Posted on 06/23/2016 2:04:08 PM PDT by ColdOne
A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.
The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
No it wasn't, and you have to be six kinds of stupid to assert that it is even remotely comparable.
We lost 3,000 lives in Peal Harbor, and Zero at Ft. Sumter.
The Japanese did many Billions of Dollars of damage to our ships and harbor, and the Confederates did little to no damage to anything that belonged to the USA.
The Japanese attack signaled that there would be further attacks in the future. The Confederates were content to just get their land back and keep a Foreign Nation's guns from threatening their efforts to create a Free Trade port.
The Japanese attack was unprovoked, but the Sumter attack was provoked by an Act of War committed by Lincoln in sending men and arms to reinforce a fort which no longer belonged to the Union because Independence had restored it back to it's original owners.
The closer analogy to the Japanese attack was when Lincoln sent 35,000 men to invade the South. It was unprovoked, many died, and much damage was done.
Yes, even more so now than before.
It's never been my claim that you didn't see what you plainly saw, or that you didn't have copies of what you clearly have. My skepticism lies with the claim that Lincoln ever spoke those words. Those articles purport (assert or claim) that he did, by virtue of "interviews". They do not provide proof - only assertion - by people with an agenda.
Now, having had an opportunity to read and compare them, I am even more convinced that they allowed their agenda to drive their "recollections".
Thanks for the links - they were interesting reads.
And what would be those, and where did you find them?
You: My post #248 includes a link....It shows exports of goods as $334 million in 1860, while net of specie was another $58 million.
I assume that represents gold & silver from new mines out west.
It was metals but source is not listed in your tables.
Your data of $334 is wrong. Actual export value of US goods (from US Treasury report) was $316 million. Your data table has likely included the value of re-exports which is valid for their bookkeeping but not for your North/South comparisons. Your second link showing the lower figure of $316 is correct for US exports that year.
You: For a detailed breakdown of what those exports were, see this link, referred to as the Hanson tables.
Hanson tables show raw cotton exports as $192 million, which is 54% of $357 total exports.
Hanson lists exports by type. Your figure is cotton and does not include Southern exports of tobacco, food, semi-finished cotton goods, chemicals, hemp, or the proportional value of finished cotton.
DeBow and Kettel have done excellent work on pulling together the entire data listings. That data shows the Southern contributions to export value in the 75 to 87#% range depending on year.
Then you launch off on whether to count specie. It was precious metals used as payment for something. Nothing in the your data tables says to whom or for what. The statistical tables from Treasury records do break out by source such as foreign countries transshipping through US ports.
So, you see, that has to be factored out because it was not sourced production.
Isn’t it interesting that lots of folks harp endlessly about slavery but never mention the word Mississippi.
‘I’ll say it again, those soldiers were killed & wounded by Confederate actions as certainly as if Confederates had pulled the triggers.’
Well you can say that but it doesn’t make it so. It happened when those troops were firing a salute. It wasn’t in defending the fort.
But this argument is pointless. If you think that just having a federal garrison in a federal fort was an unendurable assault on South Carolina that justified starting a war then you're going to start a war -- or justify starting the war. If you believe you're justified in firing first and fire first, you've already started the war -- and lost the argument.
PS, What happened to all those New England cotton men who you say were so passionate for war? Haven't heard much about them lately.
This part from one of the newspaper accounts is revealing:
The Rev. Dr. Fuller, of the Baptist church, accompanied the party, by invitation, as chairman, and the conversation was conducted mainly between him and Mr. Lincoln, and was not heard entire by all the members of the Convention.
And later:
Dr. Fuller expressed the opinion that the Northern States would constitute an imposing government and furnish revenue, but our informant could not follow the exact terms of the remark.
So in other words, "our informant" caught a few words here and there and pieced them together without much knowledge of the whole conversation.
Somehow over time, "And what is to become of the revenue?" got metamorphosed into "What about my tariff?" That was very convenient for Confederate and neo-Confederate propaganda.
James Buchanan left the the US in a very bad financial position in 1861. I don't know if Lincoln said what it's alleged he said, but federal revenue was clearly on everyone's mind in Washington.
It wouldn't have been hard for someone with obvious pro-secession sympathies to piece together fragments of a conversation to produce something that put Lincoln in a bad light.
Compare Lincoln's official response to the oft-reprinted newspaper story. It could well be that the "informant" mashed together Rev. Fuller's formal comments with Lincoln's informal remarks later, leaving out both Lincoln's more considered official response and much of the surrounding context, and adding a certain amount of imagination.
