A Class War

[unionblue]

Thea, Please take care and take your time when getting back on line to me, back surgery is nothing to fool with! I will have a fine time researching and answering your most recent post and I can hardly wait to see how you address mine.

God Bless & Keep You and have a successful procedure.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

Thea, I lied, I just can't wait to come back and answer your newest post! Guess it comes from having so little to do at work tonight but read your comments and research replies to them!

Point #1, Colonel Baldwin's sworn testimony. It reads nice, but it is in dispute. A comment from the book "Lincoln" by David H. Donald, says the following about the meeting between Lincoln and Baldwin on page 290: "Certainly Seward was not at all disheartened by the rejection of his memorandum (where among other things Seward wanted war with Spain, France, Great Britain and Russia and to basically run the government for Lincoln), and he continued to urge the President to explore face-saving solutions to the Sumter crisis. Anxious to avoid war, Lincoln willingly joined in these efforts. One possibility was an agreement to surrender Fort Sumter in return for a pledge of unconditional loyalty on the part of Virginia. There was nothing inherently implausible about such a deal. Though many Virginians sympathized with the states of the lower South, most were loyal to the Union, and Unionists had a clear majority in the state convention, which was still in session. The President hoped to confer with George W. Summers, the leading Unionist in that convention, but Summers declined to come to Washington. Instead, he sent John B. Baldwin, another Unionist, who had a long secret conference with Lincoln on April 4. WHAT THE TWO MEN SAID BECAME A MATTER OF DISPUTE, but according to the most reliable account the President promised: "If you will guarantee to me the State of Virginia I shall remove the troops. A State for a fort is no bad business." Whether intentionally or inadvertently, Baldwin misunderstood the President, and nothing came of this offer." Apparently, there is some reason to doubt the sincereity of Col. Baldwin and his version of the April 4 meeting.

Point #2 Charles Adams seems a bit of a spin doctor to me. He mixes in some of the truth and then spins what he wants after. For example, there is some truth in the idea that the South was not using the tariff as a justification for secession. Not that they were lying, as Adams suggests, but it was true. In my earlier post dated Saturday, February 08, 2003 - 03:02am, I state that Lawrence Keitt, Congressman from South Carolina stated that slavery, not tariffs, were the central reason for his state's secession. And if the North had some kind of hidden agenda for an aggressive war with the South, they sure as heck hid it VERY well. Forts and harbors seized, along with mints, cutters, arms, armories, all kinds of US property, beginning in 1860 and no response by the North with ANY kind of hostile moves UNTIL Fort Sumter was fired on in April of 1861! And of course you have read the newspaper articles where most in the North were saying let the Southern States go? How does that jive with some form of hidden pretext for an aggressive war?

And Mr. Adams has misled you on the idea that Karl Marx said the war was a tariff war. What Marx actually said was the following:

The North American Civil War by Karl Marx, 20 October 1861, Die Presse No. 293, October 25, 1861.
"For months the leading weekly and daily paper of the LONDON PRESS have been reiterating the same litany on the American Civil War. While they insult the free states of the North, they anxiously defend themselves against the suspicion of sympathising with the slave states of the South. In fact, they continually write two articles: one article, in which they attach the North, and another article, in which they excuse their attacks on the North.

In essence the extenuating arguments read: The war between the North and the South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery and in fact turns on Northern lust for sovereignty....Point by point we will probe the plea of the English press. The war between the North and South--so runs the first excuse--is a mere tariff war, a war between a protectionist system and a free trade system, and Britain naturally stands on the side of free trade. Shall the slave-owner enjoy the fruits of slave labour in their entirety or shall he be cheated of a portion of these by the protectionists of the North? That is the question which is at issue in this war. It was reserved for The Times to make this brilliant discovery. The Economist, The Examiner, The Saturday Review and tutti quanti expounded the theme further. It is characteristic of this discovery that it was made, not in Charleston, but in London. Naturally, in America everyone knew that from 1846 to 1861 a FREE TRADE system prevailed, and that Representative Morrill carried his protectionist tariff through Congress only in 1861, after the rebellion had already broken out. SECESSION, THEREFORE, DID NOT TAKE PLACE BECAUSE THE MORRILL TARIFF HAD GONE THROUGH CONGRESS, BUT, AT MOST, THE MORRILL TARIFF WENT THROUGH CONGRESS BECAUSE SECESSION HAD TAKEN PLACE. When South Carolina had its first attack of secession in 1831, the protectionist tariff of 1828 served it, to be sure, as a pretext, but only as a pretext, as it is known from a statement of General Jackson. This time, however, the old pretext has in fact not been repeated. In the Secession Congress at Montgomery all reference to the tariff question was AVOIDED, because the cultivation of sugar in Louisiana, one of the most influential Southern States, depends entirely on protection."

