Posted on 03/10/2013 8:19:44 AM PDT by BroJoeK
Ten Neo-Confederate Myths (+one)
In fact, a study of the earliest secessionists documents shows, when they bother to give reasons at all, their only major concern was to protect the institution of slavery.
For example, four seceding states issued "Declarations of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify Secession from the Federal Union".
These documents use words like "slavery" and "institution" over 100 times, words like "tax" and "tariff" only once (re: a tax on slaves), "usurpation" once (re: slavery in territories), "oppression" once (re: potential future restrictions on slavery).
So secession wasn't just all about slavery, it was only about slavery.
In fact, secessionists biggest real complaint was that Washington was not doing enough to enforce fugitive slave laws in Northern states.
Mississippi's Declaration is instructive since it begins by explaining why slavery is so important:
It goes on to complain that the Federal Government is not enforcing its own Fugitive Slave laws, saying that anti-slavery feeling:
In fact, the Compromise of 1850 shifted responsibility for enforcing Fugitive Slave laws from northern states to the Federal Government, so this complaint amounts to a declaration that Washington is not powerful enough.
In fact, no where in the Founders' literature is the 10th Amendment referenced as justifying unilateral, unapproved secession "at pleasure".
Instead, secession (or "disunion") is always seen as a last resort, requiring mutual consent or material usurpations and oppression.
For example, the Virginia Ratification Statement says:
James Madison explained it this way:
"It is the nature & essence of a compact that it is equally obligatory on the parties to it, and of course that no one of them can be liberated therefrom without the consent of the others, or such a violation or abuse of it by the others, as will amount to a dissolution of the compact.
Applying this view of the subject to a single community, it results, that the compact being between the individuals composing it, no individual or set of individuals can at pleasure, break off and set up for themselves, without such a violation of the compact as absolves them from its obligations."
In fact, the 1860 Republican platform only called for restricting slavery from territories where it did not already exist.
And Lincoln repeatedly said he would not threaten slavery in states where it was already legal.
In fact, neither out-going President Buchanan nor incoming President Lincoln did anything to stop secessionists from declaring independence and forming a new Confederacy.
And Buchanan did nothing to stop secessionists from unlawfully seizing Federal properties or threatening and shooting at Federal officials.
Nor did Lincoln, until after the Confederacy started war at Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) and then formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861.
In fact, no Confederate soldier was killed by any Union force, and no Confederate state was "invaded" by any Union army until after secessionists started war at Fort Sumter and formally declared war on May 6, 1861.
The first Confederate soldier was not killed directly in battle until June 10, 1861.
In fact, from Day One, Confederacy was an assault on the United States, and did many things to provoke and start, then formally declared war on the United States.
From Day One secessionists began to unlawfully seize dozens of Federal properties (i.e., forts, armories, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.), often even before they formally declared secession.
At the same time, they illegally threatened, imprisoned and fired on Federal officials -- for example, the ship Star of the West attempting to resupply Fort Sumter in January 1861 -- then launched a major assault to force Sumter's surrender, while offering military support for secessionist forces in a Union state (Missouri) .
And all of that was before formally declaring war on the United States.
After declaring war, the Confederacy sent forces into every Union state near the Confederacy, and some well beyond.
Invaded Union states & territories included:
In every state or territory outside the Confederacy proper, Confederate forces both "lived off the land" and attempted to "requisition" supplies to support Confederate forces at home.
Secessionists also assaulted the United states by claiming possession of several Union states and territories which had never, or could never, in any form vote to seceed.
So bottom line: the Confederacy threatened every Union state and territory it could reach.
In fact, there are remarkably few records of civilians murdered or raped by either side, certainly as compared to other wars in history.
But "pillaging" is a different subject, and both sides did it -- at least to some degree.
The Union army was generally self-sufficient, well supplied from its own rail-heads, and seldom in need to "live off the land."
In four years of war, the best known exceptions are Grant at Vicksburg and Sherman's "march to the sea".
In both cases, their actions were crucial to victory.
By contrast, Confederate armies were forced to "live off the land" both at home and abroad.
Yes, inside the Confederacy itself, armies "paid" for their "requisitions" with nearly worthless money, but once they marched into Union states and territories, their money was absolutely worthless, and so regardless of what they called it, their "requisitions" were no better than pillaging.
Perhaps the most famous example of Confederate pillaging, it's often said, cost RE Lee victory at the Battle of Gettysburg: while Lee's "eyes and ears" -- J.E.B. Stuart's cavalry -- was out pillaging desperately needed supplies in Maryland and Pennsylvania, Lee was partially blind to Union movements and strengths.
In fact, only one crime is defined in the US Constitution, and that is "treason".
