Posted on 08/09/2002 3:38:13 AM PDT by GOPcapitalist
Some of the pro-north activists around here have been asking for a factual refutation of McPherson. Since I'm too cheap to purchase "Battle Cry" due to the fact that its revenues go into the pocket of an avowed Democrat with marxist political affiliations, I decided to examine his positions in one of those free articles on the web. Here goes...
The following is intended as a refutation and analysis of the main arguments found in James McPherson's article "The Civil War: Causes and Results." I've broken it down by section to address his arguments in detail. His statements are selected in order as they appeared in the original essay and presented in bold below:
I. "To be sure, conflicts of interest occurred between the agricultural South and the industrializing North. But issues like tariffs, banks, and land grants divided parties and interest groups more than they did North and South."
McPherson is using a red herring when he states that tariffs et al divided parties instead of the country's two regions as the inescapable partisan situation throughout the war revolved around an exclusively sectional northern political party. The Republican party of the north was indisputably protectionist and heavily emphasized protectionism in its 1860 platform. The remaining partisan divisions during the war consisted mostly of southern Democrats and northern Democrats. The former played a dominant role in the confederacy. The latter came to encompass the anti-war copperheads, the peace Democrats, the anti-draft Democrats, the McClellanites, and a number of other similar factions generally supportive of the idea that the war should be waged in greater moderation, in a more limited capacity, or not at all.
In short this created a war/political climate consisting of one group for the war as it was being waged (the Republicans) and two disapproving of the way the war was being waged - the confederates who were obviously opposed to the invasion and the northern democrats who sought a more restrained war or an end to it all together. Accordingly it can be accurately said that the sectional proponents of war against the confederacy as it was being waged were almost exclusively from the strongly pro-tariff Republican Party. Comparatively the southern confederates expressed solid opposition to the tariff. As the war itself was conducted between the northern Republicans and the southern Confederates, McPherson's implication that the tariff issue did not break on the same lines as the war is historically inaccurate, deceptively presented, and flat out absurd.
II. "The South in the 1840s and 1850s had its advocates of industrialization and protective tariffs, just as the North had its millions of farmers and its low-tariff, antibank Democratic majority in many states."
This is another red herring on McPherson's part. On any given issue of practically any nature it is typically possible to find an advocate opinion in the midst of a crowd of opponents. So naturally there were some pro-tariff southerners and anti-tariff northerners. What McPherson fails to concede though is that both were a minority among the two dynamically opposed entities at the center of the war itself - the northern Republicans and the southern Confederates. The Republicans were very pro-tariff and openly indicated so platforms. The Confederates opposed the tariffs being pushed by the north and cited it frequently among their grievances for secession. As for the northern Democrats McPherson mentions, that is well and good except that he conveniently neglects their differing view from the Republicans on how to wage the war.
III. "The Civil War was not fought over the issue of tariff or of industrialization or of land grants."
While it cannot in any reasonable manner be said that the war was fought exclusively on tariffs or any other issue, to deny this as McPherson does above is simply dishonest. Northern advocacy of the tariff had been an issue since the Spring of 1860 when the House took up the Morrill bill. Southern opposition to it, aside from dating back decades to the nullification crisis, appeared in both Congress and the conduction of secession by the states. Witness just a small sample of the historical record on the issue of protectionism and tariff collection from 1860-61, broken down here between northern and southern sides:
NORTH/REPUBLICAN:IV. "Nor was it a consequence of false issues invented by demagogues.""That, while providing revenue for the support of the General Government by duties upon imposts, sound policy requires such an adjustment of the imposts as to encourage the development of the industrial interest of the whole country, and we commend that policy of national exchanges which secures to the working men liberal wages, to agriculture remunerating prices, to mechanics and manufacturers an adequate reward for their skill, labor and enterprise, and to the nation commercial prosperity and independence." - Republican Party Platform of 1860
"According to my political education, I am inclined to believe that the people in the various sections of the country should have their own views carried out through their representatives in Congress, and if the consideration of the Tariff bill should be postponed until the next session of the National Legislature, no subject should engage your representatives more closely than that of a tariff" - President-Elect Abraham Lincoln, February 15, 1861
SOUTH/CONFEDERATE:
"Resolved, That in as much as the movements now made in Congress of the United States of North America, and the incoming administration thereof, threaten to blockade our ports, force revenues, suspend postal arrangements, destroy commerce, ruin trade, depreciate currency, invade sovereign States, burn cities, butcher armies, gibbet patriots, hang veterans, oppress freemen, blot our liberty, beggar homes, widow mothers, orphan children, and desolate the peace and happiness of the nation with fire and sword,-these things to do, and not to disappoint the expectation of those who have given him their votes. Now, against these things we, in the name of right, the Constitution, and a just God, solemnly enter our protest; and further, when that which is manifested shall have come upon the country, we say to Tennessee: Let slip the dogs of war and cry havoc!" - Resolution of Franklin County, Tennessee for secession, adopted unanimously at Winchester, February 25, 1861
"You suppose that numbers constitute the strength of government in this day. I tell you that it is not blood; it is the military chest; it is the almighty dollar. When you have lost your market; when your operatives are turned out; when your capitalists are broken, will you go to direct taxation?" - Louis T. Wigfall, United States Senate, December 1860
Contrary to McPherson's assertions, a strong argument may be made regarding the nature of the core issue upon which Lincoln waged his war. As Lincoln famously expressed in his letter to Horace Greeley, his public line was "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union." Lincoln was gifted with significant rhetorical skills and publicly alleged the theme of "The Union" as his basis for action throughout the war. His use of the issue of unionism is peculiar as it bears an uncanny resemblance to a thoroughly reasoned prediction made by Alexis de Tocqueville thirty years earlier regarding the event of secession itself:
"If it be supposed that among the states that are united by the federal tie there are some which exclusively enjoy the principal advantages of union, or whose prosperity entirely depends on the duration of that union, it is unquestionable that they will always be ready to support the central government in enforcing the obedience of the others. But the government would then be exerting a force not derived from itself, but from a principle contrary to its nature. States form confederations in order to derive equal advantages from their union; and in the case just alluded to, the Federal government would derive its power from the unequal distribution of those benefits among the states.In light of northern behavior as it occurred, Tocqueville's observation was largely proven valid. Economically, the north stood to face a competitive disadvantage in the event of southern secession. Simply speaking, secession posed to expose the northern industrial economy to european economic competition it had sought to escape by way of protectionist policies - if European goods could be purchased by southerners without tariffs their prices were often lower than northern substitutes, hence consumers shift to the cheaper European products. That situation is even further complicated if cheaper European goods brought in with low tariffs in the south make their way up north and compete on the market there with northern products. Accordingly on economic policy the north had a very clear advantage to be had from the continuance of the union as one. That is what Wigfall was referring to when he asked what the north would do when it lost its market.If one of the federated states acquires a preponderance sufficiently great to enable it to take exclusive possession of the central authority, it will consider the other states as subject provinces and will cause its own supremacy to be respected under the borrowed name of the sovereignty of the Union. Great things may then be done in the name of the Federal government, but in reality that government will have ceased to exist." - Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, Book I, Chapter 18 (emphasis added)
It is also an evidenced very strongly in Lincoln's war policy. From the moment secession became an issue, Lincoln expressed a near obsessive desire to do one thing - enforce revenue collection in the south and seceded states. As early as December of 1860 he wrote private letters to his military commanders emphasizing the need to maintain or recapture southern forts to ensure revenue collection. When he instituted his blockage Lincoln explicitly legitimized it on the issue of revenue collection. When he spoke before safely pro-tariff northern audiences he pledged his dedication was to revenue collection. This was the sole issue of his letter to Salmon Chase on March 18, 1861 about what to do with secession:
"Sir I shall be obliged if you will inform me whether any goods, wares and merchandize, subject by law to the payment of duties, are now being imported into the United States without such duties being paid, or secured according to law. And if yea, at what place or places? and for what cause do such duties remain unpaid, or [un]secured? I will also thank you for your opinion whether, as a matter of fact, vessels off shore could be effectively used to prevent such importation, or to enforce the payment or securing of the duties." - Lincoln to Chase, March 18, 1861In one speech to a northern audience from February 1861 Lincoln even admitted that "marching of an army into South California, for instance, without the consent of her people, and in hostility against them...would be invasion, and it would be coercion too." But he continued to argue that if he did was simply insisting on "the collection of duties upon foreign importations" among other things, it would not be "coercion." All of this differs significantly with the official line that he was acting only to preserve the union, suggesting that just as Tocqueville predicted, the use of the union's sovereignty was a "borrowed name." And if borrowing an attractive name to publicly promote as a whole while simultaneously arguing a less attractive one in private and among allies does not constitute the invention of an issue, I do not know what does. I will concede that even the degree of Lincoln's engagement in this tactic is a matter of wide debate, but for McPherson to deny its presence all together is yet another case of historical inaccuracy on his part.
V. "What lay at the root of this separation? Slavery. It was the sole institution not shared by North and South. The peculiar institution defined the South."
First off, McPherson's assertion that slavery was a solely unshared by North and South is historically inaccurate. A number of northern states on the borders openly practiced and permitted slavery until after the war and with Lincoln's full consent - Maryland, Delaware, West Virginia, federal controlled regions of Kentucky and Missouri, and even New Jersey, where the slavery that had been abolished there about two decades earlier had grandfathered persons in slavery at the time of abolition.
Second, to suggest as McPherson does is to lie about the sentiments of large portions of the northern population, as the northern population was NOT an abolitionist body opposed to slavery in 1861 or anything even remotely of the sort. A majority of northerners were opponents of abolition at the time of the war, Lincoln included among them. The abolitionist crowd represented less than 10% of the northern population by most estimates. Among the remainder, divisions in treatment of slavery as it existed were widespread. Few statistics measure the exact breakdown of the population, though estimates based on candidacies, electoral data, and other sources of public sentiment were made at the time. The general range of northern opinion included a wide spectrum. Included were those who tolerated the institution entirely and those who tolerated it in a limited sense. One major division were those who favored its continuation so long as it was contained entirely to the south. Many since then have tried to claim that the non-extension belief was some sort of a principled long-term plan to kill off slavery where it existed (this interpretation of the non-extension position was popularized by Karl Marx in 1861). But evidence of the time suggests that the motives for the non-extension policy among many if not most of its proponents were much more political and economic based than principle oriented. Economically, a non-extension policy on slavery was believed to be an economic restriction on job competition for white northern laborers. That's right - the north of 1861 was full of bigots and racists who feared black people, slave or free and based solely on their skin color, to the extent that they did not even want them to labor in their company. Alexis de Tocqueville similarly noticed this about the north thirty years earlier. Lincoln had also noticed it in his 1858 senate debates where he consciously advocated racial supremacy before audiences he suspected to be composed of what have been termed "negrophobes," only to turn around and advocate racial equality to crowds perceived as more abolition-friendly. Lincoln also advocated the "white labor" position as a reason to oppose extension of slavery into the territories, including in one of the most famous speeches of his career:
"Whether slavery shall go into Nebraska, or other new Territories, is not a matter of exclusive concern to the people who may go there. The whole nation is interested that the best use shall be made of these Territories. We want them for homes of free white people. This they cannot be, to any considerable extent, if slavery shall be planted within them. Slave States are places for poor white people to remove from, not to remove to." - Abraham Lincoln, October 16, 1854, Peoria, ILA second major reason behind the non-extension policy was purely political - control of the senate broke on sectional lines. By allowing slavery in the territories, southerners hoped to eventually create new states on the shared issue of slavery that would also vote with them on sectional disputes. By opposing slavery in the territories, northerners hoped to do the opposite and create a state that would vote with them on sectional disputes. This is evidenced repeatedly during the pre-1860 compromises pushed by Clay, Douglas, and others - they addressed the senate division by preserving an even split. To do so they simultaneously admitted a slave territory and a free territory as states.
