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.
The things I'm talking about started before Lincoln even took office. Whether what he did was right or wrong, he didn't start it.
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.
We still don't know whether Georgians voted secession up or down at the polls or whether a majority wanted secession. I don't know if the main reason was confusion, coercion, and corruption at the polls, but the results of the election are quite uncertain. Wasn't there one state that was obligated to put the secession question before the voters in a referendum, and didn't? Notice that this happened well before the things you complain about.
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.
That has as little to do with my point as the re-enslavement of free blacks when Lee invaded the North. Once again, I'm talking about things that occurred before any of these things happened. If I recall correctly, Virginia's governor seized federal arms before the state voted for secession, maybe even after the state convention voted secession down. The saying about South Carolina in 1865 was Hosea 8:1-14 - "They Sow the Wind, and Reap the Whirlwind." Not a very Christian sentiment, perhaps, but perfectly understandable.
There were all sorts of provocations going on:
True, but Davis had an opportunity to define himself as a reasonable alternative to the hotheadedness of Pickens and the South Carolinians and he didn't take it. Maybe it was already too late, since he'd determined to become head of his own country, but Davis wasn't exactly a peacemaker.
Anderson occupying Sumter in apparent violation of the informal truce between South Carolinians and Buchanan.
Aside from the obvious nonsense of a "truce" between the federal government and one of the states, you'll have to explain what you're talking about. What "truce" was there when South Carolina was already seizing federal installations? How "informal" was it? Maybe Non-Sequitur could help with the details.
William C. Davis, Jefferson Davis's biographer, writes in his essay "Myths and Realities of the Confederacy" (The Cause Lost : Myths and Realities of the Confederacy, 1996), that a state of civil insurrection existed well before the attack on Sumter: " Jefferson Davis did not need to open fire on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 to begin the war. Armed insurrection began on December 27, 1860, when the South Carolina forces seized Castle Pinckney and Fort Moultrie and the U.S. revenue cutter William Aitken." (p. 188). The rest of the essay and book are well worth a look.
I’m sorry. You lost me. What was unconstitutional or illegitimate? Please cite the law or part of the Constitution being violated.
I assume that Article 1, Section 10 also applies to a league or alliance or confederacy of states:
No State shall, without the Consent of Congress, lay any duty of Tonnage, keep Troops, or Ships of War in time of Peace, enter into any Agreement or Compact with another State, or with a foreign Power, or engage in War, unless actually invaded, or in such imminent Danger as will not admit of delay. Emphasis added.