so, whether or not you should exercise that right is up to you, isn't it?"

And so we see that DiogenesLamp's Big Lie here is built on his own flipping of the term "should not"!
So "should not" means, "yes you can" in DiogenesLamp's la-la-land.
But the real truth is that "should" or "should not" has nothing to do with the right identified by our Founders in 1776.
Rather, they said, in effect, that a "right of secession" comes from "a long train of abuses and usurpations".
No such train existed in 1860.

"...But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security..."

[Bull Snipe]

“He wasn’t ordered to be stationed there by his superiors.”

Does not matter. He made the decision based on his situation. That was within his authority to do so.