Ft. Sumter: Can of Worms

[unionblue]

Tommy,

You are right and I apologize for making a generalization concerning the courage of the South. Let me rephrase.

The South (in which I meant the selfish, Southern Leadership) did not have the (Moral and Political) courage to call a spade a spade (rebellion) and instead, tried to use the worthless theory of secession to entice more good people of the South into a hell on earth for no good reason except to guard their base of power and wealth, the institution of slavery.

While you and I will never agree on the cause of the war, we will never have a disagreement on the courage of the Southern soldier. He fought for his convictions, his home and his family, of that I have no doubt. I am somewhat disappointed you thought of me anything else. I will lay that at my door for not being precisely clear in my above statement.

But I am willing to believe if you had thought a few moments more you would have realized that anyway. I will endeavor to be more precise when concerning those who had no courage of a kind and those who did.

YMOS,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

William,

Good questions in your above post Thursday, January 22, 2004 - 05:17 am. I will try to answer two of them.

I put to you the South went to war and started the war over the institution of slavery, to preserve it and to expand it. That is what I feel the primary reason was for the cause of the war. The North, in gaining political power through the addition of new Free States was threatening the institution and keeping it from spreading. The South had to free itself from this situation and the threat to its 'way of life.'

I also feel the South was confident at defeating the North in the military sense because the Federal government was so weak. Please remember that the national government had an army (that was divided in sentiments) of only 16,000 men. The federal government itself only had a handful of federal marshals to enforce its will, a part-time attorny-general, a President with no paid staff, etc., & etc.

There was no standing supply system of note to bring a larger army up to snuff and remember the territory that would have to be covered and re-taken, something like the size of Europe? Over confidence? There seems to be reason for such.

I will get back to you on more on the above.

YMOS,
Unionblue

[unionblue]

Thea,

In reference to your post Wednesday, January 21, 2004-10:14, I'm afraid we are going to have to disagree on your very first paragraph.

Thanks to Tommy and his remarks on the Fox letter thread, I was forced to do more research and came up with a more clear version of the 'insidious' sending of warships to accompany provisions intended for Fort Sumter.

South Carolina was well aware of the fact that Lincoln was sending both provisions and troops in the Sumter expedition. Secretary of State Seward himself had pursuaded President Lincoln to inform State officials of the expedition because he himself had given his word to the Confederate commissioners that Sumter would not be reinforced without notice.

To honor Seward's promise, Lincoln sent a State Department clerk named Robert S. Chew to deliver an authorized message from Lincoln. On April 6, 1861, Chew read and then gave to Governor Pickens the following message which stated, "an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only; and that, if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in men, arms, or ammunition, will be made, without further notice." Intended to avoid provoking South Carolina authorities, this message destroyed the slight possibility that Anderson could be secretly reinforced.

The troops were along with the fleet in the event the South resisted the resupply. I feel there was no attempt to lie or decieve South Carolina on this point and that this view has been taken out of context.

Now, why didn't Lincoln call the Congress into session for three months? We have been over this before, and in spite of the fact you think that this act has 'illegal' all over it.

Lincoln convened Congress into session on the 4th of July for a purely practical reason. By statute, the militia would remain active until thirty days after Congress convened. Convening Congress earlier would have interfered with effective mobilization.

As for calling the man the 'ablest protectionist' this country ever saw, please go the the Tariff thread and check out some new information so we can try (I know the odds on that one!) to get past this one.

AS for the 'Yanks here want to muddy the waters with his Great Emancipator mantle' let's not throw the President out with the bath water, shall we? Lincoln was about preserving the Union, no double-speak or deliberate law-breaking, the Union, the WHOLE Union was his primary consideration before Sumter and during the war.

In that muddy water, if you wait for it to settle some, you'll see slavery at the bottom, the institution the South left the Union over in order to extend, protect and preserve.

Hal,

For a more detailed response from me concerning the Fox letter, please click on the Thread labeled 'What's the Fox letter?' under the General Discussions heading and you will get your answer there. Just a bit worn out in the wrists typing all these posts!

YMOS,
Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 23, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 23, 2004)

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 23, 2004)

[unionblue]

Nicolo,

I too, would like to welcome you to the board. As you can see, it is quite a passion with some of us to debate here.

I hope that you will continue to contribute to this board as we can always use another voice to add to the stew of ideas and opinions cooking here. Makes for a great taste for the mind and the soul.

