Posted on 12/22/2019 4:23:47 AM PST by Bull Snipe
"I beg to present you as a Christmas gift the City of Savannah, with one hundred and fifty heavy guns and plenty of ammunition and about twenty-five thousand bales of cotton." General William T. Sherman's "March to the Sea" was over. During the campaign General Sherman had made good on his promise d “to make Georgia howl”. Atlanta was a smoldering ruin, Savannah was in Union hands, closing one of the last large ports to Confederate blockade runners. Sherman’s Army wrecked 300 miles of railroad and numerous bridges and miles of telegraph lines. It seized 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, and 13,000 head of cattle. It confiscated 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder, and destroyed uncounted cotton gins and mills. In all, about 100 million dollars of damage was done to Georgia and the Confederate war effort.
Funny thing that. The order taking away command of the Powhatan from Captain Mercer is available. The other order, which is Porter's explicit hand carried order of his mission has never been made public. Porter appears to have taken it to his grave. I guess he thought the public would be uninterested in what the President instructed him to do with the Powhatan.
Communication breakdown.
Communication breakdown? Well with Porter insisting that the whole affair be kept completely away from the Navy chain of command, it is understandable that communications could break down.
But it's not so simple. Porter actually received a telegram from Gideon Wells (After Wells had gotten Lincoln to agree) ordering him to return control of the ship to Captain Mercer. His response was to say that he had orders from the President which he would obey, and he therefore blatantly defied the order from the secretary of the Navy.
He then set about disguising the ship so that no one would recognize her, up to flying a British flag. Funny, because when he got to Pensacola, he was all about showing the flag and hoping to provoke an attack. Why did he feel the need for secrecy on the trip there when he felt no need for secrecy when he actually got there?
"'Lincoln reluctantly agreed', taking no notice of the incompatibility of the Pensacola scheme and the Sumter relief expedition, perhaps simply confusing the name of the ship whose presence was vital to assure success in both places.
Except it wasn't vital in Pensacola. In fact, the commander there initially treated it as a nuisance.
I think it was vital that it didn't show up in Charleston, because the other ships would have attacked Charleston if it had.
Could have been a mistake that the Powhatan went to Pensacola instead of Charleston, but Admiral Porter, in writing his memoirs said that if the Powhatan had showed up to lead the other ships, all of the ships would have been sunk. He said it was the most badly thought out operation he had ever seen.
Really odd, because the Generals had informed Lincoln it would take a force of 20,000 men to take and hold that area. Somehow Lincoln thought five warships and a troop transport with only a couple of hundred riflemen could do the job.
Either he was grossly foolish or he never expected them to actually do what their orders said they would do.
Porter was intercepted upon by Meigs and acceded (more or less) to Brown's order to stand down.
After Porter kept changing the ship's direction to avoid Meigs. He kept trying to steer around Meigs until Meigs put his ship directly in his path. He even said he thought about running Meigs over. Now why would he even contemplate running Meigs (in the Wyandotte) over? What was that?
Also all his cannons on the shoreward side loaded with shell and grapeshot? He was itching to get into a fight.
The next day spotters saw vessels bearing down on them. No vessel names, flags, captains, or intentions are listed in any of the accounts I read. Porter fired a warning shot. The vessels retreated and did not return.
I assume the dock was also approaching him in a suspicious manner, and that is why he felt the need to lob a shell into the dock area? Or did you miss that part?
I interpret them differently.
How do you interpret him trying to run down a Captain in another ship, load his cannons to attack gun crews on the shore, express regret at not being able to do so, and then fire at both approaching ships and a stationary dock with people on it?
He made the Declaration of Independence into a statement on the issue of slavery instead of what it actually was, which was an assertion that states had a right to be free and independent of a larger government which they saw as oppressing them.
He flipped the meaning almost 180 degrees, and used it to justify the very opposite thing which the Declaration said.
I pointed out that to a man who would lock up another man and accuse him of "treason" for writing a song, winning an election is not all that difficult.
When you are throwing people in jail for virtually nothing, people become afraid of you.
I don't know. I'd love to take the person who wrote "Baby Shark" and lock them up and throw away the key.
:)
Of course you don't. Interest in Davis would be...inconvenient.
Inconvenient to the extent that I don't see him as significant. He never had control of whether or not there would be a war. He never had control of whether or not the war would continue. He was a small fish in the larger events.
Maybe I should read more about him, because I don't know a great deal about anything of significance he did. He just isn't the focus of the Civil War. He merely stood in the shadow of Lincoln.
I've seen such quotes, but I never thought to keep up with where I found them. The economic numbers paint a picture clear enough for anyone to see who is willing to see it. Anecdotes aren't necessary, though they reinforce the same point as the economic data.
