Posted on 05/26/2021 5:31:39 AM PDT by Homer_J_Simpson
WASHINGTON, Saturday, May 25.
The false alarm of a fight in the neighborhood of Alexandria, which was raised about one o'clock to-day, had one great advantage -- it tested the disposition of our troops, and made manifest their efficiency. As the signal went from camp to camp that the rebels were attacking the wing, there was a prompt and decisive response of "ready," and they were ready. I never realized until to-day the celerity of movement which drill and discipline insures.
SHERMAN's battery of six-pounders made the distance from their quarters to Long Bridge at the rate of nine miles an hour. The Massachusetts Fifth were under arms, in line, and off to the Bridge before there appeared to be time for the orders to be ready.
N.P. BANKS is in town. It is understood to be settled that he will be made a Major General.
The Massachusetts Fifth were ordered to be ready with all their equipments, at 5 o'clock, but up to this time have not left the Treasury building. All the other Regiments ordered over the river to-day, when the false alarm was given, have gone back to their company.
I have just seen a member of the New-York. Seventh, who says he is from there this evening. He says everything is quiet. The work at Arlington Heights was going on lively. He says there was great excitement when the alarm was given on the other side; that a large body of men were advancing, some miles distant, upon their post.
The troops who went over the river confidently expected a fight but not a man flinching when the order was given, that I can learn.
Gen. MANSFIELD regrets the false alarm, but is much gratified at the spirit manifested by the troops.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
First session: November 21, 2015. Last date to add: Sometime in the future.
Reading: Self-assigned. Recommendations made and welcomed.
Posting history, in reverse order
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Link to previous New York Times thread
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For anyone interested, I am reading a fabulous book (2013, but I just got it) called “Freedom National,” developing the anti-slavery strategy of Republicans and showing that from the time of the Constitution freedom was considered a national right, while “servile persons” or “unfree persons” was considered only a local right. The momentum and direction even of Jefferson and the other founders was freedom nationally.
The significance of the “persons” vs “property in men” was critical. The Constitution viewed slaves as PERSONS in a servile status, whereas Roger Taney in Dred Scott called them chattel property. Once this distinction started to be made by antislave voices in the 1830s, the South had already lost, for Madison, the author of the Constitution, had said there was no right to chattel slavery. Any conflict between people (persons) and property would be decided in favor of people.
Great book.
He made a very clear distinction between chattel slavery in his day and slavery even in the Old Testament where slaves had some rights and weren't property.
We've heard it said that many Americans were expecting a short, relatively bloodless war.
This editorial says the opposite: that Americans are expecting and prepared for "a long and bloody war".
I doubt if any wet realize just how long & bloody it will become.
Thanks for your recommendation, I'll check it out.
Our Lost Causers on these threads typically address this issue by first claiming it's just a Leftist lie to say Civil War was "all about slavery".
It wasn't, Lost Causers claim, but rather was about Southern "States Rights" and that evil leftist Democrat Lincoln's plan to economically enslave the South.
Some further claim that slavery was dying a natural death anyway and would have, in due time, been abolished peacefully throughout the South.
In other words, our Lost Causers here don't usually defend slavery itself, but rather just attack Northern opposition to it as "unconstitutional".
Only one poster, DiogenesLamp, insists that not only was slavery constitutionally enshrined, but as so wisely expressed by SCOTUS Chief Justice Roger Taney, it was abolition which our Founders intended to make "unconstitutional".
Curiously, DiogenesLamp will not confess to supporting the Left's 1619 Project, but his condemnation of our Founders could hardly be less full-throated than theirs.
I passed your recommendation to the American Civil War Facebook group, where I link my FR posts. It already has 3 Likes.
Absolutely Taney did change the reading of the constitution. But you won’t find “slavery” or “property in slaves” anywhere in the Constitution, rather unfree “PERSONS” which specifically destroys Taney’s claim.
Just read the myriad of Rebel newspapers that said if they couldn’t expand slavery it would die, so the South had a choice of a fast death via military emancipation or a slow death by a “cordon of freedom” that choked off its outside support while forcing the southern tyrants to open their censored mails and ports.
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