Welcome once again,
Unionblue

[bill_torrens]

"I put to you the South went to war and started the war over the institution of slavery, to preserve it and to expand it."

They didn’t need to start a war to preserve slavery. If that was their wish, it was achieved by secession. Neil, my dear chap, this won’t do at all. Let’s follow the logic home:

“I am going to leave you and form my own country. At the same time I am going to attack you because, although you are much bigger & stronger than me, I still reckon I can whip you. And after I’ve whipped you I’ll be able to……………………………………”

Unless you can supply a credible ending to this statement – credible, mind you – I think you’ve lost this one.

Not that I for a moment accept your contention that the disparity in the perceived relative strengths of the two countries was less than I had earlier suggested. Yes, the U.S. regular army was small; the C.S. regular army was non-existent. And so we really do come back to the yardsticks of population and economic strength. I’m beginning to detect a whiff of McClellan Syndrome here – in a minute you’ll be arguing that you were really outnumbered all along!

And when it comes to population the disparity was actually much greater than the bald facts of the 1860 census would suggest. Because, of course, immigrants continued to pour into the North throughout the war. And so, after every Northerner with a backbone had been fed into the machine and chewed up, there was a literally endless supply of [often bewildered] foreigners to take their place. And every blue-clad Hessian who headed South freed up a Northerner, who was deficient in the backbone department, to get on with the business of making lots of money.

And the beauty of the system was that you didn’t even need to persuade the said bewildered foreigner to enlist. I have a copy of an (I believe) unpublished letter, dated 9th June 1864, which was written to the wife of Pvt. William Kilpatrick, of Co.H, 176th N.Y. Vols. Kilpatrick was English and his wife remained in their homeland. As he was ill, the letter was written by his army buddy, another Englishman named John Thompson. The latter wrote:

"It is a terrible war, this. The people in the Old Country have but a very faint idea what the soldier has to go through here – and what grieves me to the heart is that William like myself was kidnapped into it, and knew nothing about being enlisted, until recovered from the effects of the poison used to stupify victims by Scoundrels in New York, who make it their business to entrap strangers – and what is worse you have no redress whatever......there are thousands in this army that have been entrapped into it, as he and I were, but if ever I am spared to get out of it, I intend to return to the Old Country right away."

“…and what is worse you have no redress whatever…” This tells us that the military authorities of the United States actively colluded in the kidnapping of foreign citizens. Not strictly relevant to this thread, but interesting nonetheless. And, by the way, William Kilpatrick died of fever in 1865…….

All the best,

Bill

[nicolo]

The disparity of the relative strengths of the North and South, says nothing about why the South ignored that disparity and chose to fight a great civil war.
What was the Missouri Compromise about? What was the Ostend Manifesto about? What was the Kansas Nebraska Debates about? What was the Dred Scott Decision about? What was John Brown's Raid about? These are just a few of the devisive issues that tended to polarize public and congressional attitudes and all related the the issue of slavery in America.

[unionblue]

William,

To say that I have a 'McClellan Syndrome' is considered an insult beyond measure to me sir! I demand coffee and pistols at dawn at a place of your choosing!

In Truth, William, I about split my sides with laughter when I saw that comment! How wonderful and how direct and to the point! Thank you for it. Never mind that you are wrong in your conclusion on said comment, but it was very funny and very original. (This board is so much fun!)

William, how to you ignore the fact that the spread of slavery went hand in hand with the effort to preserve it? Surely you are aware of the Democratic platform and the plank the Southern slaveholders tried to insert in it that would have the United States Government protect and preserve slavery in EVERY state, North or South, and in every territory in the Nation. The very reason the South seceeded was its fear it would be restricted to where it was and that it could not expand and maintain Southern political power.

And secession did not garuntee slavery and those in the South knew it did not. Why prepare for war? Why secretly send arms that were supposed to go national troops and send them South for use there? No one could even bring themselves to think that secession was going to be a peaceful act, no one in the Senate, no one in Congress and certainly no one in the South. Or why prepare for war?

As for your Northern backbone argument, dear William, I can assure you that enough of the original volunteers from '61 on, stayed the course and saw the job through. Even the South in its desperation lowered the age of enlistment to 16 and then upwards to 50 and had no problems taking in foreign help in the form of weapons, ironclads, blockade runners, and such. I will not deny that men from Europe were scooped off the boat and enlisted in the Union army, even some Dutch still in their wooden shoes according to some accounts. But why was there no such immigration in the South? Not just to provide bodies for their army, but why was there no large immigration to the South before, during and after the war?