Thea, if you wish to read the entire text of Karl Marx's writings on the Civil War, go to: http:www.aotc.net/Marxen.htm and read the whole thing yourself. I think you will be a tad upset that Mr. Adams has misled you a bit.

As for the other newspaper article you mention from the New York Evening Post, that one is true, but the issue was a real one for that editor. The South was taking property that belonged to the nation and not paying one dime for it. Was that fair? And remember the tariff of 1858 had bipartisan support from both sides of Congress and was supported by President Buchanan, a southern democrat! Tariffs were not the issue!

Point #3 it was a Civil War and the South was contending for control of the government, in the Southern States! Lincoln had plenty of Constitutional authority, his oath as President for one, to maintain the Union. And Lincoln did not have control over both houses in Congress, until the South left by secession, the South did! It had lost the Presidency but still had control of the House and with Northern "doughfaces" (Northern Senators with Southern leanings)control of the Senate and the Supreme Court. And the idea that the federal government was merely the agent of the states, that was long disproved by the Supreme Court way before the Civil War.

No matter how you slice it or dice it secession was not the right of all states. The Union was meant to be perpetual from the Articles of Confederation to the ratifying of the Constitution.

Which came first: The Federal government of State government? Most people would say the State governments combined to form the Federal government. Although this is a common misconception of the truth, it is still a MISCONCEPTION. The States did NOT pre-exist the Federal government. The first Continental Congress convened on Sept. 5, 1774 with representatives of the PEOPLE of the several colonies of England. There were no states as we now know them. It was at the urging of the Continental Congress that the State constitutions were written and State governments formed separate from the control of Royal Governors. The delegates of the Congress were chosen as representatives to the Continental Congress by the PEOPLE at large of the several colonies, not the colonial governments. I guess it all had to begin somewhere, but it began with the PEOPLE, not the states.

As for the idea that slavery was on the way out, who says so? Many Southern congressman wanted to go to war to get more territory for the expansion of slavery. Cuba, Mexico and other South American countries were mentioned as potential conquests. Slavery was a long way from going anywhere because the South would not let it die.

As for expanding the so-called Police Power, the South pushed the biggest expansion of Federal Power in the name of slavery. Stephen Douglas could have been President if the Democratic party had not been split by the introduction of Southern delegates that a clause be attached to the Democratic platform which would have made the Federal government responsible for protecting slaveowners and their slaves when they went to other states, to include police protection! This one act was the largest attempt at expanding federal power until the New Deal in the 1930's!

Well, I got most of that off my chest, but remember, I still want you to take care of yourself, rest up, and then come back and give me hell! I enjoy the heck out of debating with you and researching my sources in order to prepare for you. Thea, you make it very worthwhile to be a member of this board.

Until that time,
Unionblue

I

[jac]

"rebel soldiers had to walk home"
Didn't Grant allow Confederate soldiers to keep their horses? Seems to me that was discussed between Lee and Grant at Appomattox.
I'm sure some of you folks who are more expert that I can clear this up. Anyone?

[blue_zouave]

True, Jack, the terms of the surrender of the ANV included allowing those Confederates who had horses to keep them. But the infantry doesn't ride horses. Everywhere they went during the war, they went on foot (with a few notable railroad exceptions.) After the war, the only horse most infantry guys had was Shank's mare.

Zou
Whose only horse remains Shank's mare

[brooks7md]

Zou - I noticed that there were Florida troops at Gettysburg. How much, do you think, of their long trip from Florida to Pennsylvania was on foot?

[johan_steele]

Quite a few Texas men who surrendered w/ Lee walked all the way home. It's a long way from Virginia to Texas.

[blue_zouave]

Patrick, the Florida troops at Gettysburg had two years to walk from Florida to Pennsylvania. I bet they did it just fine.

