Some of the items qualify (in the publisher's opinion) for more than one category, but for the sake of brevity will only be presented once.
| Factual Errors -- Here we deal with actual errors of historical fact which can be verified by reference to standard historical sources. |
| Page 5: |
"This doctrine [secession] was even taught to the cadets at West Point, including almost all of the top military commanders on both sides of the conflict" This is a reference to William Rawle's treatise on the Constitution (A View of the Constitution of the United States, 1825), which was used as a text at West Point for one or two years in the mid-1820's, and then replaced by a different book which did not, in fact, advocate the legality of secession. The claim that DiLorenzo makes was made often in the postwar era in publications such as the Southern Historical Society Papers, and was soundly refuted in an article published in The Century, vol. 78, no. 4, (Aug. 1909), pp. 629-635, written by Col. Edgar S. Dudley. Jefferson Davis furnishes some of the supporting evidence to refute the claim that Rawle was a text of long standing at the Academy (see the Southern Historical Society Papers [SHSP], vol. 22, p. 83). An extended discussion of this issue is in Douglas Southall Freeman's biography of Lee, RE Lee, vol. 1, pp. 78-79, and Thomas Fleming's West Point: The Men and Times of the United States Military Academy, p. 59. |
| Page 6: |
"Chapter 7 details how Lincoln abandoned the generally accepted rules of war, which had just been codified by the Geneva Convention of 1863." I can find no reference to a Geneva Convention of 1863. The Avalon Project website at Yale mentions an 1864 Geneva Convention, which undoubtedly involved some meetings in 1863, but this was confined in scope to the treatment of the wounded. The next Geneva Convention is dated 1928 (except for an 1868 Convention extending the work of the 1864 Convention to naval warfare), and concerns only the use of gas warfare; the first Hague Convention does not occur until 1907. For more detail the reader is referred to the article "The United States and the Development of the Laws of Land Warfare" by Capt. Grant R. Doty (U.S. Military Academy) in the journal Military Law Review, vol. 156, pp. 224-255, 1998. |
| Page 8: |
"Lincoln's war created the 'military-industrial complex' some ninety years before President Eisenhower coined the phrase." While this appears to me to be an outlandish assertion which cries out for some kind of substantiation, DiLorenzo provides no footnote to support his claim. I, for one, find any comparison of the 1870's era United States military-industrial "complex" with what existed beginning in the 1950's to be unsupportable, although I confess it is the kind of negative assertion which it is difficult to prove. It is worth pointing out that Eisenhower was warning against a permanent establishment, which was not the case in the post-Civil War period, when the United States military shrank from a force of several million to something like 25,000. |
| Page 25: |
"No abolitionist was ever elected to any major political office in any Northern state." Thaddeus Stevens (Congressman from Pennsylvania, 1848-1868), Salmon Chase (Governor [1856-1861] and Senator [1849-1855] from Ohio), and Charles Sumner (Senator from Massachusetts, 1851-1874) would be suprised to read this. While the definition of "abolitionist" might be a point of contention here, these three men --- along with Ben Wade, Senator from Ohio --- certainly held to extreme antislavery views. |
| Page 26: |
"[Lincoln] was thus the North's candidate in the election..." Stephen A. Douglas would have been surprised to read this. |
| Page 35: |
"At the same time, it is important to note that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave." This is simply absurd on its face, for the Emancipation Proclamation was the legal authority for the freeing of most of the slaves in the South. For example, all of the slaves in Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, and Florida, were freed under the authority of the Emancipation Proclamation; freedom perhaps did not come until the Union Army arrived, but once this happened the slaves in that area were free. Moreover, any slaves from these areas who had escaped to Union lines --- and there were many in this category --- would have been freed from bondage the instant the Proclamation went into effect. |
| Page 37: |
"The British writer Earl Russell noted ..." Is this a mangled citation for the British Foreign Secretary Earl (as in a title of nobility) Russell? It's a minor point, but for the author not to know this --- and the way the passage is constructed he clearly does not know this --- is an unfortunate reflection on his knowledge of the period. The point is not that DiLorenzo identifies Russell as a writer --- apparently he was one --- but that he does not appear to know that Russell was the British Foreign Secretary during the Civil War years. |
| Page 38: |
DiLorenzo puts the First Battle of Bull Run as occurring on July 16, 1861, instead of July 21. Again, this is a minor point, but it highlights DiLorenzo's sparse knowledge of the historical context. |