Now, that having been said it is perfect proper to admit and consider slavery as a major and prominent issue during the war. To refuse it would be to deny history and engage in absurdity. But to do as McPherson, Marx, and other persons who advocate an historical view heavily skewered to the yankee side do and purport slavery to be the sole issue is similarly a violation of historical accuracy. Above all else the war was an inescapably complex issue with inescapably complex roots. In order to reduce the war to a single issue, one must reduce it from the complex to the simple. Since the war by its very nature consists of a point of irreducible complexity in its roots, to push beyond that point is to violate the irreducibly complex. That is McPherson's flaw as it is the flaw of the many others who share his position.
VI. "What explained the growing Northern hostility to slavery? Since 1831 the militant phase of the abolitionist movement had crusaded against bondage as unchristian, immoral, and a violation of the republican principle of equality on which the nation had been founded. The fact that this land of liberty had become the world's largest slaveholding nation seemed a shameful anomaly to an increasing number of Northerners. "The monstrous injustice of slavery," said Lincoln in 1854, "deprives our republican example of its just influence in the world - enables the enemies of free institutions, with plausibility, to taunt us as hypocrites." Slavery degraded not only the slaves, argued Northerners opposed to its expansion, by demeaning the dignity of labor and dragging down the wages of all workers; it also degraded free people who owned no slaves. If slavery goes into the territories, declared abolitionists, "the free labor of all the states will not.... If the free labor of the states goes there, the slave labor of the southern states will not, and in a few years the country will teem with an active and energetic population." The contest over expansion of slavery into the territories thus became a contest over the future of America, for these territories held the balance of power between slavery and freedom."
This entire passage of McPherson commits the same error of assumption made earlier about northern beliefs on slavery and non-expansion. McPherson severely overstates the size of the northern abolitionist population and illegitimately implies a shared affiliation between them and Lincoln. In reality, Lincoln was perfectly willing to permit the continuation of slavery to the point that he used his first inaugural address to endorse a recently passed but unratified constitutional amendment to protect the institution of slavery where it existed. Had it been ratified as Lincoln wanted, slavery's life would have been artificially extended in America beyond its natural decline worldwide. That is why true abolitionists including William Lloyd Garrison and Lysander Spooner publicly identified Lincoln as a fraud, even after the 13th amendment.
McPherson's statement above further neglects the presence of what has been accurately termed as northern "negrophobia" in 1861. Included are the economic motives asserted by Lincoln and others for non-extension that were noted earlier. The less than pure motives for northern opposition to slavery's expansion were well known in their day, including having been noticed by some of the greatest minds - and anti-slavery advocates - of western history. Alexis de Tocqueville readily observed that northerners did not oppose slavery for the benefit of the slaves, but rather for the benefit of themselves. Charles Dickens noticed the same was still the case thirty years later. Both men were prominent opponents of slavery.
VII. "Proslavery advocates countered that the bondage of blacks was the basis of liberty for whites. Slavery elevated all whites to an equality of status and dignity by confining menial labor and caste subordination to blacks. "If slaves are freed," said Southerners, whites "will become menials. We will lose every right and liberty which belongs to the name of freemen."
His blatant generalizations aside, McPherson's statement above, as has been seen, perhaps better resembles the position taken by the northern "negrophobes" than any other faction in the country. Northern bigots saw the mere presence of persons of other skin colors as a threat to white livelihood and accordingly legislated blacks out of their towns, cities, and states. Many wanted blacks to be kept out of the territories for the reason Lincoln stated at Peoria in 1854 and sought to address the presence of blacks by restricting them out of white society all together through segregation, statute, and coercion - the exact type of bondage mattered little to these bigots, so long as they were "on top" and didn't perceive any economic threat posed by their labor. Lincoln took this very position in one of his debates with Stephen Douglas:
"I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races - that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of making voters or jurors of Negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race." - Abraham Lincoln, August 17, 1858VIII. "A Northern antislavery party would dominate the future. Slavery was doomed if the South remained in the Union."
Untrue, and had Lincoln gotten his way and ratified his pro-slavery amendment to the U.S. Constitution in 1861, the exact opposite would have been true. During his Inaugural Address, Lincoln made the following statement:
"I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution?which amendment, however, I have not seen?has passed Congress, to the effect that the FederalThe amendment he was referring to had passed congress with a 2/3rds majority less than a week earlier, owing its passage to what eyewitness Henry Adams described as the "direct influence" of Abraham Lincoln himself (Lincoln was fibbing when he claimed in his inaugural to have "not yet seen" the amendment). The amendment Lincoln got passed read:
Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I
depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable." - Abraham Lincoln, Inaugural Address, March 4, 1861
Article Thirteen.It would have effectively made slavery untouchable by any future constitutional amendment, thereby preventing at any time in the future what became the actual 13th amendment and prolonging the existence of slavery where it existed beyond a possible future abolition by peaceful means.
"No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic
institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State."
IX. "If the new Lincoln administration and the Northern people had been willing to accept secession, the two halves of the former United States might have coexisted in an uneasy peace. But most Northerners were not willing to tolerate the dismemberment of the United States."
McPherson is fibbing here, pure and simple. Most honest historians recognize the presence of a significant anti-war sentiment among the northern population and even a belief in "simply letting them go." This sentiment emerged at times throughout the war, especially in the early days when the north had suffered several glaring defeats by smaller sized confederate forces. Throughout much of his presidency Lincoln consciously worked tirelessly to achieve what McPherson dishonestly purports to have already been there. He did it both by persuasion and, in certain more dubious cases, coercion. The latter occurred when he unconstitutionally suspended habeas corpus among other things. Federal forces were similarly used to impede the properly seated legislatures of Maryland and Missouri, forcing many of the former state's into prison without cause and the latter's to flee south and reconvene in a rump session.
X. "Lincoln intended to maintain the federal garrison at Fort Sumter in Charleston Bay as a symbol of national sovereignty in the Confederate states, in the hope that a reaction toward Unionism in those states would eventually bring them back."
