Facts and Myths - an examination of McPherson's "Causes of the Civil War" essay

Was Virginia Lincoln's enemy, or he theirs?

President Lincoln wrote Major General Weitzel at the War Department on 4/12/65 to allow any "of the gentlemen who had acted as the legislature of Virginia" to be allowed safe passage home from Richmond.

He was no one's enemy who obeyed the laws.

See "Lincoln; Speeches and Writings 1859-65" Library of the Americas, Don Fehrenbacher, ed.

Walt

Had the seven southern states been allowed to leave peacefully then it is they who would have a failing economy and would be scrambling to find money to build their nation.

Got this off AOL a while back:

"In point of fact, the long-standing Federal sugar import tariff imposed to protect Louisiana sugar growers was extensively debated at the Montgomery Convention and, in spite the highly-touted Confederate devotion to free trade principles, was retained in the Confederacy through out the ACW. Additionally,the Confederacy placed tariffs on exports, including a duty on exported cotton. I repeat here for emphasis --- tariffs on Southern cotton exports were prohibited by the US Constitution. So much for high secessionist principles concerning tariffs! They talked the talk, but didn't walk the walk, as goes the modern formula for hypocrisy.

It is humorous to note that the prewar Federal iron import tariff, so despised by Secessionist firebrands, was continued by the Confederacy after some of the realities of fiscal and industrial policy set in. On 16 February 1861 the Provisional Confederate Congress blithely passed a bill providing for free import of railway iron. A month later, however, fiscal realities set in and an ad valorem import tax was imposed on such goods at the rate of 15%--- a rate confirmed in the Confederate Tariff Act of 21 May 1861.

For furtherdetails, see Robert C. Black's THE RAILROADS OF THE CONFEDERACY (Chapel Hill,NC: U. of NC Press, 1998)."

The CSA is such a bad joke.

Walt

Actually it was intended as a surprise. Lincoln promised Pickens a food-only mission, but sent a fleet of warships with other instructions knowing fully well that the southerners would not let them in the harbor.

This is false.

"A special messenger, said Lincoln, was going down to give Governor Pickens due notice, and to tell him that no troops would be landed if the delivery of the provisions be not opposed; the messenger, said the president, would reach Charlston long before Fox could get there...Table stakes in other words. Sending the outrider down to Governor Pickens, Lincoln was shooting the works. He was not forcing a war, but he was serving notice that he would fight rather than back down; more, he was setting the stage in such a way that Jefferson Davis, if he in his turn preferred to fight rather than to back down, would have to shoot first....On April 8 a War Department clerk named Robert S. Chew showed up in Charleston bearing instructions writen by President Lincoln which read thus:

"You will proceed directly to Charleston, South Carolina; and if, on your arrival there, the flag of the United States shall be flying over over Fort Sumter, and the Fort shall not have been attacked, you will procure an interview with Governor Pickens, and read to him as follows:

"I am directed by the president of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms or ammunitin will be maewithout further notice, or in case of attack upon the fort.

Chew delivered his message that evening".--"The Coming Fury" pp. 299-303 by Bruce Catton.

So you'd be lying.

Walt

It is a poorly documented assumption that you accept as truth.

There is no greater documentation of it than Lincoln's letters themselves, and citing those letters is hardly an assumption of anything. You're just mad you got caught in an error so now you try to escape it by throwing unsubstantiated labels at my argument.

Lincoln made no secret of his intentions.

Then why did he seal all his letters about those intentions in the strictest confidentiality?

Sounds like spin from a pro-yankee author. Look at the letters themselves though, Walt, and see the situation without the spin. Lincoln's message very clearly said they were bringing food only and did not threaten action otherwise. Lincoln's orders to the captains of his fleet very clearly said to use force to overcome any resistance and then deliver both troops and food.

BTW, has your National Archives pass been reinstated yet? Or are you still trying to avoid having to face the reality that Sherman's men murdered innocent civilians?

He was no one's enemy who obeyed the laws.

He was no one's enemy who obeyed him.

Julius Caesar was eloquent on the subject of magnanimity in victory, which he saw as a tool for the mollification and unmanning of his conquered victims. Machiavelli was more skeptical about clemency's uses:

"It should be the desire of every prince to be considered merciful and not cruel, yet he should take care not to make poor use of his clemency. Cesare Borgia was regarded as cruel, yet his cruelty reorganized Romagna and united it in peace and loyalty. Indeed, if we reflect, we shall see that this man was more merciful than the Florentines who, to avoid the charge of cruelty, allowed Pistoia to be destroyed [by internecine rioting among civic factions]. A prince should care nothing for the accusation of cruelty so long as he keeps his subjects united and loyal....Yet a prince should make himself feared in such a way that, if he does not thereby merit love, at least he may escape odium, for being feared and not hated may well go together. And indeed the prince may attain this end if he but respect the property and the women of his subjects and citizens. And if it should become necessary to seek the death of someone, he should find a proper justification and a public cause...."

--The Prince, Chapter XVII, "Cruelty and Clemency and Whether It Is Better to Be Loved or Feared"

There was much of policy, and perhaps something of regret, in Lincoln's enjoinders to desist from recrimination and bitterness after the war. The South has little to thank John Wilkes Booth for, and much to reprove and repudiate; but Lincoln's death, occurring when it did, ended the war than and there, whereas his well-meaning (and politic) policies of reconstruction could scarcely have been received better than those of Andrew Johnson. At the same time, they would not have seemed to Southerners, coming from their conqueror, much more clement and generous than the distilled vitriol of Ben Butler and Thad Stevens, which Johnson did so much to filter.