| Page 44: |
"An eyewitness to the [New York draft] riots was Colonel Arthur Fremantle, the British emissary to the Confederacy." This creates the impression that Fremantle had some kind of official status, which he did not have. See Jay Luvaas's book on the European view of the Civil War (The Military Legacy of the Civil War, University Press of Kansas, 1988 [orig. University of Chicago Press, 1959] p. 21). Again, this is a minor slip, but it should be apparent by now that the book has all too many such minor slips. At some point the "slips" become evidence of "sloppiness." |
| Page 68: |
"In virtually every one of the Lincoln-Douglas debates, Lincoln made it a point to champion the nationalization of money and to demonize Jackson and the Democrats for their opposition to it." According to James McPherson writing in his book Battle Cry of Freedom (page 182), "Tariffs, banks, internal improvements, corruption, and other staples of American politics received not a word in these debates --- the sole topic was slavery." While a careful examination of the text of the debates --- available online here --- shows that Prof. McPherson is exaggerating a bit, the essential truth of his assessment holds up under scrutiny. By a large margin, race and slavery were the dominant topics of the debates; the issues of the bank and tariffs and monetary policy were marginal at best. |
| Pages 87-88: |
DiLorenzo cites John Quincy Adams as supporting a right to secession in his 1839 Discourse, "The Jubilee of the Constitution," pp 66-69. On page 68 of the Discourse, Adams writes, "In the calm hours of self-possession, the right of a state to nullify an act of Congress, is too absurd for argument, and too odious for discussion.. The right of a state to secede from the union is equally disowned by the principles of the Declaration of Independence." Adams's subsequent reference to a right of the people in the states to dissolve the political bands that had held them in union is explicitly compared by him to the revolution of 1776. But that makes it, not a legal right, but a natural, extra-legal right. In short, it is the right of revolution as found in Locke and acknowledged by nearly every American statesman from Jefferson to Lincoln, and measured, as Adams says, by "[t]he tie of conscience, binding them to the retributive justice of Heaven." Since DiLorenzo apparently does not understand the distinction between legal and natural right, he completely misreads the whole speech. |
| Page 174: |
"In 1863 an international convention met in Geneva, Switzerland, to codify rules of warfare that had been in existence for more than a century." This is inaccurate on several levels. As noted earlier, there was no Geneva convention in 1863, not one that codified rules of warfare (except as they applied to wounded soldiers; this chapter of DiLorenzo's book is titled "Waging War on Civilians"); of equal importance is that the entire concept of "the law of war" was very fluid at this time. The generally regarded authority was the work of the Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel, The Law of Nations, published in 1758; a 19th century edition is available online. |
| Page 175: |
DiLorenzo correctly mentions Henry Halleck as the author of a book on international law, but characterizes this book as having "informed virtually all the top commanders in the Union army (and the Confederate army as well)." It appears to have escaped DiLorenzo's radar screen that Halleck's book was not published until 1861, and so could not have informed any of the "top commanders" in either army. |
| Page 184: |
"Upon entering Jackson, Mississippi, in the spring of 1863, Sherman ordered a systematic bombardment of the town every five minutes, day and night." Does DiLorenzo really mean to say that after he occupied the town, Sherman ordered it bombarded? This makes no sense at all. Checking through the Official Records, one finds that this bombardment occurred during Sherman's expedition to Jackson after the fall of Vicksburg, and was in response to the fact that the Confederates were defending the town. See Sherman to Grant, OR, Ser. 1, vol. XXIV, pt. 2, pp. 524-525. |
| Distortions of Interpretation |
| Page 4: |
"It is very likely that most Americans, if they had been given the opportunity, would have gladly supported compensated emancipation as a means of ending slavery " While this might well be true (although I personally doubt it), DiLorenzo provides no evidence that any of the slaveholding states would have accepted an offer of compensated emancipation. In 1862, Lincoln proposed compensated emancipation to the Congressional delegations from the (loyal) Border States; they rejected it. Why does DiLorenzo assume that the Deep South states would have accepted a similar offer? The extensive writings from leading Southerners in defense of slavery (see this website for a sampling) argues that they would not have voluntarily given it up. And, it should be pointed out, if any slave-owning state had wanted to offer a compensated emancipation plan on their own, they had all the authority they needed. I am unaware of any state offering such a plan. So where is the evidence that any slave state would have accepted such a plan? |
