Posted on 03/11/2021 6:26:26 AM PST by Homer_J_Simpson
WASHINGTON, Sunday, March 10.
The question of reinforcing Fort Sumpter has been under consideration in the Cabinet, and it is understood that the question whether or no it is not desirable to withdraw all the troops, except two or three men, rather than incur the bloodshed which will probably occur before troops and supplies are put into it, is now to be decided.
The immediate necessity of settling this question grows out of the fact that there is only a limited supply of bread at Fort Sumpter, but plenty of salt meat, and that it must either be re-supplied or abandoned very soon. The question has been under discussion in high military circles for several days.
Gen. SCOTT advises that reinforcements cannot now be put in without an enormous sacrifice of life. Of course his views on the subject, cannot be known officially to the public, but he is understood to say that we have neither military nor naval force at hand sufficient to supply the fort against the threatened opposition, which it would require twenty thousand men to overcome. Besides, if it should initiate civil war, in addition to uniting the South and overwhelming the Union sentiment there in the waves of passion, it would require two hundred and fifty thousand Government soldiers to carry on the struggle, and a hundred millions of money to begin with. In such an event, twenty thousand men would be needed to preserve Washington and the Government archives.
The general impression here on the streets is that the Administration has determined on withdrawing the troops from Fort Sumpter, leaving only one Corporal, two men and the Stars and Stripes, compelling the chivalry to capture the fort after all.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
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Highly Important News: The Fort Question to be Decided Immediately – 2-3
Fort Sumpter to be Evacuated – 3
The Republican Court – 3-4
The Works in Charleston Harbor – 4
Speech of Wm. C. Rives, of Virginia – 4
The Daniel Webster at Key West – 4
Sailing of the Empire City – 4
General Political Intelligence– 5
Secession Not Contented – 5
Needless Grief – 5
Police Reports – 5
Coroners’ Inquests – 5
The U.S. military literally built that island, utterly no question it was property of the North. I contend the Civil War was foremost about tenacious defense of 🇺🇸 land; other issues conveniently piggybacked that cause.
The tension is giving me ulcers. Something’s gotta give soon.
No spoilers!
Did you see George Strong's diary entry for today over on the the Harper's Weekly thread? It reads like an extra long drunk tweet. The info he is getting is fairly solid and it is making him gloomy.
Our son actually learned that in school. It was also about states rights vs a big federal government. They added slavery to get more people interested and fighting.
States’ rights yes but specifically the right of new states entering the union to permit slavery. The North sought to limit or even prevent the expansion of slavery into the territories, which would lead to congress being dominated by the South. The South hoped to gain leverage and forge policies that favored their largely agrarian economy. The issue of slavery was not an add-on. It was key, although not so much as a moral issue as an economic one. The abolitionist movement of course fueled the sentiments for emancipation on moral grounds, but they didn’t cause the war.
Back then, I believe, DC didn’t have much in the way of communications capabilities to ‘cancel’ people who they didn’t like in the South (telegraph was probably it).
Now they do. So don’t expect a repeat of the early success of the South, if states want to start going their own way again.
I think suggestions Fort Sumter will be abandoned are coming from Secretary Seward but that he will eventually flip to join Lincoln in supporting a resupply mission instead.
Property of the North? I can see an argument for claiming it was the property of the US Government, but I don't know how you can make the claim that it was the property of the "North."
I contend the Civil War was foremost about tenacious defense of 🇺🇸 land; other issues conveniently piggybacked that cause.
I contend the Civil War was primarily about Washington DC getting 73% of it's funding from the Southern states, and were quite pissed about the idea of not only losing that source of revenue, but of the possibility of Northern industries being seriously damaged by Southern states being used as transshipment depots for European products which would compete directly with businesses ran by wealthy and connected North Eastern power barons.
One of the reasons I think this is because the "North" offered the South the Corwin Amendment which would have guaranteed and protected slavery indefinitely, so clearly the Northern powers were not upset at the continuation of slavery.
