Posted on 09/06/2003 9:14:08 AM PDT by quidnunc
Abraham Lincoln is thought of by many as not only the greatest American statesman but as a great conservative. He was neither. Understanding this is a necessary condition for any genuinely American conservatism. When Lincoln took office, the American polity was regarded as a compact between sovereign states which had created a central government as their agent, hedging it in by a doctrine of enumerated powers. Since the compact between the states was voluntary, secession was considered an option by public leaders in every section of the Union during the antebellum period. Given this tradition — deeply rooted in the Declaration of Independence — a great statesman in 1860 would have negotiated a settlement with the disaffected states, even if it meant the withdrawal of some from the Union. But Lincoln refused even to accept Confederate commissioners, much less negotiate with them. Most of the Union could have been kept together. Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee, and Arkansas voted to remain in the Union even after the Confederacy was formed; they reversed themselves only when Lincoln decided on a war of coercion. A great statesman does not seduce his people into a needless war; he keeps them out of it.
When the Soviet Union dissolved by peaceful secession, it was only 70 years old — the same age as the United States when it dissolved in 1860. Did Gorbachev fail as a statesman because he negotiated a peaceful dissolution of the U.S.S.R.? Likewise, if all states west of the Mississippi were to secede tomorrow, would we praise, as a great statesman, a president who refused to negotiate and launched total war against the civilian population merely to preserve the Union? The number of Southerners who died as a result of Lincoln’s invasion was greater than the total of all Americans killed by Hitler and Tojo. By the end of the war, nearly one half of the white male population of military age was either dead or mutilated. No country in World War II suffered casualties of that magnitude.
Not only would Lincoln not receive Confederate commissioners, he refused, for three crucial months, to call Congress. Alone, he illegally raised money, illegally raised troops, and started the war. To crush Northern opposition, he suspended the writ of habeas corpus for the duration of the war and rounded up some 20,000 political prisoners. (Mussolini arrested some 12,000 but convicted only 1,624.) When the chief justice of the Supreme Court declared the suspension blatantly unconstitutional and ordered the prisoners released, Lincoln ordered his arrest. This American Caesar shut down over 300 newspapers, arrested editors, and smashed presses. He broke up state legislatures; arrested Democratic candidates who urged an armistice; and used the military to elect Republicans (including himself, in 1864, by a margin of around 38,000 popular votes). He illegally created a “state” in West Virginia and imported a large army of foreign mercenaries. B.H. Liddell Hart traces the origin of modern total war to Lincoln’s decision to direct war against the civilian population. Sherman acknowledged that, by the rules of war taught at West Point, he was guilty of war crimes punishable by death. But who was to enforce those rules?
These actions are justified by nationalist historians as the energetic and extraordinary efforts of a great helmsman rising to the painful duty of preserving an indivisible Union. But Lincoln had inherited no such Union from the Framers. Rather, like Bismarck, he created one with a policy of blood and iron. What we call the “Civil War” was in fact America’s French Revolution, and Lincoln was the first Jacobin president. He claimed legitimacy for his actions with a “conservative” rhetoric, rooted in an historically false theory of the Constitution which held that the states had never been sovereign. The Union created the states, he said, not the states the Union. In time, this corrupt and corrupting doctrine would suck nearly every reserved power of the states into the central government. Lincoln seared into the American mind an ideological style of politics which, through a sort of alchemy, transmuted a federative “union” of states into a French revolutionary “nation” launched on an unending global mission of achieving equality. Lincoln’s corrupt constitutionalism and his ideological style of politics have, over time, led to the hollowing out of traditional American society and the obscene concentration of power in the central government that the Constitution was explicitly designed to prevent.
A genuinely American conservatism, then, must adopt the project of preserving and restoring the decentralized federative polity of the Framers rooted in state and local sovereignty. The central government has no constitutional authority to do most of what it does today. The first question posed by an authentic American conservative politics is not whether a policy is good or bad, but what agency (the states or the central government — if either) has the authority to enact it. This is the principle of subsidiarity: that as much as possible should be done by the smallest political unit.
