Posted on 12/24/2003 10:30:18 AM PST by Grand Old Partisan
Abraham Lincoln, with his son Tad in tow, walked around Richmond, Virginia, one day 138 years ago, and if you try to retrace their steps today you won't see much that they saw, which shouldn't be a surprise, of course. The street grid is the same, though, and if you're in the right mood and know what to look for, the lineaments of the earlier city begin to surface, like the outline of a scuttled old scow rising through the shallows of a pond. Among the tangle of freeway interchanges and office buildings you'll come across an overgrown park or a line of red-brick townhouses, an unlikely old belltower or a few churches scattered from block to block, dating to the decades before the Civil War and still giving off vibrations from long ago.
No.
No.
But that's not the issue, you deny them the right of self government. If they hadn't attacked the custom's house at fort Sumter, would you have a different opinion? Face it, power, not principle, has your allegiance.
But they didn't. For folks that started the fight in the first place, it is more than sissy to cry about the outcome --- but that's what Neo_Confederates do --- cry like little girls about their "rights" when the so-called "republic" they were trying to start was all about denying rights to others. A damned drunken rebel mob in Baltimore caused the first deaths of the war by attacking troops doing no more than passing through the city, from one station to another, on their way to the nation's capital. You shoot at soldiers then or now, you got no bitch if you find a bayonet up your behind. Even before Lincoln took office, the so-called Confederate Government had a standing army, ready to fight, that was 10 times larger than the Union army. They had more troops massed around Fort Sumter alone than existed in the entire Union army, and you insist that Lincoln started the fight. You sound like Baghdad Bob.
My allegiance is with the concept of individual rights. How much the United States of America's policies coincide with that concept ebbs and flows, and as consequence I don't confuse the two, and maintain my allegiances accordingly. 'My country, right or wrong' is a slogan for people unable to think and self govern, and fit to be ruled.
I insist? I don't do so alone:
"For three weeks the administration newspapers have been assuring us that Fort Sumter would be abandoned... Mr. Lincoln saw an opportunity to inaugurate civil war without appearing in the character of an aggressor" - April 13, 1861 Providence Daily Post
...this unarmed vessel... is a mere decoy to draw the first fire from the people of the South, which act by the pre-determination of the government is to be the pretext for letting loose the horrors of war." - April 12, 1861 Jersey City American Standard
Jefferson Davis appointed a number of peace commissioners, in conformity with a resolution of the Confederate Congress, whose mission was to travel to Washington, D.C., in March 1861, before the attack on Fort Sumter, and offer to pay for any Federal property on Southern soil as well as the Southern portion of the national debt. Lincoln refused to even see them or acknowledge their existence (like you!). Napoleon III offered to mediate the dispute, but Lincoln refused to meet him as well.
If you doubt Lincoln's aforethought, consider as well his letter to naval commander Gustavus Fox (May 1, 1861 - after the fact), "You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation us justified by the results."
You are just full of Neo-Confederate myths. Sumter was not, and never had been a Customs House. It technically wasn't even a fort. It was still under construction and noncommissioned when Anderson evacuated his handful of men from totally indefensible positions at Fort Multree(sp?) on the mainland where there was no defence from an attack from the land side. He could have been overrun in a matter of minutes if he had stayed there. Anderson snuck his men in small boats out to the unoccupied island in the middle of the night and were the first soldiers or representatives of the Federal government to EVER occupy thst site. Sumter was a Federal boondoggle that had been "under construction" for 30 years after being lobbied for by none other that champion of small government, and opponent to "internal improvements", John C. Calhoon. It served no military purpose because as was seen through the civil war, Charleston harbor could be perfectly well defended from the mainland. There was no military need for the construction of an artificial island with no direct access to the land, and no hope for resupply from the sea. But it did provide a generation of federal construction jobs and spending for Charleston.
Try reading some real history instead of those Crown Rights neo-confederate fairy tails.
Of course you could be describing the Boston Massacre, or Lexington Green...
Having declared our Independence from Britain, how long would we tolerate a British Fort in New York harbor trying to collect taxes on our commerce? When they rebuffed our entreaties what do you think we would have done?
Good. You don't negoiate with extortionists under any circumstances. And where exactly would the President of the United States gain constitutional permission to give away Federal property at any price. Since you're such a stickler on the Constitution, why don't you show us that clause that allows the President to give away land and property without congressional apporval. When did the confederates ever petition congress, or the courts, to gain permission to take that property? Unilateral secession, to paraphrase Madison, is nothing but revolution.
It was no damn accident that Jeff Davis waited till Congress was out of session before he initiated hostilities. He considered Lincoln to be some naive country rube who would freeze up in a crisis like Buchanan did. Lincoln didn't freeze. He instead preserved the last great hope mankind --- The United States of America.
Napoleon III offered to mediate the dispute...
ROTFLMAO. I'm sure Charic offered to "mediate" between Bush and Saddam too. Should we have taken that deal? The French are always the French. Are they your buddies?
Again. Fort Sumter was not a Customs House, never had been, and never became one. You live in a land of myths and lies. The Charleston Customs house had been in rebel hands since December of 1860. Any tariffs collected in Charleston went to the Confederate treasury. Anderson and his men collected no tariffs --- ZERO. They interfered with no commerce in Charleston Harbor. They didn't fire a shot at anyone until they were fired upon.
Davis needed the war, not Lincoln. After months of standoff, support for secession in the upper south, especially Virginia and North Carolina, was slipping. The Confederacy couldn't last long without those two. If he hadn't initiated a shooting war, his little 7-state slave/cotton republic would have collapsed on it's own as people finally came to there senses and realized the economic damage they had done to themselves.
Right you are, the U.S. Custom's House was being built (started in 1853) and was seized on New Year's Eve. Fort Sumter, positioned in the midst of the harbor's mouth, was just intended with the other harbor fortifications, to enforce the Federal control of traffic.
Now, if they hadn't attacked Fort Sumter, would you have a different opinion?
Again you don't answer the question. How long, having declared our independence, would America tolerate a British fort with guns overlooking New York?
The Confederacy couldn't last long without those two. If he hadn't initiated a shooting war, his little 7-state slave/cotton republic would have collapsed on it's own as people finally came to there senses and realized the economic damage they had done to themselves.
What economic damage?
What aspect of the Constitution would it violate?
Article 2, Section. 2. Clause 2: He shall have Power, by and with the Advice and Consent of the Senate, to make Treaties, provided two thirds of the Senators present concur
Never suggested it was a unilateral power, but the Constitution does charge the executive with negotiating treaties.
Was that actually an answer to my question? Can you provide me the Article, Section, and Clause which you assert the President would violate for acknowledging the soveriegnty of a State?
You are very ignorant of history, aren't you. You know the names, but you don't know the events.
The British march through the Mass. countryside in April of 1775 was for the express purpose of arresting the patriot leaders who had committed no crimes and seizing guns from the local militia who had committed no crimes. It was the heavy hand of dictatorship that was resisted.
The Union troops who were passing through Baltimore in April of 1861 were not attempting to arrest anyone or to take anyone's guns. They were simply marching from one train station to another, a distance of about 1 mile down Pratt St. --- from one side of the inner harbor to the other -- to get on trains headed to Washington. They weren't staying in Baltimore, and had no intentions of doing anything in Baltimore except to change trains. They were attacked by a drunken mob, lead by treasonous confederate agents. Many of the soldiers were even unarmed.
To attempt to compare those situations shows why you are sucked in by this neo-confederate bull crap. You are ignorant of your own history.
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