Any Civil War buffs want to help a man out?

[Dr Strangelove]

I'd like to point out that no one brought the issue of state's rights up when a few years before the Civil War the Mormons attempted to establish a seperate nation in the hopes of preserving their custom of polygamy. It was the general consensus, even in the South, that the immorality of the practice of polygamy outweighed any sovreign rights the Mormon government might have had. That the southerners seceeded because of anxiety over the potential loss of their "property" is incontrovertable. I can provide y'all with links to a website that has transcripts of the speeches made by secessionists in their own state houses.

[Mr. Harley]

Reference the resupply of Forts Sumter, MtG, I actually made a passing reference to it in my second post:

The fort could be cut off any time the South wanted to, and even if it was supplied, Lincoln would lose the border South if the Union opened fire.

That is why Lincoln was brilliant. He put the Firebrands in a classic lose/lose situation, and even better, they didn't know it! They could attack Fort Sumter, which was essentially impossible to hold, even if fully supplied. There was too much firepower on the shoreline, and they discovered bricks are not the right thing to build a modern fort with. Lincoln could now claim the South were the agressors.

Or they could have left it alone. But they couldn't, they had their HONOR. Some people claim we don't understand the context of the time nor the culture. Hornswaggle. There were Southern leaders who did not want the shooting war to start, some hoping for eventual reunification, some realizing that a shooting war was a big gample, with poor odds. But in South Carolina, the Firebrands pretty much had control of the political apparatus, and took pretty much the attitude that Dom Pedro II states:

Sit and ignore the forts still in their territory? Allow one of their main ports to have an enemy base right smack dab in the middle of it? They HAD to act... both did.

That attitude played right into Lincoln's hands, and was the start of a series of stupid initial political moves by the Confederate governement that gave Lincoln most of the Border States. And of course Lincoln was manipulating the Confederates, and leading them on. He put them in a lose/lose situation, and they played right into it. I have said before, and I will say again, in Lincoln's own words, his focus was to preserve the union. He would abondon his principles, such as they were, he would risk the constitution, he would risk military dictatorship, to preserve the Union. He was a very dangerous man.

So were the Firebrands. They often get overlooked by many "States Rights" apologists. Dom Pedro II, they did intend to reinstate the slave trade. Period. Again, that is in both their letters and their actions. While many, if not most, Southernors took up the war for their rights against the tyrannical Federal governement (as they saw it), and to support their home state when the war finally flared up, when you look carefully at the Successionists who forced the issue, most were slave holders and most thought the Federal Government a threat to their slaves. What's silly? The Abolitionists felt the Federal Government was threatening their rights!

The Supreme Court had always had a majority of Southerners, most Presidents since the Washington had come from or lived in the South, and the South usually had control of at least one, if not both, of the houses of the legislature. "Dread Scott", the fugitive slave act, etc. were being shoved down New England's throat, and if you read the literature of the time (letters and newspapers) they were extremely upset about it. The fugitive slave act put federal marshalls into enforcing slave retrievals without due process, except that some of the retrievals were free blacks who had never been slaves, and were kidnapped into bondage. These were the results of action taking in a seperate state, and were enforced by the appartus of the Federal Government. It caused riots and several state/Federal confrontations in New England.

The point. The "States Rights" argument was a sham. It was southern states rights, and the right to force their peculiar institution (their own term, by the way) down the rest of the country. Look at the war in Kansas, and again what was written about it in the south. An excellent book on it is "War to the Knife." Many southern newspaper and politicians exhorted their men to go to Kansas to defeat the dirty abolitionists there (again, ironically most of the people in Kansas, at least initially, were Free Soil types who hated blacks, and wanted them excluded from the territory, slave or free). They sent what today would be called death squads, murdered the opposition, stuffed the ballot boxes, and totally perverted the democratic process, just to make certain Kansas became a slave state. Please note the opposition eventually retaliated in kind, but the Southerners, largely from Missouri, were the ones starting it.

As I have maintained all along, it was about power. The Southern states due to immigration and demographic changes, were losing control of the federal government. Instead of forging a coalition with the Northwest as it was called then (Great Lakes and most midwestern states), they essentially got pissed, picked up their marbles and didn't want to play any more. What is a shame is that they could have easily forged a coalition with the Northwest, to the South's advantage! If they had voted the money for interior improvements, to make the Missisisippi reliably navigable above St. Louis, think about what would have happened.

First, as had already been shown, Indiana (later a stronghold of the KKK), Illinois, Iowa, and Kansas wanted nothing to do with blacks, free or slave. They were places where slaves were routinely returned to the neighboring border states, becasue they didn't want no blacks (they used slightly different language) in their states. They would have happily supported the fugitive slave act, etc. as long as southerners didn't bring their property into these states.