You can find such quotes in some of the southern newspapers of the day. You can also find quotes about the economic cost to the North of Southern independence from various Northern newspapers of the day.
My recollection is that you are unimpressed with newspaper quotes of this era.
The founders said there is. So did the natural law philosophers of that era.
This is why the natural right of revolution is an appeal to force of arms or war.
I've never heard of the "Declaration of Revolution." I've heard of the "Declaration of Independence."
your choice
“He (Lincoln) flipped the meaning almost 180 degrees, and used it to justify the very opposite thing which the Declaration said.”
The Declaration of Independence remains the strongest brief ever written in support of secession. Lincoln, as you say, turned it into its opposite.
The 14th amendment has done a lot of bad things. It has banned prayer in public schools. It has created a right to "gay" marriage. It has created "anchor babies". It has redefined the meaning of "natural born citizen". It has allowed unelected Federal judges to impose taxes on the people of various states, and it has caused a massive increase in Federal power.
It is the worst written amendment in the entire pile, and it has "interpretation" holes in it so large that you can drive a truck through them.
It is by far the most abused amendment in the entire constitution, and it wasn't even voluntarily ratified. It was ratified by a series of coercions to force states to obey the will of Washington DC.
“Porter actually received a telegram from Gideon Wells”
The telegram delivered to Powhatan was sent by Seward.
After a conference between Lincoln, Welles and Seward, Lincoln ordered Seward to recall Powhatan. Seward did as directed, but he signed the telegram “Seward” in stead of “by Order of the President”. Since Seward was not in Porter’s chain of Command and Porter was in possession of an order signed by the President. He chose to ignore the recall order by Seward.
Porter ignored it because it didn't say "Lincoln."
You’re trying too hard...
Or as the old saying goes:
"Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.
There’s that OCD flaring up again...
Fixed it for you.
Revolution- a forcible overthrow of a government or social order, in favor of a new system:
Secession-the action of withdrawing formally from membership of a federation or body, especially a political state:
Two different meanings. The founding fathers revolted, they never claimed anything else or expected England to just let them go. So did the southern rebels but they claimed to be legally leaving by secession. A word that appears nowhere in the Constitution.
Never had control!?! He ordered the firing of the first shot! No wonder your view of the civil war is so screwed up! Lincoln or Buchanan had ample provocation to fire the first shot but Buchanan was too spineless and Lincoln was hoping the the rebellion would be stopped by cooler heads.
As Lincoln said;
We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.
Heck, Davis was warned by his his Secretary of State that firing on Fort Sumter was a bad idea.
“Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. The firing upon that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen.” [Robert Toombs to Jefferson Davis, quoted in W. A. Swanberg, _First Blood: The Story of Fort Sumter,_ p. 286
Yes. England wasn't founded on the principle that people have a right to independence.
But we were.
So did the southern rebels but they claimed to be legally leaving by secession. A word that appears nowhere in the Constitution.
Everything needing to be said on the topic was said 11 years earlier when they signed the Declaration of Independence.
But while we are at it, New York, Virginia and Rhode Island explicitly asserted the right to leave in their ratification statements. Massachusetts and Connecticut asserted the same right during the Hartford convention in 1814.
There is more proof that secession is legal than there is that it is not.
Lincoln ordered the firing of the first shot. He ordered it on April 3 when he instructed warships to go to Charleston and blow the place to h3ll if necessary to impose his will on Charleston.
Lincoln told them "Do as I say or I will shoot."
Heck, Davis was warned by his his Secretary of State that firing on Fort Sumter was a bad idea.
Davis was warned by one person. Lincoln was warned by his entire cabinet that his actions would cause a war.
Lincoln knew he was starting a war. He did so because it was in his best interest to start a war with the South.
Then let's include.
My question then, related to your post 972, becomes: How can you say the 61,000,000 children that have been put to death under the aegis of the 14th amendment “seem to be getting along rather well under it (the synthetic constitution)?”
Now it is your choice: show some of that Lincolnian compassion, or remain flippant in your answer.
Fixed it for you.
Revolution means "to turn", or "to rotate."
In civic terms, it normally means the rulers are thrown out, and new rulers take their place, much like Napoleon took the place of Louis XVI. Like Lenin took the place of Tsar Nicholas II. Like Mao took the place of Chiang Kai-shek.
In the colonies, the same people that ran things before the "revolution" were the same people who were running things after the "revolution."
Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn pointed out that the term "revolution" was a misnomer when applied to the American separation from Britain. He said the more accurate term was "American war of independence."
So at the end of 1793, King George III was still ruling the United Kingdom, and the elite ruling class in the colonies were still ruling their respective territories.
So it wasn't in fact a "revolution." It was a separation, which does in fact mean a "secession."
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