| Page 17: |
"Some ten years later, December 1, 1862, in a message to Congress, Lincoln reiterated his earlier assertions: 'I cannot make it better known than it already is, that I strongly favor colonization.'" DiLorenzo makes a big issue of Lincoln's support for colonization, but he overlooks the fact that it disappears from Lincoln's agenda after this 1862 message to Congress. Most authors accept that this represents a change of heart on Lincoln's part. DiLorenzo simply ignores it. (He also ignores Frederick Douglass's comments on Lincoln's lack of racial prejudice.) |
| Pages 10-32 |
DiLorenzo's entire point in Chapter 2 is "Lincoln's Opposition to Racial Equality." Let's hear what others had to say about Lincoln's ideas along this line. During the senatorial debates in 1858, Stephen Douglas charged that Lincoln "objects to the Dred Scott decision because it does not put the Negro in the possession of the rights of citizenship on an equality with the white man." Now it could well and truly be said that this was asserted in the midst of a political campaign, and it is the nature of politicians to frame their assertions so as to place their opponents in the worst possible light. Fair enough. But why does DiLorenzo then insist that each and every one of Lincoln's statements --- made to racially prejudiced Illinois audiences --- be taken literally? Why is Lincoln not allowed to be a politician trying to walk the tightrope between what he believes and what the electorate believes? |
| Page 20: |
"Lincoln had no intention of doing anything about Southern slavery in 1860." This is true as far as it goes, but it misses the point. Lincoln had spent the six years since his re-entry into politics in 1854 denouncing slavery as morally wrong. This is the theme of literally every speech he gave from 1854 to his election as president, and it was the theme of much of his private correspondence as well. In December of 1860, he would write to his old friend and fellow former Whig, Alec Stephens of Georgia, "You think slavery is right and should be extended; while we think slavery is wrong and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us." |
| Page 32 |
DiLorenzo ends this chapter by saying, "The foregoing discussion calls into question the standard account that Northerners elected Lincoln in a fit of moral outrage spawned by their deep-seated concern for the welfare of black slaves in the deep South." The problem is that this assertion is based on a false premise. I don't think there is a "standard account that Northerners elected Lincoln in a fit of moral outrage..." |
| pp. 38-43 |
A large portion of Chapter 3 is devoted to a summary of the military history of the Civil War prior to the Emancipation Proclamation. This summary is extremely shallow and one-sided. The account of the Battle of Fredericksburg is particularly poor. The summary almost entirely emphasizes the so-called "eastern theatre" of the war, and almost completely ignores the "western theatre." The reason for this is fairly obvious: DiLorenzo's purpose here is to show that Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation out of desperation in the midst of losing the war. But DiLorenzo's construction of the military history conveniently ignores almost all Federal successes, and minimizes those it does not ignore. Federal victories at Pea Ridge, Roanoke Island, Port Royal, New Orleans, and Corinth are ignored. The extent of the victories at Forts Henry and Donelson (12,000 Confederates captured) are minimized as "smaller battles." The importance to the Emancipation Proclamation of the battle at Antietam or Sharpsburg in September, 1862, is completely ignored. |
| Pages 54-84 |
DiLorenzo writes as if Lincoln's embrace of tariffs were a greater betrayal of liberty than the Confederacy's attempt to nullify the results of a free election and embrace of the "positive good" theory of slavery. Why does DiLorenzo concentrate his moral indignation on the man who emancipated slaves rather than on the Confederate leaders who fought to keep them on the plantation? There is a natural right of revolution but no legal or constitutional right of secession. If any state can leave the Union any time it wants, without first obtaining the consent of all the other parties to the compact, then there is no Union, only a temporary alliance of convenience. This, however, was not what the founders envisioned when they framed the Articles of Confederation ("perpetual union between the states") and, later, the Constitution ("a more perfect union"). |
| Shoddy Scholarship |
| Page 2: |
"The [Civil War] created the highly centralized state that Americans labor under today." Those of us familiar with the New Deal and the Great Society might take issue with this unsupported assertion. Those of us familiar with the dynamics of the Progressive Era might also disagree. |
| Page 3: |