There was some use of railroads to transport troops during the Civil War, but the grim truth of the infantry, as I have stated before, is that if you want to get anywhere, you walk. Ten, fifteen, twenty miles a day. What did Kilrain say in Gettysburg? "It's the first thousand miles that's hard. After that a man gets limber with his feet."

Zou (breaking in a new pair of brogans)

[thea_447]

Hello to everyone,
I'm back, although in a back brace for many more weeks to come. I want to put some
thoughts on the board. Hopefully I will be joined by some Southerners (a small hint here to Mr. Ahearn.)

Neil, I know you've been waiting for me, armed to the teeth with your texts for rebuttal of all my remarks. So here goes:
Sorry, but I have to disagree with you as to the comment from the book "Lincoln." Naturally, you have the right to be of the opinion that Lincoln tried desperately to avert war. I cannot be of that persuasion. As for an agreement to surrender Ft. Sumter for a pledge of unconditional loyalty on the part of Virginia, this would have been ludicrous....more on this later.

General Sir James Marshall-Cornwall, in the first chapter of his book Grant as a Military Commander, noted that the real issue between North and South was political and economic. He described the economic pressure on the North to protect its industrial expansion with high tariffs, whereas Southern agriculture needed free trade. The animosity between the two sections was based upon different cultures with conflicting economic systems.

Shortly after the American Revolution, the states decided to transfer all state war debts to the federal government. This meant that the federal government would pay the war debts of the states and would be a windfall for the North because the federal government would obtain monies to pay the debt by raising tariffs. The result was that the Southern states were required to pay a disproportionate share of the debt. For example, the export of cotton alone from the South in 1859 was valued at $161,434,923.
The total export of all goods from the North in 1859 was a mere $78,217,202. This differential was in place at the beginning of our political union and continued up to the establishment of an independent South.

The Virginia legislature reacted to the proposal to transfer state war debts to the newly created federal government by declaring that, if enacted it would cause "the prostration of agriculture at the feet of commerce, or a change of the present form of federal government, fatal to the existence of American liberty." Even so, the effort was successful, and thus began the systematic and "legalized" pilfering of Southern resources disguised by any excuse the numerical majority of the North could frame as necessary for the general welfare.

Abolitionists would claim that slavery was the cause of the loss of wealth in the South. Professor Jonathan Elliot, a teacher of science at Harvard University, discounted this theory and stated that it was federal legislation in regard to the Tariff Acts that was the culprit.

George Lunt, author of Origin of the Late War,
wrote: "In 1833 there was a surplus revenue of many millions in the public treasury which by an act of legislation unparalleled in the history of nations was distributed among the Northern States to be used for local public improvements."

Pres. James Buchanan's message to Congress said: "The South had not had her share of money from the treasury, and unjust discrimination had been made against her..."

It is revealing to read Northern newspaper accounts that document the change in the mood of the North during the first months after the secession by the South. At first there appears to be a mood to allow the South to exercise its right of self-determination. Then came the predictions of economic loss if the North allows the ten percent tariff established by the Southern Confederacy to remain in place and to compete with its higher tariff. Some writers predicted grass would grow in the streets of New York, while the port of New Orleans would flourish.

The fear of losing its commercial advantages to the states along the Mississippi was a prime factor in the North's invasion of the South. Just weeks before the first shots were fired the New York Times ran story after story about how the commerce of the North would be lost to New Orleans and to the rest of the South because of the low Southern tariff. Northerners even admitted that their reasons for fighting the South were not the result of differences in principles of constitutional law but only because their profits might be lost if the South was successful in its move for independence.

In Manchester, New Hampshire, the editorial in the Union Democrat stated: The Southern Confederacy will not employ our ships or buy our goods. What is our shipping without it?
Literally nothing. The transportation of cotton and its fabrics employs more ships than all other trade. It is very clear that the South gains by this process, and we lose. No --
we MUST NOT "let the South go."

On Lincoln and secession: This man won in 1860 by getting the electoral votes of every "free" state except New Jersey, where he got four out of seven. Breckinridge and Bell combined wouldn't have been able to overcome him or throw the election into the House of Representatives. And the South viewed this with a sense of political impotence.

Although he was a moderate on slavery, he was nominated by Republicans in 1860 because he was less radical an abolitionist than Seward. Except for keeping slavery out of the territories, he steadfastly opposed anti-slavery policies. He even promised to support the Fugitive Slave Law.

