Posted on 03/07/2016 2:38:12 PM PST by Red in Blue PA
GETTYSBURG, PA (WHTM/CNN) - Tensions ran high during a Confederate flag rally in Pennsylvania this weekend.
A Southern heritage group held what it calls Confederate Flag Day in Gettysburg, PA, but there were plenty of vocal opponents to the event.
The flag has 13 stars, three stripes and two very different meanings.
The refrain is familiar. Supporters such Mark Landree, executive director of the Sons of Confederate Veterans, says it's about history. Opponents like Christina Hansen only see hate.
(Excerpt) Read more at kmov.com ...
Rustbucket. If I make not mistaken. Either our good friend 4CJ or Pearidge or LG, put out some very interesting. Numbers, and sources of how from a free market, stand point Slavery. Was well on it’s way out of the South it was posted years and years ago. I myself was taken back by it.
You are a Troll.
Cannot even answer what makes you a Conservative.
And see the excellent post 100 which shows that slavery was indeed dying out, and would have eventually. No need to send 500,000 men to their deaths.
This will be my last post to you because you are I deed an ignorant leftist Troll.
I was wrong, Anderson commanded only 85 men, of which 8 were musicians. Spherical case shot is a fused round, which can be set to explode at a predetermined range, showering the target with shrapnel. This round is used against artillery batteries and ships crews. Solid shot is just that, a sold iron ball. It is for punching holes in ships.
All of Andersons fuses had be captured when the Confederate forces occupied the Federal arsenal in Charleston. Without the fuses, case shot is the same as solid shot, it wont explode. Beauregard had 6000 men and 45 big guns to counter any threat Sumter offered. The fort was built to protect the entrance to the harbor. Most of its guns faced seaward, away from Charleston. At any one time, Anderson could only man 10 guns. Davis, Beauregard and Pickens, all recognized the fact that while an imposing structure, Sumter was of little real threat to Charleston. Hardly in a position to “besiege” Charleston. On the night of April the 12th, Anderson told Beauregard’s representatives, he would surrender the for at noon an April the 15th. Davis decided not to wait those two days.
Yes, it was a dying institution all over the world, but the slavocracy steadfastly and violently refused to let it die. Rather than face reality they turned on their fellow countrymen in open insurrection.
In their pretend constitution they enshrined the Peculiar Institution and made it permanent and inviolate. They announced to the world that they would do ANYTHING to perpetuate and advance slavery in America - and kill anyone who opposed their aims.
They proved to the world that they would allow people to die easily so that their beloved slavery would persist.
Utter nonsense
The only hate is the Hate for history.
Post 100 showed nothing other than the fact that StoneWall Brigade believed slavery was dying out. With all due respect to him he gave nothing to support that.
I think everyone can agree that slavery would have died out eventually. When that eventuality would be is the question. Since the South had nothing available to replace it then the answer is that slavery likely would have continued for decades.
On November 8, the Union commander before Anderson, Colonel John L. Gardner, tried to take all of the small arms ammunition from the Arsenal with troops dressed in civilian clothes so as not to alarm Charlestonians. The owner of the wharf they were using spotted them and threatened to raise an alarm. The ammunition was returned to the Arsenal.
Buchanan and his cabinet decided to replace Gardiner with Anderson and put a US Army Colonel or Major (my books list his rank both ways) Huber in charge of the Arsenal. In December after Anderson's arrival, Capt. Foster tried to get 100 muskets from the Arsenal ostensibly for workers in Fort Sumter and Castle Pinckney. Huber refused saying he would need orders from Washington to allow that. The Secretary of War deferred the order. A couple of weeks later, Capt. Foster used a previous order made by Gardiner to obtain 40 muskets. There was an uproar in the city, and the muskets were returned because Huber had said that no arms were to be removed from the Arsenal.