But that money stuff is another matter altogether. They were *VERY* upset about the possibility of losing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue to competing Southern states.
State’s rights were respected insofar as the states were allowed to secede (even military bases in those states were abandoned). Only when those states (as their own union) attacked what was unquestionably USA 🇺🇸 military territory (which literally made the land out of ocean) did a fierce defense commence to retain that land, completed by conquest of the attacking country.
(Yes, violence would have happened anyway under some other pretext - but those cases didn’t happen, this one did,)
“North” = jurisdiction of U.S. government.
Fort Sumpter was property of U.S. government. Bad things happen to those who try to confiscate such.
And this is the grand prize winning point. Slavery could not actually expand into any territory because plantation farming was simply impossible in the territories. The feared "expansion" was all theoretical, but in real terms, was actually impossible to any significant degree.
The real situation in 1860 was that the Northern dominated congress had rigged the laws so that the Southern states were producing 73% of all the federal revenue and the bulk of that money was being spent in the Northern states, especially for railroads. Also the laws forced the Southern states to transport their export goods through well connected Northeastern shipping companies, banks, insurance, warehousing, ect at far greater costs than they would incur if they were able to use foreign shipping.
Basically the Northern states were taxing the sh*t out of them and gouging them for other services which the Northern dominated congress had written into law. (Such as the "Navigation act of 1817")
From sources I have read, about 60% of all the production of the Southern states ended up in the hands of the North Eastern power barons and their Washington DC corruptocrats.
And therefore they wanted to keep control of Congress away from the hands of the Southern states.
And it worked.
Northerners first learned that slavery was morally wrong in their churches, in what's been called the Second and Third Great Awakenings.
It's why they first abolished slavery in their own states.
But having abolished slavery in their own states, most Northerners were still content to let it continue in the South, regardless of moral concerns because of obvious economic benefits to the nation as a whole.
Still, Northern workers did not wish to compete with slaves in the western territories, for both economic and moral reasons, and that was the rock on which the Union broke.
But the key element which flipped the majority of Northerners from Democrats tolerant of Southern slavery into anti-slavery Republicans came from the threat represented by the US Supreme Court's Dred Scott decision -- fully understood, it meant slavery could not be constitutionally abolished anywhere.
As Abraham Lincoln said at the time:
The claim of Lincoln in justifying the Civil war is that the South was also the jurisdiction of the US government.
Fort Sumpter was property of U.S. government.
Just as much as Fort Ticonderoga was the property of the British Government.
Some would argue that since the United States seceded from the Union of Crowns, the property became ours, but clearly you are a person that believes the land should remain the property of the British.
That, and they discovered there wasn't a lot of use for slaves in the North east. Other than making their fortunes transporting slaves, the Northeast really didn't have much use for them.
Still, Northern workers did not wish to compete with slaves in the western territories, for both economic and moral reasons, and that was the rock on which the Union broke.
Slaves were worth today's equivalent of 100,000 dollars only because they could produce high demand goods like cotton. There is absolutely nothing a slave could be used for in the Western territories that would equate to the value he could produce in the plantation farms, and very few people would try to use them in the territories when they could make a lot more money in the cotton producing areas of the nation.
As has been pointed out before, the Wikipedia entry on "New Mexico territory" when New Mexico territory extended all the way from Texas to California, states that there were not more than a dozen slaves in the entire region.
There was simply nothing worthwhile for which they could be used in the territories that would pay better than what they could be used for on the plantations.
You also left out a very prominent reason why they didn't want slaves in the territories. They hated black people, and they didn't want them around. This is why states like Illinois passed all sorts of horrible laws to keep black people out of their state.
The powers that be in Washington DC didn't care about any of this. They wanted to keep control of congress because they were very successfully exploiting the South to line their own pockets and they wished to continue doing so.
It was always about control of congress and not about actual large scale slavery in the territories.
“By right of conquest” is a thing.
The Colonies succeeded, Britain relented.
The CSA tried but failed. Had Lee succeeded at Gettysburg, Fort Sumpter would be CSA land.
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