The Constitution's definition of "treason" could not be simpler and clearer:
The Constitution also provides for Federal actions against "rebellion", "insurrection", "domestic violence", "invasion" declared war and treason.
So Pro-Confederate arguments that "there was no treason" depend first of all on the legality of secession.
If their secession was lawful, then there was no "treason", except of course among those citizens of Union states (i.e., Maryland, Kentucky & Missouri) which "adhered to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort".
But the bottom line is this: in previous cases -- i.e., the Whiskey Rebellion -- once rebellion was defeated, rebels were all released or pardoned by the President of the United States.
And that pattern, first established by President Washington, was followed under Presidents Lincoln and Johnson.
In fact, lawful secession by mutual consent could be 100% constitutional, if representatives submitted and passed such a bill in Congress, signed by the President.
Alternatively, states could bring suit in the United States Supreme Court for a material breach of contract and have the Federal government declared an "oppressive" or "usurping" power justifying secession.
But Deep-South slave-holders' unilateral, unapproved declarations of secession, without any material breach of contract issues, followed by insurrection and a declaration of war on the United States -- these our Founders clearly understood were acts of rebellion and treason -- which the Constitution was designed to defeat.
That leads to the larger question of whether our Pro-Confederates actually respect the Constitution as it was intended or, do they really wish for a return to those far looser, less binding -- you might even say, 1960s style "free love" marriage contract -- for which their union was named: the Articles of Confederation?
But consider: the Confederacy's constitution was basically a carbon copy of the US Constitution, emphasizing rights of holders of human "property".
So there's no evidence that Confederate leaders were in any way more tolerant -- or "free love" advocates -- regarding secession from the Confederacy than any Union loyalist.
Then what, precisely, does the allegation of "statism" mean?
The truth is, in this context, it's simply one more spurious insult, and means nothing more than, "I don't like you because you won't agree with me."
Poor baby... ;-)
Plus, one "bonus" myth:
No, no, no way...
Yes, FDR could be the O-man's political daddy, and his political mother those 1960s radicals like, well, his mother.
And one of his grandparents is well known: his intellectual maternal grandpa is Karl Marx.
But the other grandpa is certainly not Lincoln.
Rather, it is Lincoln's evil doppelganger, the other tall thin President born in Kentucky: Jefferson Davis.
How can that be?
Well, here's my list -- both Obama and Davis are/were:
You know, I don't know how important of a person you are, or how big of a muckety-muck you are in your community, but I doubt seriously if you speak for the whole South, and you shouldn't be trying to sound like you do, FRiend.
Some of my Southern relatives, inlaws and "outlaws" ancestors served the Confederacy, but others were Unionists, and suffered under the Confederacy.
Regardless, they all want us to come and visit, more often than we do, and they're disappointed when we can't make it.
And I'd love to see them all here...
Yes, I've kidded about it, but where would be a better place and time for a lot of people to get together than...
I agree with what you say, but would like to expand on it a little.
Prior to around 1850 there was no such thing as a North vs. South dichotomy in American politics. Since at least the War of 1812 the country had been politically split into three sections, East (what we now call the Northeast), West (the free states from Ohio to Minnesota and Iowa), and South (the slave states). Some states, like MO and KY sort of vacillated between West and South.
All this time the country had been generally dominated by an alliance between South and West, both of which were heavily agricultural and thus economically aligned in interest against an increasingly industrial and financial East. The notion that in 1850 MS was agricultural and IA was industrial is just ludicrous.
For most of this time slavery was a back issue that most Americans just wanted to go away. Abolitionists were assaulted and sometimes murdered in the West and even in the East. They were (accurately) viewed as disturbers of the national peace.
All this was based on the notion that the expansion of slavery had been settled by the Missouri Compromise in 1820. North of the southern boundary of MO would be free territory.
The southern extremists started pushing for the right to expand slavery into all the territories, with the Dred Scott ruling and the Nebraska Acts.
Men of the West were perfectly happy to have blacks enslaved in the South, but did not want to live next to them, or to free blacks for that matter, so in self-defense they turned against the South’s drive for expansion beyond previously accepted limits.
Meanwhile southerners, accurately or not, felt more and more at risk and they saw as mere self-defense what the East and West saw as aggression.
Which meant throughout the 1850s both sides saw themselves as merely defending themselves against attack by the others. The very natural and human response was to line up with others who felt the same, creating the North vs. South split that finally showed up in the 1860 election.
I see even most of the fire-eaters as thinking of themselves as in self-defense mode, not attack mode. They believed, probably accurately, that the only chance to preserve the institution of slavery in the long run was for the South to be its own country. Hence their maneuvering to create conditions under which the Union would fracture.
Looking back at your original essay, which I think was well-done, BTW, I think you missed one.
