Posted on 04/27/2022 9:57:50 AM PDT by Borges
There is nothing stranger in American history than the up-and-down reputation of Ulysses S. Grant.
Grant, who was born April 27, 1822, was the commanding general who ended the Civil War. He managed the great campaigns that captured Vicksburg and Richmond, saved Chattanooga, and compelled the surrender of Robert E. Lee and the main Confederate field army, and did it so well that President Abraham Lincoln apologized for not showing him enough confidence. Grant’s “Personal Memoirs,” published after he died in 1885, are a landmark of 19th-century American prose.
Grant may be a greater example even than Lincoln of the American rags-to-riches story. In 1861 he was working in his father’s leather-goods store in Galena, Ill. Three years later, he was general-in-chief of U.S. forces. Four years after that, he was elected president.
(Excerpt) Read more at wsj.com ...
The draft law still outfitted the ranks of the North, and I believe much less so in the South because they were fighting invaders, and people naturally volunteer to fight invaders.
One other manpower move the North made that paid of greatly was to open the army up for enlistment of free blacks and former slaves. This brought over 100,000 men into the Union Army.
a hundred thousand soldiers is a hundred thousand soldiers.
Even the Confederacy came around to realize that pool of manpower may support their cause. But changing the law in 1865 did little to benefit the Confederate war effort.
I am not disputing that. I have always said the North had a massive manpower advantage over those defending their homes.
My point about bringing up Lord Dunmore's proclamation is to point out that the Civil War was pretty much the same as the American war of independence.
If you wish to say so.
It seems self evident to me, but I am willing to listen to evidence to the contrary.
I remember reading the many speeches in Congress about the issue and of course there would have been endless informal meetings to find some resolution to the impasse.
Davis talking informally as one Kentuckian to another was the only hope of avoiding war.
When Anderson initially left the other forts around Charleston harbor, he told folks in Washington he did not need to be resupplied. Afterwards he revised the statement to ask for help. The ships that came were not a warship convoy, but those needed to resupply him. Davis could have decided there was no reason not to allow him to be resupplied.
The forts were federal property and would not automatically revert to a state, but their fate would have been decided as part of secession negotiations. Mary Chestnuts Diary makes clear Anderson was given an ultimatum to surrender and bombardment began after the deadline passed, and not because Union warships were or were not present. I’ll stick with my understanding of history.
no argument from me on your statement.
Because the possibility of discussing it with President Buchanan was impossible?
The ships that came were not a warship convoy, but those needed to resupply him.
That is incorrect. The ships that were publicly announced to be sent were the "Powhatan", the "Pocahontas", the "Pawnee", the "Harriet Lane", and the Yankee, all of which were warships.
Additionally, the "Baltic" was sent with hundreds of troops and munitions.
Three tug boats were also sent, and there is some question as to whether or not one of them was armed at the time, but here is a picture of the "Thomas Freeborn" tugboat.
Here is a picture of the USS "Pawnee". I couldn't find any pictures of the Powhatan or the Pocahontas, but they were at least as powerful as the Pawnee.
These were warships, and their orders were to use their entire force if they were resisted in their efforts to place supplies into Sumter.
Lincoln launched this attack, and then told the public it was just "supplies" and he would arrest anyone who said otherwise.
The Confederates knew he was sending a flotilla of warships to coerce them, and it was the arrival of the "Harriet Lane" (which immediately fired a shot at the "Nashville) that triggered the bombardment of Sumter.
General Beauregard correctly reasoned that if the fort was still in enemy hands when the ships arrived, he would face cannon fire from both the ships *and* the Fortress.
He offered a truce with Major Anderson, but Anderson refused.
Beauregard had to neutralize the fort before the rest of the ships arrived. The public orders said that Captain Mercer would arrive in the Powhatan and take control of the operation.
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