I feel like what i learned in school about the american civil war wasnt the whole story (military, battle)
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Jefferson Davis could have learned from George Washington.
After the Revolution. Great Britain continued to occupy forts in the United States, notably in New York and the future Michigan.
President Washington could have gone to war to liberate the forts. Instead he waited them out, used diplomacy, sent the former Secretary of State John Jay to negotiate and eventually the Jay treaty was signed. The forts came into American possession peacefully.
Unfortunately for the South, Jefferson Davis was less wise. Davis ordered Beauregard to attack the fort, against the advice of his own Secretary of State Robert Toombs. Toombs warned that attacking Fort Sumter would stir up the North and turn Northern friends of the South into enemies. He was right.
Why did Davis do it? Perhaps it was because there was negotiations in Congress to find ways to bring the seceded states back into the Union (like the Crittenden Compromise). So the South started the War.
LOL!
That Washington behaved differently is completely irrelevant. The fact remains that upon secession, Fort Sumter was no longer Union territory. They had the chance to leave peacefully, but instead, attempted to re-arm and re-supply, an act of war. Doesn't matter how you try to spin it, the war was started by the Union, not the Confederates.
That Washington behaved differently is completely irrelevant. The fact remains that upon secession, Fort Sumter was no longer Union territory. They had the chance to leave peacefully, but instead, attempted to re-arm and re-supply, an act of war. Doesn't matter how you try to spin it, the war was started by the Union, not the Confederates.
The Confederates had no legal right to secession. They decided to revolt, knowingly initiating an armed conflict which they anticipated winning easily. Lincoln abhorred the possibility of armed conflict and was willing to go to extraordinary lengths to avoid it, but was not willing to concede to the dissolution of the United States. The Confederate leaders clearly did not abhor the possibility of violence, but embraced it confident in their superiority, and certainly had no reluctance to destroy the United States.
Read Lincoln's First Inaugural Address. He explained how the right to secession was the equivalent of anarchy, both for the Union and the Confederacy. No government, certainly one valued by its citizens to the degree evidenced by the citizens of the Union states, will willingly commit suicide.
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In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. Where hostility to the United States in any interior locality shall be so great and universal as to prevent competent resident citizens from holding the Federal offices, there will be no attempt to force obnoxious strangers among the people for that object. While the strict legal right may exist in the Government to enforce the exercise of these offices, the attempt to do so would be so irritating and so nearly impracticable withal that I deem it better to forego for the time the uses of such offices.
The mails, unless repelled, will continue to be furnished in all parts of the Union. So far as possible the people everywhere shall have that sense of perfect security which is most favorable to calm thought and reflection.
The course here indicated will be followed unless current events and experience shall show a modification or change to be proper, and in every case and exigency my best discretion will be exercised, according to circumstances actually existing and with a view and a hope of a peaceful solution of the national troubles and the restoration of fraternal sympathies and affections.
That there are persons in one section or another who seek to destroy the Union at all events and are glad of any pretext to do it I will neither affirm nor deny; but if there be such, I need address no word to them. To those, however, who really love the Union may I not speak?
Before entering upon so grave a matter as the destruction of our national fabric, with all its benefits, its memories, and its hopes, would it not be wise to ascertain precisely why we do it? Will you hazard so desperate a step while there is any possibility that any portion of the ills you fly from have no real existence? Will you, while the certain ills you fly to are greater than all the real ones you fly from, will you risk the commission of so fearful a mistake?
All profess to be content in the Union if all constitutional rights can be maintained. Is it true, then, that any right plainly written in the Constitution has been denied? I think not. Happily, the human mind is so constituted that no party can reach to the audacity of doing this. Think, if you can, of a single instance in which a plainly written provision of the Constitution has ever been denied. If by the mere force of numbers a majority should deprive a minority of any clearly written constitutional right, it might in a moral point of view justify revolution; certainly would if such right were a vital one. But such is not our case. All the vital rights of minorities and of individuals are so plainly assured to them by affirmations and negations, guaranties and prohibitions, in the Constitution that controversies never arise concerning them. But no organic law can ever be framed with a provision specifically applicable to every question which may occur in practical administration. No foresight can anticipate nor any document of reasonable length contain express provisions for all possible questions. Shall fugitives from labor be surrendered by national or by State authority? The Constitution does not expressly say. May Congress prohibit slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say. Must Congress protect slavery in the Territories? The Constitution does not expressly say.
