Did Abolitionist Hatred of the South Cause the Civil War?

PJ Lifestyle ^ | July 5, 2013 | David Forsmark

[2ndDivisionVet]

A Conversation with Thomas Fleming, historian and author of A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War.

Thomas Fleming is known for his provocative, politically incorrect, and very accessible histories that challenge many of the clichés of current American history books. Fleming is a revisionist in the best conservative sense of the word. His challenges to accepted wisdom are not with an agenda, but with a relentless hunger for the truth and a passion to present the past as it really was, along with capturing the attitudes and culture of the times.

In The New Dealers’ War Fleming exposed how the radical Left in FDR’s administration almost crippled the war effort with their utopian socialist experimentation, and how Harry Truman led reform efforts in the Senate that kept production in key materials from collapse.

In The Illusion of Victory, Fleming showed that while liberal academics may rate Woodrow Wilson highly, that he may have been the most spectacularly failed President in history. 100,000 American lives were sacrificed to favor one colonial monarchy over another, all so Wilson could have a seat at the peace table and negotiate The League of Nations. Instead, the result of WWI was Nazism and Communism killing millions for the rest of the century.....

[CougarGA7]

As I had to tell you before. Words have meaning. I will illustrate this to you again.

I said that I gave you my source. Which was the book, the author, the page number, and where you can find it on the internet.

This more than fits the standard for a source.

Now when I asked you to post where you got your information you refused hiding behind the RTFT excuse. Mind you I never asked you to cite specifics, I only asked you to post the source so I could go look at it. Now I'm providing you with the pages that will actually confirm my statement and where you can find them and you refuse to go look. Then you have the audacity to call me lazy.

I find this very amusing. But again since you are too lazy to do any research yourself. Here are pages 361 and 362 of the sources I am referring to. I will again for the umpteenth time ask you to reciprocate and offer up where it is you are getting your fallacious information.

[CougarGA7]

Honestly, this guy has talked himself into a corner and all he is doing at this point is lashing out so he can feel that he is right. This is why he will offer no justification for his statements, yet demand line and detail justification for anything that contradicts him. For me this is just a form of sport so I am loving the hell out of it.

[rockrr]

It would be bad enough is it was just the pilpul, but the constant moving of goalposts, change of topic and some of the oddest utterances I’ve ever seen give me pause to question his sanity.

He reminds me of a kid I encountered in the 5th grade (when I was still living in the south) whose idea of an effective offensive strategy was to smear dog poop on himself. Then when you were repelled by him he would claim victory by forfeiture. I have to admit that it WAS effective!

I can’t remember if his name was Breckenridge ;-)

[JCBreckenridge]

Thank you. So no specific date then for their arrival, but sometime in February of 1861. I stand corrected.

[CougarGA7]

LOL. Brilliant strategy. Makes it harder to get dates though.

[CougarGA7]

Well considering that you were off by a whole year, I imagine that the specific date of arrival is a little less significant. But if we can continue this line of thought then now that we have established that, lets return to the provisions that were allotted to Jefferson Davis in February 1861 when he sent the mission to the North.

If he had no legal precedent to send a legation to the North in 1861 since, as you said, he had no treaty making power, what reason would any of the Northern government have to listen to this group at all. I’m really looking for an opinion here since it would be impossible to say definitively why the individuals involved did not engage this commission.

[central_va]

By Lincoln’s own admission there were peace negotiations just before his first inauguration. The details are irrelevant because Jesus Christ himself would have been turned away by that blood thirsty goon President from Illinois.

[JCBreckenridge]

Jefferson Davis did what he could within his powers to avert the forthcoming disaster. Lincoln did not. Lincoln could have brought them in and negotiated with them. There was nothing stopping Lincoln from doing so.

[CougarGA7]

Well from what you say, he did things that were beyond his authority to try and come to a settlement. This ligation would have held no legal power since it was commissioned by the provisional President.

