Posted on 08/19/2013 9:27:39 AM PDT by don-o
"Interfere"? When the Constitution gives Congress alone the power to declare war?
Argument in support? You really do like totalitarianism, don't you? In fact, if you like it that much, I'm sure you'd prefer to dispense with further discussion and just roll the Black Marias.
States have their sovereignty, portions of which are lent to the federal government to exercise as the States' agent.
Agents, like seneschals and butlers, are not masters.
They call that one teleology, and appeal to force.
If they were all about peace, why the war preparations, unless they were about war, a grand crusade to destroy the South and take the country's affairs into very profitable receivership?
No secret meeting may have been necessary, but the meetings continued, in hushed and rushed circumstances, right up to the fall of Fort Sumter.
So much yearning for peace, and yet so many secret meetings, so many quartermasters and militia commanders so hard at work, so many unspoken plans and conjurations.
Yes, that has peace written all over it. Well before Lincoln took the oath, too.
Si vis pacem, para bellum. A famous phrase. I'm not going to fault people for trying to be prepared for different contingencies. There'd be more to fault if they didn't.
Beyond that what you're doing is taking the result of a war as the goal people had before they even went to war. Clearly, that's not always true. In spite of what I've heard around here last week, the colonists in 1775 weren't aiming at independence.
In 1914 Britain probably wasn't aiming at overturning Germany's monarch any more that Germany was intending to overturn Russia's. Such events were results that were barely conceivable before the war began. Leaders started from the existing situation and took action to prevent conditions from getting worse or their side from collapsing, not to fulfill some great master plan.
I could just as easily turn your worldview on its head, and say that Lincoln didn't intend any great revolution in Southern life. He had friends in the South from his Congressional days. His wife was from a slaveowning family. In a sense, Lincoln was Southern-born himself, and believed his ancestry to be Southern.
Lincoln thought he understood the South and believed that underneath all the enmity and animosity that most Southerners were still loyal and would respond to a firm and decided, but peaceful action, and then things could go back to what they were (with only the question of the territories finally resolved in his side's favor). I don't know if that's the truth or the whole truth, but I doubt it's further from the actual truth than your conspiracy theory.
So much yearning for peace, and yet so many secret meetings, so many quartermasters and militia commanders so hard at work, so many unspoken plans and conjurations.
So much on the other side as well. Got to dig out Davis's day book and find out what he was up to at the time before casting aspersions.
Those were not the last orders Anderson received. The ones you cited were the ones Buchanan objected to. From Buell's orders you quote [my red bold underline below]:
... an attack on or attempt to take possession of either one of them will be regarded as an act of hostility, and you may then put your command into either of them which you may deem most proper to increase its power of resistance. You are also authorized to take similar defensive steps whenever you have tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act.
You and I had a discussion of this when you were posting under your previous handle. I kept asking you where the mob was or the attempt to take possession of Moultrie that might justify Anderson's move if he went by Buell's orders. You never could provide evidence of one.
Charleston officials had promised to stop any mob attacking Fort Moulrie, and they had boats patrolling in the harbor off Fort Moultrie to prevent an approach from the water. Anderson's own officers said that the modifications they had made to Moultrie were sufficient to protect them from a mob, but not an organized army. What soldiers attacked Moultrie?
Here is an excerpt from Buchanan's December 21 revised order to Anderson sent by Floyd:
It is neither expected nor desired that you should expose your own life or that of your men in a hopeless conflict in defense of these forts. If they are invested or attacked by a force so superior that resistance would, in your judgment be a useless waste of life, it will be your duty to yield to necessity and make the best terms in your power.
Anderson was certainly invested, i.e., enclosed or surrounded, by superior forces, although they had not moved against him.
Anderson's move to Sumter also violated another of the tenants of Buell's instructions, to wit:
You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression; and for that treason you are not, without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile attitude.
Anderson's move was certainly construed as hostile, as the report from the Charleston Courier I provided above indicates. His move stopped negotiations between the South Carolinians and Buchanan and led eventually to open conflict.
tenants = tenets
Presumably for Boston to join their compatriots. I believe the larger Massachusetts contingent left from Boston for the capital the next day.
That's not my point, though. I'm just saying that John Andrew was prepared for different contingencies and the militia was readying before Lincoln even came on the scene. The same thing was going on in the South.
Lincoln wasn't necessarily driving the mobilization momentum across the country. It was going on before he even took office.
I am somehow reminded of LBJ and his minions interfering with military operations during the Vietnam War.
That is after a war has started. I was thinking about 1) delicate negotiations and 2) crisis or hostage or stand-off or emergency situations (Panay, Maine, Cuban Missile, Pueblo, Mayaguez, Entebbe, Munich, Teheran, Benghazi ... whatever).