From questions of this class spring all our constitutional controversies, and we divide upon them into majorities and minorities. If the minority will not acquiesce, the majority must, or the Government must cease. There is no other alternative, for continuing the Government is acquiescence on one side or the other. If a minority in such case will secede rather than acquiesce, they make a precedent which in turn will divide and ruin them, for a minority of their own will secede from them whenever a majority refuses to be controlled by such minority. For instance, why may not any portion of a new confederacy a year or two hence arbitrarily secede again, precisely as portions of the present Union now claim to secede from it? All who cherish disunion sentiments are now being educated to the exact temper of doing this.
Is there such perfect identity of interests among the States to compose a new union as to produce harmony only and prevent renewed secession?
Plainly the central idea of secession is the essence of anarchy. A majority held in restraint by constitutional checks and limitations, and always changing easily with deliberate changes of popular opinions and sentiments, is the only true sovereign of a free people. Whoever rejects it does of necessity fly to anarchy or to despotism. Unanimity is impossible. The rule of a minority, as a permanent arrangement, is wholly inadmissible; so that, rejecting the majority principle, anarchy or despotism in some form is all that is left.>>
Who can deny the truth of Lincoln's words emphasized above?
The Confederate leaders well knew that firing on Fort Sumter would incite armed conflict. That was their goal.
If a person takes and action that engages in, let alone threatens violence in order to destroy another person, whether or not the victim acquiesces, the aggressor can not blame the victim when force is met with force.
This perpetual truth was beyond the grasp of the Confederate leaders, and apparently remains beyond the grasp of those adhere to the neo-Confederate interpretation of the Civil War -- Confederate leaders merely were good guys just defending their economic interests, even though centered on human enslavement, torture, murder, etc., and had every right to void the Constitution of the Founding Fathers and destroy the United States.
Even slave owners, such as George Washington and Andrew Jackson, knew that secession was vile and were willing to engage in armed conflict to suppress it.
Then I'm sure you will have no problem citing where in the Constitution this prohibition against secession can be found.
Does anyone see the sweet irony in the fact that the Union was willing to go to war, to keep people tied to a union that they no longer wished to be a part of, while so many claim that the war was all about preventing the southern states from trying to keep another people in a situation against their will? Why is that forcing one group of people to bend to your will is abhorrent, while at the same time, forcing another group of people to bend to your will is actually the action of those possessing the moral high ground?
It's a very strange double standard held by the champions of the Union.
I've heard many theories on why the war really started. One is that some wanted slavery to be expanded into the newly discovered western territories of the US. Many were opposed to that. The other is that there were many slave uprisings and people began to fear that if we kept bringing in blacks into the states it would only be a matter of time before uprisings became uncontrollable. So fear was the reason there. Another was that the South felt their states rights were being infringed by the Federal government. And yet another is the one mostly taught in schools and which I happen to think is the catalyst for the war - emancipation. I really believe that something the Quakers started, an evolution of empathy, started spreading amongst the people. Lincoln, Mark Twain, and others told of feeling empathy for slaves. I think this feeling started to spread like fire amongst people and made them realize the unfairness and cruelty of that system that it was only a matter of time before that abomination ended one way or the other.
With the advent of the cotton gin and the ensuing industrial revolution slaves would become obsolete anyway. It would only be a matter of time that the system of slavery would have ended. The Civil War only hastened it's eventual demise.
That Washington behaved differently is completely irrelevant. The fact remains that upon secession, Fort Sumter was no longer Union territory. They had the chance to leave peacefully, but instead, attempted to re-arm and re-supply, an act of war. Doesn't matter how you try to spin it, the war was started by the Union, not the Confederates.
Lol, why? Because you said so? It is inconvenient to your theory? Sorry not good enough.
First, the Confederates repeatedly looked back to the American Revolution. George Washington was even on Confederate money.
Before Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was not recognized by any nation. Before Fort Sumter, even fellow southern states like Virginia, Tennessee and Arkansas were still in the Union. So your "fact" that Fort Sumter was no longer Union territory was an unrecognized one at best.
The situation from the Confederate POV, called for calm, to drag out negotiations and to allow people time to get used to Southern independence. George Washington's example of peacefully resolving alien forts was a perfect example to follow.
Instead by attacking Fort Sumter, Davis gave President Lincoln the excuse to resort to the military.
I've always thought of the American Civil War an excellent example of what happens at the basic level of when unbridled greed uses fear and anger to achieve their means of having unrestricted control.
Even the term "Civil War" is an oxymoron. That may better describe the divorce court.
War is the epitome of hell and when you're in the heat of battle, there's nothing civil about destroying human life through bloodshed and the pillaging and pilfering of property.
War's are a barbaric means to make other succumb to your beliefs by beating you into submission.
