A monument to SC’s black Confederate soldiers? None fought for the South, experts say

The State ^ | 12/30/18 | Jeff Wilkinson

[DoodleDawg]

Two South Carolina lawmakers want to erect a monument on the State House grounds to African-Americans who served the state as Confederate soldiers. But records show the state never accepted nor recognized armed African-American soldiers during the Civil War.

“In all my years of research, I can say I have seen no documentation of black South Carolina soldiers fighting for the Confederacy,” said Walter Edgar, who for 32 years was director of the University of South Carolina’s Institute for Southern Studies and is author of “South Carolina: A History.”

“In fact, when secession came, the state turned down free (blacks) who wanted to volunteer because they didn’t want armed persons of color,” he said.

Pension records gleaned from the S.C. Department of History and Archives show no black Confederate soldiers received payment for combat service. And of the more than 300 blacks who did receive pensions after they were allowed in 1923, all served as body servants or cooks, the records show.

Confederate law prohibited blacks from bearing arms in the war, records show, until that edict was repealed in 1865 at the very end of the conflict.

That repeal resulted in a handful of African-American units in states such as Virginia and Texas. But there were none in South Carolina, which prohibited African-Americans from carrying guns in the state’s service throughout the war for fear of insurrection, according to the archives.

[BroJoeK]

x: "go here for a start.

Well worth the time & effort to review.

[Bull Snipe]

Not in a long time. For every ship that could tie up in Charleston Harbor, 20 could tie up in New York, and 15 in Boston. No ship captain is going to swing at anchor for days waiting for pier space to offload his cargo. He will always look for the port that give him the fastest turn around time. This is money in his and the ship owners pocket. Money spent as anchor is lost.
“eventually it would dominate trade to the Western states.”
What did the Western States need Cotton for. That was the only commodity available from the South. If the Western states want rails, locomotives, plows, threshers, or machinery, harness leather, wagons, or single trees they looked to the North. They did not look to the South, because the South could not make them. All the South could offer was cotton

[BroJoeK]

re: the debate over Lincoln's resupply mission to Fort Sumter, on his orders to commanders.

DiogenesLamp post #341: "They say in several places to use force against anyone preventing them from landing the supplies.
I think the words "use his entire force" are in there somewhere."

Bull Snipe post #350: "only if the Charleston authorities resisted the effort to land food at Fort Sumter."

DiogenesLamp: "A condition which was already a foregone conclusion, else why send warships and troop transport?
The Star of the West was deemed adequate prior to this."

What DiogenesLamp wishes us to ignore is that any military unit is authorized to use force in self-defense.
Lincoln's commanders didn't need orders to tell them that.
But Lincoln's orders made certain there would be no force used unless attacked.

As for Jefferson Davis's threats, demands and military actions against Union Fort Sumter, those were already acts of war against the United States.
Combined with dozens of illegal seizures of Union forts, ships, arsenals & mints, they meant Confederates were at war against the Union since January, 1861.

So Lincoln's mission to resupply Fort Sumter was not an act of war, merely a response to the rebellion Confederates had long been waging.

[rockrr]

DEgenerateLamp’s various utterings aren’t persuasive, nor are they particularly compelling. I do find a few interesting however. If he were American he would be inclined to want to protect his nation - but his concern is with the insurrectionists.

Curious that...

[ml/nj]

I went to your link and see that it also sh*ts on the Charles Adams book. When I read the Adams book, I couldn't believe the things I was reading. But I went back and forth between his book and others I own, mostly the Encyclopedia Britannica, and almost everything was corroborated. The one claim he made that I still have a little difficulty with was that Lincoln ordered the arrest of Justice Taney. He probably footnoted the book by the then Mayor of Baltimore, and I bought that book along with a number of others footnoted. To be sure, Mayor Brown backs up the Adams assertion, but I thought he provided little evidence of his own; so I still don't know about the Taney arrest warrant. But the Adams book is SPOT ON.

ML/NJ

[central_va]

Are older encyclopedias online? Like ones written pre 1960? Before the revisionists took over?

[BroJoeK]

ml/nj: "I'm curious.
Do you think the British recognized this 'absolute necessity' in 1776?"

Of course they did, they created it with full malice aforethought, they made it impossible for Americans to do anything except revolt.
Why, you ask?
Because they wanted to defeat & subject Americans to direct British rule & taxes.
That's why in 1774 they first abrogated the 1691 Massachusetts Charter of self-government and then in 1775 issued a Proclamation of Rebellion, effectively a declaration of war on Americans.
So, from September 1774 through July 1776 there were dozens of battles & other military actions including almost every state from Massachusetts to Georgia.

So by July 4, 1776 the Brits had already abrogated self government, declared & waged war against Americans.
If that was not our Founders' definition of "necessity", then nothing could be.

