Posted on 08/12/2020 2:31:56 PM PDT by Jonty30
LOL! Of course it is.
Have you even read The Emancipation Proclamation? Lincoln freed the slaves in the South! He didn’t free the slaves in the North. He freed the slaves in a different country! That sounds like some of the crap Obama would pull. What do you think the US would say if Canada passed a law saying we had to turn in all of our cars? We’d laugh our heads off and tell them to go pound sand.
Except the Union never recognized the CSA. The only fools that thought they were a different country were in the south. Everyone else just knew they were children in a larger CHOP zone.
We took care of that one, too.
My guess is that King George III has similar thoughts.
I didn’t say childish; I said irrelevant, as in irrelevant as to the cause of the war or which side was responsible for it. The fundamental cause of the war was the fact that the North and South were fundamentally different societies. Once the South tried to make that official by seceding the war was inevitable. If the South bears responsibility, it’s not because of Sumter.
Yet if someone posts on here that 2+2=5 or that the sky is green, I would call them out for being factually wrong. In similar vein, while the causes and ultimate responsibility for the war are certainly matters of debate, the immediate start of hostilities is not — the South fired the first shots of the war. If one cannot accept that fact, then there’s really no point in having a debate about the other questions.
It seems that there are quite a few posters on here who fit that description. I even saw a poster list firing on Sumter as one of the actions Lincoln took to provoke the war. I agree with you that there seems to be much more emotion than historical knowledge posted on CW threads; I’m just trying to do a little to change that.
You’re right. Should have said ‘take’ instead ‘sink.
Point is the same in that slavery was already considered in a negative light.
Point well taken
I don’t know for sure, but I’m glad it was done.
You are probably correct. But King George was not willing to use all the resources at his disposal to prosecute the rebellion in the Colonies. President Lincoln was willing to use all the resources at his disposal to prosecute the rebellion he was faced with.
With all respect, you are mistaken. The South wanted a fight. The forts that the Union rightfully claimed (they were Federal property, and legally remained so even if one granted the legality of secession) were mostly not garrisoned prior to the war. Ft Moultrie had a garrison of 85 men led by Major Robert Anderson. Anderson saw that Moultrie was an indefensible position and moved his garrison to Sumter. He was essentially surrounded by hostile forces and his occupation of the fort was more like a siege by the Confederates. The fort was cut off from supplies and rations and ammunition were in short supply. An attempt was made to supply the garrison via a merchant ship, but the firing of shore batteries drove the supply ship away.
The point is that the South has no military reason to fire on Sumter or demand its surrender. A garrison of 85 men in Charleston harbor posed no real threat. Had Anderson attempted to use his position to fire on ships bound for Charleston, he would have been wiped out by the surrounding Confederate forces. The possession of the fort was nothing more than a point of honor; the South refused to allow it and the North refused to abandon it. Either side could have averted the war (at least temporarily) by backing down. Both sides refused to do so.
You are also mistaken if you think that the South believed they would lose. That’s hindsight talking. At war’s start the South was quite confident that they had better soldiers and better leaders than the North. Events mostly proved that assessment correct, at least for the first two years of the war. The losses at Gettysburg and Vicksburg, with hindsight, marked the turning point, but even through 1863, Southern confidence in ultimate victory was quite high. It was not until the capture and burning of Atlanta, Sherman’s march to the sea, and the seige warfare at Petersburg that Southern confidence waned. Certainly in April 1861 they thought they would win.
Fixed it.
Not entirely true. George probably did want to use all available resources to subdue the colonies but he couldn’t. We Americans don’t like to admit this, but we won in large part because the Revolutionary War transformed from a war of rebellion to a great power conflict after Saratoga.
George was much more concerned with defending England’s posessions in India and the Caribbean from French incursion than he was with the rebellion in America. According to the prevailing economic theories that led to mercantilism, colonies that provided raw materials unavailable to the mother country were far more valuable than colonies that were developing an industrial and commercial base, like the American colonies, especially the ones in the North.
It’s no coincidence that British strategy in America shifted to fighting in the Carolinas and Virginia after the French got involved— they had already written off New England as lost and would likely have been willing to give up on New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania as well. Obviously it would have been desirable to hold all of it, but the South, the Caribbean and India were much more valuable.
Yet poor Southerners still saw themselves as being higher socially than blacks.
See my post above. George had his hand forced by France. Had England recognized the Confederacy and formed an alliance, he too would have been forced to divert resources away from fighting the rebellion, just like George was.
North, South?!? What strange terms.
This was a war fomented by democrats against Republicans.
Have I read ? Of course sweety. Why do you think people who disagree with your asinine, incorrect opinions are not well read.
President Lincoln frees all the slaves with the passage of his thirteenth amendment to the US Constitution.
President Lincoln frees all of the slaves who’s owners were in revolt against the United States with the emancipation proclamation.
He did. The difference is that the Founding Father's won their rebellion against England while the South lost theirs.
Comment 54 in the thread said 75% of the tariffs were paid by the south. Without trying to confirm it, I assumed that was correct.
The quote you provided, talking about what the situation HAD been over the previous 70 years, ignores that the times had changed from the beginning of that time to the end. From 1844 to 1860, seven states were added to the union. MI, WI, MN, FL, TX, CA, and OR. Areas of the country where slavery was considered vital to the economy had reached it's natural limits, while the remainder of the country continued to expand. I believe that politics forced compromises in the 20 years prior to the war to appease the south, with the intention of holding the union together, but the trend pointed to an inevitable conclusion.
“What if” does not counts for nothing.
They did, but only for ten hours a day or so. Then they had to find their own food, clothing, and shelter. Read Upton Sinclair's The Jungle.
I would much rather have been Thomas Jefferson's slave than a coal miner in west Virginia.
ML/NJ
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