McPherson is fibbing again. Lincoln's private correspondence to military commanders over the issue of Fort Sumter were near obsessively concerned with the collection of revenue. Surviving from Lincoln's cabinet meetings on the subject of how to address Fort Sumter also include a lengthy list of the "pros and cons" of holding the fort. Clearly identified among them as a "con" is the statement recognizing the federal presence at Charleston as having the effect of exacerbating secessionist sympathies much like a thorn in the side of South Carolina. It states that "(t)he abandonment of the Post would remove a source of irritation of the Southern people and deprive the secession movement of one of its most powerful stimulants."
XI. "To forestall this happening, the Confederate army attacked Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861"
McPherson's fibbing continues in the above statement, which immediately follows the statement he made in what I have identified as item X. The historical record shows the above statement to be bizarre, unusual, and largely fabricated out of thin air. The confederate attack was not made randomly on April 12th to stop some unknown resurgence of unionism in South Carolina. It was fired on in direct response to military maneuvers on the fort that had been launched by Lincoln earlier that week. On April 5 Lincoln notified Governor Francis Pickens of South Carolina that he would be attempting to peacefully reprovision Fort Sumter with supplies. Shortly thereafter he instructed his military to send out a fleet of federal warships containing the food as well as heavy reenforcements and weaponry. Explicit orders were to go to Sumter and if the Confederates refused to let them enter the fort, open fire and fight their way in. Confederate intelligence, knowing of Lincoln's earlier message to Pickens, caught wind of the operation by discovering the ships had been sent to sea. Beauregard was notified and opened fire on the fort to preempt the fleet's arrival, which turned out to be only a day away. Lincoln's fleet got there a day late, though just in time for Beauregard to allow the garrison safe passage to them and back up north. Needless to say, Abraham Lincoln did not consider the move in any way a failure as he had provoked the confederates into firing the first shot, even though it did not happen the way he anticipated. He openly admitted this in a personal letter to Captain Gustavus Fox, who he had tasked to lead the expedition:
"I sincerely regret that the failure of the late attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, should be the source of any annoyance to you. The practicability of your plan was not, in fact, brought to a test. By reason of a gale, well known in advance to be possible, and not improbable, the tugs, an essential part of the plan, never reached the ground; while, by an accident, for which you were in no wise responsible, and possibly I, to some extent was, you were deprived of a war vessel with her men, which you deemed of great importance to the enterprize. I most cheerfully and truly declare that the failure of the undertaking has not lowered you a particle, while the qualities you developed in the effort, have greatly heightened you, in my estimation. For a daring and dangerous enterprize, of a similar character, you would, to-day, be the man, of all my acquaintances, whom I would select. You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort-Sumpter, even if it should fail; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result." - Abraham Lincoln, letter to Fox, May 1, 1861 (emphasis added)XII. "The war resolved the two fundamental problems left unresolved by the Revolution of 1776, problems that had preoccupied the country for four score and nine years down to 1865. The first was the question whether this fragile republic would survive in a world of monarchs and emperors and dictators or would follow the example of most republics through history (including many in the nineteenth century) and collapse into tyranny or fragment in a dreary succession of revolutions and civil wars."
Here McPherson is exploiting the "experiment in democracy" myth to attach some legitimacy and purported good to what was an appallingly costly, brutal, and disastrous war. While he is correct to phrase the American nation's role in a world that was at the time dominated by empire and monarchy as well as to note the previous occurrence of republican failures elsewhere, he is incorrect to suggest that the fate of republican government rested on the preservation of the union. As any honest historian must concede, though it is often contrary to the Schlessingerian "experiment in democracy" and the neo-Hegelian "end of history" paradigms, the concept of republican government has been around in various forms throughout recorded history. It has had its successes, sometimes lasting for centuries, and it has also had its failures, but just the same so have empires and monarchies. On the greater spectrum of history itself I believe the evidence is clear that governments are cyclical developments and refinements. This is commonly thought of as a classical understanding of government. Alternative some hold governments to be evolutionary stage developments as McPherson does here and as some otherwise genuinely intelligent and even conservative persons believe America to be. This alternative is the Hegelian view, perhaps most famously adopted by Marx as the heart of communism. I will concede it is tempting for some conservatives to gravitate toward this latter position, but doing so entails what is ultimately an embrace of arrogance and perfectibility over all that preceded us when in reality we are the same inherently human, inherently flawed, yet readily redeemable human beings as those who came before us were. For that reason few will likely find the Hegelian position in the minds of conservatism's greatest thinkers (actually it is normally found among the left, such as McPherson demonstrates here). Therefore what some may falsely interpret to be a classical system that appears dismissive of the wisdom of the Constitution and the sorts may find themselves surprised to find it a position held by some of the Constitution's greatest defenders and conservatism's greatest minds.
I hope you didn't think my comment was intended to be hostile. I was thinking of your own edification - that if you stuck your head up your arse you might finally see how full of shit you are. As for my response being southron, well, I am by birth a Northerner, as I've told you many times. I might still be one in point of view had not you and WhiskeyPapa converted me to the Southern point of view. I think though my response was much more in the spirit of you and W.P. than of the Southern gentlemen who frequent these threads.
And Hitler was never cruel to a dog.
Yeah, what's your point? Have you not seen maps of confederate Arizona territory? They covered the southern half or so of New Mexico and specifically identified that as their political jurisdiction. Santa Fe to the north was across the border.
But your history is way skewed.
I think not. History supports my position as secession happened in convention their before the end of March. The Texas forces you purport to have "invaded" and forced the secession of Arizona did not come until July, where they releaved the secessionist regions of the territory from an undesired union presence that was trying to reclaim the region for the union.
The territorial governor of New Mexico (Henry M. Connelly) called on all New Mexicans to resist the Texas invaders. Unless, of course, by territorial governor you mean John Baylor who attacked New Mexico and installed himself as governor of Arizona at Mesilla.