Huber's position was consistent with the agreement between South Carolinians and Buchanan to not change the strengths of the various forts in the harbor. The agreement was widely know by Charlestonians. Despite Buchanan's later public disavowal of such an agreement after Anderson moved to Sumter, two of Buchanan's cabinet members later revealed Buchanan's reluctance in cabinet meetings to go back on his promise to the South Carolinians.
FYI, after the surrender of Fort Sumter to the Confederates, Huber resigned his position in the US Army and joined the Confederacy, later becoming a Major General.
You are correct that Fort Sumter's canons did not face Charleston, but like Anderson said, he could command the harbor with his guns. The harbor was essential to Charleston and South Carolina, and they did not want their future commerce and tariff revenue under the control of a possible hostile fort.
Fort Sumter was not initially in good enough condition to repulse an amphibious attack from the city. There were low openings in the walls of the fort, and, as you said, the canons faced seaward. Anderson was concerned about those weaknesses, and I don't think he could have held the fort if South Carolina had wanted to take it at that point. The state did not move against the fort then, but demanded that President Buchanan honor his promise to Southern Congressmen not to change the relative strengths of the forts in the harbor.
Oh please, dying out, yeah right. That’s why it’s enshrined in The Confederate Constitution. What makes me a conservative is I was a former liberal democrat. All of you Confederates are Democrats. So long, Democrat.
We went to war to preserve the British Empire.
I forgot to reply to the above part of your post. Anderson knew that Lincoln's ships were supposed to arrive momentarily. Why should he surrender if he would have (he thought) lots of assistance from Lincoln's men and war ships? Here, incidentally, was what Anderson pinned to Washington when he learned the Union ships were headed his way [my black bold and red bold below]:
I had the honor to receive by yesterday's mail the letter of the honorable Secretary of War, dated April 4, and confess that what he there states surprises me very greatly, following as it does and contradicting so positively the assurance Mr. Crawford telegraphed he was authorized to make. I trust that this matter will be at once put in a correct light, as a movement made now, when the South has been erroneously informed that none such will be attempted, would produce most disastrous results throughout our country.
It is, of course, now too late for me to give any advice in reference to the proposed scheme of Captain Fox. I fear that its result cannot fail to be disastrous to all concerned. ...
... I ought to have been informed that this expedition was to come. Colonel Lamon's remark convinced me that the idea, merely hinted at to me by Captain Fox, would not be carried out. We shall strive to do our duty, though I frankly say that my heart is not in the war which I see is to be thus commenced. That God will still avert it, and cause us to resort to pacific measures to maintain our rights, is my ardent prayer.
The arm-chair generals at the New York Times couldn't understand why the South hadn't moved on Fort Sumter earlier, since they [the NYT] thought the arrival of Lincoln's ships in Charleston would defeat the South. They seem to ignore that the South wanted to reach a peaceful solution and had kept commissioners in Washington until the last minute trying to achieve that end. Here is what the New York Times said in their April 12, 1861 edition:
Sumpter [sic] on the one side and the Fleet off the North Channel on the other, will effectively cover any relieving expedition, whether of open boats, tugs, or small vessels, from any maritime attack, and confine all resisting operations to the land batteries. Experience has shown -- as in the case of Gen. WILKINSON’S passage down the St. Lawrence during the last war [the Mexican War doesn’t count as a war in the Times view?], with five hundred boats, suffering but a trifling loss, in the face of strong shore batteries – that batteries cannot effectually prevent the passage of an armament. Still less can be done when the batteries themselves will be exposed to such a terrific fire as Major ANDERSON can for some hours at least, pour with his whole force on Moultrie and the battery near Cummings' Point, the only two places from which boats or light draft vessels can be fired upon to any purpose.
But ANDERSON’S fire will not be the only one to which Moultrie may be exposed, as the smaller vessels can take with impunity positions from which shell may be thrown with great effect. No matter how brave or skillful the Southern troops may be, they will be under a fire which will render the entire stoppage of relief to Fort Sumpter [sic] nearly impossible.