Lincoln expressed similar concerns about the revenue to John B. Baldwin on April 4, 1861. Are you dismissing Baldwin too?
Northern ports like New York's were already reeling from the imposition of the Morrill Tariff and the promise of lower tariffs in Southern ports. Many import businesses had closed or were closing in NYC. Future tariff revenue was uncertain and probably headed down if Lincoln couldn't somehow block the Southern ports from taking a significant part of the import business from the North.
Given all that, do you think Lincoln might have been seriously concerned about tariff revenue at that point in time or not? And if not, why not?
And if yes, would it have been unreasonable for Lincoln to have mentioned that concern on two separate occasions (one of which was a meeting he requested)?
The Sun article is second hand (1. the source likely heard those quotes first hand, and 2. the Sun reporter wrote it down). Baldwin's testimony was first hand. He met with Lincoln and reported what Lincoln said.
The Rev. Dr. Fuller, of the Baptist church, accompanied the party, by invitation, as chairman, and the conversation was conducted mainly between him and Mr. Lincoln, and was not heard entire by all the members of the Convention.
As the article said, "... a delegation from five of the Young Men's Christian Associations of Baltimore consisting of six members of each ..." That makes at least 30 people in the delegation plus maybe Rev. Fuller. It is quite possible with a group that large that some were far enough away or maybe in the hall that they couldn't hear well. They must have heard some of it, because the article said "was not heard entire ..."
... our informant could not follow the exact terms of the remark.
I note that you have misquoted the article. The article said, "our informant could not follow the exact turn of remark." Nor "terms" and not "the." Are you trying to illustrate how things change on repeated telling by different people, a la Russian Gossip or Chinese Whispers? I concur that that no doubt happened in some of the retelling of what was said by people who weren't there.
So in other words, "our informant" caught a few words here and there and pieced them together without much knowledge of the whole conversation.
Your comment is a stretch. The informant said where he couldn't hear or perhaps the conversation went too fast for the informant to follow. But the informant appears to have heard much of the discussion, or else he would say like he did, that he couldn't follow this part or that part.
Somehow over time, "And what is to become of the revenue?" got metamorphosed into "What about my tariff?"
The tariff quote might have its origin in Baldwin's Memoir as reported by Robert L Dabney in 1876 (based on an 1865 interview with Baldwin) and also reported his book, "Discussions with Robert L. Dabney, Volume 4." Here is an excerpt of the 1876 article and a confirmation of its substantial correctness by someone Baldwin told when he returned from Washington in April 1861. Lincoln's words below are shown in bold red font. [Source: see Link].
Lincoln seemed impressed by his solemnity, and asked a few questions: "But what am I to do meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?" "Yes, sir," replied Colonel Baldwin, decisively, "until they can be peaceably brought back." "And open Charleston, &c., as ports of entry, with their ten per cent. tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?" This last question he announced with such emphasis, as showed that in his view it decided the whole matter. He then indicated that the interview was at an end, and dismissed Colonel Baldwin, without promising anything more definite.
In order to confirm the accuracy of my own memory, I have submitted the above narrative to the Honorable A. H. H. Stuart, Colonel Baldwin's neighbor and political associate, and the only surviving member of the commission soon after sent from the Virginia Convention to Washington. In a letter to me, he says: "When Colonel Baldwin returned to Richmond, he reported to the four gentlemen above named, and to Mr. Samuel Price, of Greenbrier, the substance of his interview with Lincoln substantially as he stated it to you."
I believe they always start the conversation off with "slavery" because without it, they realize that it was an immoral invasion.
Believing the fiction that the war was launched to "end slavery" is the only thing that allows them to justify what was a horrible, bloody, ugly war over money.
They just gloss right over the fact that it was nearly two years before Lincoln issued the Emancipation Proclamation. They also ignore the fact that he explicitly said he would keep slavery if the South would stop fighting.
Of course he would. That's where much of that import money that came through New York, originated.
The troops on those ships that were sent to reinforce Ft. Sumter. I can look up their names and how many troops they were carrying, but I don't remember that information right off the top of my head. I believe PeaRidge probably knows exactly where to find it, but I would have to look for it.
And as for Ft. Sumter, the presence of it's guns, and the threat to use them, would preclude the establishment of a low Tariff port in Charleston. The continued occupation of it by Union forces would have put off the trade that they were expecting which would allow it to becoming a heavily trafficked low tariff port.
No doubt if one of them died from being run over by a wagon, BroJoeK would regard that as the fault of the confederates too.
But to make it clear, none of those soldiers were killed in an engagement with the enemy. They were killed in an unfortunate accident.