The one and only! Baylor's expedition into New Mexico came directly at the request of representatives from Mesilla and Tuscon who had already aligned with the confederacy yet faced a nearby union presence trying to prevent their exercise of self government. Upon arrival he defended Mesilla from a yankee attack on the secessionist city. That was July 1861. Mesilla and Tuscon adopted the secession resolution by the end of March.
I hardly think that the attack on New Mexico by Texas (which lasted for about 12 months starting in August of 1861 and ending in the withdrawal of the Texans from the New Mexican territory completely) was an unamed conspiracy - especially since the Texans were occupying Tucson and Mesilla at the time.
Uh, no they weren't. Mesilla's convention was held on March 16, 1861. Tuscon's was held on March 28, 1861. Baylor reached El Paso in July and was met with representatives from Mesilla and Arizona telling of the situation of a union encampment outside of Mesilla at Fort Fillmore that was there to retake the territory. Baylor responded by splitting his forces and taking half in to defend the city. The yankees attacked upon his arrival and lost the battle, went for a retreat, got cut off by Baylor, and surrendered.
Boy you sure do like picking and choosing.
There's nothing wrong with me calling you on an unsubstantiated claim about an historical document. The Cherokee Nation stated its causes against the north. You come along 140 years later, pretend that you know what they were thinking better than them, and arbitrarily dismiss their declaration's content because it doesn't suit your skewed "it was all slavery and nothing else" view of the war.
And yet, you refuse to accept Lincoln at his word
I'm perfectly content with analyzing his words and, where evidence exists to show they were his genuine beliefs, accepting them as that. But I also recognize the fact that Lincoln himself was very skilled in political deception, rhetoric, and even fibbing when it suited him - a character that appeared in many of his most prominent speeches.
even going so far as to distort the meaning of Lincoln's words on invasion by offering up a textual rail split.
One problem. Lincoln's message was simply not distorted by the truncation of that quote. I truncated it as my interest was in his plainly stated definition of "invasion." Later he goes on to say that recovering the forts and collecting the taxes and all that stuff does not constitute invasion. That's fine and all, but Lincoln did a heck of a lot more than simply recover a couple of forts from the confederates. He did exactly what his own definition says to be invasion - marching an army into a region against the will of its people and in hostility toward them.
At least I don't do that.
No. You just tell lies about how a perfectly valid quotation of Lincoln somehow says something different when considered with the sentences following it when this is simply not the case.
You sure love that term non-binding, don't you.
Do you deny its accuracy? If so, please cite the legislative passages demonstrating it to have been a matter of statute legally enacting secession in Texas. Otherwise it is a description grounded in historical accuracy (unlike your own mega-hyperbole which called the thing the equivalent of a Declaration of Independence) in which case you have no grounds to challenge my characterization.
Using your reasoning, the Texas resolution to join the Confederacy was also a non-binding resolution because it was never submitted to a popular vote.
Really? Cause the scan of the document itself located online here says differently: http://www.tsl.state.tx.us/treasures/images/earlystate/ord.jpg
Quoted from the transcription: "This ordinance shall be submitted to the people of Texas for their ratification or rejection, by the qualified voters, on the 23rd day of February, 1861, and unless rejected by a majority of the votes cast, shall take effect and be in force on and after the 2d day of March, A.D. 1861. PROVIDED, that in the Representative District of El Paso said election may be held on the 18th day of February, 1861."
Officially reported totals of the popular vote itself 46,153 for and 14,747 against. So it looks like you were fibbing again.
Hogwash.
Surely you've heard of the Hartford Convention, have you not? Or the attempted thwarting of the will of the people of Kansas through the (almost successful) ramming down their throats of the LeCompton constitution.
You lodge interesting grievances over Kansas, yet all come from the Northern side. Hate to break it to ya but the yankees had plenty of blood on their own hands during that whole affair. John Brown made a bad habit of eliminating pro-southern civilians from the territory by capturing them and their children in the middle of the night, hacking their heads open, and spreading their entrails along the roadside as a warning to other southerners living their.
Or the meddlin of Texas
Meddling? Texas voted to join the union on its own with absolutely no doubt it would become a southern state. The yankees, Lincoln included, vehemently opposed Texas and even spoke up in Congress on behalf of Mexican dictator Antonio Lopez de Santa Ana, one of the most notorious tyrants of the 19th century, in attempt to thwart Texas' entry into the United States.
in New Mexican affairs to ensure that they entered the Union as a slave territory.
As if the yankees did not want the region for their own? You seem to be keen on accusing the south of trying to bring in new states as slave states but conveniently ignore the entirity of aggressive moves made by others.
There are many more examples of southern coercion than of northern.
Really? Such as what? Texas was not coerced by anybody and despite your implication otherwise, coercion in Kansas was a two sided fight with some of its bloodiest acts committed by the northerners.
Read Article I of the Constitution sometime. It is rather amusing.
I suppose you would find it that, particularly the part where suspension of Habeas Corpus is listed among LEGISLATIVE acts.
You might note that the federal government is given certain specific powers that are denied to the state. Amongst those powers denied to the states is the ability to act as supreme sovereign powers. To do so is an act of rebellion under the constitution clear and simple.
But at the same time, the right of rebellion against a coercive government that violates a clearly expressed right of the same people to self government supersedes any statutory limitation. Further, when the national government itself (i.e. that constitution) is a voluntarily entered creation of the states it is difficult to argue that it legitimately gained authority beyond that which its creators gave it to begin with.
Don't delude yourself. Those were federal forts.
Initially. But just the same, forts in most east coast American harbors were initially British forts. Does that mean Britain still has a right to them after the political separation from that nation has already occured?
The state of S.C. opened up hostilities by firing on Ft. Sumter and "Star of the West."
Yeah, and it's funny how that little incident didn't require a massive union invasion army in return. For some strange reason Sumter, which suffered NO CASUALTIES in the battle, did. Methinks it has something to do with a man named Lincoln.
Lincoln was merely trying to retain what belonged to the Federals.