Better yet, instead of railroads increasing the Northern domination of shipping and finance, barge traffic of Northwestern agricultural goods bound for Europe, which was a growing market right behind cotton, would have gone through New Orleans, turning it into a financial as well as shipping powerhouse. It would have probably ended up becoming a major shipbuilding center, and given the South a sound, independent of the North, financial structure.

You could see New Englanders claiming the right to leave the Union sometime by the 1870's! Think about it. New York beggared (barges are much cheaper than railroads, especially railroads through the mountains). New Orleans the major US port, and immigrants coming in through there to continue spreading west. Why didn't this happen? Because, just like today's tax cut Republicans, it was a matter of dogma, no matter what, that internal improvements, payed for by the South because the duties paid were all on the South's back (political dogma in the antebellum South) were bad. So the railroads got build, the Northwest forged ties with the Northeast, and the rest is history.

Which brings me to an interesting point, Don Pedro II's historical what-if? The two groups you find most historical what-ifs written about are the Confederacy and the Nazis. Both fall under the same fallacy - they both lost, and for very good reasons. Once you start rewriting history, if you let one side correct all it's mistakes, while the other has to keep making the one's it did, or even more, well, yes, they lose. Duh.

Read "Japanese Destroyer Captain", by Captain Tameichi Hara. I am paraphrasing having read it twenty years ago, but what he essentially says is that the guys who make the least amount of blunders win. His explanation of the early Japanese successes - It's not that we were so good, but that the Allies were so bad. It applies to the Army of the Potomoc, as well. One good example of a historical what-if that is popular is Stonewall Jackson surviving to fight at Gettysburg.

The problem is why Stonewall was such a good general. He was up front in the thick of battle, leading his Corps from the front. He personally reconoitered the front prior to an attack, to make sure he understand the tactical implications of the terrain. Hello, he got killed doing exactly that. If you keep engaging in high risk behavior in a war, you are going to get killed. It's not that Jackson was unlucky at Chancellorsville, it's that he stopped getting lucky.

Reference Dom Pedro II's historical what-if, the first major problem I see is using the Monitor. It was a marginally sea worthy ship, and would not have been the one that started the conflict with England. Instead use MtG's post, and borrow Wilkes. He was a big enough idiot to do it, we know that historically . Hooker will not "support McClellan", Hooker would only support one person - Hooker. The problem is that he is not in the position at the time of your story to become dictator, and McClellan always dithered and talked a good fight. He's not decisive enough to do it, and Hooker isn't in the right position.

If you want a military dictatorship, Hooker is your man. You need to choose sometime between Fredericksburg and Chancellorsville to put him in control. Earlier, and he doesn't have the position to pull it off, and later, he is dicredited. Having Lincoln shot during that time would be a plausible solution. Even better yet, have him shot (or die of pneumonia) just before the Emancipation proclamation. The European powers were convinced the Union could not garrison the South, and without the black troops, they were correct.

Now you can have riots in multiple Union cities, as Hooker enforces the draft on a large scale instead of letting people buy their way out of it. Mini-insurrections occur in places like Southern Ohio (Butternuts), and Hooker is loosing control. The Europeans recognize the South, as Hooker begins to lose control of the North, and if you want have Lee win at Gettysburg when Hooker tries to command the army in the field and loses. Hooker in a fit of pique defies the European powers, and seizes some British ships (i.e. Wilkes). Now it's getting messy, and you may have a revolt of some of the army officers and states in the Northwest, maybe even forming a third government, along the lines of what you are proposing with Grant.

Whether the South had the right to succede will be argued ad infinitum (though Texas maybe the best case for that, so you just have an independent Texas - now that would be an interesting historical what-if). My point was that Andrew Jackson, a southerner, said no. I will have to find that book on the history of the development and background to the constitution, and post the title here. The author does an excellent job of debunking much of the pro-succession rhetoric that gets accepted as dogma today. I believe it dates from the 1980's, if my memory doesn't fail me.

Reference the posts on the status of the rebelling states. Now that's a case where Lincoln played free and easy with international law, and got hoist on his own petard (but haven't I always claimed he would do anything...). The situation with France and Britian and the blockade of the Confederacy, the threat of considering Confederate commerce raiders pirates (and hanging their crews), etc. caused the Union some real problems. The Europeans were extremely aware of the contradictions of blockading a rebellion (some interesting precedents were set that helped lead to the defeat of Germany in WWI - law of unintended consequences). If the South had not insisted on their peculiar institution, they probably could have gotten British recognition, and from that would have come enough other advantages they might have had a genuine chance. Of course, without the tensions slavery brought to the USA prior to the Civil War, the crisis would not have occured anyway .

