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Dom Pedro II
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The College of New Jersey
Nov 1999
time: 05:32
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I've been doing a lot of research for the past few years on the period between June 1862 and December 1862 for a story I've been working on, and I was wondering if anybody had some info that might be useful.
Firstly, I have read that General Joseph Hooker talked loosely of setting up a dictatorship in the USA to get the war won. To the point that Lincoln actually sent him a letter regarding it in which he said basically that a general needs victory to become a dictator, and that if Hooker brought him victory, he'd risk the dictatorship.
I also know that General McClellan mused privately over the idea of making himself dictator. Of course, Little Mac would never have had the stones to try, but he was arrogant enough to wish it... and he did try to get into power through legitimate means by running for President on the Democratic ticket in '64.
I was wondering if anybody knew of any other generals or military men in the army or navy who... let's say might not have been opposed to the idea of a military dictatorship... or that probably had such a coup taken place, would probably have backed it. Or for that matter, any Northern politicians who might have supported such a move.
Also, does anybody have any general information on Rear Admiral Charles Wilkes, Captain Thomas Holdup Stevens, or Captain John Rodgers other than the paragraph or so that can be pulled up on the internet on any of them? Or more broadly, what the purpose of Wilkes's squadron in the West Indies was and what activities they carried out?
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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As far as generals or admirals who would have supported such a dictatorship, only a loudmouthed and smallbrained few would voice it openly (ol' F. J. Hooker fit the bill) as it would be both treason and a violation of the officer's oath. IIRC, Hooker didn't start running his mouth on the subject until he had command, which would be after your time frame.
Stanton and a number of government officials and officers favored some form of martial law under the current administration, in at least some areas, but their are so many of them, and so many scopes (hardcore sympathizer areas, any sort of sympathy areas, the entire country) that it's hard to single any out, and all came a bit short of actual dictatorship.
Wilkes' squadron was sent out to the West Indies to do forward interdiction of blockade runners, but that was a fairly quiet area where he couldn't do much harm.  Wilkes had a lot of seniority and capability, but after the Trent incident (in which Wilkes ordered the boarding of a neutral vessel and took prisoner two civilian commisioners of the CSA government), and his two court-martials, plus his reputation for overharsh treatment of his crews, the Navy wanted someplace where Wilkes could do useful work, but not create more trouble than he was worth. The West Indies was it.
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shawnmmcc
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Actually, I believe Secretary Seward attempted to organize a coup and depose Lincoln, but Lincoln very cleverly defused the attempt. I'd have to be at home and check my books, sometimes I transpose names.
quote:
Major General Hooker:
General: I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac. Of course I have done this upon what appears to me to be sufficient reasons, and yet I think it best for you to know that there are some things in regard to which I am not quite satisfied with you. I believe you to be a brave and skillful soldier, which, of course, I like. I also believe you do not mix politics with your profession, in which you are right. You have confidence in yourself, which is a valuable, if not an indispensable, quality. You are ambitious, which, within reasonable bounds, does good rather than harm; but I think that during General Burnside's command of the army you have taken counsel of your ambition, and thwarted him as much as you could, in which you did a great wrong to the country and to a most meritorious and honorable brother officer. I have heard, in such a way as to believe it, of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of it, that I have given you the command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship. The Government will support you to the utmost of its ability, which is neither more nor less than it has done and will do for all commanders. I much fear that the spirit which you have aided to infuse into the army, of criticizing their commander and withholding confidence from him, will now turn upon you. I shall assist you as far as I can to put it down. Neither you nor Napoleon, if he were alive again, could get any good out of an army while such a spirit prevails in it.
And now beware of rashness. Beware of rashness, but with energy and sleepless vigilance go forward and give us victories.