If that is true, then Lincoln must have thought the entirity of the South "belonged to the Federals" because that's what he invaded, that's what he conquered, and that's what he retained - not just some little fort in a harbor or two, but the entirity of the southern states.
Your attempt to discredit a well established and known plan by Lincoln to retake the forts by calling it the c-word aside, I need only note that I posted that letter in direct response to your denial that Lincoln's plotting over Sumter had occured all the way back in December and January. Unable to own up to your fib now that it has been exposed, you respond by trying to divert attention from it by irrationally alleging that my simple posting of the indisputable historical record is some sort of unspecified conspiracy theory. Nice try, but you got caught.
he said: "i'll get around to it."
free the south,sw
That's another debate entirely and completely ignores my correction of your erronious allegation that the whole of arizona and new mexico was part of the confederate territory. I will note however for the record that the right of self government supersedes statutory matters.
For such an undesired presence, there was sure a lot of screaming for Federal troops to take on the Apaches.
Yeah - before secession when the federals were ignoring them. But the second they secede Lincoln's men suddenly find a need to be there and set up camp outside Mesilla to prepare for taking the town. It's funny how things work out like that!
Until Baylor and his Texans came in, the Union was firmly in charge of the entire New Mexico area.
Hence the problem. The southern half of the territory had already decided they did not want them there but they were there anyway. That's why they went to El Paso and asked Baylor to liberate their territory from a federal army outside of Mesilla.
This in spite of the Arizona Guards, the severely weakened Federal military presence in the area and the pro confederate sentiment in the area of Mesilla and Tucson. So I would hardly term the Tesas expedition a "relief" expedition since there was nothing to relieve from a military standpoint.
Sure there was. The only major military force in the region was a union command occupying a fort outside of Mesilla to counter the southern half of the region's confederate government. The leaders of Mesilla sent message to El Paso for relief. Baylor split his army in two, left half there to garrison it, and took the other half to relieve Mesilla in direct response to that request. Shortly after his arrival the larger yankee army attacked Mesilla and was repulsed by Baylor. Your complete ignorance of this event is laughable considering that you purport to know what you are talking about. As for Baylor's expedition, if that does not qualify as a relief expedition, I don't see what else could.
Baylor was in charge of a western Texas garrison (under Earl Van Dorn) and was sent to occupy the abandoned federal fort of Ft.Bliss just south of the New Mexico border. He felt that the Ft. Fillmore (forty miles upriver) constituted a grave threat to his Ft. Bliss garrison, so he invaded New Mexico to attack it. Yup sure sounds like he was invited - by himself.
Nonsense. Fort Fillmore was just outside of Mesilla. Mesilla was the center of confederate activity in New Mexico and the people there wanted the yankees gone so they contacted Baylor and asked him to send men. Baylor planned at first to march directly on the fort but was forced to take up camp in Mesilla. The people of Mesilla greated Baylor with open arms, flying the confederate flag and thanking him for his efforts to liberate the region from the nearby yankee command. To say that they did not want him there is to deny basic history.
Also, it is just not simply true that Mesilla (near Ft. Bliss) was under threat of attack by the Union. The yankees approached it on July 24, 1861 and demanded the town's surrender. Baylor, who had been welcomed there by the openly confederate town, refused and the yankees opened fire. Baylor repulsed them. Read about it here http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/MM/qfm4.html
I was referencing Baylor's becoming governor to the Texas conspiracy.
It was a bold move, but by all indications Baylor's presence was welcomed with open arms by the people of Mesilla. They celebrated his arrival and added troops to his ranks to pursue the yankees after the city was saved.
Baylor attacked Ft. Fillmore because it was a threat to Ft. Bliss - not because he was trying to protect Mesilla.
Nonsense. Baylor did see Fillmore's presence as a threat to his command at Bliss, which was one of the reasons he responded to Mesilla's calls. But his plans to attack it did not come through and he went to Mesilla to prepare it for a defense. Shortly after the federals arrived and demanded the city's surrender. Baylor said no and the yankees attacked the city, not the other way around as you suggest.
I don't claim to think what they knew better than them.
Then why did you dismiss the entirity of their ordinance as them seeing only what they wanted to see without knowledge of this or reason to merit your allegation?
I just claimed that the south traditionally gave them a rougher row to hoe than the north
And I responded that your claim of this was based almost entirely on Andy Jackson, the same man who put down the earliest beginnings of the drive for southern independence. As far as I'm concerned (and I believe many southerners would back me on this) you can have all of Jackson you want cause we certainly don't want him.
It is also evident from the documents that they intended to stay neutral. And they did initially - until it was apparent that the south was winning.
The document expresses an intended neutrality, but it was not broken for the reason you allege and quite to the contrary. The Cherokees specifically listed a lengthy string of grievances against the North that had happened in the wake of secession.
The Washington Peace Conference and the various compromises offered in late 1860 and early 1861 were *exclusively* concerned with slavery.
Yeah, and the northerner's openly admitted among themselves at the time to intentionally framing the compromise debates around that issue for political reasons to their own advantage. Read their eyewitness histories and letters if you doubt me.
Both the Unionists and the slavers felt that if the slavery issue could be worked out, then everything else could be worked out too.
No they didn't. Louis Wigfall, one of the first southern senators to take up the secessionist cause, identified the problem in a December 6 speech as strictly economics. He said that, despite their protests otherwise, the almighty dollar was driving the yankee cause at southern expense and that if it could be worked out there would be no problem. He then concluded that the yankees had made the situation unworkable and therefore secession had become the only course of action for the south. Then he issued one of the first serious calls for his colleagues to secede.
Er, with your habit of textual rail-splits
Show how any truncation of that quote changed Lincoln's meaning.
I would be careful about calling anyone else a fibber.
If you can substantiate your allegation of a fib on my part, please do so. Otherwise you shouldn't shoot your mouth off like that.
Uh huh, then you totally ignore his words concerning S.C.'s actions concerning Federal forts.
Exactly what's to say about them? They don't change Lincoln's definition of invasion in any way not do they change the fact that by waging the war he met that definition of invasion.