The Democratic and Republican parties are Lincolnian parties. Neither honestly questions the limits of federal authority to do this or that. In 1861, the central government broke free from what Jefferson called “the chains of the Constitution,” and we have, consequently, inherited a fractured historical memory. There are now two Americanisms: pre-Lincolnian and post-Lincolnian. The latter is Jacobinism by other means. Only the former can lay claim to being the primordial American conservatism.
David W. Livingston is a professor of philosophy at Emory University and the author of Philosophical Melancholy and Delirium (University of Chicago Press).
I presume Buchanan could have fixed the situation by arranging with the governor to let Anderson back into Fort Moultrie. Instead Buchanan embarked on Scott's secret plan to slip supplies and troops into Fort Sumter via the Star of the West.
WASHINGTON, December 30, 1860.
The PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES:Lieutenant-General Scott begs the President of the United States to pardon the irregularity of this communication.
It is Sunday; the weather is bad, and General Scott is not well enough to go to church. But matters of the highest national importance seem to forbid a moment's delay, and if misled by zeal, he hopes for the President's forgiveness.
Will the President permit General Scott, without reference to the War Department and otherwise, as secretly as possible, to send two hundred and fifty recruits from New York Harbor to re-enforce Fort Sumter, together with some extra muskets or rifles, ammunition, and subsistence stores?
It is hoped that a sloop of war and cutter may be ordered for the same purpose as early as to-morrow. General Scott will wait upon the President at any moment he may be called for.
The President's most obedient servant,
WINFIELD SCOTT
Now back to the bigger question. You used the broken agreement situation to try to justify Buchanan's action. You didn't respond to my analogy of the South being justified to get out of the broken constitutional compact.
Not according to President Buchanan or Secretary of War Floyd.
an officer of the United States, acting, as we (you) are assured not only without but against your (my) orders, has dismantled one fort and occupied another, thus altering to a most important extent the condition of affairs under which we (you) came.
the officer in command of the forts has received orders to act strictly on the defensive.
It is well known that it was my determination, and this I freely expressed, not to re-enforce the forts in the harbor, and thus produce a collision, until they had been actually attacked, or until I had certain evidence that they were about to be attacked.
The world knows that I have never sent any re-enforcements to the forts in Charleston Harbor and I have certainly never authorized any change to be made "in their relative military status."
You are carefully to avoid every act which would needlessly tend to provoke aggression; and for that reason you are not, without evident and imminent necessity, to take up any position which could be construed into the assumption of a hostile attitude. But you are to hold possession of the forts in this harbor, and if attacked you are to defend yourself to the last extremity. The smallness of your force will not permit you, perhaps, to occupy more than one of the three forts, but 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.
D. C. BUELL,
Assistant Adjutant-General.
FORT MOULTRIE, S. C., December 11, 1860.
Under these circumstances it is clear that Major Anderson acted upon his own responsibility, and without authority, unless, indeed, he had "tangible evidence of a design to proceed to a hostile act" on the part of the authorities of South Carolina, which as not yet been alleged. Still, he is a brave and honorable officer, and justice requires that he should not be condemned without a fair hearing.
Be this as it may, when I learned that Major Anderson had left Fort Moultrie, and proceeded to Fort Sumter, my first prompting were to command him to return to his former position, and there await the contingencies presented in his instructions.
the officer there in command of all the forts thought proper, without instructions, to change his position from one of them to another
With the facts we have stated, and in the face of the crowning and conclusive fact that your Secretary of War had resigned his seat in the Cabinet upon the publicly-avowed ground that the action of Major Anderson had violated the pledged faith of the Government, and that unless the pledge was instantly redeemed he was dishonored, denial was impossible. You did not deny it; you do not deny it now
- South Carolina Reps to Buchanan
The news of Major Anderson's coup produced a sudden and unexpected change in the President's policy. While declaring that his withdrawal from Fort Moultrie to Fort Sumter was "without orders, and contrary to orders," he yet refused for twelve hours to take any action in the matter. For twelve hours, therefore, without any excuse, he refused to redeem his plighted word.
- South Carolina Reps to Buchanan
|Page 3|
OFFICIAL RECORDS: Series 1, vol 1, part 1, page 3
[Telegram.]
WAR DEPARTMENT,
Adjutant-General's Office, December 27, 1860.