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
The forts were property of the United States, bought and paid for. Even the Confederacy, or perhaps especially the Confederacy, would have loathed the uncompensated seizure of someone's property. In fact Lincoln did attempt to use the forts as bargaining chits, specifically he made an offering to the governor of Virginia that he would give Fort Sumter to South Carolina if Virginia promised to stay in the union. The governor never answered this offer, even after the Virginia legisalature had repeatedly voted against joining the Confederacy. The governor of Virginia at that time was in favor of secession. One wonders whether he saw in this offer an opportunity to tip the balance in his own state, and might have passed this information on down the lne to militants in South Carolina hoping that they would act on it.

Property of the United States, maybe, however, there were issues of both taxation paid to the Federal government, the ages of the forts and the state of their equipment (decades old for the most part, many undergunned or virtually empty, and all unmanned or grossly undermanned), and more importantly, the sovereignty issue of the underlying land. None of the forts in question at the beginning were Federal reservations built on Federal territory which later became a state - as would be the case with many frontier forts in the west. Particularly as South Carolina's sovereignty predated the existence of the United States, one could argue that the presence of the Federal fort was nothing more than an improvement on a defacto land use license, and that the construction of a fort was a duty the United States owed the sovereign state of South Carolina, funded by various taxes collected on commerce into and out of the state.

When the baltic republics broke away from the USSR, the US government didn't agree that they owed the USSR anything for infrastructure or state owned facilities.

With respect to Lincoln's offer to Governer Letcher, one would wonder, with Lincoln making so many offers of so much to so many (the railroad lobbyist and lawyer), whether one could take them all seriously. The notion that one man could speak absolutely for the Commonwealth of Virginia is a bit odd, and why would Lincoln worry so about Virginia when the legislature was currently disposed toward the union?

[MichaeltheGreat]

shawnmmcc (and Doc) -

I will never argue for the wisdom or visionary qualities of the CSA's political leadership. In fact, you could pretty much take the lot of them, and if all their brains were powder, you couldn't scrape together enough to blow even one of their noses. In that sense, the entire political leadership of the south didn't amount to a pimple on Lincoln's ass.

The hotheads were stupid for firing on Sumter or worrying about the status of Pickens and Barrancas - the smart move, before the blockade was in effect, would have been to ship every bale of cotton possible and buy every weapon possible, particularly rifled artillery for counterbattery fire, and rifled muskets. Arm the south to the teeth without starting a shooting war, and then "negotiate" from a position of strength. Say, at the tip of a bayonet.

The whole "honor" thing was double-edged. It was far more ego and bad blood between the prewar political factions than honor, but "honor" was the spin of the day. After the fireworks, only one man on each side was injured, and it was clearly proven that Sumter was as useless as a turd for harbor protection - but everyone already knew that. Had the north (or the south) really been anxious to avoid war, nobody would have gotten bent out of shape over such an ineffectual display and such a minor result. The US has ignored more significant provocations before and after to avoid war with other nations.

[Mr. Harley]

MtG - exactly! The fact was Lincoln knew he needed the war to preserve the Union, so he got what he want. The Firebrands wanted a war to whup the damn Yankees, independence, and slavery. They couldn't keep seperate which they wanted more, and didn't/wouldn't realize that one could threaten the others. We both especially agree on your first statement .

Now heres a thought. The Confederacy had the best operations general in the war (Lee) while the Union had the best political leadership (Lincoln). What other examples do we have out there, heck, interested in a thread debating the pros-cons of which is more likely to win the war - of course totally ignoring the fact that either one without the other give you a really good chance at losing . One caveat - Nazis are too easy. Great generals, political leadership that made the Davis administration look competent!

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
I'd like to point out that no one brought the issue of state's rights up when a few years before the Civil War the Mormons attempted to establish a seperate nation in the hopes of preserving their custom of polygamy. It was the general consensus, even in the South, that the immorality of the practice of polygamy outweighed any sovreign rights the Mormon government might have had. That the southerners seceeded because of anxiety over the potential loss of their "property" is incontrovertable. I can provide y'all with links to a website that has transcripts of the speeches made by secessionists in their own state houses.

Let's not forget that Southern leaders also clamored for federal government intervention in Northern states before the Civil War, for the return of fugitive slaves.

[SlowwHand]

And let's not forget that there were slaves in the North, that were replaced by indentured servants called Irish; nor let us forget that if Lincoln was such a better man than any in the South, he wouldn't have waited YEARS to issue his meaningless proclamation.

[MrFun]

Yep -- those are good points too, SlowwHand.


Let's also not forget that many white Northerners wanted blacks to STAY in the South after the Civil War, rather than have blacks migrate to the northern states.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Originally posted by MrFun


Let's not forget that Southern leaders also clamored for federal government intervention in Northern states before the Civil War, for the return of fugitive slaves.