But Seward and Chase, both radicals, were coming into high positions in the new government. And they understood the power of patronage to build and sustain a party in power.
The Republican party was on the verge of controlling federal patronage, as well as the postal service, the military, and judicial appointments. Lincoln would have four years to put ardent abolitionists in key courts across the South.

The election of Lincoln, and the radicals he brought with him, helped set off secession, but not in the upper South or the border slave states. After Lincoln's inauguration, the Union still contained eight slave states, more than had left. They were willing to endure him.

Lincoln determined to hold the union by force and he made that clear, though he chose his words carefully. His first Inaugural speech:
"The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imports." He also seemed to be saying the federal government wouldn't use force first.

Federal authority had evaporated in the South upon secession. Federal troops in Texas surrendered on their own initiative. Only Ft. Sumter and three Florida coastal forts remained in U.S. hands.

But Lincoln was under severe pressure from his political base. Eastern manufacturers would lose Southern markets to European competitors under a Confederate free-trade policy. Yankee merchants and ship builders faced an end to their government-granted monopoly of the South's coastal trade and holders of government securities were near panic over the loss of tariff revenue.

Sumter was the flashpoint. Seward had privately and unofficially been reassuring the Confederates that the government would abandon it and that allowed Jefferson Davis to persuade South Carolina to be patient and let hunger, not cannonballs, settle the issue. Which is why the U.S. government's move to re-provision the garrison was not so simple as it would seem. It forced the issue, just as Lincoln knew that it would.

Lincoln was no fool. He took a calculated risk, and he knew that Confederate attack was one of the possibilities. And the fact is, Lincoln had already determined to use force to prevent Southern independence.

There was a way to undercut moderate men in the Southern leadership and put the U.S. flag in front of the fire-eaters and all but defy them to take a swing at it. That is precisely the path he chose.

This fort, commanding the harbor, as we all know, was within the domain of South Carolina. The state had withdrawn from the Union by the formal and unanimous action of her free people in Convention assembled. The fort was held by soldiers of the U.S. Army. These young men were expecting reinforcements. A fleet with arms and provisions was waiting in the nearby waters. Eleven ships carrying twenty-six guns and two thousand four hundred men from the North, some from the South, all decked in Blue uniforms had come to strengthen the garrison "peaceably if permitted, forcibly if they must." This overt act began the war that would continue and destroy the lives of thousands upon thousands. P.T. Beauregard's firing of the first shot was merely the natural conclusion of a sequence of events. Southerners fired first, but the North drew first. Southerners shot in self-defense, to prevent being taken in front and rear. Was Beauregard supposed to wait for his foe to strike him down? Was the armed attitude and hostile intention of his enemy not ample justification for the shot heard round the world?

Before Sumter, the Southern and border state unionists made it clear that they believed no state should be forced to remain in the United States. They revolted over the administration's maneuvering the U.S. in the conflict that erupted at Sumter. Now whether you think that Lincoln did that or not, they certainly thought he did. What precipitated secession in the Upper South was the administration's revealed determination to bring the seceding states back into the Union by force, and the call-up of militias from the "loyal" states to invade the others.

Virginia Gov. John Letcher to Lincoln: "The militia of Virginia will not be furnished to the powers at Washington for any such use or purpose as they have in view. Your object is to subjugate the Southern States, and a requisition made upon me for such an object --
an object, in my judgment, not within the purview of the Constitution or the (militia)act of 1795 --will not be complied with. You have chosen to inaugurate civil war, and having done so, we will meet it in a spirit as determined as the Administration has exhibited toward the South."

Virginia, North Carolinia, Tennessee, and Arkansas ( as well as most of the tribes in Indian territory) promptly transferred their allegiance to the CSA. Unwilling to secede over slavery, they fought for the idea of a voluntary Union.

With that in mind, I do not think that this Upper South, with half of the Confederacy's population -- went to war for the sake of slavery.

As to your remarks about the perpetuity of the Union, I have already stated my position on this in a previous lengthy post. The very phrase "in perpetuity" was stricken!

As for my opinion of General William Tecumseh Sherman, the change of the planets in their alignment on Christmas Eve would not do that, Neil. LOL

Major General Sherman wrote Oct. 19, 1862, that the attack and burning of a Yankee gunboat should be punished by bringing about the "utter ruin" of the people in the area, and he ordered: "I hope...you will proceed to Bledsoe's Landing and then destroy all the houses and cornfields for miles along the river on that side...You should shell the whole river whenever one of these raids occurs."

