Who is this "Martin Luther King" and why does he have his day off today?

[MrFun]

How can they be trespassing on Federally owned land?

exactly

[MrFun]

It's a good reference to parts of our history that shouldn't be whitewashed or forgotten, although they do lump in extrajudicial lynchings of murder suspects, etc., with plain ol' domestic terrorism racially motivated lynchings. They're really two separate things, and I think it dilutes the effect.

I don't think including instances of both types of lynchings necessarily dilutes the effect. The pictures and descriptions are graphic, regardless of what type of lynching they were.

[Lancer]

How can they be trespassing on Federally owned land?

They can't, but the island was definitely part of the South. If one looks at it even today from the North its still South.

[Hauldren Collider]

That doesn't change the ownership...

[Lancer]

I guess that's why the South declared war. Can't have a foreign owned and operated fort within a bay of an important port can one? Bit much to expect... However come to think of it, and as MtG has been saying as I understand it, that port was part of a state, South Carolina to be exact, and they should have been returned the land when South Carolina succeeded from the Union. Hey, they did ask nicely... A refusal could be considered an act of war!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fort_Sumter

Over the next few months repeated calls for evacuation of Fort Sumter[12] from the government of South Carolina and then from Confederate Brigadier General P. G. T. Beauregard were ignored.

[Hauldren Collider]

Lancer, war was inevitable and the legality of it is purely academic.

[Alexander's Horse]

I blame the British, cos I can't blame the French

[MichaeltheGreat]

How can they be trespassing on Federally owned land?

It was federally occupied land since South Carolina's possession predated federal possession, and the US government never directly purchased the land. Given that it was a glorified sandbar held together with bird****, nobody cared at the time. It was under federal use by permission, which permission was revoked. Even if you take the position that federal ownership was absolute, South Carolina seceded, and common law rights of ingress and egress do not apply across international borders except by treaty. The yankees had no legal right to put ships of war within the boundaries of Charleston harbor without permission of South Carolina.

President Grant effectively endorsed this point after his presidency, while touring Japan. He was asked his view about an incident when a foreign (IIRC German) ship entered without permission and put a cholera infected sailor ashore triggering a major cholera epidemic in the Kansai region. Grant replied something to the effect of "[you] ought to have fired on them."

[MichaeltheGreat]

I guess we'll never know which way the world is better off. For now we have our assumptions based on misinformation to teach the kids. Just glad the slaves were freed, though that certainly must have occurred somewhere in history had the Confederacy outlasted the North's will to fight. I wonder if Lee had not invaded Maryland (and met up with Gettysburg) but instead had gone west to stop the invasion developing there, might that have been the solution? em in majority. So in WW1 the North allies with Germany while the South goes with UK and France...

We're definitely better off the way it worked out. Not only (legality of the whole War of Yankee Aggression aside) in the accelerated end of slavery, but in terms of geopolicital effects. The Euros would have been much more apt to **** around in this hemisphere, California, Oregon and Nevada may well have seceded (who'd stop 'em, and they certainly had the wealth), and the lack of a consolidated US would have enabled more Euro intervention in Asia. Then you get the commies coming along, because regardless of the Russo-Japanese war, the Tsarist system in Russia was not going to survive.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Most people still stop short of that position, at least nominally. The Republican Party has seen a resurgence of the view that states are fully sovereign, particularly the new crop of governors that were elected between 2009 and 2011.

Even the most ardent states-rightist nowadays would be a Federalist back in the 1790s.

[regexcellent]

Yes, when the Constitution was ratified. The Anti-Federalists opposed the current constitution.

[MichaeltheGreat]

Well, yeah. It was practically communist.

[Lancer]

We're definitely better off the way it worked out. Not only (legality of the whole War of Yankee Aggression aside) in the accelerated end of slavery, but in terms of geopolicital effects. The Euros would have been much more apt to **** around in this hemisphere, California, Oregon and Nevada may well have seceded (who'd stop 'em, and they certainly had the wealth), and the lack of a consolidated US would have enabled more Euro intervention in Asia. Then you get the commies coming along, because regardless of the Russo-Japanese war, the Tsarist system in Russia was not going to survive.

California, Oregon and Nevada? Doubt they could split from the North if 11 Confederate States came up empty. Been thinking about it since reading these pages. In order to win the war the Confederacy would have had to abolish slavery before Antietam and have the Brits and or French come in. Politically very difficult move, but might it have been doable in order to win the war? The South couldn't sell their cotton anyway with the blockage, they would have been better off paying their workers and having the Euros keep the sea routes open. Even a heartless slave owner can do math. So lets say the Brits come in, keep South's trade open and blockade the North. War comes to a negociated end with the North saying they won freedom for the slaves, and rightly so. Personally I think its a much better world for historical gaming.

[Hauldren Collider]

Even the most ardent states-rightist nowadays would be a Federalist back in the 1790s.

I don't disagree.

[Hauldren Collider]

Lancer, just read Harry Turtledove or something