Major ANDERSON, Fort Moultrie:
Intelligence has reached here this morning that you have abandoned Fort Moultrie, spiked your guns, burned the carriages, and gone to Fort Sumter. It is not believed, because there is no order for any such movement. Explain the meaning of this report.
J. B. FLOYD,
Secretary of War.
- Secretary of War Floyd to Anderson: You did WHAT!!???
Springfield, Ills. Dec. 24, 1860
Hon. Lyman Trumbull
My dear Sir
I expect to be able to offer Mr. Blain a place in the cabinet; but I cannot, as yet, be committed on the matter, to any extent whatever.
Dispatches have come here two days in succession, that the forts in South Carolina, will be surrendered by the order, or consent at least, of the President.
I can scarcely believe this; but if it prove true, I will, if our friends at Washington concur, announce publicly at once that they are to be retaken after the inauguration. This will give the Union men a rallying cry, and preparation will proceed somewhat on their side, as well as on the other. Yours as ever
A. Lincoln
- The Living Lincoln,Angle and Miers, p. 369.
[nc] The words of a maniac or someone who desperately seeks to provoke war.
That is what you said, you little ankle biter. You may digress all you want, but your brilliance is still on display.
[nc] The Captain Vogdes who went on to say that he had reinforced Fort Pickens before Fort Sumter was attacked; but, that his act was overshadowed by the clamor and furore about Fort Sumter. I will also assume the peaceful seceders did not trust the leaders of the invasion.
[N-S] The rebellion leaders had demanded on more than one occasion that Slemmer surrender the fort. The only thing that stopped them was Slemmer's vow to defend the forts against attack to the best of his ability. It seems that it was the fear of high casualties more than any 'armistice' that prevented it.
[nc] Obviously, this fear of high casualties also must have prevented the War Between the States.
[N-S] In any case, whatever agreement there was was with Buchanan and the leaders of the rebellion. Nothing bound President Lincoln to abide by it.
[nc] Wrong.
[nc] In Charleston, that armistice was broken when a civilian ship, carrying reinforcing troops, was dispatched to Fort Sumter. It was further violated by Major Anderson when he abondoned Fort Moultrie and moved to Fort Sumter.
[N-S] The agreement that President Buchanan made with members of the South Carolina congressional delegation on December 9 stated that the government would make no attempt to reinforce the garrison in Charleston so long as the state government made no attempt to seize federal property. Nothing prevented the current garrison from moving among the federal facilities located there.
[nc] As is your perpetual habit, you change what someone said to suit yourself, and then you argue with yourself.
[nc] The language was not only to not reinforce the forts but "not to disturb the military status of the forts."
[nc] The specific purpose of the unauthorized move to Fort Sumter was to change the military status.
[N-S] That promise was promptly broken when state militia seized Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinkney.
[nc] It had already been broken by the disturbance of the military status via the unauthorized movement of Anderson.
[N-S] Following that what obligation did President Buchanan to abide by an agreement that was already violated?
[nc] It was the Buchanan administration that breached the agreement, possibly with some assistance from a usurping president-elect.
An odd thing to say considering he dispatched the Star of the West.
Instructions to Major Anderson gave him all the leeway he needd, no matter what Buchanan said later.
The South Carolonians were traitors and criminals. But you support them over a loyal officer doing his full duty in difficult times.
Walt
J. B. FLOYD
Floyd was a traitor.
Walt
As usual, you are absolutely wrong. Major Anderson violated the explicit language of the orders.
Contrary to the explicit and expressed policy of the commander-in-chief, NOBODY had proper authority to tell Anderson he could change the disposition of forces.
No even the usurping, megalomaniacal president-elect had such authority.
And since Major Anderson did indeed believe that his command was in danger from the mob in Charleston, and since he did have permission to take steps necessary to protect his men, Anderson broke no agreement by moving to Sumter. Buchanan knew this, and made sure that the agreement he made with the South Carolina congressmen did not prohibit moving troops around Charleston. It just prevented reinforcing them.
I'm just trying to summarize what you said. So what you meant was that the small percentage of imports destined for southern consumers would have 'flowed south' while the overwhelming majority would have continued to go to New York and Boston and Philadelphia?
