Posted on 11/19/2001 6:28:43 AM PST by tberry
On April 12, 1864, Confederates forces under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest stormed Fort Pillow, a small garrison held by some 600 Union troops. Half were African Americans from the Sixth US Colored Heavy Artillery and the Second US Colored Light Artillery.
Black soldiers who surrendered were murdered. Black sergeants were singled out, nailed to logs and set on fire. The tents of the black wounded were set on fire. Blacks escaping into the Mississippi River were caught in a crossfire. Black women and children were shot on sight. At the end of the slaughter, the Confederates had lost 14 men, but 331 Union soldiers had been killed. The number who were prisoners is unknown. Of the living Union prisoners, 168 were white, but only 58 blacks had survived.
Testifying on Fort Pillow, one Confederate sergeant reported:
"I with several of the others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded, but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued."
After the battle, Forrest stated:
"It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that nigra soldiers can't cope with Southerners."
General Grant responded by demanding that black soldiers must be treated like whites or he would cancel the practice of prisoner exchanges that until then had been one of the rules of North-South engagement. That great paragon of the South, Robert E. Lee, refused.
Speaking of Lee, the neo-confederates love to spread the lie that he was opposed to slavery. However, when Lee invaded Maryland in 1863 he ordered all free blacks shipped back to the South as slaves.
Nathan Bedford Forrest - the great white hero of the neo-confederates - had been a slave dealer in Memphis before the war; following the war he was one of the organizers of the Ku Klux Klan and reportedly served as its first Grand Wizard. That gaggle of wing-nuts over at the "League of the South" recently erected a statue in honor of this worthless sheethead.
But of course, the Civil War had nothing to do with race, or slavery.
I like whiskey too papa, but there comes a time when you should either lay off the internet or lay off the whiskey.
If you believe in government of the people, by the the people and for the people, then you have to believe also in the right of secession. There is simply no escaping that.
Charlie
From a transcript preserved by one of my relatives who knew a man who knew a man who knew a man who served as clerk to Stanton and handed the document down to my father.
President Lincoln has answered you:
"Our popular government has often been called an experiment. Two points in it, our people have already settled - the successful *establishing*, and the successful *administering* of it. One still remains - its successful *maintenance* against a formidable internal attempt to overthrow it. It is now for them [our people] to demonstrate to the world, that those who can fairly carry an election, can also suppress a rebellion - that ballots are the rightful, and peaceful, successors of bullets; and that when ballots have fairly, and constitutionally, decided, there can be no successful appeal, back to bullets; that there can be no successful appeal, except to ballots themselves, at succeeding elections. Such will be the great lesson of peace; teaching men that what they cannot take by an election, neither can they take it by war - teaching all, the folly of being the beginners of a war."
"What is now combatted, is the position that secession consistent with the Constitution -- is lawful, and peaceful. It is not contended that there is any express law for it; and nothing should ever be implied as law, which leads to unjust or absurd consequences. The nation purchased, with money, the countries out of which several of these states were formed. Is it just that they shall go off without leave, and without refunding? The nation paid very large sums, (in the aggregate, I believe, nearly a hundred millions) to relieve Florida of the aboriginal tribes. Is it just that she shall now be off without consent, or without making any return?
The nation is now in debt for money applied to the benefit of the so-called seceding states, in common with the rest. Is it just, either that creditors shall go unpaid, or the remaining States pay for the whole? A part of the present national debt was contracted to pay the old debts of Texas. Is it just that she shall leave, pay no part of it herself?
Again, if one state may secede, so may another; and then when all shall have seceded, none is left to pay the debts. Is this quite just to creditors? Did we notify them of this sage view of ours when we borrowed their money? If we now recognize this doctrine, by allowing the seceders to go in peace, it is difficult to see what we can do, if others choose to go, or to extort terms terms upon which they will promise to remain... If all the states, save one, should assert the power to drive that one out of the Union, it is presumed the whole class of seceder politicians would at once deny the power, and denounce the act as the greatest outrage upon State rights. But suppose that precisely the same act, instead of being called "driving the one out," should be called "the seceding of the others from that one," it would exactly what the seceders claim to do; unless, indeed, they make the point, that the one, because it is a minority, may rightfully do, what the others because they are a majority may not rightfully do. These politicians are subtle, and profound, on the rights of minorities. They are not so partial to that power, which made the Constitution, and speaks from the preamble, calling itself "We the People."