"Lincoln thought of himself as the heir to the Hamiltonian political tradition" This is another unsupported assertion (no footnote is given), and I conducted a brief experiment to see if Lincoln's own words would back it up. I went to the Lincoln Papers online site and did a simple search on the word "Hamilton." If DiLorenzo's assertion were valid, it seems clear to me that I ought to get a lot of hits; I got a grand total of 26 hits, the first three of which were not to Alexander Hamilton! In fact, looking through the citations, only five of them referred to Alexander Hamilton; the rest were to locations named Hamilton or to Union officers named Hamilton. It seems to me that this is a sparse degree of citation for someone who thought of himself as Hamilton's "heir." |
| Page 7: |
"Chapter 9 describes Lincoln's economic legacy: the realization of Henry Clay's American System. Many (primarily) Southern statesmen had opposed this system for decades." DiLorenzo conveniently ignores the many prominent Southern Whigs who favored Clay's ideas and the many Northern Democrats who did not. The point is that the debate over the American System did not split along North-South lines. |
| Page 15: |
"In twenty-three years of litigation [Lincoln] never defended a runaway slave, but he did defend a slaveowner." The reference to defending a slaveowner is to the notorious Matson case, in which Lincoln represented (as an assistant) a Kentuckian who owned land in Illinois which he worked with the help of some slaves he brought over from Kentucky for part of the year. There is no denying that this case causes some embarassment to those who hold Lincoln in high esteem, but the fact is that Lincoln did defend a black woman, Nance, who was accused of being a slave (Bailey v. Cromwell, 4 Ill. 71 [1841]; strictly speaking, Lincoln did not represent Nance, he simply demonstrated that her alleged owner could not establish that she had ever been a slave, thus legally establishing her as a free person under Illinois law). While DiLorenzo's assertion, "he never defended a runaway slave," may be, strictly speaking, true, to omit the Nance case in this discussion is shoddy scholarship. |
| Page 24: |
"The more or less 'official' interpretation of the cause of the War between the States, as described in The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, by historian William A. Degregorio, asserts that the slavery issue 'pitted abolitionists in the North who viewed it as a moral evil to be eradicated everywhere as soon as practiable against southern extremists who fostered the spread of slavery into the territories.'" I, for one, have never heard of William A. Degregorio nor The Complete Book of U.S. Presidents, and I would think that many better sources would exist for an "official" interpretation. This is nothing more than a strawman, and a weak one at that. No serious scholar takes this view of the Civil War, and while I do grant that many ordinary citizens might, that is an indictment of history education, not of Lincoln's record. |
| Page 45: |
DiLorenzo states that the emancipation proclamation "caused a desertion crisis in the U.S. Army. At least 200,000 Federal soldiers deserted; another 120,000 evaded conscription; and at least 90,000 Northern men fled to Canada while thousands more hid out in the mountains of central Pennsylvania to place themselves beyond the reach of enrollment officers." This statement is referenced to p. 67 of The Confederate War by Gary Gallagher. However, this is wrong in two ways. First, no such statements are to be found in Gallagher's book, either on the page noted or anywhere else. (Gallagher's book tends to focus only on the Confederate side of the war.) Second, DiLorenzo is blaming all desertions on the U.S. side of the Civil War on the Emancipation Proclamation --- 200,000 is the consensus estimate for the total number of deserters throughout the war, according to Mark Weitz's article on desertion in the Encyclopedia of the American Civil War (Santa Barbara, CA: ABC-CLIO, 2000). Needless to say, some Federals deserted before the proclamation was passed, so not all the desertions can be ascribed to it, and it seems unlikely that every U.S. soldier who deserted after September 1862 did so because of the proclamation. |
| Pages 125-126: |
"Since they were so dependent on trade, by 1860 the Southern states were paying in excess of 80 percent of all tariffs..." There is no question that some prominent Southerners believed this, but it is difficult to reconcile that belief with the data. Stephen Wise's book on blockade running (Lifeline of the Confederacy, University of South Carolina Press, 1988) gives a table of tariff amounts collected at some ports (page 228); according to these figures, the Northern ports of New York, Boston, and Philadelphia took in more than $40 million in tariff duties, while the Southern ports of New Orleans, Charleston, Mobile, Savannah, Norfolk, and Richmond took in less than $3 million, total. While some of the import duties paid in the North would no doubt be on goods sold to Southerners, it is difficult to accept that enough of this happened to result in 80% of the tariff being paid by Southerners, given the customs house figures. Even if DiLorenzo's intent was to characterize the effect on Southerners of paying higher prices for tariff-protected domestic goods, it is difficult to justify his claim. The burden of the tariff would have fallen almost completely on the consumers, and the North had many more consumers than did the South. |
