Posted on 03/20/2013 9:57:49 AM PDT by mnehring
Zo has strong words for neo-confederate libertarians, especially those who infiltrated the CPAC conference. He reminds viewers why some libertarians have no place in the conservative movement, and why Republicans should embrace the vision of Abraham Lincoln and Frederick Douglass.
(Video at link)
(Excerpt) Read more at pjtv.com ...
So you accuse me of doing something I didn't do with no evidence. Another example of vileness from you.
Other people have been struck by your strange manner of posting and the similarity to another poster. It's one of many things people have discussed privately.
Someone else may have brought up the topic with the moderator (if in fact this actually happened). I didn't do it, but I wouldn't blame anyone who did.
I also wouldn't dredge up petty stuff like this on the public forum.
I doubt that his anecdote has any truth to it at all - much less the slimy insinuation that it was you.
Right, the Confederate government did not need to enforce the embargo, but certainly did not oppose it, making the embargo effectively national policy.
Here's what I'm looking at:
In short, second only to the foolishness of firing on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy's decision in early 1861 to embargo cotton exports can be said to have cost them the war.
Sherman Logan: "Most of the effect of the embargo was lost because of the immense cotton exports of previous years, which meant European warehouses were bulging with cotton."
Yes, but according to this site:
"In the absence of the drastic disruption in the supply of American-grown cotton, the world demand for such cotton would have remained strong."
I am very unclear on why they thought it would work. While embargoes prior to the Revolution, an early form of what we today call economic sanctions, may have had some positive effect, later attempts to implement the policy under Jefferson and Madison were wildly counter-productive.
I guess they just got to believing their own propaganda about King Cotton.
Both correct.
PeaRidge: "You started the discussion about documents concerning the "reasons for secession" by referring to unofficial statements which were copies of speeches.
Interesting reading but of no official value."
Read them again, more carefully.
You'll see that all four "Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession from the Federal Union" are official documents adopted at their respective secession conventions:
PeaRidge: "None of the original 7 ordinances mentioned slavery as a cause of their decision to leave the Union."
Those Ordinances of Secession themselves generally provided no reasons.
Reasons were provided, however, in the four Declarations of Reasons for Secession. See above.
PeaRidge: "Your comments regarding the tariff are uninformed well informed and wrong correct."
There, fixed it for you.
Yes, you're welcome, glad I could help!
;-)
"The Morrill Tariff was THE ISSUE."
Not in January 1861, since the Morrill Tariff was not finally approved until March 1861, and took effect in April, after Civil War had already begun, at Fort Sumter.
Second, the figure "70%" is wildly inaccurate, since of the US top ten ocean-ports, accounting for nearly 100% of dutiable imports, only number six, New Orleans, and number ten, Charleston, SC, seceded.
Based on city populations alone, these two Southern ports cannot have accounted for more than 10% of all US dutiable imports.
Yes, later, war fears along with Confederates' embargo on exports of cotton, might put a damper on some commercial activities, which in turn could affect the US treasury -- in March or April, 1861.
But not in January and nothing to do with the Morrill Tariff, which was not approved until March 2, 1861, took effect in April, after Civil War had begun.
PeaRidge quoting somebody unnamed: "Over one hundred leading commercial importers in New York, as well as a similar group in Boston, informed the US collectors of customs they would not pay duties on imported goods unless those same duties were also collected at Southern ports.
Please provide a source for this data.
It sounds like businessmen threatening law enforcement with non-compliance, a potential problem for which law enforcers have tools readily available.
PeaRidge: "This threat was likely the proximate cause of the beginning of the war.
The Lincoln Cabinet abandoned its initial inclination to turn over Ft. Sumter to the Confederates, and to support Lincoln's plan to invade Pensacola and Charleston."
First, not "likely" if you remember everything else going on in those days.
Second, in March 1861, Lincoln had no plans to "invade" anything.
The question then was whether to resupply and or reinforce Union garrisons in the two remaining Union forts in Charleston and Pensacola?
Lincoln felt it his duty as president to defend Federal properties, but was willing to trade Fort Sumter for a promise by Virginia not to secede.