Sadly it did not. The Davis regime got their war a few months later at Charleston.
Wrong.
What bound President Lincoln to abide by an agreement already broken by the South Carolina government?
In Charleston, that armistice was broken when a civilian ship, carrying reinforcing troops, was dispatched to Fort Sumter. It was further violated by Major Anderson when he abondoned Fort Moultrie and moved to Fort Sumter.
Nothing in the agreement prevented Major Anderson from moving to Sumter. It did, however, prevent the Charleston mob from seizing U.S. property in the Charleston area. That occured long before the Star of the West arrived, so the first violation was on the part of the rebellion leaders.
As is your perpetual habit, you change what someone said to suit yourself, and then you argue with yourself.
On page 78 of his book "Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War" David Detzer gives an account of the meeting between President Buchanan and the South Carolina congressional delegation. When they presented their written understanding of the agreement, according to Detzer, President Buchanan had objected to the promise that there would be no assault on the forts "provided" that there was no change in the forts status. He had told the delegation that he could not agree to that wording and the congressmen had stricken it out. The OR, on pages 126 and 127, shows that the congressional delegation was proceeding on what they thought Buchanan had said or, more likely, what they hoped he had said. Again there is no written agreement signed by the parties to fall back on so it appears that whatever the rebellion leaders believed, Buchanan apparently believed otherwise. So it appears that it is you, not I, changing wording to fit your purpose.
It was the Buchanan administration that breached the agreement, possibly with some assistance from a usurping president-elect.
More wishful thinking on your part?
free dixie,sw
Captain Abner Doubleday, who served under Anderson puts it this way (Doubleday):
It became evident, as I told Anderson, that we could not defend the fort, because the houses around us on Sullivan's Island looked down into Moultrie, and could be occupied by our enemies. At last it was rumored that two thousand riflemen had been detailed to shoot us down from the tops of those houses. I proposed to anticipate the enemy and burn the dwellings, but Anderson would not take so decided a step at a time when the North did not believe there was going to be war. It was plain that the only thing to be done was to slip over the water to Fort Sumter, but Anderson said he had been assigned to Fort Moultrie, and that he must stay there."... Bands of secessionists were now patrolling near us by day and night. ..."
As near as I can tell, there was no actual physical movement against them, only a rumor, and no mob, and the fact that Fort Moultrie was not a very defendable place.
The only act of aggression before or during the move came from the Union troops. As Doubleday says of the actual move into Fort Sumter:
We went up the steps of the wharf in the face of an excited band of secession workmen, some of whom were armed with pistols. One or two Union men among them cheered, but some of the others said angrily: "What are these soldiers doing here? What is the meaning of this?" Ordering my men to charge bayonets, we drove the workmen into the center of the fort. I took possession of the guard-room commanding the main entrance and placed sentinels. Twenty minutes after, Seymour arrived with the rest of the men. Meantime Anderson had crossed in one of the engineer boats. As soon as the troops were all in we fired a cannon, to give notice of our arrival to the quartermaster, who had anchored at Fort Johnson with the schooners carrying the women and children. He immediately sailed up to the wharf and landed his passengers and stores. Then the workmen of secession sympathies were sent aboard the schooners to be taken ashore.
Angrily say, "What is the meaning of this?", and get a bayonet charge in return? Sounds like Doubleday couldn't have survived FreeRepublic give and take without having a stroke.
[Non-Seq] I'm just trying to summarize what you said.
You are doing a poor job of it. I quoted what you said and opined that it deserves an award.
-btw Does your source indicate how many civilian workmen were at Ft. Sumter when Doubleday and his men arrived? I've seen estimates of 100-150 workmen at the fort prior to Anderson's decision to move the garrison there. Fixed bayonets does not seem inapropriate when the odds are 3 or 4 to 1 against. Especially with some of the civilians wearing blue cockade hats.
Sounds like Doubleday couldn't have survived FreeRepublic give and take without having a stroke.
Ha. Sounds to me like he'd fit right in...
I found some additional information about how Floyd and Buchanan reacted to Anderson's move into Sumter in the book, "Days of Defiance," by Maury Klein.