| Page 128: |
"To a very large extent, the secession of the Southern states in late 1860 and early 1861 was a culmination of the decades-long feud, beginning with the 1828 Tariff of Abominations, over the proper economic role of the central government." The documentary record of the Secession Winter, and the arguments put forward by the secessionists themselves, argues against this claim. See, for example, the documents archived here. |
| Page 131: |
"Even though the large majority of Americans, North and South, believed in a right of secession as of 1861..." DiLorenzo provides no basis for this statement, which is refuted by the fact that Lincoln had wide-spread support for the war effort. The several resolutions by Northern state legislatures condemning secession as treason or rebellion would also argue against this assertion. See the resolutions of New York, Maine, Minnesota, New Jersey, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. These legislative resolutions, which ought to reflect some degree of popular sentiment, would by themselves contradict DiLorenzo's assertion about "a large majority" believing in a right of secession. |
| Page 144: |
"'Under the protection of Federal bayonets,' wrote David Donald, 'New York went Republican by seven thousand votes' in the 1864 presidential election." DiLorenzo cites this passage to page 81 of David Donald's collection of essays, Lincoln Reconsidered. In the third edition, the correct citation is to page 180, but this is yet another minor matter. It is clear from his context that DiLorenzo is suggesting that somehow these Federal troops influenced the outcome of the election in New York. Now perhaps they did, but is there a larger context which Prof. DiLorenzo has failed to mention? In fact, there is. During the fall of 1864, the Confederacy was active in fomenting and aiding numerous attempts to disrupt the election. Some of these efforts centered on New York City, whose mayor (Fernando Wood) was suspected of being sympathetic to the Southern cause. In fact, a team of sabateurs would attempt to set fires in several New York hotels some weeks after the election, an effort which was supposed to have been timed to coincide with and therefore disrupt the election. It was to prevent this kind of disruption that Federal troops were sent to New York around election day, and they had the desired effect, according to the postwar memoir of one of the arsonists (Confederate Operations in Canada and New York, by John W. Headley, pp. 268-270). But readers of DiLorenzo's book would never learn this. |
| Page 148: |
"Lincoln was not opposed to secession if it served his political purposes." DiLorenzo then begins to discuss the formation of West Virginia, which is admittedly a controversial topic. Alas, he appears to be unfamiliar with the extensive literature on the subject. While there were some irregularities in the process by which West Virginia came into being, for the most part the Federal government followed established constitutional procedures and standards. The Constitution requires only the permission of the parent state government for a state to be partitioned (Article IV, Section 3). As it happened, the recognized government of Virginia, the so-called loyalist Pierpont government, agreed to the partition (the fact that the Pierpont government was mostly from the western Virginia counties would explain this). By what authority did the Federal government recognize the Pierpont government as the legitimate government of Virginia? By Supreme Court decision, as written by no less a figure than Chief Justice Roger Taney (Luther v. Borden, which held that the determination of legitimacy of competing state governments was a task for the "political" branches of the government, i.e., Congress and the President). It should also be pointed out that Congress, with perfectly clear Constitutional authority, implicitly recognized the Pierpont government by seating its Senators and Representatives. Without question, there were some irregularities in the process, but most of these centered on the issue of which counties to include in the new state. See the article in North & South ("Montani Semper Liberi," by Ed Steers, Jr., vol. 3, no. 2, January 2000) for a good overview, as well as the extensive discussion in James Randall's Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln. It is instructive to note, as DiLorenzo does not, that Virginia did not contest the partition in court after the war, but only the inclusion of some specific counties (Virginia v. West Virginia, 78 US 39). |
| Page 158: |