Often when reading the OR(official records) it is easy to see one quote as above, then in another place he appears to be attempting to control the excesses of the troops unders his command. Needless to say, these excesses are well documented and show that officers were aware of what was happening. (See Sherman's General Orders No. 44, 2-18-62, No.2, 12-6-62, No. 3 1-12-63, : General Order No. 49 : "Stealing, robbery and pillage has become so common in this army that it is a disgrace to any civilized people."
Sherman wrote to Gen. Grant regarding his destruction of *******n, Mississippi: "I...began systematic and thorough destruction...For five days, 10,000 men worked hard and with a will...with axes,crowbars, sledges, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work as well done. *******n, with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists."

And Secretary of War Stanton knew all this...
May , 1862, Maj. Gen. Ormsby M. Mitchell wrote to the Yankee secretary of war to inform him that: "The most terrible outrages, robberies, rapes, arsons, and plundering are being committed by lawless brigands and vagabonds connected with the army..."

Oh, and I correct myself somewhat about Halleck. He was commander of the Department of the Missouri who sent this to McClellan, general in chief of the army in Washington, describing some of Brig. Gen. Lane's activities..."The conduct of the forces under Lane...has done more for the enemy in this State than could have been accomplished by 20,000 of his own army..I receive almost daily complaints of outrages committed by these men in the name of the United States, and the evidence is so conclusive as to leave no doubt of their correctness. It is rumored that Lane has been made a brigadier-general . I cannot conceive of a more injudicious appointment...its effect... is offering a premium for rascality and robbing generally."

Gen. McClellan gave this to President Lincoln who read it in his presence. This man whom children in this country are taught to venerate as a compassionate leader "With charity for all and malice toward none" said these words:
"An excellent letter, though I am sorry General Halleck is so unfavorably impressed with General Lane."

Lincoln's friend Lane did receive his promotion, a reward, for his campaign of terrorism against the Southern people! It's a matter of the government's official records.

Furthermore, Sherman expanded his human target to include children as I've shown earlier in one of his direct quotes. Stanton's reply to this "Your letter of the 21st of June has just reached me and meets my approval."

Yankee armies made every effort to fulfill the desire of their leaders to leave the Southern people with "nothing but their eyes to cry with".
Gen. Halleck relays an order from Gen. Grant:
"Gen. Grant.. directs that... you ...make all the valleys south of the Baltimore and Ohio road a desert.."

And this is seen in a report from by an officer of the United States army showing their attempt to reduce the Southern population to starvation: "No squad of ours... can live anywhere we have been. The people have neither seed, corn, nor bread, or mills to grind the corn in if they had it, as I burned them whever found...I have taken from these people the mules with which they would raise a crop the coming year, and burned every surplus grain of corn..."

Notice they not only burned current food supplies but their efforts were to cut off any future food supplies.....Yes, you're right, Neil, war is terrible. And war inflicted by the Yankees against the South left scars that will never be healed.

In response to my previous remarks about men walking home from the war: I assumed incorrectly that everyone knew that anyone who didn't sign the pledge to the United States government walked all the way home. There were thousands who walked. I imagine a lil' trek from New York or Pennsylvania took a spell.



Also, as to your assertion that the Federal government came first and that the states did not pre-exist the Federal government, I again refer you to my rather lengthy previous post and can only assume that you and I will never agree on this. The Federal government did not spring full grown like a viper's head out of the nest, although that is a more obvious description of it today.

On June 7, 1776, Richard Henry Lee, Southern delegate from Virginia to the Second Continental Congress proposed a resolution calling for independence from Great Britain. For more than ten years, there had been an on going dispute because the legislature in London was trying to tax the people of the colonies. And their answer to this was :"No taxation without representation..." The British colonist wanted to secede. Congress appointed a committee to prepare a statement giving reasons for independence. Thomas Jefferson was selected to write the Declaration of Independence. The delegates voted to adopt it, and all thirteen colonies declared independence on July 4, 1776.
Each state acted as a sovereign nation, but they acted together. The Declaration is clear about this.

