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.
Bull. Get your facts straight. Ft. Fillmore already had Union troops in it.
My facts are already straight. Yours however are not. The federals in the region converged at Fillmore to compose the only major army in the region after it had seceded. As the region was confederate, that army was hostile and the people there wanted it gone. Therefore they welcomed the arrival of their side's army under Baylor to do exactly that.
Yes, Lynde did attack Baylor - after Baylor invaded New Mexico.
Since when does moving an army of a region's own political affiliation into that region under the overwhelming suppor of its people for the purpose of ridding them of the presence of a nearby force belonging to the enemy that has remained congregated there against the wishes of those same people constitute "invasion" under any definition of the word, Lincoln's included?
The narrative goes on to talk about the disastrous retreat of Lynde, but the point is that Ft. Fillmore was attacked by the Texans from the direction of Mesilla. The federals didn't attack Mesilla and apparently had no plans to do so.
Did you not read your own site's narrative? I quote:
"On July 25, Lynde advanced his force of 380 from Fort Fillmore to demand Baylor's surrender. Baylor's response was, "If you wish the town and my forces, come and take them!" Lynde resolved to do just that, ordering his infantrymen into line while his two mountain howitzers began to shell the town and his mounted troops prepared to charge."
Sounds like an attack on Mesilla to me! It's also why the only major engagement there was called the Battle of Mesilla.
Baylor attacked Ft. Fillmore because he saw it as a military threat and because he was assured that he wouldn't get any civilian opposition.
He was also assured that the civilians supported the move, and in fact they had asked him to do it and added their own men to his ranks to rid their countryside of a hostile army of yankee invaders. Again, did you not read your own web site's narrative? I quote:
"That evening, the Arizona Guards, a local militia unit that had assisted in Baylor's defense, infiltrated Fort Fillmore and made off with 85 cavalry horses and 26 mules."
That sounds like a bit more than simply being assured that the civilians wouldn't oppose him. What REALLY happened is that they wanted Baylor there, took up arms along side him as part of his forces, defended the city with him, and helped him in pursuit of the yankees AFTER they were repulsed in their failed attempt to take the city while firing of the first shots.
Yeah, but you were saying that Baylor went to help Mesilla because it was being threatened by Lynde at Ft. Baylor.
No. I said and maintain that Baylor went to Mesilla at the request and open welcoming of its people, who did not want the hostile army of a foreign nation occupying strategic control over their territory. I also presume you mean Fort Fillmore.
Lynde didn't threaten to attack the town until Baylor was already in it.
But he did initiate the battle by attacking the town when Baylor got there, and his presence there alone as the only sizable army in the region placed that region under Lynde's military control against the wishes of its people.
Furthermore Lynde didn't demand the town's surrender. He demanded Baylor's surrender.
You are clearly grasping at straws in despiration with this one. Baylor's troops set up their defensive position in the town with the town's support. Mesilla added its own militia to their ranks to prepare the defense. Lynde arrived and demanded that Baylor surrender the city and his forces defending it. YET AGAIN, your own web site's narrative even indicates this fact while exposing your erronious history:
"Baylor's response was, "If you wish the town and my forces, come and take them!" Lynde resolved to do just that, ordering his infantrymen into line while his two mountain howitzers began to shell the town and his mounted troops prepared to charge."
Please get your facts straight.
They are straight. As your own chosen web site's narrative indicates, your's are not though.
It doesn't support your contention that Mesilla was under threat of Union forces prior to Baylor's arrival.
You are grasping at straws again, and in doing so ignoring the most basic concepts of military movement. An army occupying the strategic command point over a region control's that region. The yankees occupied the point commanding the region around Mesilla and were the only sizable army in that region until Baylor came along. Therefore they militarily controlled the region. Baylor's arrival and open welcoming by the confederate city of Mesilla allowed that force to be countered, and when the yankees acted to suppress the newly reinforced Mesilla, they were defeated.
So you condone that in Baylor which you would condemn in Lincoln.
Not in the least. Baylor marched an army into a confederate region at the request and full support of the people of that region to remove the presence of a hostile army occupying the command over it. He set up defensive works around the city to prepare it for an assault and to prepare himself to drive the hostile army out of the confederate city's region. That is not "invasion" under any reasonable definition of the word including Lincoln's.
Lincoln on the other hand sent hostile armies to occupy confederate regions against the will of the confederate people and with sanction to use force to suppress those people. That is, by Lincoln's own definition, "invasion."
And also, what did he save Mesilla from?
Immediately, he saved them from an assault on the town by a hostile army. Strategically, he liberated their region from the hostile army that controlled it against Mesilla's wishes.
Until Baylor entered Mesilla, the town was in no danger from Union troops.
So the fact that a hostile army occupied the military command over the region against the wishes of Mesilla's people does not mean they are under any threat?
True. This is a my bad. This is what happens when my fingers outrun my brain, and for this I apologize.
