No. I mean seize property and supplies, threaten citizens, and run fraudulent elections. If people in some other part of the country had behaved as the Southern rebels did, you can bet Southerners would be irate. Why the special privileges for Dixie?
Trust but Verify comes to mind.
You don't get it. Reagan was a legitimate national leader. It was only right for him to try to negotiate from a position of strength. Someone who wants out of a federal union doesn't get to give ultimatums or make demands. The terms of separation have to be sorted out at the federal level, not by force of rebellious arms.
I gather from Davis's April 29, 1861, speech to the Confederate Congress that he was busy after Lincoln's call for 75,000 troops, asking for the volunteers previously authorized by the Confederate Congress for the defense of the Confederacy.
The earlier call by Congress was something Davis could have stopped if he'd wanted to and been on the ball. If he'd used his head he would have understood what a provocation that was. Lincoln's call was a response to the war the rebels had already started. It lost unionists the Upper South, but wasn't unconstitutional or illegitimate as the earlier Confederate demand was.
If this is your criteria, I assume that you would not have been happy with the Lincoln Administration's rule over of the North and the border states during the war. All of the things you list also happened in the North and in northern controlled border states. There were bad folks in both regions during that time period. The South didn’t have a monopoly on them, nor did the North.
What special privileges for Dixie? Any state could leave the Union when it no longer comported to their happiness.
I’m curious. What fraudulent elections were you talking about in the South? I'm aware of election problems in Delaware, New York, and Kentucky during the war, and the overthrow of elected government in Maryland. Missouri too maybe, but I don't know the history of that state very well.
I've heard allegations of intimidation of Texas Union supporters during the secession vote. The results of the secession vote closely matched the previous fall's election returns between Bell (Constitutional Union) and Breckenridge (Southern Democrat), so apparently not many people's minds were changed by whatever intimidation there was. I don't like voter intimidation, and I'm sure you don't either.
Seizing property and bad behavior? I suspect that you are not talking about looting by Federal troops at Fredericksburg or what occurred in Georgia and South Carolina along Sherman's path. I assume you are not talking about the many Northern newspapers shut down and in some cases destroyed and editrors and writers jailed. I also assume that you are not talking about the refusal in some northern states to return fugitive slaves before the war, slaves being defined as property under the laws of the time. Some slave owners and their agents were killed by mob action, IIRC.
On the other hand, you might be talking about bad behavior by Confederate supporters in East Tennessee after secession. I'm sure, of course, that you will not forget about the bad behavior by some East Tennessee Unionists. Or maybe you are talking about Quantrill. Or you could be talking about bad behavior by some Texan in response to plots against their families admitted on the witness stand or against Texas Germans going to join the Union armies.
You don't get it. Reagan was a legitimate national leader. It was only right for him to try to negotiate from a position of strength.
Pardon me, but I find your answer rather strange. Certainly Reagan had the right to try to negotiate from a position of strength. So did Lincoln. So did Davis for that matter.
What is your point? I would trust a politician if I could verify that his/her actions were what I wanted. But many politicians say one thing, then do another. We probably agree on that point.
The earlier call by Congress was something Davis could have stopped if he'd wanted to and been on the ball. If he'd used his head he would have understood what a provocation that was. Lincoln's call was a response to the war the rebels had already started. It lost unionists the Upper South, ...
There were all sorts of provocations going on:
- Anderson occupying Sumter in apparent violation of the informal truce between South Carolinians and Buchanan.
- South Carolinians then occupying forts around Charleston Harbor.
- Buchanan sending the Star of the West with 200 troops into Charleston Harbor to reinforce Sumter.
- South Carolinians firing on that ship.
- Southern states taking over US forts and armories in their territories.
- The North seizing ships and shipments of arms headed South.
- Lincoln saying he would collect the revenue from imports headed to the South by force if necessary.
- The Confederacy responding to that threat by authorizing Davis to call up 100,000 troops for defensive purposes.
- The Lincoln Administration saying Sumter would be evacuated, then sending an armed fleet south with the intent to enter South Carolina territorial waters and resupply the Sumter or perhaps to reinforce it with the troops in that fleet -- who could trust Lincoln's word after the evacuation flip-flop?
- The South firing on Sumter.
- Lincoln calling for 75,000 state forces to invade the South. (Why am I reminded about Hamilton's warning against the coercion of states? Apparently Virginia and other states remembered.)
- Davis calls for his own volunteers.
… but wasn't unconstitutional or illegitimate as the earlier Confederate demand was.
I’m sorry. You lost me. What was unconstitutional or illegitimate? Please cite the law or part of the Constitution being violated.
It has been well observed, that to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single State. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war? Suppose Massachusetts or any large State should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would not they have influence to procure assistance, especially from those States which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this present to our view? A complying State at war with a non-complying State; Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another; this State collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against its federal head. Here is a nation at war with itself! Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a Government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a Government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a Government.
Correction on my timing of Davis’s callup of troops. I just discovered that Davis called for 20,000 troops on April 8 when he learned that his commissioners in Washington were denied recognition. He might have called for some troops before then as the crisis was heating up.