You have (until this post) adamamntly maintained that by trying to maintain Ft. Sumter that Lincoln was doing an invasion.
Uh, no. I don't believe I have. Show where if you think otherwise. I did say he invaded Virginia, and I did say he instigated hostility at Fort Sumter, but I don't believe I ever said he invaded Fort Sumter in the context of his own definition of invasion.
Lessee now, S.C. attacks Ft. Sumter, invading federal property along the way.
It was no more a _legitimate_ federal property than a british fort in Boston Harbor was legitimate English property circa 1777.
And then you complain because the Union responds?
A full scale hostile of invasion of the entire south is a bit drastic as a response to a zero-casualty siezure of a single fort, don't you think?
Tit for tat.
So you think invading 13 states and 2 territories with one of the largest armies ever assembled on the continent is "tit" for the "tat" of a single fort being siezed in a battle with no casualties and no prisoners?
If Cuba started a war with the U.S. and kicked the U.S. out of Guantanamo Bay, we would be entirely justified in not only taking it back, but giving Castro and company an all-expense paid vacation to Portsmouth Naval Prison.
I don't dispute that we could do it, and as much as I hate Castro I would love to do it, but it would NOT be an equivalent retaliation to conquer the entire country and rule it under military command for a decade. Toppling Cuba's government is another issue that is complicated by the fact that their government is not one of the consent of the people. The south's was, therefore your analogy compares two incomparable matters.
Lessee, you leave out critical info about Lincoln's feelings of the attack on Ft. Sumter by S.C.
You have yet to explain how anything he said about the forts was "critical" to his definition of invasion, which was my matter of concern. Care explaining yourself?
When I post this, you immediately back off of your claim that S.C. had every right to reclaim the fort
Back off? Where? I firmly believe it is a people's right to remove a hostile garrison from their presence when they are no longer subject to that garrison and when that garrison has no business being there other than for hostile motives.
Then you call me a liar.
If you don't want to be called a liar, don't fib about Lincoln's quotes by throwing out false allegations that I somehow denied their meaning by only quoting the sentence on the matter I was making a point about.
You might note S.C.'s actions in regards to Ft. Sumter and collecting imposts and duties before calling Lincoln a liar. Even according to his own words, he had the right to do that, which S.C. vigorously denied.
Since when did the US Government have the right to collect taxes for itself on the goods going into another political entity that has clearly indicated the termination of its political affiliation with that government? Lincoln had no more business collecting taxes there than King George did in Philadelphia circa 1780.
What you are talking of is the Ordinance of Secession adopted by the Convention on February 1, 1861. The ordinance accepting Confederate Statehood was adopted in convention on March 5, 1861 and was never voted upon by the people of the state of Texas.
Nice try at evading that one. Too bad for you that you got it wrong again. Texas' admission to the confederacy was already addressed in Montgomery, which accepted the state contingent upon the referendum's passage and permitted for its delegation, which preceded the may 5th measure. Even then, your analogy fails you as the may 5th measure was enacted as a statutory response to the confirmation of Texas' seating in the confederate government just as the referendum itself was called for by a statutory measure passed by the convention.
Both these items were matters of legislative statute. The declaration of causes was not. It had no statutory effect, no legally binding qualifications, no requirement of a course of action to be taken, and no enaction of anything. It was a non-binding resolution that simply stated the arguments of delegates after the fact of secession had already been called for in a vote.
Neither the "Declaration of Causes" nor the "Ordinance Accepting Confederate Statehood" was put to a popular vote. Therefore if one was not binding because of this fact, neither was the other. And that has to be one of the most ignorant statements you've made yet on this matter. Have you no familiarity with legitlative processes? Have you no knowledge of the difference between a statute and a resolution? Your above statement indicates this to be the case.
A bill of statute enacts things into law - it mandates that a certain measure be executed, enforced, or implemented. An example would be for Congress to pass a bill overhauling the IRS and implementing a retail sales tax instead of the income tax
Comparatively, a legislative resolution is little more than an expression of opinion on behalf of the legislative body. It does not make anything into law, it does not enact any measures, it doesn't do anything other than formally state a position of the legislature. An example would be for Congress to pass a resolution stating, as an opinion that "we as a body believe the IRS should be overhauled and the income tax replaced."
The first is a binding statutory measure. The second is a non-binding resolution. In the case of Texas' secession, the ordinance requiring a secession vote and the may 5th measure were both statutory measures enacting various items contained within them. Comparatively the declaration of causes did nothing but state the opinion of the delegates who signed it in a non-binding, non-statutory form. They even say this in the resolution itself. It concludes stating basically 'these are some of the reasons we want to secede, we already support secession as a body, and we urge everyone to do the same when they vote.'
I suppose that you could interpret it to mean that only congress has that power.
That is the only reasonable interpretation that could be given to the matter in a plain text strict constructionist reading of the Constitution. It is also the interpretation established by the supreme court in a decision written by John Marshall himself that was the precedent at the time Lincoln violated it. Further it was the interpretation clearly expressed by the sitting Chief Justice Roger Taney, who had reaffirmed Marshall's earlier decision in response to an act by Lincoln's men with a ruling he made while sitting on the federal circuit.
Problem is, Article I, section 9, second paragraph doesn't, in and of itself, give any such limitations.
Not so. Any direct reading of the Constitution cannot escape Article I's opening statement: "All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in a Congress of the United States, which shall consist of a Senate and House of Representatives"
Nowhere does it say that the powers granted herein are vested in the President. Nowhere does it say they are vested in the court. Nowhere does it say they are vested in the King of England. It says they are vested in the Congress. Moving on to section 9 of article I it is easily observed that every single one of those clauses pertains to the legislative power and a direct extension of that power. It says things like no ex post facto law can be passed, no direct tax can be imposed. Every one of them is a matter of congress, unless you subscribe to some wierd "living breathing" loose constructionist theory of the constitution that permits the president to enact new tax codes on his own. Same goes for habeas corpus - the only way you can get around the clear meaning that is found in the document itself, asserted by John Marshall writing for a the US Supreme Court majority opinion, and affirmed as a precedent by the circuit court in direct response to Lincoln's men's violation of it is to engage in a tortured and historically oblivious reading of the document.