Third, when Virginians refused to make such a promise, Lincoln decided to resupply Fort Sumter, and so advised South Carolina's Governor, Francis W. Pickens.
Pickens immediately informed Confederate President Davis, who ordered Sumter be assaulted and taken by military force.
Davis' order was not the "likely" proximate cause, it was the certain beginning of actual military warfare.
That definition leads a lot of room for subjectivity. The side that fires first will always argue that its actions were constrained or forced upon it by the enemy. If some group starts a hostage situation and you do something that gets them shooting, it doesn't follow that you started the war. I'd say you have to look at legal rights and principles, not simply say that the side which makes the last move before the other side starts shooting "started" the war.
When he was informed that the Sumter expedition was coming, Anderson wrote that the coming expedition was the start of the war.
I had heard that about Major Anderson, though I can't find the quote right now. I do find a reference to Adam Goodheart's recent book arguing that the war really "began" on December 26th 1860 when Anderson moved his force to Sumter and raised the flag. Or maybe it "began" when Buchanan sent the Star of the West to resupply the fort. Or maybe it began on January 9th, 1861 when that ship was fired on. I'll stick with the usual answer: the war began on April 12th, 1861 when the fort was attacked.
On the theory that Lincoln somehow tricked or manipulated the Confederates into firing the first shot: It was a stand-off situation of the kind we are now familiar with. The important thing in the Northern debate was not to back down, as the free states' leaders were presumed to have done in 1820 and 1850 and in subsequent crises and upheavals. That was the primary question -- to back down, compromise, concede, or not. Lincoln decided to stand firm. He also decided not to fire the first shot. He was pretty up-front in his inaugural address:
In your hands, my dissatisfied fellow-countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The Government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. You have no oath registered in heaven to destroy the Government, while I shall have the most solemn one to "preserve, protect, and defend it."
So there you have it. Lincoln put the matter in the Confederates' or rebels' hands. Was he disingenuous? Was he secretly hoping for war? I don't know what was going through his mind, and I can't prove a negative. I can't prove that the idea of hoping or wanting that the other side would start a war never ever crossed his mind.
But I will ask, wanted a war compared to whom or to what? Did Lincoln want a war more than Davis or the South Carolinians who proclaimed the Revolution of 1860? Did he want a war more than a peaceful resolution of the conflict or a back-down by his adversaries? Did he want a crushing war more than other presidents who've been in similar stand-off situations since the founding of the republic?
Compare Lincoln, Davis, and Pickens in 1861 to Kennedy, Khrushchev, and Castro in 1962, and it's not certain that Lincoln comes out the worse. How much of the idea of Lincoln tricking or manipulating Davis into war to crush the South has to do with the actual situation in 1861, and how much has to do with what actually happened later?
About the Fox quote: David Donald says that Fox was bitter about the failure of the relief expedition and blamed himself for it, and Lincoln was trying to reassure Fox that the action wasn't a total loss. If you read the whole letter it supports that reading. It's certainly possible that what Lincoln was referring to as a positive result of the unsuccessful campaign was the act of staying firm, of taking a stand. Even a defeat could have been regarded in a positive light if seen as the beginning of a new policy of firmness.
About the Hay-Nicolay quote: First, Hay and Nicolay were writing for an audience of Northerners who had lived through the war and had little doubt that the Union was right and the rebels were wrong. There wasn't any need to be cautious and guarded, since the readers would have agreed that the Confederates had started the war. Does that make their account more trustworthy than a more cautious, lawyered-up version written with an eye to winning arguments?
Maybe. Maybe not. Most of the time the "lawyered-up" version is less reliable. But at least it addresses issues that a more naive and unguarded account may not. In the version written for an audience that's always going to accept and admire one's story, there are temptations to play on the audience's emotions or to show off how clever one is and was.
But secondly, the quote as written doesn't necessarily prove that Lincoln was angling for war, just that if war began, it wouldn't be blamed on Lincoln. There's a distinction between setting a scene where war if it comes will have to be started by the other side and forcing the other side to fight. Of course, if you belong to the side that does fire the first shot you might be more than willing to claim that your actions were forced.