Walt, your comparison of the peacetime tax structure of the United States to that of the wartime Confederacy is mixing apples and watermelons.

During the war, United States debt jumped into the billions (IIRC) for the first time. I think when Johnson took office it was on the close order of two billion dollars gold. The amounts spent by both governments was unprecedented, as we might have imagined, and therefore their tax regimes were radically altered by exigent need -- the South's more exigent than the North's.

If you want to make something of it, Longstreet and Lee, in the last days before Appomattox, had a dreary correspondence about orders from the Richmond government for the impressment of gold. Needless to say, a peacetime Confederacy wouldn't have proposed such an article be included in their constitution.

I don't buy any of that. but there was something else:

"The answer perhaps is that the problems were not so much unseen as uncomprehended. At bottom they were Yankee problems; concerns of the broker, the money changer, the trader, the mechanic, the grasping man of business; they were matters that such people would think of, not matters that would command the attention of aristocrats who who were familiar with valor, the classics and heroric atttitudes. Secession itself had involved a flight from reality rather than an approach to it....Essentially, this was the reliance of a group that knew a little of the modern world but which did not know nearly enough and could never understand that it did not know enough."

Walt the Coming Fury, p. 438-439 by Bruce Caton

Walt

You misunderstood me. North Carolina was still in the Union when Lincoln proclaimed the blockade, but so where all the other states. Their acts of rebellion didn't change that. The recourse you speak of under Article III also works both ways. The southern states could have taken their matter to court but instead chose to enter into a rebellion. Faced with armed acts of defiance, Lincoln was faced with no real choice at all. He had to stop the lawlessness.

No tariff was collected on goods from the North shipped to and sold in the south prior to the rebellion, either. Items manufactured in the North could still have been exported to south so the market remained. They may have had to adjust prices to keep their markets, but they could still have undercut European manufactureres. Since the overwhelming majority of imports already came in through Northern ports then tariff income would have continued and the government funded. It would have been the south faced with the problem of funding their new government and their huge army. They would have had little choice but to have turned to a tax of some sort, probably a tariff of their own.

I repeat here for emphasis --- tariffs on Southern cotton exports were prohibited by the US Constitution. So much for high secessionist principles concerning tariffs!

Earth to stupid - tariffs are imposed on IMPORTS by their very nature.

Many things are, or could be, made tariff free.

In any case, the United States put down the rebellion without having to resort to placing tariffs on exports.

The so-called CSA, even with all the advantages of interior lines, great distances, de facto independence, and its other benefits, had to take expedients the lawful government did not.

Walt

Sounds like spin from a pro-yankee author.

I don't think Bruce Catton has ever been called pro-Yankee.

The words of the note were read to the governor just as they appear in the text.

As I said yesterday, your version was substantially false.

You lied.

Walt

"No Preference shall be given by any Regulation of Commerce or Revenue to the Ports of one State over those of another: nor shall Vessels bound to, or from, one State, be obliged to enter, clear, or pay Duties in another."

Lincoln's blockade clearly violated that clause of the Constitution.

The Supreme Court ruled otherwise.

See the Prize Cases from 1862.

Walt

Walt, and see the situation without the spin. Lincoln's message very clearly said they were bringing food only and did not threaten action otherwise. Lincoln's orders to the captains of his fleet very clearly said to use force to overcome any resistance and then deliver both troops and food.

There was no conflict or disconnect between what Chew told Pickens and President Lincoln told Fox.

You tried to suggest there was. You discredit yourself, not President Lincoln.

Walt

Walt, and see the situation without the spin. Lincoln's message very clearly said they were bringing food only and did not threaten action otherwise.

The message Chew delivered to Pickens said no attempt would be made to land troops or ammunition --unless the attempt to land food was opposed.

Lincoln knew two things:

The status quo favored him, and if the secesh fired on Old Glory, that favored him.

He arranged a win-win situation for both the national union and democratic government.

Walt

Then why did he send a letter stating his intentions to the Governor of South Carolina? Why did he make his belief that the forts down south were federal property and would be held or reposessed clear in public speeches up to and including his inaugural? There was nothing mysterious or secret about his intentions. The North knew it, the south knew it. Davis just bided his time, waiting for the chance to start a war.

If you're looking for plots and if your looking for lies, look no further than the man who said, "...if we may not hope to avoid war, we may at least expect that posterity will acquit us of having needlessly engaged in it..." and then started a war. A man who claimed to desire peace but immediately extablished an army 6 times the size of the Federal governments. A man who claimed to stand for justice and respect of the law but who tellingly spoke only of establishing "...branches of the executive department, having special charge of foreign intercourse, finance, military affairs, and the postal service." No justice department and especially no supreme court, in spite of the fact that his constitution called for one. There is the liar.

as usual, your intent is either to close your eyes to the TRUTH and/or to DECEIVE the ignorant.

what i posted about Grant is the plain, un-varnished truth.

he was no hero wearing a halo, any more than you or i are. just a man.

WHAT SOURCE will you ACCEPT as FACT? how about the Philadelphia Inquirer newspaper? the paper is the source of the the "help is hard to find" comment as to why Grant had NOT freed his personal slaves AFTER the WBTS.

for a free and much improved dixie republic,sw

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.