Posted on 11/23/2002 7:30:17 AM PST by stainlessbanner
No x, not under reasonable circumstances. I'm sorry, but the firing on a single fort in Charleston harbor simply does not give legitimacy to the military invasion and occupation of 11 states. Lincoln used it to do so, but not in any reasonable or legitimate manner.
There is a right of rebellion and a right to self-defense, but neither justified the assault on Sumter.
Sure they did. Charleston's right of self defense was being violated and threatened by the presence of a foreign military in its harbor. That military had no other business being there than to obstruct free entrance to that harbor and had already shown that was exactly what it was there to do a day earlier by firing on a confederate ship.
imagine if county or city police had fired on the state militia
Your analogy is false. The applicable description is of a foreign nation attempting to maintain a hostile army within the borders of its neighbor, as that is precisely what happened. Lincoln could not have expected to hold his forces there and exert them against entrants to the harbor without prompting action to remove them sooner or later.
What's striking is how some people who rightly object to excessive federal power and abuses justify the same sort of conduct when states or competing nations engage in it.
It certainly is striking, and stands out in perhaps no better example than those who dismiss Lincoln's conduct on the grounds that it supposedly "saved the union"
Perhaps you are correct, but remember, the established rule: the aggressor in a war is not the first who uses force, but the first who renders force necessary.
A peaceful dissolution of the union might have been possible, but a major condition of this was that the state governments and their jumped up confederation act in a conciliatory fashion and didn't demand complete sovereignty until separation had been effected. The need to act out one's emotions or to solidify the Confederacy by, as a correspondent of Davis's said, "sprinkling it with blood" proved too strong for the rebels. The secessionist leaders behaved in a manner that would be irresponsible at any time and foolish and criminal in the heated atmosphere of the 19th century.
It's hard to imagine this DiLoenzo bum could make a statement like this with a straight face.
Walt
God vindicated the Union.
Walt
The So-called CSA never had any borders. It never had a lawful existance. You can declare -your- independence and you'll probably be able to maintain your sovereignty longer than the so-called seceded states did.
Walt
When we review the record, we'll say the same thing.
Walt
But he was.
"When you give the Negro these rights," he [Lincoln] said, "when you put a gun in his hands, it prophesies something more: it foretells that he is to have the full enjoyment of his liberty and his manhood
...By the close of the war, Lincoln was reccomending commissioning black officers in the regiments, and one actually rose to become a major before it was over. At the end of 1863, more than a hundred thousand had enlisted in the United States Colored Troops, and in his message to Congress the president reported, "So far as tested, it is difficult to say they are not as good soldiers as any." When some suggested in August 1864 that the Union ought to offer to help return runaway slaves to their masters as a condition for the South's laying down its arms, Lincoln refused even to consider the question.
--"Lincoln's Men" pp 163-64 by William C. Davis
Walt
How so? Sumter was the property of the U.S. Government, built with federal money on an island created from Vermont granite on property deeded to the government by the South Carolina legislature. They had every legitimate right to be there.
The yankees fired on a confederate ship entering Charleston harbor the day before Beauregard ordered the shelling commenced.
Beauregard had been given orders to fire on Sumter if it did not surrender and those orders were issued the day before the Harriet Lane arrived.
And how did the Union render force necessary?
Unless Beauregard had a radio, he knew nothing about it. This incident had nothing to do with the firing on Fort Sumter; that's not even a half truth on your part.
Walt
That's like saying the bombing of a single naval base in Hawaii did not legitimize the atomic destruction of two civilian cities. Accepting for a moment that the confederate claims of independence was valid, then the confederacy initiated hostilities at Sumter and officially declared war a few days later. The Union had war forced on them and carried it out to the end. And that included sending troops into the south.
Charleston's right of self defense was being violated and threatened by the presence of a foreign military in its harbor.
That in and of itself is no more cause for war than is the U.S. Naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Does Cuba have the right to shell it into submission and occupy it? I would say not. Charleston was in no danger. The confederacy itself was in no danger. Had Lincoln landed a few hundred more troops, or a few thousand for that matter, the threat would not have changed. But the south felt the need to begin the war then and there. They sowed the wind and reaped the whirlwind. They have nobody to blame for the suffering that happened afterwards except themselves.
That may speak well of Lincoln (though I don't believe I've ever seen you address his many contradictory statements about race), but your sentence completely proves that the cause of the North was NOT TO FREE THE SLAVES! Can you see that? I bet anyone who read it and thinks about it for 5 seconds can see it.
No kidding. The cause of the North was never to free the slaves. The cause, first, last, and always, was to preserve the Union. The fact that this resulted in the end of slavery was a fortunate outcome of the war but not the purpose of it.
That's because the Emacipation Proclamation had freed them the year before.
Slave ownership devolved on about 1/3 of southerners and on about 50% in SC and MS. But the vast majority of whites supported the war because they were unalterably opposed to negro equality.
The slave --holders-- were able to drive their section into treason and rebellion because of perceived threats to the expansion of slavery -- a direct threat to their financial well-being based on what the federal --government-- MIGHT do in the future. Their real enemy was demographics.
The poor whites -- what Churchill called the "mean whites", were JUST as interesting in opposing what the federal government MIGHT do, because it MIGHT devalue their most important possession -- a white skin.
Walt
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