Posted on 07/06/2013 7:37:16 AM PDT by 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.....
(Excerpt) Read more at pjmedia.com ...
I have posted that neither Buchanan nor Lincoln ever met directly with official Confederate emissaries, because I'm not aware of any occasions when that happened.
As in the example referred to by CougarGA7 in post #310 above, and by you here, the Confederate emissaries did not meet directly with either Lincoln or Secretary of State Seward, but rather with a Southern-born Supreme Court Justice, who then talked to Seward.
If you can cite specifics of any direct meetings between Buchanan or Lincoln and official Confederate emissaries (let alone President Jefferson Davis), I will be most happy to stand corrected.
And just so we don't spin our wheels in confusion, I'm not talking about Senator Jefferson Davis.
Believe me, I absolutely love it!
But let us have some sympathy for poor Brecky-baby, he's in way, way over his head, and desperately needs to take a long break, clear his head, calm his nerves and spend some serious time studying actual historical documents that he can refer to here.
I mean, really, it's been tons of fun, but the poor guy is like a boxer who's taken so many blows he's punch-drunk and now he's swinging at anything and everything close-by.
Brecky-boy -- take a break, give it a rest, clear your head.
Come back another day, when you're more fit and nimble.
Believe me, we love to spar with you, FRiend, but you're making it too easy for us... ;-)
Yes, overall roughly one in five Southern families owned slaves -- ranging from one in three in Deep South States like South Carolina and Mississippi (#1 & #2 to secede), one in nine in Border States like Maryland and Missouri (which never voted to secede).
On previous threads I posted miscalculated numbers as high as 50% instead of the correct 33% maximum.
No excuses, just my sloppy work.
Hopefully this can start to correct any misimpressions... ;-(
Good work in my opinion. Much than better than going with the most basic of calculations or just pulling stuff out one’s keester. :)
Freeper Breckenridge is doing fine, he will perfect his states rights arguments for Southern independence despite the shenanigans of statist boot licker attempts to otherwise reconstruct and distort.
My guess the ultimatum in a nutshell was "we are leaving so leave us alone". If Lincoln really wanted his island fort in the middle of the Cooper River that bad, then 600,000 dead was the price of his stonewalling....
Stop it. Lincoln knew it existed and said so in his second inaugural:
"On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came".
How many f-ing times do I have to post this Goons speech?
Why do you have to guess when the documentation is available for all to see online? The ultimatum was "we left so recognize us", period. Nothing for discussion. Lincoln's position was not open for negotiation. It was the rebel way or no way at all. So how can any rational person term that a 'negotiation'?
If Lincoln really wanted his island fort in the middle of the Cooper River that bad, then 600,000 dead was the price of his stonewalling....
You have that completely backwards, which is pretty much par for your course. It was Davis who felt Sumter was worth a war, and who led the country down the path of 600,000 dead in his losing effort. Was that worth it?
Yea - just mind his aim - it appears to be a hair off from time to time ;-)
So you are saying that “insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war—seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation.” in his second inaugural speech is a direct reference to the commission sent by Davis in February of 1861. I can see that as plausible. Is there any other reference or correspondence by Lincoln referring to this commission that you know of? It would help corroborate your claim and I would be interested in looking at it.
In such an “important” speech as the second inaugural, why would Lincoln devote any attention at all to obscure failed negations of 1861? I have my thoughts on it. It was his guilty conscious trying to assuage himself in front of the entire nation.
“Confederate forces invaded Union states”
There is dispute whether New Mexico, Missouri, Kentucky and Maryland were in fact Union states.
Nice try, but that isn't what the south said at the time. Here's one editorial:
"No man, no association of men, no state or set of states has a right to withdraw itself from this Union, of its own accord. The same power which knit us together, can only unknit. The same formality, which forged the links of the Union, is necessary to dissolve it. The majority of States which form the Union must consent to the withdrawal of any one branch of it. Until that consent has been obtained, any attempt to dissolve the Union, or obstruct the efficacy of its constitutional laws, is Treason--Treason to all intents and purposes. . . . This illustrious Union, which has been cemented by the blood of our forefathers, the pride of America and the wonder of the world must not be tamely sacrificed to the heated brains or the aspiring hearts of a few malcontents. The Union must be saved, when any one shall dare to assail it." [Richmond Enquirer, 1 November 1814]Nothing there about it being wartime. Instead it's all about consent of the other states being necessary to dissolve the union.
There is also dispute as to whether Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia, Florida, Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, Arkansas and Texas ever formed a sovereign nation, too.
Interesting. So it’s not an ‘invasion’ when you do it.
You invade other countries, not rebellious parts of your own. But lets assume for the sake of argument that the Confederacy was a sovereign nation. Strictly speaking the Union army did "invade" it, in the same way the U.S. "invaded" Germany and Italy and Japan in World War II. Had those countries not initiated the war then there wouldn't have been a need to "invade" anything. So like them, the Confederacy has nobody but itself to blame for the "invasion".
Whose disputing this? Now New Mexico wasn't a state, but it was a Union territory so there is that, but Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland were all states in the United States and never seceded from the Union. That would make them Union states.
“it was a Union territory”
Neither New Mexico nor Arizona Territory were union until after the war. Kentucky actually seceded but did not join the confederacy. Missouri and Maryland were split.
Nonsense. The governor of Kentucky asked the legislature to call a convention to vote on secession, but they refused, and the subsequent election in June of 1861, Unionists won 9 out of 10 of Kentucky's congressional seats. They did ask to remain neutral, and the Union respected that until the south broke the truce by invading. After that, a group of pro-southern politicians gathered and announced that they were now the government of Kentucky, and they voted for secession. The confederacy did, in fact, admit them, but they were basically powerless and fled the state when the confederate invasion withdrew.
If they remained a part of the union why then did Grant occupy Paducah?
Again - this reinforces the point that Kentucky was not a union state at the start of the war.
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