(Regarding the 1862 Santee Sioux uprising in Minnesota) "Three hundred and three Indians were sentenced to death, and Minnesota political authorities wanted to execute every one of them, something Lincoln feared might incite one or more of the European powers to offer assistance to the Confederacy, as they were hinting they might do." I would really like to know what evidence there is that the Europeans threatened to aid the CSA because of US Indian policy. Certainly DiLorenzo points the reader to none. The fact that the executions happened months after the preliminary Emancipation Proclamation was issued also weighs against the story. The conventional story is that Lincoln intervened to prevent the execution of all but the most culpable offenders among the Indians. Supposedly (David Donald's Lincoln, page 394) he insisted on executing only those who had actually committed murder or rape, and he insisted that the telegraph operator be especially careful in transmitting the 38 Sioux names over the wire, since an error in tapping out the the imperfectly anglicized names of the Indians in Morse Code could send the wrong man to the gallows. DiLorenzo, who cites Donald's book when it suits him, omits the comment on pp. 394-395 that Minnesota Senator Alexander Ramsey, who had been Governor of the state at the time of the uprising, told Lincoln in 1864 that if he had hanged more Indians he would have carried the state by a larger majority. Lincoln's response was, "I could not afford to hang men for votes." |
| Page 201: |
"Shortly before his death in 1870, General Robert E. Lee told former Texas Governor Fletcher Stockdale that, in light of how the Republican Party was treating the people of the South, he never would have surrendered at Appomattox, but would have died there with his men in one final battle. 'Governor, if I had foreseen the use these people designed to make of their victory, there would have been no surrender at Appomattox Courthouse; no sir, not by me. Had I foreseen these results of subjugation, I would have preferred to die at Appomattox with my brave men, my sword in my right hand.'" This story is weak on several levels. Douglas Southall Freeman, the premier biographer of General Lee, does not accept it. DiLorenzo cites a book by Thomas Nelson Page as his source, but Freeman notes that the evidence for the incident is second-hand (to DiLorenzo's source it might be third-hand) and says, "There is nothing in Lee's own writings and nothing in direct quotation by first-hand witness that accords with such an expression on his part." (R.E. Lee, vol. IV, p. 374). |
| Page 203: |
DiLorenzo states that revisionist historians of Reconstruction "have been dominated by 'Marxists of various degrees of orthodoxy'" and cites p.9 of Kenneth Stampp's book The Era of Reconstruction: 1865-1877 as support. Let's see what Stampp really says (the first sentence starts on page 8): "The revisionists are a curious lot who sometimes quarrel with each other as much as they quarrel with the disciples of Dunning. At various times they have counted in their ranks Marxists of various degrees of orthodoxy, Negroes seeking historical vindication, skeptical white Southerners, and latter-day northern abolitionists. But among them are numerous scholars who have the wisdom to know that the history of an age is seldom simple and clear-cut, seldom without its tragic aspects, seldom without its redeeming virtues." I will leave it to the reader to decide if DiLorenzo's comment accurately reflects the meaning of Stampp's words. Stampp does in fact use the words "Marxists of various degrees of orthodoxy", but he does not say that they have dominated the school; he lists them merely as one of several groups that have been lumped together as revisionists and points out that the revisionists have frequently disagreed with each other. |
| Pages 200-232 |
It is fair to ask, in my opinion, why DiLorenzo spends an entire chapter (33 pages) of a book on Lincoln on the subject of Reconstruction, which occurred after Lincoln was dead. Apparently, DiLorenzo's point (see page 211) is that Lincoln's agenda and policies led to Reconstruction and so it is proper to consider it part of his legacy. This thesis founders on the very real fact --- which DiLorenzo conveniently ignores --- that Lincoln and the radical wing of the Republican Party disagreed about Reconstruction policy, to the extent that Lincoln's "pocket veto" of the Wade-Davis bill was a serious issue in the 1864 election campaign. DiLorenzo, of course, does not mention the Wade-Davis bill at all. |
Lorenzo gets so much attention on FR, I thought some balance would be nice.
Have you ever wondered why, when the subjects of slavery and segregation come up, those on one side of the issue argue it on the basis of legalities, while those on the other side argue it on the basis of morality and right?
Interesting post whiskey. Regardless of the accuracies or inaccurracies in Lorenzo's work, I believe the Civil war was a counterproductive and needless tragedy of monumental proportion.
Nice work.
History bump.
The "factual errors" seem pretty nit-picking and arguable to me. 600,000 dead in 3 years was necessary? Lincoln unnecessarily inflamed the South after the 1860 election in the transition from Buchanan, and after taking office.
