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And Lincoln wouldn't have sulked. He would have tried another gambit. The man was a master manipulator. It's how a no-name backwoods lawyer from Springfield Illinois got the nomination for President to begin with.
34 HOUR BARRAGE, NOT A SINGLE SOLDIER KILLED. They are on an island in the middle of a harbor. They are surrounded. Not a single soldier killed.
The South fired explosive shells at the fort. The South fired heated shot to burn the buildings, gates and attempt to detonate the magazine. The South shelled the fort continually for 34 hours.
During the barrage Anderson kept his men in the most secure portion of the fort and declined to use his most effective guns as they were located in more exposed positions.
Which can you honestly say had more of an impact on the fact that no one was killed...
The South bombarding the fort or Anderson keeping his men in what basically amounted to a bunker?
And Lincoln wouldn't have sulked. He would have tried another gambit. The man was a master manipulator. It's how a no-name backwoods lawyer from Springfield Illinois got the nomination for President to begin with.
Gambit? So, resupplying a federal garrison in a federal fort is a "gambit"?
Gambit? So, resupplying a federal garrison in a federal fort is a "gambit"?
They tried to re-supply Ft Sumter in January, and failed. Why didn't they resupply it during the intervening 3 months? Why did every military commander tell Lincoln to let it go? Why did every cabinet member tell Lincoln to let it go? Why did every advisor tell Lincoln to let it go? Because it had zero value to the union. So why did Lincoln wait until Congress had recessed to try to resupply a fort that had zero value?
One, why wouldn't the justices from Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia no longer be members of the Court? They aren't legislators, they are appointed until THEY choose to resign. It is their LEGAL opinion, not their LOYALTY that is required.
Here is why:
Let us say that the case arrives at the US Supreme Court and they are asked to rule on the legality of secession or on the legality of the process by which the southern states claimed to have seceded. Let us further say that the three southern justices are joined by the two border state justices and by a 5-4 vote, secession is declared legal.
So....retroactive to the passage of the secession declarations the previous winter and spring, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia were no longer part of the United States, rather they were members of a foreign nation. Thus the three justices from those states ceased being citizens of the United States at the time of their state's secession. As foreign nationals, they had no right to be serving on the US Supreme Court and any cases they heard after the secession of their states, their votes would not count because they are serving illegally.
So...the vote now changes from 5-4 validating secession to 4-2 against its legality. When that happens, it reverses the ineligibility of the three justices from the seceded states and the vote reverts to 5-4 in support of secession, which invalidates the service of the three secession state judges...
Get it? It would be like one of those Star Trek Next Generation time conundrum episodes, an impossible legal situation because whatever is decided invalidates itself instantly and perpetrates an endless cycle of reversals and affirmations. We would have a legal system which appeared to be designed by M. C. Escher.
Further...exactly what process would have been used to get the case to court? What right of lawsuit would foreigners, as the Confederates claimed to be, have to pursue a legal remedy in the US Supreme Court? They would have had to have taken this approach before secession, while they were still American citizens.
Finally, in that the Confederates declared themselves out of the union, by what means could compliance have been compelled had their lawsuit failed? They could simply announce that the CSA wasn't going to be bound by the decisions of a foreign court.
So, the Supreme Court solution is a washout, nothing would have been resolved by going there.
Last edited by Grandstander; 10-15-2013 at 05:35 PM..
Since the South had fired in January when Buchanan was still in office when a ship was sent to reprovision the fort, and it wasn't considered a declaration of war, then, what was appreciably different in April?
That is sort of like arguing that The Great Depression didn't exist until Roosevelt took office
The cause belli existed whether Buchanan acted upon it or not, Buchanan simply chose to pass off the crisis to Lincoln.
It's easy today to say that secession is illegal. .
Actually it is still neither legal nor illegal. The Civil War produced no new law which spelled out the permanent nature of the union.