This is that Lincoln was the precursor of all subsequent expansions of federal power, and therefore that if Lincoln had not expanded this power, or had failed in his attempt to conquer the South, we would live in a states-rights paradise. IOW, Lincoln is the cause of all our present problems.
This is a classic example of the post hoc, ergo prompter hoc fallacy. The admittedly bad recent and ongoing expansion of federal power occurred after Lincoln, therefore he caused it.
In actual fact, the primary expansion of federal power didn’t get going till the late 1800s, some decades after Lincoln’s presidency, during which the government contracted greatly from its size during the war.
I don’t know of anything at all in Lincoln’s writings, including his letters,which I’ve read several volumes of, that indicate any desire to expand the scope of the government, except insofar as necessary to win the war.
In fact, the CSA did not expand confederate power as much as the Union did federal power, and you can make a good case this was a significant contributor to their eventual defeat.
If you wish to fight a war, you need to recognize that a real existential war, not our present wars of choice, requires centralization of power to win. If you can’t accept that, you should either not get into a war, or you need to recognize that failure to centralize will mean probable defeat, the consequences of which might be considerably than a (hopefully) temporary expansion of central power.
I would also suggest that if temporary expansion of central power is not preferable to defeat, then you probably should not be fighting that particular war, since it doesn’t really matter if you lose.
All of TN was lost long before this once Vicksburg fell— the original mississippi riverine campaign (Donelson etc.) The North started there (ex: Shiloh).
There was no hope to stop the unionists in E. Tenn. So one can argue as many have Hood was high or something-— book is coming out in June this year— he wasn’t. The overall strategy of S from the get go was to politically grind down the N. The effort in TN was a last desperate and foolish effort to disrupt supply lines that were already secure, and Sherman being already more than half the way to Savannah and burning/pillaging up GA along the way. Total war in other words. By this point it was last stand time in Richmond, redoubts, delay and pray— and all logistical.
Will be interested for true facts about Hood’s personal state to come out, esp. as regards his relationships with his command staff. Also would like to know about the “peculiar behaviour of Patrick Cleburne” at Franklin— aside from being a warrior.
Ok, we’ve both exchnged our facts. You still claim my facts are misinformation, and I still believe that your facts are the same. Thus, we’ve come full circle, back to where we started.
Thanks for an interesting but inconclusive discussion. Neither of us were in the Civil War and we both choose which facts we wish to believe. Neither of us changed the other’s mind and all we have done is waste JimRob’s bandwisth.
Your "noble" lost causers (Gen. Early) demanded $500,000 ransom in lieu of the destruction of Chambersburg. They subsequently set the town on fire. In addition, they demanded ransom from individual homeowners, whose homes they torched even after the ransom was paid. In addition, these enlightened officers and men tortured to death an old Negro Freeman [presumably because Southerners weren't racists, and the Civil War was not about slavery.]
/.02 ;-)
Can you cite a couple of examples of your facts which I dispute, and my facts you don’t accept?
An awful lot of Southerners moved North in the 20th century. Maybe they were ill-treated in the North (maybe they came here because they were treated worse in the South). Maybe their migration was the South's revenge for the Civil War and Reconstruction.
But maybe our moving down there is just the next act -- the response to what happened before. Southerners moved where the jobs were. Now Northerners are doing the same (maybe it all has to do with air conditioning, I don't know). By this point, though, I wonder if really unreconstructed Dixiecrats don't feel as out of place in Southern cities as Northern transplants do.
If you're trying to make some point, don't expect other people to guess what it is. Just say it (though however you did it with South Carolina, it didn't work out so well for you, did it?)
Elections like 1860 or 1912 -- or even 1960 for that matter -- were very confusing affairs because it was hard to tell just who electors were going to vote for. Still and all, Lincoln did win a majority of the electoral vote.
His corps took the lead in the invasion of Pennsylvania and almost reached the state capital of Harrisburg before being recalled by Lee to concentrate at Gettysburg. These successes led to favorable comparisons with Jackson.
You need to learn some history, while camped near Harrisburg Confederates went into Harrisburg quite often. There are many letters home describing soldiers going into Harrisburg shopping. Yes, shopping.
BS alert. Most were GTT.
New Jersey had 4 faithless electors who supported Lincoln.
The fact that electors are supposed to vote for the person who won the most votes in their state? Douglas won the state, he should have received all 7.
Hi, Tom
Thank you! I got lucky, too.
No, wait, that didn’t come out right.....
LOL
John Breckenridge received 8 electoral votes from South Carolina and the only citizens that were allowed to vote were the members of the South Carolina legislature. So...should those 8 electoral votes gone to nobody since voters were not allowed to express their preference?
Sherman's men were ordered not to steal from ordinary citizens too. And we all know that soldiers never, ever disobey orders. </sarcasm>
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