Confederate plaque in Texas Capitol to come down after vote

WFAA ^ | January 11, 2019 | Jason Whitely

[TexasGunLover]

AUSTIN, Texas — A historically inaccurate brass plaque honoring confederate veterans will come down after a vote this morning, WFAA has learned.

The State Preservation Board, which is in charge of the capitol building and grounds, meets this morning at 10:30 a.m. to officially decide the fate of the metal plate.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yes. The Corwin amendment was an effort to entice them back, or do you disagree?

If it was not for that purpose, then what was it's purpose?

And why the H3ll did anyone want those D@mn slave states in the Union anyway? Seriously?

[rockrr]

I really don't GAF general. He might have embraced every plank. He may have thought them all insufficiently conservative.

The point remains that there is no evidence that he was active in the Republican party or supported Abraham Lincoln.

[rockrr]

Right back atcha...

[central_va]

You idiot John Brown was the antithesis of conservatism. What a moron.

[DiogenesLamp]

Wool Merchant, bankrupted by Cotton. His raid was financed by wealthy Massachusetts wool merchants. Can't imagine why they would want to wreck the Cotton industry.

Milk of human kindness. Had nothing to do with money. That would have just been a fortunate side-effect of mass slave revolts in the South.

They would have made a fortune though. :)

Probably did anyways once the war started.

[rockrr]

Right back atcha...

[DoodleDawg]

Yes. The Corwin amendment was an effort to entice them back, or do you disagree?

If it was not for that purpose, then what was it's purpose?

If it was then it was a futile effort from the beginning. Having adopted a constitution that protected slavery to an extent never imagined by the Corwin amendment then why on earth would the go back?

[x]

I can't do it up here because if I did I'd be lynched....yes,I said "lynched"....within minutes of being seen.

Try it.

Either you're proven wrong or you actually are lynched.

Win-win either way.

[DiogenesLamp]

No force authorized unless the resupply mission is opposed by force.

There wasn't anybody on either side that believe that was going to happen. Certainly not Lincoln's cabinet, because the vast bulk of them said it would start a war.

So what were those warships going to do when the inevitable opposition manifested itself? Tell me what wasn't "further from the truth" regarding those warships next actions?

The “War Fleets” order were to return to their ports.

Weren't you the one that kept demanding I show you the orders"? Their orders were absolutely not to "return to their ports", their orders were to use all force at their command to place troops and supplies into Fort Sumter.

I will assume you have forgotten, but I am reminding you right now, that those warships official orders would have had them attacking the confederates surrounding the entrance to the harbor.

Mercer was to assume command and use his "entire force" to complete the mission.

I believe I have already linked you to the memoir written by Admiral Porter in which he asserted every ship would have been sunk. Do you not recall?

[x]

Well stated, and exactly corresponds with what I have, in the last three years, come to regard as the true situation.

When one lunatic finds another, it can be a beautiful thing.

[DiogenesLamp]

Just about any book I've every read that deals with Sumter in any level of detail talks about the resupply effort. It isn't a secret at all.

You prove my point. They talk about it as a "resupply effort." They minimize the military nature, and they emphasize the "supply" nature, when in fact it is heavily weighted towards fighting.

Four ships of war, and a large passenger ship used as a troop transport carrying riflemen and munitions.

And yes, everyone tries to hide the fact of what it was by calling it a "supply" mission instead of a belligerent attack the Confederates mission, which is closer to the truth.

Its purpose was resupply.

That's why it had so many cargo ships in it.

And this is why it is usually pointless to argue with some of you. You will simply not admit the truth even when you are beaten over the head with it.

Admiral Porter admits what would have happened as I linked above, but some of you cannot even admit what a man who fought in it can admit.

[x]

Secession, southerners argued, would "liberate" the South and produce the kind of balanced economy that was proving so successful in the North and so unachievable in the South. (Garraty and McCaughey, The American Nation, pp. 418-419, emphasis in original)

That is two late 20th century historians' view.