Yours, very truly,
A. Lincoln |
War of Northern Agression? Our founding fathers specifically authorized the federal government to put down reballions in the constitution. Plus, this opinion was not just Lincoln's, a very famous southerner actually was the first one to threaten disunionists, this funny guy named Andrew Jackson. Finally, there are some excellent scholarly treatises looking at the line of authority, and the fact that many of the state governments were more or less created/organized/pushed? by the Continental Congress, creating a line of authority to the federal governent, not the states (I prefer sovereignty of the people, but the founders didn't, which is why the US is a Republic).
http://odur.let.rug.nl/~usa/P/aj7/about/bio/jack19.htm
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On December 11, 1832, Jackson published a proclamation giving strong constitutional arguments, written by the Secretary of State Livingston, "... I consider then, the power to annul a law of the United States, assumed by one State, incompatible with the existence of the Union, contradicted expressly by the letter of the Constitution, unauthorized by its spirit, inconsistent with every principle on which it was founded, and destructive of the great object for which it was formed".
It ended in a strong plea and threat which was mostly pure Jackson: "Those who told you that you might peaceably prevent [the execution of the laws] deceived you; they could not have been deceived themselves... Their object is disunion. But be not deceived by names. Disunion by armed force is treason. Are you really ready to incur its guilt? If you are, on the heads of the instigators of the act be the dreadful consequences; on their heads be the dishonor, but on yours may fall the punishment. On your unhappy State will inevitably fall all the evils of the conflict you force upon the Government of your country... I adjure you ... to retrace your steps." |
Hooker at first treasured the letter, and showed it to multiple individuals, saying it was written like a father to a son. As many historians have observed, he obviously "didn't get it"  .
As I've noted before in other posts, the Civil War was a war about power (like most wars, funny thing that). Most of the planters in the South had a wealthy oligarchy that disenfranchised poor voters. Most of the Southern states did not have a true popular vote to succede, and in fact their legislatures were so organized as to make certain that the majority poor upland voters were underrepresented.
The North also had problems with this, however, they didn't try to succede. Remember, troops for South Carolina fired the first shots of agression. The firebrands in that state, who helped start the crisis under Jackson, and then pushed it to rebellion in 1860, could have chosen the peaceful route, and they probably would have won!
Before any revisionist historians try to paint the South Carolina firebrands as the noble "states rights" types, remember that these same firebrands were planning to re-establish the slave trade. They had already run slave ships to Africa, and had run mulitiple trips. The Civil War had nothing, and everything, to do with slavery. These individuals had every intention of restarting the brutal slave trade where free people were forced into bondage with hideous deaths in cramped, fetid ships. It was only the need for British and French recognition that caused the Confederacy to take the "enlightened" view against slavery that they did (multiple scholerly workups on that, too).
Lincoln was going to try to collect duties on the South from ships at sea, if a shooting war did not start. It was an attempt doomed to failure. It would have taken several years, but with Kentucky refusing US troops passage, Maryland unpacified (no war, no martial law) and Missouri as well as Kansas vicous chaotic "War to the Knife" I can see the Confederacy gaining it's independence. I think I agree with the poster "the war of southern stupidity".
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Dom Pedro II
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The College of New Jersey
Nov 1999
time: 05:32
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The South Carolinians fired on Fort Sumter because they were left with little alternative. The Confederates knew damn well it'd be better to avoid a war, but how is one supposed to be recognized as an independent country, if another nation still has forts in your borders?
Fort Sumter was one of several games of chicken the North and South were playing. Lincoln wanted a war because the Southerners had already made it clear that they were not going to come to the negotiating table. War was going to be the only way to solve the problem. Of course, if he had started it, he might not have only lost the states he did, he might have lost Kentucky, Missouri, and Maryland along with them... so the solution was to keep reinforcing the bases the North still currently possessed.
What could the Southerners do? 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.
And one could make the same argument in the North as in the South with regards to democracy. During the war, strong-arm Republican tactics were used in many areas including vicious reprisals to anyone who voted Democrat thereby scaring the Democratic voters away. And in Indiana, when the legislature in 1862 was going to be predominately Democrat, their governor suspended the legislature and ruled by decree till the end of the war...
And while certainly there were those Southerners who were looking to reestablish the slave trade, or more conservatively to perserve the institution of slavery, or out for just their own personal ambition, that was not the case for many of them... Many of the men who fought for the South had no such intentions. Of course, many of these same people would rather have avoided secession altogether.
Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't go so far as to call it the War of Northern Aggression... but there was dirt on both sides, blood on both hands.
EDIT:
Thanks for the info, MtG
Anyway, perhaps I can squeeze a bit more info out if I explain what the story's about...
The story is basically a "What If?" story in which we suppose that Jackson had been fully alert on June 30th at the Battle of Glendale and had crossed the White Oak Swamp against Franklin's Corps. Without anyone in command, in the middle of the Virginia swamps, with only one choked road full of wagons as a means of escape, 40,000 men of the Union Army would easily have collapsed in the face of one of the Confederate's rarest of all advantage: superior numbers.
The loss of 40,000 would have halved the Army of the Potomac. It also would have been the worst Union defeat yet seen. There is no way McClellan's army would have risked staying where they were now, and they would have been moved out. McClellan meanwhile would surely have been fired if not put in jail for dereliction of duty.
With Richmond secure, Jackson would be sent out to stop Pope moving in against Gordonsville, a critical rail junction (which he was) in mid-July. What has also changed is that with Richmond safe, the rest of the Army of Northern Virginia would have been right behind him. In that case, they would have been able to carry out the assault planned on Pope's army for August 17th. The battle would have been an absolute disaster. Lee's forces would have splashed across the river 50,000 strong moving against Pope's 45,000 while Stuart's cavalry would have moved north and destroyed the bridge over the Rappahannock cutting off the only retreat for the Union troops. Nevermind the disastrous defeat of Second Manassas in the real timeline... this would've been effectively another Glendale. Imagine it! The Union having lost nearly eighty thousand men in two months?!
The way to the North would have been paved. There would be no Antietam. No disastrous retreat for Lee. They could march straight through Maryland and into Pennsylvania. Once there, Jed Hotchkiss, who had traveled extensively through the Pennsylvania countryside, comes up with a plan to force the North to its knees: the coal mines. 3/4 of all the anthracite coal produced in America came from those few counties in Pennsylvania. If the supply of coal was interrupted, it would force the North to rely on the other places that produced the coal they needed. The Union war machine would have come streeching to a halt. And much of this information was acquired from a book on the subject of Lee's plans for invasion of the North. This was a real possibility. The disasters in Virginia compel the War Department to call for reinforcements from the West, and the severing of the B&O disrupts the supply lines in the West, and as a result, Bragg actually manages to beat Buell to Louisville, Kentucky.
The Northern newspapers are screaming for peace, the elections are going to be soon, and France and Britain have effectively decided that the Confederacy has more than proved itself. Lincoln calls his Cabinet, and as there are no solutions offered, he decides that there is no choice but to call a truce.
As he does so, there are rumblings among the 40-50,000 troops still in Washington holding back a Confederate invasion of the city. The message is clear: If Lincoln sues for peace, there will be a revolution. He really has no choice though, and so he does, but only once he knows that he and his people and family can be safely gotten out of the city. He issues the order for a truce and promptly resigns as a means to stop the coup. It doesn't. Bloodlessly, McClellan is sprung from jail, and backed by Hooker he takes the White House.
Lincoln and his people flee and get to safety. Congress, meanwhile, is not so lucky. The following day, an emergency meeting is called, and the situation is explained. The army gives the Congress two choices, comply or be removed. Many of the Senators and Representatives opt for prison rather than be dictated to by the army including John Sherman (William T. Sherman's brother).
Meanwhile, while returning home from Pennsylvania, Lee gets the message that Lincoln has been overthrown. He orders the army to stop. If this means renewed hostilities, he's not sacrificing his advantage. In the West, the generals there receive the news of the coup. Grant decides that there is no way he can in good conscience support this. It was hard enough for him to decide to take up arms against old friends. This was just too far. Buell, on the other hand, jealous of Lincoln's top general Halleck, who had been given promotions above him in spite of Buell being the more competent man, and also as a friend of McClellan's, Buell agrees to support McClellan.
In the Navy, Charles Wilkes decides to side with McClellan since otherwise he was going to be removed.