...The next morning when Trescot was readying their credentials [the credentials of the South Carolina commissioners who had come to talk with Buchanan], Louis Wigfall burst in with a telegram that Anderson had spiked Moultrie's guns and moved to Sumter/ The commissioners and Trescot were stunned. "True or not," said Trescot amid an animated discussion, "I will pledge my life that if it has been done it has been without orders from Washington.Just then Floyd arrived. He blanched at the news and confirmed what Trescot had said, that such a move "would be not only against orders but in the face of orders." ...
Trescot informed Senators Jefferson Davis and Robert Hunter and went with them to the White House to demand an explanation. Buchanan had not heard of Anderson's action. Here is how Buchanan responded according to Klein's extensively documented book:
Buchanan slumped into a chair. "My God!" he cried wearily. "Are calamities ... never to come singly! I call God to witness -- you gentlemen better than anybody else know that this is not only without but against my orders. It is against my policy." ...
Major Anderson, Captain Doubleday's commanding officer, put it another:
Numbers 12.] FORT SUMTER, S. C., December 27, 1860.
(Received A. G. O., December 31.)
COLONEL: I had the honor to reply this afternoon to the telegram of the honorable Secretary of War in reference to the abandonment of Fort Moultrie. In addition to the reasons given in my telegram and in my letter of last night, I will add as my opinion that many things convinced me that the authorities of the State designed to proceed to a hostile act. Under this impression I could not hesitate that it was my solemn duty to move my command from a fort which we could not probably have held longer than forty-eight or sixty hours, to this one, where my power of resistance is increased to a very great degree. The governor of this State sent down one of his aides to-day and demanded, "courteously, but peremptorily," that I should return my command to Fort Moultrie. I replied that I could not and would not do so. He stated that when the governor came into office he found that there was an understanding between his predecessor and the President that no re-enforcements were to be sent to any of these forts, and particularly to this one, and that I had violated this agreement by having re-enforced this fort. I remarked that I had not re-enforced this command, but that I had merely transferred my garrison from one fort to another, and that, as the commander of this harbor, I had a right to move my men into any fort I deemed proper. I told him that the removal was made on my own responsibility, and that I did it because we were in a position that we could not defend, and also under the firm belief that it was the best means of preventing bloodshed. This afternoon an armed steamer, one of two which have been watching these two forts, between which they have been passing to and fro or anchored for the last ten nights, took possession by escalate of Castle Pinckney. Lieutenant Meade made no resistance. He is with us to-night. They also took possession to-night of Fort Moultrie, from which I withdrew the remainder of my men this afternoon, leaving the fort in charge of the overseer of the men employed by the Engineer Department. We have left about one month's and a half of provisions in that fort; also some wood and coal and a small quantity of ammunition. We are engaged here to-day in mounting guns and in closing up some of the openings for the embrasures-temporarily closed by light boards, but which would offer but slight resistance no persons seeking entrance. If the workmen return to their work, which I doubt, we shall be enabled in three or four days to have a sufficient number of our guns mounted, and be ready for anything that may occur.
I am, colonel, very respectfully, your obedient servant,
ROBERT ANDERSON,
Major, First Artillery, Commanding.
Colonel S. COOPER, Adjutant-General.
Then be clear about it. Why would trade flow south when it didn't flow south before the rebellion?
Um ... how long did Anderson hold out at Sumter after hostilities began?
After Buchanan heard the verbal instructions that Buell gave Anderson, he objected and had them rewritten. The new instructions said, "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."
Any attempt to defend the forts with his small force would be hopeless.
What is the evidence that the authorities of the state "designed to proceed to a hostile act" against Fort Moultrie?
According to David Detzer, Anderson made his decision based on the following information:
1. A warning from James Louis Petigru that Fort Moultrie would be attacked if Washington did not surrender it.
2. Word that the South Carolina militia was assembling in Charleston and that scaling ladders were being prepared. Southern engineering officers openly surveying the site from Sullivan's Island also was noted.
3. Talk by civilains in Charleston of seizing Fort Moultrie.
From "Allegiance: Fort Sumter, Charleston, and the Beginning of the Civil War" by David Detzer, Page 109-110.
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