Let's read the Constitution, shall we? There was no "federal government intervention in northern states" - by the terms of the Constitution, disputes between states were a Federal law matter, and the Full Faith and Credit clause requires any state to consider valid the legal judgments of another state, and to act accordingly.

There is no abrogation of state's rights in having the Federal government do precisely what it was mandated to do, and to require states to adhere to their compact with other states in creating the United States. Of course, secession solved that problem nicely, but nooooo.... can't please a damn Yankee no matter what you do for him.

[MrFun]

Funny -- I thought the Fugitive Slave Law was of federal legislation.

And even if this policy did not lead to actual enforcement MTG, there were Southern leaders who were advocates for the federal government to intervene and then they did an about-face shouting about states' rights in other instances.

[MichaeltheGreat]

State's rights is an issue when the Federal government intrudes in a matter reserved under the Constitution to the States.

It is not an issue when the Federal government does that which it was assigned and obligated to do under the Constitution.

The Fugitive Slave Act (a) concerned interstate commerce, like it or not, that was the legal framework, and (b) implemented the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit clause.

Or do you think that the power of Congress to levy taxes exists whole within Article I, and no implementing legislation is required to actually carry out that process?

Why would the FSA be "intruding in state's rights" when it is no different in function than any other piece of implementing legislation for any other constitutional power or obligation?

[SlowwHand]

Who wanted to set up, was it Liberia?

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat


Let's read the Constitution, shall we? There was no "federal government intervention in northern states" - by the terms of the Constitution, disputes between states were a Federal law matter, and the Full Faith and Credit clause requires any state to consider valid the legal judgments of another state, and to act accordingly.

There is no abrogation of state's rights in having the Federal government do precisely what it was mandated to do, and to require states to adhere to their compact with other states in creating the United States. Of course, secession solved that problem nicely, but nooooo.... can't please a damn Yankee no matter what you do for him.

Are you arguing legalities or real political motivation? Granted the fugitve slave act WAS constitutional - but then all the Republicans proposes in 1860 was banning slavery in the TERRITORIES, which was also quite constitutional.

Apologist for the South have attempted to claim that the South was concerned about states rights as a matter of concern for a freer, more republican form of govt, with respect to local traditions. As enforced, the Fugitive Slave Act, even if formally constitutional, was not at all consistent with traditional forms. It was a massive attempt to enlist federal power for the preservation of slavery. When that power could no longer be so enlisted, the South seceded. The goal was to preserve slavery, not legal niceties.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by SlowwHand
And let's not forget that there were slaves in the North, that were replaced by indentured servants called Irish; nor let us forget that if Lincoln was such a better man than any in the South, he wouldn't have waited YEARS to issue his meaningless proclamation.

Indentured servitude existed in what would become the US since the 17thc century, and involved the VOLUNTARY signing away of freedom for a fixed period of years to pay for ocean passage. It was not a bad deal of impoverished immigrants, and there is much evidence that the cost and benefits were weighed quite carefully by would be indentees (Bailyn, The peopling of the United State)

In any case few if any 19thc Irish immigrants were indentees.

WRT the Emancipation Proclamation, Lincolm was inaugurated in March 1861, and released the proclamation in Sept 1862. Less that a year and a half. He didnt release it earlier for fear of alienating the neutral slave state of Kentucky, at a strategically delicate time. Lincoln was a pragmatist. Doesnt mean he wasnt a great man.

Greater than ANY in the south - hard to say, seeing as there were millions of men in the South, including quite a few (especially in Tennessee and North Carolina) who fought bitterly against the Confederacy.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by MichaeltheGreat
State's rights is an issue when the Federal government intrudes in a matter reserved under the Constitution to the States.

It is not an issue when the Federal government does that which it was assigned and obligated to do under the Constitution.

The Fugitive Slave Act (a) concerned interstate commerce, like it or not, that was the legal framework, and (b) implemented the requirements of the Full Faith and Credit clause.

Or do you think that the power of Congress to levy taxes exists whole within Article I, and no implementing legislation is required to actually carry out that process?

Why would the FSA be "intruding in state's rights" when it is no different in function than any other piece of implementing legislation for any other constitutional power or obligation?

States are supposed to settle with each other according to legal means. IE a southerner claiming a lost slave in Pennsylvania was to supposed to sue for return of his property in Penn courts. Now they might side for him, or they might decide that a black claimed as a fugitive slave was NOT in fact the slave of said master. Southerners became impatient with Northern state processes, and in some cases wanted to take back blacks with little evidence or justification - basically launching slave raiding expeditions on free black communities. The FSA was passed to expedite this.