Chief executives don't always handle those situations well, but sometimes Congressmen exploiting the situation for political gain can make things worse. Sometimes it can be a blessing to only have to deal with one adversary on one front, rather than having to answer every possible political objection.
Here I am reminded of Carl Schurz's April 5, 1861 letter to Lincoln.
Doesn't answer the question of why the special session of the Senate Buchanan called was adjourned when the nation was in the greatest crisis in its history. Was it really Lincoln's business to call Congress back into session after (one branch) had voted to adjourn after about 24 days?
Basically Lincoln had earlier told Schurz if Lincoln called an extra session of Congress, some in Congress might have called for peace and compromise.
Maybe he figured they had their chance and didn't achieve anything. That was certainly a plausible conclusion from the facts.
Bottom line on all this: Lincoln came out and said that he wasn't going to start shooting first.
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.
The secessionists started shooting. Then they declared that they'd somehow been "tricked" or "forced" into a war that it was fully in their power to avoid. I mean avoid on that day. They could have let the ship through and let Lincoln make the next move.
If Davis or Pickens had bothered to read or understand Lincoln's inaugural, they might have let Lincoln start the war that you guys are so certain that he wanted, and let him bear the consequences.
"...and later granted by George III...to the States severally and individually, South Carolina being specifically named and enumerated among the States thus created Sovereigns in law as well as fact?" If South Carolina is a sovereign entity free of the United States then who from that state signed the Treaty of Paris? Being a sovereign entity then they would have had to have signed in order to be bound by it, wouldn't they?
"Their resumption of their unified Sovereign powers by secession gave the Carolinians all the authority they needed to demand anything of anyone on their soil, under the terms of their own state constitution..." and the legal owners be damned, right? Forget that pesky Constitution and that ridiculous rule of law, y'all made it up as you went along.
If you think a sovereign government does not have powers of taking in cases in dispute, just try your argument out on the Enforcement Division of the IRS and DoT.
And what you ignore is that there are legal processes behind all that, with guarantees of just compensation. Hardly the case in 1861.
You really do like totalitarianism, don't you? In fact, if you like it that much, I'm sure you'd prefer to dispense with further discussion and just roll the Black Marias.
Your idiocy knows no bounds doesn't it? And you have no respect for legal protections of any kind if it gets in your way.
And si vis bellum, para bellum immo. Works that way, too.
Not as long as I'm reading you.
That would be a reasonable caution if I were doing it, and perhaps a transgression into teleology; but well before the war we saw Lincoln in the U.S. House, sitting at the knee of John Quincy Adams as he expounded on the subject of "reorganizing" the South by force in case of a contest of wills, and of theoretical justifications for coercing a State by armed force.
Put that together with what happened later, and it's hard to resist the conclusion (which we're entitled to draw, since Lincoln so doggedly persisted in habitually concealing his real intentions in any sitation and in going out of his way to exclude Congress and other nosy nobodies from the shaping and executing of his agenda) that the outcome of the Civil War was exactly what Lincoln intended, and that a large part of his success lay in never letting people know what he intended in full, so that (like good Alinskyites today) he could avoid the tactical and political trammels of any moral onus that might flow from his deeds, and indeed ascribe the People's sufferings to Judgments of God.
Which he did.
You might have added that Lincoln was kibitzing and nibitzing from the sidelines betimes. From his election forward, he was communicating directly with Gen. Winfield Scott and members of the Northern "war faction" (I would call them) of Buchanan's cabinet, which you'll recall already included the notorious South-hater Edwin Stanton. Stanton became Attorney General (having had another cabinet post up to that time) just days before public accusations of improper handling of government bonds were brought against two Southern members of the Buchanan cabinet (they were pushed out in disgrace -- just like Obama today does with heterosexual Army generals). They left just before the end of December, 1860.
Former Michigan senator Lewis Cass, a "peace Democrat" and sometime co-sponsor with Stephen A. Douglas of the "popular sovereignty" doctrine, resigned his cabinet post at the same time and retired from public life.
Well, if S.C. secedes, the U.S. Constitution no longer applies to S.C., which becomes a duchy or republic of its own. Overrides the S.C. legislature? Well, yes, a sovereign secession act would override acts of the legislature, too, since they are taken at the highest level of sovereignty.
One of which deeded the land Sumter was built on to the federal government free and clear and the other which clearly states that only Congress can dispose of federal property?
Those arrangements are only good as long as a) S.C. remains in the Union or b) S.C. is pleased to continue them even after seceding. Neither applied, and S.C. had the authority to demand the return of its property.