If the situation was bad before, it has no gotten substantially worse. A new government is organized under Hamlin in Cleveland, but there's no way to collect taxes without a Congress, and the policy is still that the truce with the CSA stands. Neither government has complete legitimacy on its side. Hamlin is ruling as a governor-by-decree through legitimate channels, and McClellan is ruling as the President through illegitimate channels. Who to follow? For the western states, the choice is pretty clear, and the conventions determine that they will NOT follow McClellan. Calls for troops are ordered, and Grant is placed in command of a large coalition army being assembled in the West, it's mission to liberate Washington. Grant gets a telegram from Lee a few days later saying: Give me 40,000 men, and I will deliver the capital.
As far as Britain and France are concerned, they're still doing business with the old government, and recognition goes through as expected. The McClellan government responds by declaring war on Britain and France in retaliation. It is Thomas H. Stevens and his Monitor that fire the first shots on a British merchant vessel. While the British do not decide to declare war on the USA, an order is issued saying that any ship flying the US flag will be considered an enemy ship until proven otherwise.
And that's about as far as I am because I need more info .
Last edited by Dom Pedro II on 23-11-2003 at 15:08
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shawnmmcc
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Agree completely about strong-arm Republican tactics - during the war. You'll find in my other posts that I use Lincoln as my primary example of an American President who was a threat to liberty, and I call him a bastard. He was a very effective political bastard.
Why did the South Caroline firebrands HAVE to fire on Fort Sumpter? That is a historical load of crud that they had to that it has now become accepted fact. Many South Carolinians and other southerners wanted to play the waiting game with Lincoln, they were pretty sure they could win. They would drag things out and rely on the border states and public opinion. 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. The calmer heads knew it, and were willing to sit on the side of the road while Lincoln made a high speed wreck - they didn't want to play chicken.
But the Firebrands knew those Yankees were cowards, hated the abolitionists, and were certain the righteousness of their cause would assure their victory. Read their corresponcence, it's very illuminating. They did play chicken with Lincoln, doing exactly what he wanted. Because of the positions they occupied in South Carolina, they drug the rest of the south with them. Lincoln wanted the car wreck, Lincoln would do ANYTHING to preserve the union. He stated that in his inaugural address, and his actions thoughout the war were totally focused in that direction. Reread his letter to Hooker. He subverted the constitution, the political process, elections, martial law, and would risk political dictatorship! Jefferson Davis admitted he had prickly pride, and some of his conflicts with generals helped weaken the confederacy. Lincoln said he would hold a general's horse (I cannot remember which one) is he would give him victory. Ego versus a cold, calculating focus. History tells you which one was victorious. Lincoln was a great man, but like most great men, I wouldn't trust him farther than I could throw and M1 Abrams.
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Dr Strangelove
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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.
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Dom Pedro II
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The College of New Jersey
Nov 1999
time: 05:32
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Dr. Strangelove: Interesting. I had never heard about that before.
quote:
Read the language very carefully. There was no rebellion (i.e. an attempt to replace the United States government, or that of any state, by force). Nor did any state governments apply for aid in putting down insurrections against state authority.
Sovereign states left a union of sovereign states, which they voluntarily formed, in some cases, or joined, in others. |
Of course, according to the federal government at the time the Southern states didn't secede because they couldn't secede. There was no Confederate States of America, just an uprising as far as they said.
It is interesting though that Lincoln had to order the blockade of a country that never existed. A number of Congressmen and advisors warned him that he was effectively recognizing by doing this. That if it were just an uprising, that he should close the ports instead.
It is also interesting that states that never left the Union had to be readmitted to it during Reconstruction.
I mean, if we want to argue inconsistencies or hypocritical tactics, we'd be here for a looong time.
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Dr Strangelove
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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.
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shawnmmcc
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Reference the resupply of Forts Sumter, MtG, I actually made a passing reference to it in my second post:
quote:
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:
quote:
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  .
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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quote:
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?
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MichaeltheGreat
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Apolyton Grand Executioner
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mooning the house that Ruth built.
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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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.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:32
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quote:
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.
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lord of the mark
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FUKCOV - Former United Kingdom Colony of Virginia
Dec 2000
time: 00:32
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quote:
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.
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23-11-2003 06:39
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