However, in the same vein. If this was not a legal authority, you can hardly blame the United States government if they elected to not entertain them.

I will add to Davis’ credit that he made efforts to keep the seceding states from initiating hostilities against the North. But in the end he did not achieve that aim. Fort Sumter which, while in dispute, was still a Union installation, was attacked by secessionists. This would be the first volley of the Civil War.

I did a logistical analysis of the South during the Civil War and I can only imagine that Davis must have spent at least ten minutes beating his head against his desk at the beginning of the war if he had even a inkling of an understanding of his situation that I gathered from the advantage of hindsight.

[JCBreckenridge]

This is what folks don’t understand - the South knew they would lose, and yet fought anyways. Davis knew it. Lee knew it. They knew it back in 1860.

Davis anticipated an attack on the fort without his explicit instruction and attempted to corral it before it was done, all the while negotiating with the United States for fair and equitable treatment, before a shot was even fired.

Again - Lincoln could have chosen to recognize his Davis’ delegation. His hands, at this point, were not tied.

[CougarGA7]

Well, I’m not going to fault Lincoln for not recognizing the commission that we have been discussing since I have seen no evidence that he even knew that it existed. I would hope that Seward would have told the President, but I couldn’t say for sure.

Many in the South knew that they were in an untenable position. Davis and Lee were only one in a choir of those who knew they were in deep trouble. But while Davis knew that they were in a precarious situation, he also made some critical mistakes that made that situation significantly worse. Resistance to federalizing the railroad, unrealistic expectations on the Tredegar Ironworks, even the approval of Lee’s advances into the North which never had the war ending effect they had hoped for either used, misused or misappropriated the very limited resources they had available.

[JCBreckenridge]

The North had the correct strategic outlook of the war from day 1 with the Anaconda plan. They quickly apprehended that the South needed outside provisions in order to fight the war, and that the US Navy had substantial advantages over the confederates.

The south had amazing tactical leadership. What they lacked was Winfield Scott and his overall strategic outlook to start the war. Lincoln knew how crucial the Mississippi was to the overall plans of the south.

Basically, the overall strategy of the North was to force the South into fewer and fewer options and force them into making poor decisions.

However, it must be said. If it were Lee and not McLellan, the war would have ended in ‘61. We’d not be talking about the war between the states today if it had. The union had the correct strategic outlook, they had the men and the materiel, they just did not have the command to pursue and destroy the enemy. They did not have to.

[CougarGA7]

However, it must be said. If it were Lee and not McLellan, the war would have ended in ‘61.

I'm going to throw on my best David Tennant and say....well, I don't think the war would have ended in 61, but Lee was definitely a far superior general to the like of McClellan.

However, I think it is important to point out that Lee was not the perfect general either. (Here we go and I will get ready to duck).

He had an overdeveloped sense of the offensive. While this did serve him in that it provided him with more than one tactical victory, it put him in some pretty tenuous situations when the Civil War devolved (yes opinionated verb), into positional warfare. It put him at a strategic disadvantage and made him slow to adopt the entrenchment and the positional tactics that would eventually rule the day.

[0.E.O]

Honestly, this guy has talked himself into a corner and all he is doing at this point is lashing out so he can feel that he is right.

Welcome to the War of Southern Rebellion v2.0. The Lost Cause contingent are truly an odd lot.

[Gaffer]

Yes, I stopped by the source you cited while I was poking about on the web - History Guy or something like that, IIRC.

The data cited there looks a lot like some of the other sources I happened on and some of them noted in their analysis that the data from the 1860 Census they examined was incomplete in one way or another due to events back then (e.g., Jeff Davis’ Secession Speech Jan 1861).

So you have an 1850 Census and an 1870 Census to try to fill in/augment the blanks. I read in some sites that the population increased statistically significantly between 1850 and 1860 (and from 1860 to 1870) I'm assuming due to immigration.