You could find a few people who thought that way in Charleston or New Orleans, but it wasn't that widespread. Plenty of secessionists, like Senator Wigfall, were more than content with a Confederacy that remained permanently agrarian and supplied cotton to Europe in exchange for manufactured goods. If the South had really wanted more industry, it would have had more industry.

The fact that the Corwin Amendment was offered as well as the fact that Lincoln made it perfectly clear on numerous occasions that he had no desire to threaten slavery as well as the complete lack of political support for abolition in the North all make it clear that slavery simply was not threatened in the US.

Do you believe everything politicians say? When Obama said that he was against gay marriage, did you believe him? Politicians promise things - maybe sincerely, maybe not. What actually happens, though, may not be what was promised. Events have a momentum of their own, and politicians have so many commitments that one may override the others. There are always enough people who fear what may happen that politicians' promises are never entirely believed or trusted.

Had the protection of slavery rather than economics been the main concern, the Southern states could have had that for the asking.

The truth is more like the opposite. Southerners could achieve much of what they wanted economically if they put their minds to making shrewd alliances and deals, but they could never be sure that Northerners would remain friendly to the institution of slavery.

[DiogenesLamp]

I reviewed the thread, and I don’t see where you posted a link to Virginia’s ordinance.

Correction, I urged you to look at it. I posted the link to it to Mr. Rogers. For some reason I got the two of you confused.

In post #121 you concede that Texas along with several other states specifically identified slavery as the cause or one of the causes of secession. So, there is no debate.

Oh, there is still a debate. Someone else made the point clearer up thread somewhere, but a state saying that they are leaving because of a perceived threat to slavery, does not necessarily mean that they are actually leaving because of a perceived threat to slavery.

As one Northern Newspaper cleverly recognized, that was just a made up excuse to misdirect what was really happening.

Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but the mask has been thrown off, and it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding States are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centres of traffic can be changed from Northern or Southern ports. The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade. If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out policy by which only nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby.

The difference is so great between thee tariff of the Union and that of Confederate States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York. In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties … The … [government] would be false to all of its obligations, if this state of things were not provided against.

Boston Transcript, March 18 1861

Slavery was clearly under no threat in the Union, but there was a great quantity of money to be made by the Southern wealthy if they could get out from under Washington's economic control of their European trade.

The US laws had been jiggered so that New York businessmen controlled the vast bulk of the money from Southern export products. Getting out of the Union would allow the wealthy men of the South to control that cashflow.

I believe the opportunity for greater profit drives most people, and I believe they will also lie about their real motives if profit is at stake.

[DiogenesLamp]

When one lunatic finds another, it can be a beautiful thing.

I see you are adopting rockrr's method of debate. :)

[FLT-bird]

That is two late 20th century historians’ view.

You could find a few people who thought that way in Charleston or New Orleans, but it wasn’t that widespread. Plenty of secessionists, like Senator Wigfall, were more than content with a Confederacy that remained permanently agrarian and supplied cotton to Europe in exchange for manufactured goods. If the South had really wanted more industry, it would have had more industry.

Oh I disagree. There were plenty of Southerners who recognized that industrialization was the way forward. They could hardly have failed to notice it by the mid 19th century. Senator Wigfall’s view was definitely a minority view by that point.

---

Do you believe everything politicians say? When Obama said that he was against gay marriage, did you believe him? Politicians promise things - maybe sincerely, maybe not. What actually happens, though, may not be what was promised. Events have a momentum of their own, and politicians have so many commitments that one may override the others. There are always enough people who fear what may happen that politicians’ promises are never entirely believed or trusted.

I certainly know better than to take politicians at their word. Nevertheless, Lincoln had never said he had any intention of threatening slavery. Abolitionists routinely got drubbed in election after election in the Northern states. Even if there had been a lot of political support for it, without the consent of the slaveholding states it would have been impossible to get rid of. It takes 3/4s of the states to pass a constitutional amendment and there were 15 states that still had slavery. Ergo, any move to abolish slavery would have required their consent.....ergo, they would have been able to get a generous compensated emancipation scheme as had been done in other countries that abolished slavery at that time to ensure they did not take a huge financial loss....just as the Northern states’ gradual emancipation schemes gave slaveowners in their states ample time to dispose of their slave property to ensure they didn’t take a huge financial loss.