It's just too bad the South did not turn to a real source of manpower in the form of their black slaves until 1865 and then could not even promise them freedom at the end of their service. Seems like slavery had an impact there, too.

Again, I tell you (at the risk of the MC Syndrome), I think that one of the very reasons the South took a chance on war with a region of the country with more resources and manpower is because they considered the Federal Government so weak and so de-centralized, coupled with a huge amount of territory it would have to reclaim and the example of the Revolutionary War to guide them, Southern leadership made some bad assumptions. Could anyone, North or South, anticipated four years of the most destructive and bloody war that followed? Not in my opinion. Most in the country had no living memory of war, which was all glory and nonsense from repeated tales of the Revolution, 1812 and the Mexican War. And the Mexican War was a tiny affair compared to what was to follow.

And William, if you are of the opinion that logic and thoughtful contemplation are keys to understanding the American character of the 1860's, I might suggest you review current American foreign policy of late.

Until that time,
Unionblue

[thea_447]

Before Sumter, things had happened rapidly.
Lincoln won in 1860 by getting the electoral votes of every "free" state except New Jersey, where he got four out of seven. Even Bell and Breckenridge combined wouldn't have been able to overcome him or throw the election into the House of Representatives. The South viewed this with a sense of looming political impotence.

Lincoln himself was a "moderate" on the slavery question. He was nominated by the 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 radicals like Seward and Chase were coming into high position in the new government. And any mid-19th century American politician understood the power of patronage, to build and sustain a party in power. And 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 into power, set off secession in the Deep South. 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, for all the threat he posed to slavery.

Lincoln determined to hold the union by force. He made that clear, though he chose his words carefully, in his First Inaugural. "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 imposts." He also seemed to be saying the federal government would NOT use force first.

Federal authority in the South had evaporated 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. 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. That allowed Jefferson Davis to persuade the South Carolinians 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.

Lincoln was no fool. He knew all this. 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 proceed that would undercut the 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 the path he chose.

The immediate cause of the war, the act that brought on the trouble was an attempt by the Federal administration to reinforce and provision Fort Sumter. This fort, commanding the harbor, 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 and these unknowing lads were expecting reinforcements. A fleet with arms and provisions was waiting in the nearby waters. Eleven ships carrying 26 guns and two thousand four hundred men from the North, some from the South, all attired in Blue had come to strengthen the garrison "peaceably if permitted, forcibly if they must." That "overt act" began the war that would continue and destroy the not yet begun lives of thousands! The firing of Beauregard was merely the natural consequence. The "Southron" first first, the Northman had drawn first. Our shot was in self defense, to prevent being taken in front and rear. The only question I see is, was Beauregard under obligation to wait for his foe to strike him down--was not the armed attitude and hostile intention of his enemy ample provocation to justify the shot heard throughout the world?

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. into the conflict that erupted at Sumter --whether you think 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 wrote back 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 Carolina, 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. Some will say at this juncture that the Upper South went to war to preserve slavery. But is that really what happened?

Lincoln got the South to fire first. I have no doubt that with two thousand four hundred men on board warships his intent was quite clear. The only problem was neither he nor any of the others in high places foresaw the dreadful calamity that was to follow. There is no myth involved in those warships or the 2,400 men on board. That's historical fact.

Till we meet again, I remain, YMOS,

[unionblue]

Thea,

What is stunning about your above post is how much of it I actually agree with.

I am almost certain the 2,400 men you speak of could be broken down a bit more in their roles during the Ft. Sumter crisis. Could you tell me how many of that 2,400 men were actual troops that were designated to reinforce Sumter if interfered with during the resupply of provisions and how many were crew aboard the navel vessels in the fleet sent down by Washington?

In fact, only 400 brand-new recruits, sea sick and scared, had been taken aboard ship to reinforce Sumter in case the resupply mission failed. I am curious to know where the figure of 2,000 comes from in your calculations.

And would you remember just how many men General Scott said it would take to reinforce Sumter in the face of Southern forces already in Charleston? 20,000 men was the figure he gave Lincoln at a time when there were only 16,000 in the entire national army.

I await your computations with much interest, my dear friend.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

(Message edited by Unionblue on January 26, 2004)

[nicolo]

Thea, the act that brought on the trouble was S.C. seceding and closing the harbor to normal traffic in order to force a Federal installation to be given over to an insurrectionary gov't.