Maybe the problem here is that both sides wanted to act as the US often acts -- being firm, not backing down, letting the other side concede. My own view is that if you want to get independence from a government that you belonged to, you don't get arrogant about it. You show a modest, conciliatory spirit and consider a certain amount of deference now the price of full independence later. That's not something the secessionists of 1860 could do. But the results of their bad choice aren't necessarily something one can blame on their opponents.
FWIW, a lot of what gets posted online are anti-Lincoln editorials. Whether we're talking about outright pro-Southern, pro-secessionist newspapers or business papers that oppose any disruption or restriction of commerce, the choice of sources gives a very skewed view of what was happening. Here -- for a change -- is part of an April 11th editorial by the Indianapolis Daily Journal:
The Administration from the beginning has avowed its purpose to do nothing but hold the Government property, neither acknowledging nor attempting to destroy the assumed independence of the rebel States, till authorized by the Nation to do so. This is the policy avowed in the inaugural of Mr. Lincoln, and it has been acted on steadily. This is the policy of prudence and peace, and the policy of good order, and of the supremacy of law.--Mr. Lincoln could neither declare or do less without assuming the right to allow a State to secede at will, and that right clearly belongs only to the people who formed the Union. But the peace policy is to end in war. Why? Not because it assails anybody. Not because it coerces anybody. But because the seceding States are determined to have war; because they believe a war will drive to their support the border slave States, and unite them all in a great Southern Confederacy. A policy of peace is to them a policy of destruction. It encourages the growth of a reactionary feeling. It takes out of the way all the pride and resentment which could keep the people from feeling the weight of taxation, and the distress of their isolated condition. If forces them to reason, and to look at the consequences of their conduct. A war buries all these considerations in the fury and glory of battle, and the parade and pomp of arms. War will come because the Montgomery Government deems it the best way of bringing the border States, and of keeping down trouble at home.
You really don't even try, do you? You just deny reality. But because I'm feeling charitable today, here are the Declarations of War I cited, as passed in Congress, with the operative phrases I quoted highlighted:
War with Great Britain 1812(Act of Jun. 18, 1812, ch. 102, 2 Stat 755)
CHAP. CII.—An Act declaring War between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the dependencies thereof, and the United States of America and their territories
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That war be and the same is hereby declared to exist between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the dependencies thereof, and the United States of America and their territories; and that the President of the United States is hereby authorized to use the whole land and naval force of the United States to carry the same into effect, and to issue to private armed vessels of the United States commissions or letters of marque and general reprisal, in such form as he shall think proper, and under the seal of the United States, against the vessels, goods, and effects of the government of the said United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and the subjects thereof.
APPROVED, June 18, 1812.
War with Spain 1898
(Act of Apr. 25, 1898, ch. 189, 30 Stat. 364)
CHAP. 189—An Act Declaring that war exists between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, First. That war be, and the same is hereby, declared to exist, and that war has existed since the twenty-first day of April, anno Domini eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, including said day, between the United States of America and the Kingdom of Spain.
Second. That the President of the United States be, and he hereby is, directed and empowered to use the entire land and naval forces of the United States, and to call into the actual service of the United States the militia of the several States, to such extent as may be necessary to carry this Act into effect.
APPROVED, April 25, 1898.
War with Germany 1917
(Act of Apr. 6, 1917, ch. 1, 40 Stat. 1)
CHAP. 1.—Joint Resolution Declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial German Government and the Government and the people of the United States and making provision to prosecute the same.
Whereas the Imperial German Government has committed repeated acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America:
Therefore be it Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial German Government which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and that the President be, and he is hereby, authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial German Government; and to bring the conflict to a successful termination all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.
APPROVED, April 6, 1917.
War with Japan 1941
(Act of Dec. 8, 1941, ch. 561, 55 Stat. 795)
[Chapter 561]
JOINT RESOLUTION
Declaring that a state of war exists between the Imperial Government of Japan and the Government and the people of the United States and making provisions to prosecute the same.
Whereas the Imperial Government of Japan has committed unprovoked acts of war against the Government and the people of the United States of America: Therefore be it
Resolved by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That the state of war between the United States and the Imperial Government of Japan which has thus been thrust upon the United States is hereby formally declared; and the President is hereby authorized and directed to employ the entire naval and military forces of the United States and the resources of the Government to carry on war against the Imperial Government of Japan; and, to bring the conflict to a successful termination, all of the resources of the country are hereby pledged by the Congress of the United States.