There is a reason for this. The Federal position all along was that secession was an assumed illegality, that it had obviously been the intention of the Constitution writers that it was a perpetual union because they included no process of any sort for the withdrawal of individual states. If after winning the war they then turned around and passed an amendment specifying a prohibition against secession, they would have been retroactively invalidating their original position that no such law was needed to settle the question.
So, we don't have a law, we just have the result of the war.
The South fired explosive shells at the fort. The South fired heated shot to burn the buildings, gates and attempt to detonate the magazine. The South shelled the fort continually for 34 hours.
During the barrage Anderson kept his men in the most secure portion of the fort and declined to use his most effective guns as they were located in more exposed positions.
Which can you honestly say had more of an impact on the fact that no one was killed...
The South bombarding the fort or Anderson keeping his men in what basically amounted to a bunker?
Given the accuracy of weapons at the time, it is difficult to imagine how southern forces could shell the fort for 34 hours in a manner to carefully avoid casualties.
Even if that was possible, how would that change the fact they attacked a U.S. military installation?
As to sending in a war ship to resupply the fort, given that the previous supply ship was fired upon it would make sense that the next supply ship be prepared to defend itself.
The South could have voted to establish their own nation, set up their own government, gone through the legal challenges in federal courts, Congress, and the Supreme Court to secede. Once they had met the legal challenges, CSA residents would withdraw from these deliberative bodies, but not before.
Instead, they rounded up a militia and launched a war.
I've often wondered how they thought this could possibly end in their favor. My understanding was that the North had the advantage in the industrial infrastructure needed to wage war.
I've read that the South did not think the North would actually go to war to prevent them from seceding.
So why fire on Ft. Sumter? Surely, they knew that an attack would elicit a response.
Let us say that the case arrives at the US Supreme Court and they are asked to rule on the legality of secession or on the legality of the process by which the southern states claimed to have seceded. Let us further say that the three southern justices are joined by the two border state justices and by a 5-4 vote, secession is declared legal.
So....retroactive to the passage of the secession declarations the previous winter and spring, Alabama, Tennessee and Georgia were no longer part of the United States, rather they were members of a foreign nation. Thus the three justices from those states ceased being citizens of the United States at the time of their state's secession. As foreign nationals, they had no right to be serving on the US Supreme Court and any cases they heard after the secession of their states, their votes would not count because they are serving illegally.
So...the vote now changes from 5-4 validating secession to 4-2 against its legality. When that happens, it reverses the ineligibility of the three justices from the seceded states and the vote reverts to 5-4 in support of secession, which invalidates the service of the three secession state judges...
Get it? It would be like one of those Star Trek Next Generation time conundrum episodes, an impossible legal situation because whatever is decided invalidates itself instantly and perpetrates an endless cycle of reversals and affirmations. We would have a legal system which appeared to be designed by M. C. Escher.
Further...exactly what process would have been used to get the case to court? What right of lawsuit would foreigners, as the Confederates claimed to be, have to pursue a legal remedy in the US Supreme Court? They would have had to have taken this approach before secession, while they were still American citizens.
Finally, in that the Confederates declared themselves out of the union, by what means could compliance have been compelled had their lawsuit failed? They could simply announce that the CSA wasn't going to be bound by the decisions of a foreign court.
So, the Supreme Court solution is a washout, nothing would have been resolved by going there.
Here is why....what?
Cite me the qualifications that says the Southern justices would no longer be able to serve. Constitutional references would be appreciated. They are appointed for LIFE, or until they choose to resign. There is NO provision that says if their nationality changes they must resign. There is no process which negates their ruling.
And again, the legality of secession was not a Southern/Northern issue. As I stated earlier, which you evidently didn't read, NEW ENGLAND was the first area that brought up the possibility of secession, decades earlier. The legality of secession depended on whether one thought the union was a voluntary association, or if it was involuntary. And there were many people, Northerners and Southerners, who believed that the union was a VOLUNTARY association.
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