---

The truth is more like the opposite. Southerners could achieve much of what they wanted economically if they put their minds to making shrewd alliances and deals, but they could never be sure that Northerners would remain friendly to the institution of slavery.

They could be reasonably sure at least for the intermediate term that Northern business interests would remain amenable to slavery considering the enormous profits they were making from servicing goods produced at least in part by slave labor. As I’ve outlined above, had Northern sentiment hardened against slavery, the slaveholding states could have extracted a lot of money via a compensated emancipation scheme in order to get rid of it....which seems only appropriate given that it was Northerners who sold the slaves in the first place making a hefty profit in the process.

[Bull Snipe]

“Baltic. Leased passenger ship carrying at least 200, possibly 300 riflemen and munitions as well as other military supplies.”
Makes them no more a warship than Maersk freighters carrying military cargo to the Gulf during Gulf I.
Unarmed, a civilian charter vessel. Three steam tugs unarmed. Tugs only armed in your imagination. One does not mount 900 lbs. of cannon to a 18 foot beam steam tug without a considerable amount of engineering to counter ballast, reinforce bulkheads, decks and provide secure storage for ammunition.
As far as orders, you have read Powhatan’s orders. No force authorized unless the resupply mission was opposed. They would not shoot unless the Charleston forces fired first.
Escorts is what they were.

[DoodleDawg]

You prove my point. They talk about it as a "resupply effort." They minimize the military nature, and they emphasize the "supply" nature, when in fact it is heavily weighted towards fighting.

And the reason behind that being?

[x]

One could draw an analogy to what's going on now. The few Southerners passionate about industrialization were a little like the Flake-Romney Republicans passionate about globalization or the Ocasio Democrats passionate about socialism. Most people lived in the world as it was and were concerned about what was immediately around them. I don't think Jefferson Davis had any ambitious hopes for industrialization.

_________________

You do realize that saying "I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists" was not going to satisfy Southern slaveowners.

They believed slavery was a good thing that ought to be spread. They wanted what they thought was their share of the new territories. They wanted to be able to take their slaves with them when they went west. Or even when they went North.

A President who wanted to exclude slavery from the territories was a slap in the face of slaveholders and their pride. They thought it made them second class citizens (as strange as that sounds to sane people now).

There were plenty of ways that a Republican president could "threaten" slavery. He could appoint judges that weren't friendly to slaveowners. He could admit new states without slavery. He could speak up for freedom and allow abolitionist literature the use of the mails. Start debate in Congress on compensated emancipation. Begin a colonization program - or alternatively, start receiving African-Americans at the White House and listening to their concerns.

Plenty of things would threaten the self-image of slave owners and make them feel like it wasn't their country any more. You didn't need a constitutional amendment to make the slave power feel the heat. If you owned slaves, you were used to getting your own way. When you didn't, it would peeve you something terrible.

_______________

Some Northerners brought slaves to the South. But Britons brought more, I believe. So did the French, Dutch, and Spaniards. They were all satisfying the demand.

[Bull Snipe]

“There wasn’t anybody on either side that believe that was going to happen. Certainly not Lincoln’s cabinet, because the vast bulk of them said it would start a war”
Just as Davis’s cabinet advised him of the consequences of firing on the Fort. to wit “Firing on that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen.” Robert Toombs, Confederate Secretary of State.

“their orders were to use all force at their command to place troops and supplies into Fort Sumter.” You have seen the orders to Powhatan. you know that is not what they said. Force was authorized only if the resupply mission was opposed by force. If not, once the resupply mission was complete, the ships were to return to their ports.
Porter does not mention that he was sent orders countermanding the Pensacola mission on the afternoon he sailed, directing him to proceed to Fort Sumter. He ignored those orders because they were signed by Seward.

[Bull Snipe]

“The US laws had been jiggered so that New York businessmen controlled the vast bulk of the money from Southern export products”

Which laws would those have been?