Apology accepted. Are we on the same page now as far as events went?
The true order of events was that Baylor camped about 600 yards from Ft. Fillmore planning to attack it, but surprise was denied him due to a deserter. So he occupied Mesilla instead. Lynde called on him to surrender, which he refused. Lynde then commenced a disastrous attack. After failing in his attack, Lynde then ordered an evacuation in the night. Baylor caught up with Lynde later and slaughtered his rather inebriated group of soldiers. Satisfied?
I'm not aware of any "slaughter" you speak of unless it's something I've not seen. What I do know is that Lynde abandoned his fort shortly after the battle and began a retreat to the next fort up. Baylor then cut them off on their trail by taking a shorter pass around it and Lynde surrendered his forces without a fight.
That's my point. Initially, the Five Civilized Tribes were nervous about situation and expressed a desire for strict neutrality. Other tribal documents also express this desire (and no I don't have the links to them).
Nor do I dispute that. On a similar note, some of the more moderate CSA states did not secede until Lincoln started to invade, arrest legislatures, shut down opposition and the sort. And while you are correct to note that both unionist and secessionist efforts were made in the Indian territories as was the case in most confederate states as well, in the end they fell on the side of the confederates. You may not like that it happened that way, but nevertheless it did.
He was still a southerner.
Yep, and those great "allies" of the Indians, W.T. Sherman and Abe Lincoln were both northerners.
Lincoln was born in Kentucky. So was Jefferson Davis.
Walt
Neither does it establish what it as the biggest "sticking point," as you call it. If I recall correctly, your "proof" that the slavery extension issue was the main conflict was that many compromise proposals dealt heavily with this issue. I responded by noting that the North worked hard to make sure the debate was framed on this issue and openly admitted doing so. You respond that they worked hard to frame the debate around this issue because it was the main issue, your supposed proof of which being that the debate was framed around it. You are using a circular argument.
Lincoln framed the entire Lincoln-Douglas series of debates around slavery. Certainly it was to his advantage.
Then why did he lose the debates?
If you are talking of his "Cotton is King" speech, that has got to be one of the more delusional and arrogant pieces of work of the period.
Call it all the names that you like, it still doesn't change the fact that one of the most powerful secessionists rallied southerners to the secession call by citing economic grounds rather than slavery as the reason for leaving the union.
Basically, he is saying that cotton is far more important than food.
No. He's saying that in economic agricultural terms, the cotton market is king. Other commodoties are smaller in market sizes and more easily substituted by other agricultural markets than cotton is.
In fact, he goes so far as to say that if England has a famine in corn but plenty of cotton, there are few problems.
Considering that England could substitute away for its corn shortage with any one of the dozens of other agricultural food products whereas cotton was not near as easily substituted, the argument is reasonable.
However, if the situation is reversed, there are riots. Apparently, this guy never heard of the corn riots in England.
The corn riots were class-based "fair cost" uprisings caused in the fallout of the last remnants of a pre-industrial earlier feudal society. They happened long before cotton's 19th century emergence as what it was in 1860 and are economically incomparable to the situation at the time the speech was given. Try again.
But to get to the text of the speech: He mentions that the strength of the government is the military chest and the almighty dollar. He even talks a bit about one specific tariff (totally ignoring any others).
The obvious grievance is protectionism. His point is that money is driving the northern side of things, and argues that northerners need for the southern market might even prompt them to take up the then-extreme and unthinkable measure of direct taxation to pay for their government.
He also talks a bit about slavery and shows (indirectly) southern economics is based on it.
Barely if at all, and it's definately not the central argument of his speech. Economics and taxation are. He never talks about yankees at all (although I grant you that it could be reasonably inferred that he was talking of northern interests in his speech).
Really? Cause much of the speech itself is directed as a message toward the northerners - "When you have lost your market; when your operatives are turned out; when your capitalists are broken, will you go to direct taxation?"
He also lodges repeated grievances with yankeeland by referring to it by name repeatedly:
"Your irrepressible conflict is predicated upon the supposition that this is a consolidated Government; that there are no States; that there is a national Government, as they call it; that the people who live between the two oceans and between the Gulf and the lakes are one people; that the boundaries of Massachusetts have, by some hocus pocus, been extending themselves until they embrace all the remainder of the Union"
His remarks are directed at the government - of which he is a member.
Actually, they are directed at a government which he argues to have become dominated by a specifically yankee brand of doing things. See above for his description of that government - its as if Massachusetts has extended itself around the remainder of the union and demanded everything be done by the massachusetts way, or yankee way.
If economics were the overriding reason, the south would have split in the 1830s when taxes and tariffs were more onerous.