"This is essentially a people's contest. On the side of the Union, it is a struggle for maintaining in the world, that form, and substance of government, whose leading object is, to elevate the condition of men -- to lift artificial weights from all shoulders -- to clear the paths of laudable pursuit for all -- to afford all, an unfettered start, and a fair chance, in the race of life. Yielding to partial, and temporary departures, from necessity, this is the leading object of the government for whose existance we contend."
7/4/61
"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. The occasion is piled high with difficulty and we must rise with the occasion. As our case is new we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves and then we shall save our country.
Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. We of this congress and this administration shall be remembered in spite of ourselves. No personal significance or insignificance can spare one or another of us. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor unto the latest generation. We say we are for the Union. The world will not forget that we say this. We know how to save the Union. The world knows we do know how to save it. We--even we here--hold the power and bear the responsibility. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free--honorable alike in what we give, and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of earth. Other means may succeed; this could not fail. The way is plain, peaceful, generous, just--a way which, if followed, the world will forever applaud, and God must forever bless."
12/01/62
Walt
You can't summon anything from the historical record to support your position. Personal attacks must suffice.
The framers' intention was a permanent union of the states. No one started this secession blather until their property in slaves was threatened. Pull out a dollar bill. See where it says "E Pluribus Unum"? That was adopted in 1782. The concept of legal secession is a construct taken from whole cloth by the slave holders.
Walt
Forrest was tried by a damnyankee military tribunal; a bunch that would have surely hanged him if they could have produced any grounds at all.
Of course the only thing they found was that he was a better general than any one they (the dyanks) had.
Try again Blinky.
It is hard to imagine an intellect of self-imposed serfdom but that's what you have in the cut and paste mentality of Whiskey_Poo!
(and others on this forum who, when pressed, have admitted the same)
"Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right - a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people, that can, may revolutionize, and make their own of so much of the territory as they inhabit. --Abraham (Spooning Abe) Lincoln January 12, 1848
I am encouraged that, as they gain political sophistication, many Americans are beginning to see this tyrant for what he is. He was considered a liar and the Bill Clinton of his era. Don't take my word on that; check it out; you will find it true by going to the original sources; --such as Linkum's own speeches and newspaper accounts of the day (in which you can find opinions of people from all sections of the area that then comprised the united states of America.)
The Confederacy did not fight for the right of "the people" of the seceding states to govern themselves. This implies that "all" the people of the southern states were included in this group.
They rather fought for the right of one group of southerners to continue their immoral dominance over other groups of southerners. This primarily meant blacks, but also included all Unionist southerners, a surprisingly numerous group, especially in those areas where plantation slavery was uneconomical. Loud laments are heard about the violations of civil rights by the evil Lincoln and his followers, yet the far more numerous and murderous attacks on Unionist southerners are seldom mentioned.
Actually, you meant 18th century (1772 - Lord Mansfield - Sommersett case). The 17th century was the heyday of Bristol slavers.
You are correct about the harsh penalties for slave importation. It was considered a form of piracy and the appropriate penalties applied.
Possible, but unlikely. Pullman invented his car in 1857, but it didn't go into commercial production till 1865. It's big break came when one of the first units produced formed part of Lincoln's funeral train, providing enormous publicity.
Davis may have got in trouble on a sleeping car, but it probably wasn't one of Pullman's.
Yours in nitpicking.
Best numbers I've seen: 260,000 dead for the South. 360,000 dead for the North. Thus greater absolute numbers for the North. Significantly greater relative numbers in the South. Anyway you slice it, a horrific tragedy.
VERY few northern soldiers fought because they were forced into it. The Confederacy resorted to conscription before the Union did. The vast majority of Union soldiers were volunteers, although large numbers were probably "encouraged" to join up by social pressure, and some by bounties, etc.
Given the relative levels of education in the two sections, and the considerably freer press in the North, it is likely that the average Northerner was a lot better informed about the issues involved than the average Southerner was. It's interesting that you also seem to think that midwestern farmboys had nothing to fight about besides slvery and blacks. Take a look at a map and perhaps you can come up with other reasons why Iowa or Minnesota residents might object to the lower Mississippi valley becoming part of a hostile nation.
Hint: Jefferson said that if Napoleon got firm hold of New Orleans and Louisiana, the US would be forced to throw itself back into the arms of Great Britain.
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