Another factor in reconstructing a true picture is availability of local records. If you drive through a lot of the small county seat towns here in Georgia, in some of the towns you'll see an empty square, others have courthouses built after the war. Marietta is one example. There used to be a courthouse there but Sherman burned it (and the city along with Atlanta and others). The square to this day is empty but for the accouterments of a public park.

http://marietta.patch.com/groups/around-town/p/the-burning-of-marietta

Nonetheless, I think what your analysis boils down to as an average, about 1 in 5 slave owners overall, is probably the most accurate estimate of the ones I've seen.

[0.E.O]

By Lincoln’s own admission there were peace negotiations just before his first inauguration.

Incorrect. Lincoln admitted that there were rebel representatives in town to deliver the Southern ultimatum; they were not there to negotiate anything but capitulation to Southern demands.

The details are irrelevant because Jesus Christ himself would have been turned away by that blood thirsty goon President from Illinois.

I don't see Jesus Christ taking part in the rebel contingent, a group without any peaceful intent whatsoever.

[0.E.O]

Jefferson Davis did what he could within his powers to avert the forthcoming disaster.

LOL!!!!! The disaster that was to come fell upon the South, and the responsibility for it lies with Jefferson Davis.

Lincoln did not. Lincoln could have brought them in and negotiated with them. There was nothing stopping Lincoln from doing so.

Except that they weren't there to negotiate. They were there to deliver Confederate demands and accept Lincoln's complete surrender to them. Given that, what was there to talk about?

[BroJoeK]

JCBreckenridge: "You’re very wrong about this.
They did meet, and he did make this offer prior to the war.
Lincoln refused.
Go read some books on the civil war, and get back to us when you’re properly informed."

Sorry, FRiend, but by now you should well recognize yourself as holding onto a vast wealth of completely false data, of which this is just one small example.

I have here, and have now read a good many books on precisely this subject, and I'm telling you that someone, somewhere, somehow has fed you a cr*ck of sh*t story which never happened.

Of course, feel free to prove me wrong -- and I'll eat your cr*ck of sh*t story. ;-)
But you better quote a very, very reliable source, FRiend.

[BroJoeK]

JCBreckenridge: "It’s not irrelevant that some battles are major and some are not.
All battles with more casulties than First Manassas is an objective standard."

That is irrelevant to the simple fact that Confederate forces invaded Union states and territories when-ever, where-ever and in what-ever strengths they could muster.

Certainly, most of the war was fought on Confederate territory but not because Confederates wanted it that way!
Instead, whenever possible Confederates sent forces into Union areas -- in order to gather up supplies and recruits, destroy Union "infrastructure" (as we call it today), and perhaps most importantly, draw Union forces away from Confederate states.

And why-ever would you try to deny all that?
It's simply good military "strategery", practiced by any thoughtful commander.
It proves that the Confederate government (read: Davis) did have some military smarts, and understood what would be necessary for victory.

Of course, in the end it didn't work, but that was primarily because for every one Confederate soldier operating in Union states & territories, there were at least ten Union soldiers in Confederate states.

[BroJoeK]

JCBreckenridge: "So you’re going to continue the lie to cover your butt. :)
It was constitutional to secede.
Lincoln chose to declare war on the south when peace was possible, and refuse to permit the South to leave."

Sorry, FRiend, but I don't care what your mother told you while she fed you her, ahem, bottle, it's still a crock of lies.
Repeat it as often as you wish here, yell it from the roof-tops if that makes you feel better, but it's still a lie and you well know it's a lie, because you have no data source -- zero, zip, nada -- to support it.

Yes, I know, it's all mother's milk to you, but I'm telling you, you just can't sell a crock of lies to anyone who doesn't have the same mother.

Out in public, out in the real world, you have to depend on historical documents, and when you have no reliable documents, then you just have to bite your tongue, FRiend.

You're statement above is wrong, and you need to stop lying about that.