Why wasn't the constitution amended to prohibit secession? Because secession was never allowed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_v._White Chase wrote that the original Union of the colonies had been made in reaction to some very real problems faced by the colonists. The first result of these circumstances was the creation of the Articles of Confederation which created a perpetual union between these states.
Then I'm sure you will have no problem citing where in the Constitution this prohibition against secession can be found.
Anybody who asks this question has never studied the Preamble of the U.S. Constitution.
<<We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence,[note 1] promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.>>
The Constitution was drafted to form "a more perfect Union" than that provided by the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union." Indeed the goal to "insure domestic Transquility" depended upon prohibiting armed conflicts between individual states, as the Founding Fathers were appalled by the millennia of vicious inter-state warfare that had characterized the history of Europe.
Where do you find the right of secession in the concept of a "Perpetual Union????"
What was meant by the "more perfect Union?" Most Americans, especially the defenders of a implied right of secession in the Constitution, don't understand that the Constitution was written a successor to the governing document under which the federal Union was explicitly deemed perpetual.
Abraham Lincoln well documented this historical reality in his First Inaugural Address. The U.S. Supreme Court in the 1869 Texas v. White case ruled that the founders through the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union had intended that the Union would endure in perpetuity, largely echoing Lincoln's lawyerly Constitutional argument in his First Inaugural Address:
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By [the Articles of Confederation], the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?>>
Obviously, the leaders of the Confederacy never imagined that they had Constitutional right of secession, or they certainly would have understaken a Constitutional lawsuit to achieve their goal of independence. Why engage in an armed rebellion if such a Constitutional right of secession was available?
Neo-Confederates, ignorant that the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" were the foundation of the Constitution, in denial of the existence of Texas v. White, continue to argue that a right of secession is implied in the Constitution as it is not expressly denied.
Of course, the right to murder all political opponents also is not expressly denied in the Constitution but no one, yet, argues therefore it is an implied right.
Most importantly, those arguing for a right of secession ignore a key argument made by Lincoln -- if secession was a right meant by the drafters of the Constitution to be bestowed on individual states, it surely would have been an express right stated in the Constitution, as such a right was tantamount to the destruction of the perpetual "Union." There was, and is, no such EXPRESS right of secession in the Constitution because it was well understood that the Union was indeed perpetual.
See posts 97, 105, and especially post 106, which analyzes Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, in the following thread for a further discussion of why secession is NOT an implied right in the U.S. Constitution.
Does anyone see the sweet irony in the fact that the Union was willing to go to war, to keep people tied to a union that they no longer wished to be a part of, while so many claim that the war was all about preventing the southern states from trying to keep another people in a situation against their will? Why is that forcing one group of people to bend to your will is abhorrent, while at the same time, forcing another group of people to bend to your will is actually the action of those possessing the moral high ground?
It's a very strange double standard held by the champions of the Union.
The Republicans were champions of "free labor," "free soil [no slavery in American territories]," and appalled by the "Slave Power."
The Republicans firmly were willing to advance their philosophies through Constitutional means, but the Republican victory in the 1860 Presidential election was the writing on the wall for Confederate leaders. The Confederate leaders were not willing to leave the institution of slavery vulnerable to Constitutional restrictions, let alone eventual abolishment, and they repeatedly said so in their articles of secession. So the Confederate leaders resorted to an armed rebellion to subvert the will of the emerging American majority that intended to restrict and eventually abolish American slavery.
For a generation that had lived through "Bloody Kansas," there was a thorough understanding in the North that the Southern slave owners had every wish to advance slavery into new territories, and surely this would lead to armed conflict. This generation also had witnessed the Napoleonic Wars, and had no desire to permit the militarization of their continent. For all of this, they were willing to engage in armed conflict to destroy the rebellion whose goal was to destroy the democratic "perpetual Union," the greatest gift in human history bestowed on future generations by the Founding Fathers, and to restore "domestic tranquility" and the rule of the majority on behalf of future generations.
Were there many abolitionists in the North who found the institution of slavery abhorrent and were willing to die to eradicate it? Yes, as is evident in the famed "freedom" stanza of the "Battle Hymn of the Republic:"
<<In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me;
As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free!
While God is marching on.>>
Yet most in the Union, from Lincoln down to the average soldier, fought the Civil War to preserve the Union and avoid anarchy and the transformation of the North American continent into a new Europe in which "domestic tranquility" would constantly be challenged by the enhanced likelihood of military as opposed to political conflicts.
Last edited by WRnative; 09-30-2017 at 12:11 PM..
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