Which it did, while offering to take a pro rata share of the national debt. S.C. never did, to my knowledge, offer any statement of what they thought should happen with federal territories (such as asking for a 1/32nd share of Colorado Territory, or something like that).
Only if they do it legally.
Only by aggressive (illegal) force of arms against inferior forces. But that was eventually put right.
And you accuse me of ad hominem attacks? And are you saying that the Democrat Party had not and still has not this evil slavery mentality in which it has not turned away from before the Civil War?
One interesting thing is Romans would sell themselves into slavery. Collecting taxes was by the tax farm system, and citizens could not refuse the civic duty of being tax farmers, which meant they became personally liable for the amount of tax, but had the authority to extract taxes from their neighbors. Sometimes there was not enough money in the province to pay the demanded taxes, and the tax farmer would sell himself, his wife, his children to make up the difference.
Augustine sold his citizenship.
Roman slaves had some legal protection. Spanish slaves had some legal protection. Much less was provided under English common law or US law.
Becoming a slave might be thought superior to being murdered as a prisoner of war.
As lentulusgracchus has pointed out, war was the responsibility of Congress. Lincoln was clearly on the path that would result in war.
The Senate usually had special sessions every two years at the end of the regular session, sometimes longer, sometimes shorter. So, this special session was by no means unique. Doubtless, the new president had appointments he wanted to make, and some of the higher ranking ones required Senate confirmation. The new government needed to be set up.
In checking the minutes of this special session I see where Lincoln's secretary Nicolay would periodically bring in communications from the president, and the Senate would then go into executive session to discuss them.
The session had opened with Lincoln's inaugural address. There then followed quite a bit of discussion on what Lincoln meant in the inaugural and whether the Senate should print the inaugural speech, which was apparently not usually done. A number of other things were discussed including whether to expel Senator Wigfall of Texas since his state had seceded, but he was staying in the Senate until he was officially informed of the secession. There was discussion about forts in the seceded states and what the administration intended to do about Fort Sumter. One argument at that time was that Sumter should be evacuated as a military necessity. There were not enough troops to force their way in to the fort, which was apparently true if Scott's and Anderson's manpower estimates were correct.
Bottom line on all this: Lincoln came out and said that he wasn't going to start shooting first.
Could the South trust anything that Lincoln said? He sent Lamon to Charleston to say that Sumter would be evacuated. It wasn't. His Secretary of State similarly assured the Confederate Commissioners about Sumter, and they ended up accusing the Administration of gross perfidy concerning Sumter. Lincoln sent Fox down to visit Sumter, and Fox was allowed to visit Sumter for supposedly a peaceful purpose but in reality Fox was planning his Sumter relief expedition as became clear by some captured communication, IIRC. Lincoln said the Union couldn't stand half free, half slave, yet he supported a constitutional amendment leaving slavery alone in those states that wanted it. Which Lincoln was president?
What was to prevent a not-so-trustworthy Lincoln from reinforcing Sumter with men and ammunition instead of just supplying the fort with food? Until news began leaking out that an armada of war ships was being prepared by the North the Confederates had allowed Anderson to buy food in town for the fort. Anderson had earlier turned down an offer from the governor for free food; he insisted on paying for it.
The Richmond Daily Dispatch of April 5, 1861 said the following (I have no idea whether it was true -- it doesn't seem to match the story that the North/Anderson was putting out):
The Mercury has a correspondent who says:
Up to this time, two hundred pounds fresh beef, and three dozen cabbages, have been sent to Fort Sumter three times a week — besides potatoes by the barrel. Thus, both officers and privates have been allowed to have at least a considerable amount of wholesome provisions fer seventy men, and what cause is there for complaint? These facts are derived from the best authority, and are reliable. Let the Northern people do justice to Southern liberality.
As a Monday morning quarterback I would not have stopped food supplies and instead have widely publicized that the South was providing all the food that the fort needed, leaving no justification for Lincoln's supply-Sumter-with-bread Expedition.
If Davis or Pickens had bothered to read or understand Lincoln's inaugural, they might have let Lincoln start the war that you guys are so certain that he wanted, and let him bear the consequences.
I've seen it argued that there was a chance that one or more already-seceded Southern states might waiver about their secession if Davis et al. let Lincoln supply the fort. I don't know whether that was true or not. I doubt it. More probably Davis recognized that a confrontation with the North would drive more states into the Confederacy, just as Lincoln recognized that such a confrontation would firm up support for himself. Both things happened.
What way is that? What constitutional provision controls the issue? Were Hamilton and Jay (two of the authors of the Federalist Papers outlining what the Constitution meant) wrong about what the Constitution meant?
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