Posted on 06/13/2005 6:08:24 AM PDT by sheltonmac
"Sorry, Pea, but I don't see one bit of oppression there"
You can say that but the speech is there, recorded, and specifically states the concerns. You can label it as vague but it does not make it so.
The agitation and threats have been recorded. Your Neo-historianism does not change the facts.
"And I thought you were of the school that claims slavery had nothing to do with the war."
Wrong again. I have said that abolitionist activity was one of the many irritants that led to secession, but war came for a very different reason.
It seems that fear of slave Rebellions was part of the price paid in return for "maintaining institutions."
The election of Lincoln didn't change anything in regard to slave rebellions.
The abolitionist "agitation" as you call it represented the views of a very small minority on Northerners and most certainly not the policy of the Federal Government. There was not a single instance of "oppression" by the Federal government alleged by the seceding states.
If the South chose to "secede" from Horace Greely, fine. But they had no justification for rebellion against the United States.
Some argue that the Lincoln government would have fallen if Lincoln had not acted tough at Sumter. Maybe, maybe not. The attack on Sumter actually served the immediate objectives of both sides. Lincoln got patriotic support from Northerners upset over the attack on the flag, and Davis got border and wavering states to join the Confederacy.
As I've mentioned before, in spite of what he was advised was required, Lincoln didn't put near enough resources into his fleet to make the relief effort work. He didn't need to win -- he only needed to make the effort. If he lost at Sumter he could use an attack to rally the North behind him and get the support he needed to govern.
It was something that the CiC simply had to do!
No, he didn't.
When it comes to misquoting and/or misinterpreting then I take a distant second place to you and your compatriots.
Logically, doesn't that presuppose that Lincoln would have been prepared to either see Sumter relieved, or been willing to use the Navy to pound Charleston into submission?
It appears that Lincoln's intention (actually hope) was to deliver supplies to Sumter and thereby maintain the status quo and his best chance of doing that was sending a small force that was obviously not threatening. If he actually was intent on war, logic would dictate that he do as you suggest and send a strong force.
"My supplies of provisions that I laid in before the commencement of the investment were yesterday reduced to one half-barrel of cornmeal, one-seventh barrel of grits, and eleven codfish. Everything else that is necessary for the support of the Engineer force is drawn from the scanty stores of the command."
That has been well documented. What people tend to forget about were the supplies being made available to him from the city -- that's what I focused on.
Major Anderson was short sighted. He should have thought about the situation he was putting his troops and the country into when he moved his force to Fort Sumter. He was attempting to stay in a fort surrounded by his opposition. Sort of like the Alamo, I suppose. Eventually the food supplies he brought with him would run out, and he would be at the mercy of his opposition and/or force a national crisis. The opposition had been allowing him to get some food supplies from the city, but eventually they could close that source, if they so wished. They ultimately did just that -- an error on the Confederates' part, IMO, as I said above.
Here is how President Buchanan responded when informed that Major Anderson had moved into Fort Sumter [Source: Maury Klein's well documented book Days of Defiance]:
Buchanan slumped into a chair. "My God!" he cried wearily. "Are calamities ... never to come singly! I call God to witness -- you gentlemen better than anybody else know that this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy."
Buchanan could see the implications of Anderson's move, if Anderson could not.
If Lincoln had been successful at getting provisions into the fort, he would have to go through the same exercise the next time the food ran out. He was just postponing the crisis. (Actually one-seventh of a barrel of grits could have gotten the fort through the whole summer.)
When members of Lincoln's cabinet advised him that all of the proposed plans to supply Sumter would result in a clash of arms, they weren't wrong. Lincoln chose to do so in face of this advice.
Here was some of the advice Lincoln got [from Klein's book]:
On the 15th [March] Lincoln met again with the cabinet, Scott, Totten, Stringham, and Fox. Totten reviewed several plans for reinforcing Sumter and concluded that all of them would result in a clash of arms. Scott added that even if Fox's plan succeeded, it would do little more than buy time before the attempt would have to be made again. With five of seven cabinet members and his generals against the attempt, Lincoln was in more of a quandary than ever. ...
Lincoln did later bombard Charleston civilians for 18 months trying to get the Confederate Army to submit to various demands. Didn't work. Nice guy.
How is the act of sending warships, any warships, down to Charleston not threatening?
Back in January of '61, the Star of the West, was not a warship, it was unarmed, but it was fired on. In neo-Confederate logic, is that fact considered "non-threatening"?
Bite the bullet here rusty. That there would be a war was no surprise in 1861 to anyone who had half a brain. It had been discussed for a least 10 years, with the South convinced that somehow via shere genetic ability, they could beat any power who faced them. By the time Lincoln took office, it was nothing but a a Kabuki dance to see who shot first. The fact of the matter is that as of April 12 when the designated mad man Ruffin from Virginia who had lobbied for war for 30 years, was given the honor of lighting the first fuse, the confederate side was far more "armed up" than Lincoln and the Union. The Confederate forces in Charleston alone, outnumbered the entire United States Army at they point in time.
I stick to my point that Davis and the Fire Eaters needed Lincoln to react before they could truly have a viable nation, because without Virginia and the upper south, they were a fly spec on the pages of history. Lincoln, on the other hand, needed the rebs to shoot first. They served each other's purposes in doing what was inevitable.
Lincoln was in a no win situation at that point. If he allowed Davis to give him the finger with no response, he was a lame duck in his first month in office. If he did anything else, "he provoked" the tender sensibilities of the "South." that were so tenderly cultivated by the Slave Power.
I suppose the 250 troops hidden below decks as the Star of the West entered Charleston harbor were armed with only spit wads.
I found an interesting collection of online articles published in early April 1861 mainly by New York and Charleston papers. See: Newspaper articles. Enjoy.
At least a couple of the articles mention that permission to land a supply ship at the fort was requested but denied. Others cite the buildup of Confederate troops around the harbor in the days immediately preceding the battle.
What is your support for that statement?
The regular army of the US was about 16,000 men before Sumter (Source). The online articles I linked to you mentioned 6,000 to 7,000 Confederates in the Charleston and island areas with possibly a couple of thousand more coming. Harper's Weekly reports about 7,000 Confederates were there (Harper's).
The National Park Service says only about 500 men on the Confederate side were actually engaged in the fighting (NPS).
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