But no condition remotely resembling that existed in 1860 when Deep South Fire Eaters began organizing to declare their secessions "at pleasure".

Our Founders would not have approved.

Two Georges:

[DoodleDawg]

The professor I have in mind didn't write about the Baltimore Plot or about incidents that reflect upon Lincoln's character so far as I recall.

But you said, "...he could not write such things and retain his (Ivy WBTS professor) position..." Doesn't that mean he would have to lie when writing on the subject in question?

[rockrr]

Here’s another one who has painted himself into a very uncomfortable corner where he constantly disparages the United States.

[ml/nj]

I'm done with you. You obviously cannot understand the written word.

ML/NJ

[ml/nj]

Are older encyclopedias online? Like ones written pre 1960? Before the revisionists took over?

Not that I'm aware of. That's why I LOVE my 1979 Britannica.

ML/NJ

[central_va]

Not that I'm aware of. That's why I LOVE my 1979 Britannica.

I wonder if i can get an old set on Ebay?

[DoodleDawg]

When I read the Adams book, I couldn't believe the things I was reading. But I went back and forth between his book and others I own, mostly the Encyclopedia Britannica, and almost everything was corroborated.

Adams makes a lot of claims that aren't corroborated. Or are supported on the sketchiest of evidence. He denies that slavery was the motivation for the rebellion, when the preponderance of evidence from Southern leaders of the time says that it was in defense of slavery. Instead he says it was all about tariffs. He claims that Lincoln violated the Constitution with the suspension of habeas corpus when the legality or illegality of that action has never been definitively decided. And he attacks the Gettysburg Address, claims secession is legal, and on and on offering little but his opinion in support. And then there is the whole Taney arrest nonsense as well.

Adams is very earnest in making his case, but he really offers little in the way of support.

[BroJoeK]

ml/nj: "When I read the Adams book, I couldn't believe the things I was reading.
But I went back and forth between his book and others I own, mostly the Encyclopedia Britannica, and almost everything was corroborated. "

On occasion, I've also attempted to read pro-Confederate propaganda, but could never get far into it because of its endless lies & nonsense.
I just can't separate the rubbish from facts because the rubbish makes me too angry to read farther.

ml/nj: "The one claim he made that I still have a little difficulty with was that Lincoln ordered the arrest of Justice Taney"

The fact that Adams would include the story as true when it's not reliably verified tells us that Adams is more interested in smearing Lincoln than reporting accurately on history.

Your man diLorenzo claims tens of thousands of Northern Copperheads were arrested during the war, but I've seen nothing to verify such numbers.
Indeed, only a few specific names are mentioned, including Ohio Congressman Vallandigham whose "punishment" Lincoln made exile in the Confederacy!

As for Taney, Lincoln did have some of Taney's fellow Marylanders arrested to prevent them from providing aid & comfort to our enemies by joining the Confederacy's war against the United States.
Whether Taney's actions also amounted to treason is at least debatable, but in fact he was not arrested.

But you obviously care nothing about real facts, unless they support your own hatred for Lincoln specifically and Republicans generally, right?

[ml/nj]

I wonder if i can get an old set on Ebay?

bookfinder.com is pretty good. I found this link by searching on the ISBN for the full 1979 set. Even there, there are links probably to the 1979 Yearbook. The low price is a giveaway. You are looking for a "full set."

ML/NJ

[Chickensoup]

You can get an old set by just putting the word out in your local shopper and let the librarians locally know. People are always looking to get rid of them.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The South produced 200 million per year in export value in 1860, and the North produced something like 78 Million in export value."

Nice to see one realistic number.
Your $200 million is roughly the 1860 exports of cotton from the Deep South.
But exports from the rest of the country, including California gold, were not $78 million, but nearly $200 million -- the total was $392 million in 1860.

In 1860 US exports represented roughly 10% of the nation's total $4.4 billion GDP, making the Deep South's $200 million roughly 5%.
Would the loss of 5% in overall GDP create a national depression?
Well, the Panic of 1857 was brought on by less, but on the other hand, that revenue was lost during the Civil War and yet the Northern economy boomed as never before, the GDP increasing from $4.4 billion in 1860 to almost $10 billion in 1865.

DiogenesLamp: "I'm gonna go out on a limb here and say that yeah, that 200 million in return import value was going to end up in Southern ports. "

But $200 million was the value of cotton exports, which would be roughly what Southern planters were paid for their crops.
How much of that they'd spend for shipping, insurance & loan interest we don't know, but they'd still pay all that after secession, and there's no reason to think some of those services wouldn't come from Northerners.

DiogenesLamp: "But not just because of the tariff.
Also because of the elimination of the Navigation act of 1817 which gave the northern shipping industry a near monopoly on all shipping."