... Why the Southern Commander, be he JEFFERSON DAVIS or Gen. BEAUREGARD, has delayed pouring on Sumpter [sic] his full force, and crushing it beneath an iron hail, if he could; why he has waited until, instead of concentrating his fire in security on one small point, he now has to defend a long straggling line [ten miles of shoreline], from a powerful fleet, it is impossible to tell. The reason may have been political; it may have been that there was not the vaunted readiness; it may have been incompetency; and it is not impossible that when the yawning abyss opened before them with all its horror, they may have lacked the insane courage required for the final leap.
During the war Roosevelt got on the wrong side of Churchill, among other incidents, by allowing his folks in India to become involved in local politics in a very un-imperial manner. In reading books about Roosevelt and his advisers, I detect antipathy not sympathy for the Empire.
Huger was dumped by Lee after the 7 days battles and sent out to a staff position in the Trans-Mississippi Department.
Fort Sumter was of marginal military threat to Charleston.
What Fort Sumter really was, it was a symbol of continued Federal presence in what was now the Confederate States of America. That galled the South Carolinians and it galled the new President of the Confederacy. Had the North tried to force a resupply of the Fort, they would have been see as the aggressors, even if the resupply was only provisions. Davis screwed the pooch. He decided to reduce the fort by force, rather than allowing Anderson to surrender in a couple of days. His forces were probably adequate thwart any attempt to resupply Sumter. If he had waited, allowed the North to try a forced resupply, He would have been in the right, to fire on that force and the fort. He chose instead to start a war that did not need to start at that point. His firing on Fort Sumter gave Abe Lincoln all the ammunition needed to call for crushing the “rebellion”. JMO
Churchill could wait to get America into the war.
It was an occupying force inside South Carolina's waters.
Had the North tried to force a resupply of the Fort, they would have been see as the aggressors, even if the resupply was only provisions. Davis screwed the pooch. He decided to reduce the fort by force, rather than allowing Anderson to surrender in a couple of days. His forces were probably adequate thwart any attempt to resupply Sumter. If he had waited, allowed the North to try a forced resupply, He would have been in the right, to fire on that force and the fort.?
Um, the South didn't fire on the fleet, only the fort. And US General Scott had let the cat our of the bag in his communications about the Sumter expedition. Its objective was to reinforce Sumter, not just resupply it. Hence the large number or troops and a large amount of provisions and supplies in the expedition's ships.
Who is the true aggressor in this case? If you look at the history of those times more deeply, you may come to realize that Lincoln fully wanted and intended war. His cabinet had advised him that the Sumter expedition would result in a shooting war. After the Sumter expedition failed, Lincoln consoled Gustavus Fox (the man who proposed the Sumter expedition) saying basically that the mission accomplished what we wanted [Link].
You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter [sic], even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.
The result, of course, was war. Lincoln had accomplished his goal.
War and the blockade of Southern forts were ways that Lincoln could use to stop the Southern tariff from ruining the Northern economy and the US government's revenue. He was faced with disaster because the North had almost doubled the Northern tariff (something Lincoln and the Republican Party had been in favor of) when Buchanan signed the Morrill Tariff bill on March 2, 1861. The South had made their tariff slightly lower than what had been the tariff in the US before the Morrill Tariff.
The immediate impact of the two tariffs was that many businesses started failing in Northern ports and US tariff revenue started plunging rapidly. Northern businessmen started demanding that the government drop or change the Morrill Tariff or do something rather than inaction. The lower Confederate tariff meant that a lot of the import business would eventually move to Southern ports like Charleston, Savannah, Mobile and New Orleans, and Northern goods would now be charged a tariff by the Confederacy when they were imported into the South. This would mean that Northern manufacturers would have to lower their prices to compete in the South with less expensive European imports. The North would be deprived of much of its tariff revenue and its manufacturing businesses would be hurt.
A delegation from Baltimore met with Lincoln and Lincoln famously said, "... what is to become of the revenue? I shall have no government -- no resources."