BroJoeK really is stretching to try to include those two deaths as part of the battle. Other than that his commentary has been pretty reasonable.
Most accounts of the battle will tell you that the sole battle casualty was the Union horse.
These other deaths were the result of an accident while firing a salute.
On the twenty-ninth of March, he (Lincoln) had ordered that three ships — the Pocahontas, the Pawnee, and the Harriet Lane — together with three hundred men and provisions be made ready to sail for the Charleston harbor. Lincoln to Cameron, in Official Records: Armies, Series I, Volume I, page 226; Inclosure No. 1, op. cit., page 227.
These orders were all marked private. On the first of April, he sent a message to Commandant Andrew H. Foote at Navy Yard in Brooklyn, New York to “fit out the Powhatan to go to sea at the earliest possible moment under sealed orders.”Lincoln to Andrew H. Foote, in op. cit., page 229
These instructions were confirmed with another telegram which contained these words: “You will fit out the Powhatan without delay. Lieutenant Porter will relieve Captain Mercer in command of her. She is bound on secret service; and you will under no circumstances communicate to the Navy Department the fact that she is fitting out.” In all, consisted of eight warships, carrying twenty-six guns and one thousand, four hundred men.
This was a gigantic issue husbanded by the people of South Carolina while being bullied by Washington.
One week before South Carolina seceded:
“I am authentically informed that the forts in Charleston harbor are now being thoroughly prepared to turn, with effect, their guns upon the interior and the city. Jurisdiction was ceded by this State expressly for the purpose of external defence from foreign invasion, and not with any view that they should be turned upon the State.”
Governor Pickens to President Buchanan, December 17, 1860
Three weeks after Maj. Anderson took control of the unfinished building and three days after the Star of the West had attempted to run into the harbor:
In his letter of introduction to President Buchanan of January 12, Governor Pickens of South Carolina said,
“I have determined to send to you Hon. I. W. Hayne, the attorney-general of the State of South Carolina, and have instructed him to demand the surrender of Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, to the constituted authorities of the State of South Carolina.
“The demand I have made of Major Anderson, and which I now make of you is suggested because of my earnest desire to avoid bloodshed, which a persistence in your attempt to retain the possession of that fort will cause, and which will be unavailing to secure to you that possession, but induce a calamity most deeply to be deplored.”.
Major Anderson, after the Star of the West, asserted his military strength in correspondence with the Governor, saying circumstances might cause him to fire upon all vessels coming within range of his guns.
Imagine driving your wife and family around downtown Charleston in your carriage while this was going on.
That said, there also seems to be a lot of conflating of select ambiguity and uninformed facts on the subject on the CW; Par for the course.
I reckon it's to help mask Lincoln's subterfuge, coercive fascism, and tyranny that's masqueraded as the "Honest Abe" who "held the Union together (with a literal gun to the head of a subjugated South.)
And they wonder why the Confederates thought Lincoln was a liar when he said he was just shipping supplies.
There is no possible way that you can keep secret the movement of troops onto a ship in any of the Northern ports.
I have come to the conclusion that Lincoln, no fool he, absolutely counted on the Confederates knowing that he was shipping men and guns. He wanted that move to provoke them, all the while the Northern Public wouldn't have been aware of it, and would see the entire action as a deliberate attack from the South.
The "secrecy" was only for the Northern people who would not be paying attention to Union ship or troop movements, and most assuredly was not for Confederate spies or sympathizers who would have been intently watching all the Union military assets for just such a move.
Yes, Lincoln came to office in peace and turned it into war within five weeks. His problems were caused by the wealthy elites in Boston and New York who were forcing him to block trade between Europe and the South, and reestablish the money flow from tariffs.
I think it makes for a great plot line for a movie.
You know his people rented out civilian ships to carry the troops. The people at the Naval yard painted out the names on these ships, and loaded English coal so that the different smoke would make it appear that these ships were not warships.
His men had to pay for these ship rentals at very high rates.
Has anyone asked where the money came from since in several posts earlier it was reported that the Treasury was depleted and departmental expenses could not be paid?
Agreed. Remember also the Charleston civilians killed by the 18-month bombardment of Charleston by Federal troops during the war. They started firing on the city in the middle of the night, not from Fort Sumter which the Confederates still held, but from big guns like the Swamp Angel located in the marshes. Basically, the Union general had told the Confederate Army to stop defending your forts and batteries or we will bombard the Charleston civilians. And he did just that.
Years ago, I made my own list of casualties from this bombardment. I used newspapers and other sources for the information. See my old post listing them: Link to post 1,629 -- you have to scroll to the post, I think.
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