APPROVED, December 8, 1941, 4:10 p.m., E.S.T.
I think it is obvious that you are resorting to personal insults, as you usually do when you are running out of reasonable, rational points.
Not much content in there, x.
You set up a strawman argument by suggesting that a set of unofficial documents proved anything more being commentary.
And the point is that secession had its own causes, but Lincoln's invasion had its causes also....quite different from each other.
Go ahead and quote what you want but exclusion proves nothing.
You missed the point. As of January, no products from the seceded states entered the Transatlantic trade, nor were transshipped to northeastern ports.
Since Southern products accounted for 70% of the trade inventory, this was lost.
This caused a great stir in New York and New England.
Read the newspaper accounts published previously.
However, you supplied quotes that came from speeches announcing the action of Congress. You can find an example here. That brings us back to the main point: You said: “What I want to know is what a Declaration of War is required to say?”
And my answer is this: That it was ratified by the Congress.
About four minutes of going through a text with all the declarations of war passed by the US, created by the Congressional Research Service, which is the same place I got the quotes in the first place.
However, you supplied quotes that came from speeches announcing the action of Congress.
Your willful obtuseness is well-known, but it's difficult to understand how you can, with a straight face, continue to claim that something identified by the Congressional Research Service as a declaration of war, and bearing the title "An Act Declaring War Between the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland and the Dependencies Thereof and the United States of America and Their Territories" and starting with the line "Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled..." isn't REALLY a declaration of war enacted by congress but is instead some sort of--let me get this straight--speech announcing a declaration of war that, apparently no one can find, since these are the only texts research finds as US declarations of war.
You can find an example here..
Maybe you didn't read that, but it says it's a presidential proclamation, not a speech. And it quotes the same congressional declaration of war that I quoted.
And my answer is this: That it was ratified by the Congress.
See, here's the deal. I don't believe that there's any amount of evidence that would lead to you concede that what I presented were the actual declarations of war. I could find the vote totals, the original Congressional Globe texts, and still you'd find a way to deny it while claiming that the actual declarations of war are something else that, apparently no one can find. So it's your turn. You come up with the REAL (according to you) declarations of war for the wars I presented. Show me I'm wrong rather than just insisting that I take your word for it. Time to put up, Pea.
The Declarations of Reasons for Secession listed in post #365 above are all Official Documents, approved by their respective State Secession Conventions.
Read them.
So what, exactly, is your problem with that?
PeaRidge: "And the point is that secession had its own causes, but Lincoln's invasion had its causes also....quite different from each other."
Agreed.
First, seven Deep South states seceded and started war to protect slavery from "Black Republican" abolitionists, and from just-elected President Lincoln.
Second, four Upper South states only joined in rebellion after the Confederacy had already started and declared, or "recognized", war on the United States.
Third, after Fort Sumter's surrender, in April 1861 President Lincoln called up state militias to:
PeaRidge: "Go ahead and quote what you want but exclusion proves nothing."
Say what?
Pea is like the guy in the Monty Python argument sketch who believes that argument consists solely of saying “No, it isn’t.”
"Since Southern products accounted for 70% of the trade inventory, this was lost."
Your figure of "70%" can refer to:
PeaRidge: "Since Southern products accounted for 70% of the trade inventory, this was lost."
Possibly by January 1862, but not in January 1861, at which point most mills were still bulging with extra cotton inventory.
You quoted declarations of war, some from proclamations and some from speeches.
But that is not the point.
All those that you quoted were a function of an act of Congress.
You understand that, don't you?
There was no act of the Confederate Congress declaring war.
That is the point.
Your exact comment from #310: “First of all, if you think the Morrill Tariff had anything to do with Deep South declarations of secession, then I'd challenge you to quote any of their Declarations of Reasons for Secession which say as much.”
As I have said twice, you set up a strawman argument by suggesting that a set of unofficial documents proved anything more than being commentary.
And as I said, go ahead and quote what you want but exclusion proves nothing.
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