Abraham Lincoln accomplished his goal, because Jefferson Davis acted on impulse, not logic. He could have set it out for two days and Sumter would have had to surrender. He was a fool that played into Lincoln’s hand. There was no militarily sound reason for firing on Sumter. Jefferson Davis was outsmarted by Abraham Lincoln and the war that could not be won by the Confederacy was started, by the Confederacy as far as the World community saw it. JMO
I don't disagree that Lincoln outsmarted and out connived Davis. It is quite obvious though that Lincoln started the war. Lincoln’s two wartime secretaries, Nicolay and Hay, put it this way in their book about Lincoln:
President Lincoln in deciding the Sumter question had adopted a simple but effective policy. To use his own words, he determined to "send bread to Anderson"; if the rebels fired on that, they would not be able to convince the world that he had begun the civil war.
A study of Lincoln's actions confirm that. Lincoln had put Davis in a box. If Davis let the expedition proceed to the fort, Lincoln would reinforce the fort (just as General Scott said) despite telling the South he would not reinforce the fort if the South didn't oppose the expedition. And then the South would be stuck with a well manned and supplied fort that could and would shut down the port of Charleston.
Remember this is the man (Lincoln) who lied to the Senate telling them that they could adjourn because he did not have anything important to tell them, yet that same day he had a draft developed of the secret plan to send the expedition to Sumter, the expedition that his cabinet had told him would start a shooting war. Lincoln sent his man Lamon to tell the Governor of South Carolina the fort would be evacuated. His cabinet Secretary of State Seward through an intermediary implied the same thing to the Confederate Commissioners who were in Washington trying to negotiate a peaceful solution to the crisis. Lincoln kept Congress out of session until July 4. During that time he operated without checks and balances unconstitutionally assuming the powers of both Congress and the Judiciary to maneuver the country into war. Despite the common perception that the war began with the attack on Fort Sumter, the US Supreme Court ruled that the war started with Lincoln's April 19th proclamation imposing a blockade on Southern ports, a recognized act of war.
I don't agree with Davis's decision to fire on the fort. I would have let Lincoln try to collect tariff on the high seas from foreign ships importing things to the South. Davis, however, probably recognized that the border states would opt to join the South if he fired on the fort, and they did. Two more state probably would have joined the South, had Lincoln not arrested members of the Maryland legislature and invaded Maryland with armies from Northern states. Similarly, soldiers and militia from Illinois joined homegrown Missouri paramilitary units (Wide Awakes) to overthrow the Missouri state government.
At the same time, Lincoln no doubt recognized that goading the South into firing on the flag would instigate a war fever in the North and generate support for his heretofore floundering government.
It wasn't only at Fort Sumter that Lincoln was working to provoke war. He sent instructions to break a truce that the US government had negotiated with Southerners that the US would not reinforce Fort Pickens and the South would not attack the fort. Breaking a truce without informing the other side was an act of war, which the man (Meigs) who, at Lincoln's instructions developed the plan to reinforce Fort Pickens, recognized. Meigs recognized that breaking the truce meant war. Actually, the reinforcement of Fort Pickens began in the dead of night before the attack on Fort Sumter started. Hostilities would have started at Fort Pickens except that the Confederates only had about a day's worth of ammunition and shells, not enough to take the fort.
Red, I’ve been thinking about what you said. About touring the Battlefield on horseback. The more I think about it the more I think it’s by barn, none the best idea yet. I’ve been to Gettysburg more times than I can count but have never done anything quite like that. So this Summer, probably around August. I’ll take a trip up there for Vacation. Do it camping style, and do your horse back suggestion. Thank You, so much for the idea.
Didn’t one side of the state of the state Kentucky, vote for Secession?
It wouldn't do for Lincoln's birth state to secede. Here is what Lincoln said in a September 1861 letter:
"I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game. Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri, nor Maryland. These all against us, and the job on our hands is too large for us. We would as well consent to separation at once, including the surrender of this capitol."
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