The rebellion was well underway before Lincoln took office.
December 29, 1860 South Carolina militia storm Federal forts in Charleston harbor, which had been evacuated the previous day by Major Anderson, who withdrew his troops into Ft. Sumter in the middle of the harbor. Three prisoners were taken.
January 4 Alabama militia sieze the U.S. arsenal at Mt. Vernon, AL. Alabama has not yet seceded.
January 5 Alabama militia sieze Ft. Morgan and Ft. Gaines in Mobile Bay.
January 7 Florida militia sieze the Federal fort at St. Augustine. Florida has not yet seceded.
January 8 Florida militia attempting to sieze Ft. Barrancas are driven off by Federal troops.
January 9 South Carolina militia fire on US merchant vessel Star of the West, preventing reinforcement and resupply of Ft. Sumter garrison.
Mississippi secedes.
January 10 Louisiana militia sieze all Federal forts and arsenals in the state. Louisiana has not yet seceded.
Florida (belatedly) secedes. Federal troops abandon Ft. Barrancas.
North Carolina militia capture Ft. Johnson and Ft. Caswell. North Carolina has not yet seceded.
January 11 Alabama (belatedly) secedes.
January 12 Florida militia demands the surrender of Federal troops in Ft. Pickens. The demand is refused.
Mississippi fortifies Vicksburg and closes the Mississippi River to all traffic. Mississippi is the only state on the river, at this point, which has seceded.
January 19 Georgia secedes.
January 21 Mississippi militia sieze Ft. Massachussetts and Ship Island.
January 25 Georgia militia sieze the federal arsenal at Augusta. North Carolina calls for a referendum on secession.
January 26 Georgia militia sieze Ft. Jackson and Oglethorpe Barracks.
Louisiana (belatedly) secedes.
January 31 The U.S. Mint in New Orleans is siezed by Louisiana militia.
February 1 Texas submits an article of secession to popular referendum for February 23.
February 4 Delegates from the six seceded states meet in Montgomery to form the Confederate States of America.
February 9 Tennessee rejects secession in popular referendum by a large margin.
February 16 Texas militia sieze the federal arsenal at San Antonio. Texas has not yet seceded.
February 18 Texas militia besiege Federal army headquarters for Texas in San Antonio and force the surrender of over 3,000 troops. Texas has -still- not seceded.
Jefferson Davis inaugurated as President of the Confederacy.
February 21 The Confederate Provisional Congress orders Mississippi to end the blockade at Vicksburg.
February 23 Texas voters approve secession by a 75% majority, secession to take effect March 2 (Texas Independence Day).
February 28 North Carolina voters narrowly reject secession (by fewer than 1,000 votes).
March 2 Texas's secession takes effect; that same day, Texas is admitted into the Confederacy.
March 3 The militia units in Charleston Harbor are taken under Confederate authority.
All before Lincoln took office.
Walt
Lincoln was a giant among men - one of America's greatest presidents. This moron of an author is unworthy to even say his name.
Hi WH,
I think your answers are evasive, unconvincing and weak. Summarized, they are "might makes right", history is written by the victors, etc.
Lincoln's statements following his election in 1860, and in the transition from Buchanan were provocative. His election itself, in light of the unbearable tension in the years leading up to 1860, was an outrage to the South.
The most hostile party to Southern interests that ever existed was the Republican party. Lincoln was not even on the ballot in Southern states. He got 39% of the vote, and now the leader of South's worst enemy was President.
The threats of secession leading up to 1860 had been extraordinarily heated, and Lincoln's election could not have been more incendiary. Yet, had Lincoln been more conciliatory, Virginia would never had seceded, nor North Carolina. Had they stayed with the Union, the Confederacy would have been a farce.
I don't see where Lincoln deserves praise for the debacle he created, in which so many Americans lost their lives from First Manassas to Appomattox, when it clearly could have been avoided.
Although Salmon P. Chase authored the 1869 Supreme Court decision that finally decided secession was unconstitutional, in it he says that the concept of states rights before the Civil War and after Appamattox had been altered irreversibly from what the founding fathers held it to be.
Chase warned the Radical Republicans who wanted to hang Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, and other Southern officers and politicians as traitors, that secession had legal basis. The South Carolina ratification of the Constitution in 1788 states clearly that it regards itself as sovereign.