You couldn't be any more wrong, Gen'ral. The GOP belongs, as it always has, to northeastern elitists. It has never been conservative, though it has pretended to be a few times in its history. A Southerner in the GOP is deluding himself and betraying the conservative cause. Sorry to be so blunt, but there it is.
Not true. Lincoln levied war on Virginia and North Carolina both, when they had committed no act definable as treason by seating or calling for secession ordinances and occupying (or in North Carolina's case, seizing) federal facilities.
The cause is clearer in Virginia's case: the North not only blockaded, but fired on Virginia militia when there was no casus belli except President Lincoln's determination to have one.
Lincoln went to the military option first with both Virginia and North Carolina, abandoning civil and constitutional remedies in favor of what he really wanted -- war.
I don't agree with you that GOPcapitalist has no case for deception on Lincoln's part. To talk about ensuring revenue collection and the integrity of the mails, while you are preparing a vast civil war to destroy slavery and recast the Union, could be construed by reasonable people as a Machiavellian exercise in expedience....and misdirection.
If so, he had a funny way of showing it, stripping garrisons and abandoning forts all over the West.
If he were acting in accord with your attribution of motive, he'd have ordered federal garrisons everywhere to stand fast, not burn the place and bug out as they did at Harper's Ferry and the Norfolk Naval Yard, or evacuate to other facilities as they did at Fort Moultrie and Castle Pinckney.
No, that isn't what Lincoln was doing. What Lincoln was doing, was preparing to levy civil war. The facilities he retained in the East, all had value if one were waging war -- or provoking one. The facilities that had no value in waging a war in the East, were stripped.
Well, the first part is largely true. George W. Bush talks like a Texan, but he was born in Connecticut to a life of privilege and duty, and it shows. His "business" career was all access capitalism and crony capitalism -- my cousin can be eloquent on the subject of the new Texas Rangers baseball stadium, for which he had a front-row seat. It is less well known that they tore down a perfectly serviceable stadium from the 60's.....it simply lacked luxo-boxes and all the other money-making frou-frou's that ballpark complexes need nowadays to stay in Major League Baseball.
So I carry no brief for the Bush family -- they're New England elitists and opportunists in my book, just like Bobby Kennedy.
The conservative wing of the GOP had two seasons of control of the party: when Reagan was nominated (until the Bush crowd ran off all the Reaganauts with office politics) and when Goldwater was nominated. When Barry was nominated, was when Nelson Rockefeller gave the GOP convention delegates the finger and walked off the stage.
You need to check the time line closely. One of the key dates is April 27, when Lincoln extended the blockade to Virginia and N. Carolina, which is an act of war and unconstitutional in peacetime as a violation of Article I, Section 9. The key is that Virginia hadn't joined the Confederacy, and N. Carolina hadn't even seated a secession convention. Virginia arguably wasn't even out of the Union yet, having voted out at their convention on April 17, I think it was, but under the procedure they settled on, the People would vote on May 23rd in their plebiscite.
If Lincoln is going to demand the states follow the letter of the law, he has to be prepared to do the same and not just invoke "executive privlege" all over the place and start quartering federal troops on people and opening fire on Militia units.
As long as there is not armed violence in these areas, Lincoln's complaints about the U.S. Mint office in Raleigh and various other facilities are a matter for the marshal service and the courts. If he felt there was some other way the States could legally leave the Union, it was on him to articulate it -- but he took the position that they could not, because he knew they would anyway, giving him the pretext for war.
I strongly urge you to check the posts above for the key dates and analyze them. Get a Civil War almanac or datebook. Check it out -- Lincoln moved for war first.
Had Lincoln declared a blockade of France or Spain then you would be correct. However, Lincoln was blockading rebellious sections of his own country. You do not declare war on your own country. But even if by this time a single country had recognized confederate independence, then the issue is moot because the confederacy had declared war on the United States over a week before.
The key is that Virginia hadn't joined the Confederacy, and N. Carolina hadn't even seated a secession convention. Virginia arguably wasn't even out of the Union yet, having voted out at their convention on April 17, I think it was, but under the procedure they settled on, the People would vote on May 23rd in their plebiscite.
One could look at this two ways. One, Virginia and North Carolina had made their intentions known by voting rebellion and by siezing federal property and facilities so Lincoln's actions were justified. Or two, Virginia and North Carolina were still part of the United States, as you suggest, so moving federal troops into them or by using the navy to guard their coasts and ensure no illegal materials come into the state are both within the powers vested in the president as commander in chief. Take your pick.
If Lincoln is going to demand the states follow the letter of the law, he has to be prepared to do the same and not just invoke "executive privlege" all over the place and start quartering federal troops on people and opening fire on Militia units.
Lincoln's actions were consistent with the powers granted by the militia act. He can move federal troops within any of the states. As for the 'militia units' there were none in Charleston. They considered themselves soldiers in the confederate army, and they fired first.
As long as there is not armed violence in these areas, Lincoln's complaints about the U.S. Mint office in Raleigh and various other facilities are a matter for the marshal service and the courts.
On the contrary, the Militia Act of 1792, Section 2
"And be it further enacted, That whenever the laws of the United States shall be opposed or the execution thereof obstructed, in any state, by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings, or by the powers vested in the marshals by this act, the same being notified to the President of the United States, by an associate justice or the district judge, it shall be lawful for the President of the United States to call forth the militia of such state to suppress such combinations, and to cause the laws to be duly executed."
Can you show where a district judge or marshal wasn't consulted?
I strongly urge you to check the posts above for the key dates and analyze them. Get a Civil War almanac or datebook. Check it out -- Lincoln moved for war first.
I assure you that I have. Lincoln did nothing outside the powers granted to him by the Militia Act and other legislation. There was no war, only rebellion.
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