Do you not recall your history? South Carolina almost did. As for taxes, they were about to become their highest level in over a decade and a half. When Wigfall spoke, the protectionist Morrill tariff bill had already passed the house several months earlier. It was up for debate in the senate, the last place it had any opposition, and would pass out of that chamber by the end of the session. Further, the incoming president, Lincoln, was an open protectionist who advocated the reinstatement of the tariff and would later assert that if it did not pass before he took office, it should be a legislative priority of the following session. The tariff threat was very real in 1861 and southerners openly noted it to be so.
He also ignores the tariffs which were designed to help the south (such as the tariff on imported sugar - which was a boon to Louisiana).
Irrelevent to the matter at hand. One pro-southern tariff does not change the pro-northern nature of protectionism and the favor given to it by that same region.
Now contrast that with the comments of Lincoln and Alexander Stephens (vice-president of the Confederacy).
I suppose you are referring to the supposed "cornerstone" speech. Fair enough. I need only note that Stephens was a unionist until the very last moment whereas Wigfall was one of the first secessionists. Wigfall spoke on behalf of the movement as a leader of the secessionist cause. No speech of Stephens can be said to contain the same. As for his "cornerstone" speech, make of it what you may as it does represent _a_ position taken by a prominent southerner. Just be careful while reading Stephens that you don't mistake him for a secessionist and that you always remain mindful of his own eccentricity as a person.
They both felt strongly that the entire issue hung on expansion of slavery to the territories
Wigfall doesn't in that speech. It's almost entirely economics.
Actually, the Confederate Congress declared war on the United States on May 6, 1861. Lincoln declared it de facto with his blockade proclamation two weeks earlier on April 19, 1861. And for the record, Virginia (may 6), Arkansas (may 6), North Carolina (may 20), and Tennessee (june 8) did not become members of the confederacy until after Lincoln's blockade.
The full-scale invasion was in response to that situation.
Not so. Lincoln's decisions were the first full scale acts of war in the conflict.
No, S.C. refused to give up federal property - as did the other southern states.
Then 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 couple of forts being taken without casualties.
A war was declared - in which the south thought that they would win.
The confederacy declared war on May 6th. Lincoln had already initiated it with his blockade order back in April - a full scale act of war which he "justified" on a single skirmish over a fort in south carolina without casualties and under circumstances that he himself provoked.
Cause of a little document signed in 1776. But then again, I guess things like that don't matter to persons such as yourself who take a "might makes right" view of the world in all cases except when might is exercised to expunge a hostile army from a strategic position inside the borders of the rebelling country.
Sure he did. Why else would he leave out a key part of his intentions in the message to Pickens?
and he didn't deceive anyone.
You are correct there. The confederates saw right through it all.
Also, President Lincoln made it clear that Major Anderson was not to offer resistance beyond what was reasonable.
Yeah, so what's your point?
...and lived his life as an Illinois citizen. Therefore he was a northerner.
BTW, any chance you're ever gonna get around to addressing the documentation I provided of the civilian murders by Sherman's armies?
I always found Marines to be slow with the snappy come-back. Probably a genetic failure somewhere, like whatever one makes someone want to be a Marine in the first place.
As far as I am concerned, you are totally discredited. Any chance you'll retract the statement you made but couldn't support -- that Sherman ordered the random murder of civilians?
Walt
You're dith-spicable.
free dixie cups now
Walt
Lincoln received more votes than Douglas did. He didn't lose the debates.
Walt
...and lived his life as an Illinois citizen. Therefore he was a northerner.
The fat that Jefferson Davis was born less than 100 miles from Lincoln shows that where you are from means nothing.
Walt
...and lived his life as an Illinois citizen. Therefore he was a northerner.
The fact that Jefferson Davis was born less than 100 miles from Lincoln shows that where you are from means nothing.
Walt
...and lived his life as an Illinois citizen. Therefore he was a northerner.
The fact that Jefferson Davis was born less than 100 miles from Lincoln shows that where you are from means nothing.
Walt
He didn't. See #394 in this thread.
Walt
dixie, $5.99/lb
ns
Cause of a little document signed in 1776.
You should promulgate such a document. Then you wouldn't have to pay any more taxes, right?
Walt
You were wrong then and you're still wrong now. Lincoln specifically told his troops to use force against any resistance. Lincoln left that out in his message to Pickens. Live with it.
In what magical country did that happen, Walt? Senators were not voted on by the public in 1858. The legislatures chose them. When Lincoln ran the people of Illinois chose Douglas-supporting legislators, and the legislature chose Douglas as their senator.
You calling another person "discredited" in a WBTS debate is about like Jesse Jackson giving a sermon on the sin of adultery.
Any chance you'll retract the statement you made but couldn't support -- that Sherman ordered the random murder of civilians?
No, as that statement has been thoroughly supported.
Headquarters, Military Div. of the Miss, Rome Ga. Oct. 29th, 1864
Brigadier General Watkins, Calhoun, Ga.:
Can you not send over to Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known Secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon from Resaca to Kingston.
W. T. Sherman
Major General Commanding
That sure sounds "Sherman ordered the random murder of civilians" to me!
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