Nobody but nobody in 1860 complained about the Navigation Act of 1817 for the obvious reason that it wasn't a problem for them.
Southerners were always fully capable of building & manning their own ships, if they wanted to.
But this is an area under Texas Senator Wigfall's observation (thanks for DoodleDawg's post #439):

"We have no commercial marine-no navy-we don't want them.
Your ships carry our produce and you can protect your own vessels.
We want no manufactures; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes.
As long as we have our cotton, our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from these nations with which we are in amity."

DiogenesLamp: "Even some New Yorkers thought it would be a financial disaster for the North. (Well, for New York anyways.)"

DiogenesLamp is not totally wrong to identify Northern economic concerns, except that he identifies them with Lincoln when, in fact, they were all Northern Democrats, erstwhile allies of Southern Democrats who during the Civil War sometimes became known as Copperheads, Confederate sympathizers.

DiogenesLamp wishes to use these Northern Democrats to smear Lincoln specifically and Republicans in general, but in fact, they remained Democrats during the war and, indeed, are still Democrats today.

Most Republicans are a different kind of people.

[central_va]

We need the old encyclopedias to keep track of revisionist history.

[Chickensoup]

You bet we do, librarians as a group are leftists and our history is going down the tubes.

I own a 63 version as well as the Junior and world book.

[BroJoeK]

ml/nj from post #279: "When it comes to Lincoln I shy away from obvious Southern partisans, so while I have Pollard's Southern History of the War, I don't usually quote it as regards Lincoln.
I feel the same way about current folks like DiLorenzo even though I'm not aware of any errors he might have made."

x post #348: "Well, go here for a start and be enlightened."

ml/nj post #445: "I went to your link and see that it also sh*ts on the Charles Adams book.
When I read the Adams book, I couldn't believe the things I was reading.
But I went back and forth between his book and others I own, mostly the Encyclopedia Britannica, and almost everything was corroborated."

The link x gives us is titled: "Thomas J. DiLorenzo's "The Real Lincoln" --- a rebuttal"
My main take-away's from it are:

1. When you see posters carping about alleged "Lincoln worshippers" or "Lincoln cultists", that's DiLorenzo talking.
   I don't know if he coined those terms, but they are a major part of DiLorenzo's shtick.

2. DiLorenzo argues for "peaceful abolition", a case which shatters on slave-holders' rock-hard opposition.

3. Some posters here claim, with DiLorenzo, that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation (January 1863) didn't really free anybody.
   In fact, it effected about 50,000 people immediately and by war's end another three million.
   But it was a wartime measure only and required the 13th amendment to both cover all slaves and make a return to the status quo ante impossible.

4. With DiLorenzo, some posters claim that Lincoln "tricked" Jefferson Davis at Fort Sumter by first promising to abandon the fort, then sending a naval force to trigger Davis into starting war.
   In fact, Lincoln made no such promise but did hope to hold Fort Sumter until it could be traded for something of value, such as a promise by Virginia not to succeed.
   Lincoln's post Sumter letter to mission commander Fox expressed regrets at its failure but, as consolation, at least now there was clarity on Southern intentions.

5. DiLorenzo claims Lincoln was personally corrupt, but examination of the example DiLorenzo cites shows otherwise.

My point is that when you see such arguments posted here, one source for them is DiLorenzo and the link above provides data to refute them.

Ml/nj then mentions the Charles Adams book, "When in the Course of Human Events", which is also reviewed at length on this site.

Adams: "There must have been something more than hurt pride and indignation to have the Northern money interests expend so much on the war, and to have Northern men sacrifice their lives....

“The forts were intimately tied up with the collection of taxes.
Control and fortify the forts in the great harbors in the South and you could cripple trade unless the South paid its duties.
Sumter was such a fort."

Of course, the response to Adams is simple: "That Lincoln wasn’t worried about the tariff revenue for the sake of revenue is shown by the fact that the entire south collected only $4 million in revenue in 1860, compared to $231.3 million in revenue collected at the Port of New York alone."

As a result, our own DiogenesLamp pushes the argument further than Adams does by claiming it was not so much the actual tariff revenues those evil "Northern money interests" cared about, it was the huge potential loss of trade from New York to Confederate cities like Charleston, SC.
The problem for DiogenesLamp is that loss of trade did actually happen during the Civil War and it did not, in fact, cripple the Union economy.
Indeed US GDP grew from $4.4 billion in 1860 to nearly $10 billion in 1865.
What certainly did p*ss-off those evil "Northern money interests" was the repudiation of debts owed by Confederates, beginning with Georgia on April 26, 1861 and then Confederacy wide on May 21.

Anyway, point is: between DiLorenzo and Adams most of the pro-Confederate arguments we see posted are found and dismantled on the link x provided us above.