Note that these are independent states. Each acted as an independent State before and after the war. They banned together to strengthen their resistance against a common enemy. The colonies were united only in their effort to be free and independent of a king that was attempting to tax them and destroy their liberties.
Please refer to my notes in another post concerning the Articles of Confederation . And ratification of that took three more years, but it existed between 1781 and 1789. The states remained as nations and the maintained their sovereignty and wrote it into these articles. (After much reivew, please note that the Treaty of Paris was the beginning of a new nation. This is not usually printed in textbooks but is part of this same Treaty:
His Brittanic Majesty acknowledges the said United States, viz., New Hampshire, Massachusetts Bay, Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, and Georgia, to be free sovereign and independent states, that he treats with them as such, and for himself, his heirs, and successors, relinquishes all claims to the government, propriety, and territorial rights of the same and every part thereof. --Jackson's Oxford Journal England, October 4, 1783.

I'm tired now and will bid you good day.
Till we meet again.....}}

[thea_447]

Just discovered something of interest concerning tariffs. In another message board here, on 2-21-03, Mike Durkin drew my interest to www.mises.org/ for something from Thomas J. DiLorenzo entitled Gods Generals and Tariffs.

Very interesting reading and it also includes something about the Morrill Tariff...Neil, I hope that you, in particular, will read it.}}}

[thea_447]

After re-reading the fantastic article by Thomas DiLorenzo found at www.mises.org/
entitled Gods, Generals, and Tariffs(I believe you'll find it in the archives),I remembered another article I'd read recently.

It shows the quintessential politican Lincoln and his cohorts and their uncanny ability to talk out of both sides of their mouths.

This article was written by Brent Moore. Sources: John Archibald Campbell, Southern Moderate, 1811-1889 by Robert Saunders, Jr., The University of Alabama Press, Tuscaloosa 1997; The Last Citadel by Noah Andre Trudeau, The Louisiana State University Press 1991; Fire and Thunder, Exploits of the Confederate States Navy by R. Thomas Campbell, Burd Street Press 1997.

The article is entitled: Proper Subjects For the Hangman?

On February 3, 1865, aboard a riverboat off Fort Monroe, Virginia, a peace conference of sorts was underway. Present were U.S. President Abraham Lincoln, his Secretary of State William Seward, Confederate States Vice President Alexander Stephens, president pro-tem of the C.S. senate Robert M.T. Hunter, and C.S. Assistant Secretary of War John Archibald Campbell. This conference did not result in peace between the two countries of course, but the conversations that occurred are interesting and quite insightful.

A negotiated peace between the two countries was doomed from the start. This was because Lincoln simply refused to view the CSA as a country. After several issues were discussed, Robert Hunter asked Lincoln: "Mr. President, if we understand you correctly, you think that we of the Confederacy have committed treason; that we are traitors to your government; that we have forfeited our rights, and are proper subjects for the hangman. Is that about what your words imply?" Lincoln replied: "Yes, you have stated that proposition better than I did. That is about the size of it." In essence, Lincoln would settle for nothing less than unconditional surrender by these "parties in arms against the government." This is not surprising. During the war, whether it concerned Confederate privateers, prisoner exchanges, Confederate citizens on foreign ships, or dealing with Confederate States Navy ships in foreign ports, the Lincoln government had been forced to treat the CSA as a legitimate government. The lie that Confederates were traitors was essential to justify Lincoln's aggression, so he kept it up.

What is surprising, and informative, are other statements by Lincoln and Seward and what they offered the Confederates in return for surrender. The U.S. government had just voted to submit the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery to the states for adoption. Seward showed the Confederate representatives a copy of it, but Seward hinted that the proposed amendment and the Emancipation Proclamation were "war measures". He went on to say that if the south capitulated, "it was probable that the measures of war would be abandoned." Lincoln agreed, saying that as soon as the war ended the Emancipation Proclamation would no longer be in effect. Also, according to Seward, if the "Southern States will return to the Union....with their own strength and the aid of the connections they will form with other states, this (constitutional) amendment will be defeated."

The U.S. President, who would not recognize the Confederate States, brought his Secretary of State, who was in charge of dealing with other countries, to a meeting with the representatives of that country that he would not recognize. The U.S. President, who claimed to want to free the slaves of the country he would not recognize, and his Secretary of State, told the representatives of this unrecognized country that if they would surrender they could keep their slaves.

It didn't work. The Confederates decided to keep their country.