Civil War History - Secession and PoliticsWas it Slavery, or was it States Rights? Perhaps it was the election of Lincoln? What were the real reasons for Southern Secession and what were the political issues in this time of war? Find your answers here in the Secession and Politics Disussion.
I do know in the case of Brig. General John Buford,(promoted to Major General on his deathbed,) was from Kentucky yet, he refused a commission of the CSA and made very clear--he was remaining in the Union Army and fight for the Union cause. His half brother, Brig. General Napoleon Buford refused the CSA's offer of a commission and fought for the North as well--even though family remained in Kentucky. The Buford brothers' cousin, Abraham Buford though--took a commission with the CSA and had the rank of Brig. General.
I'm confused. Kentucky did not secede, so why would anyone expect that a man's family would not stay in Kentucky when he joined the Union army?
I had invested some time in discussing the Buford boys when I realized that the topic has nothing to do with the thread. A harmless deviation, but a deviation nontheless.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I had invested some time in discussing the Buford boys when I realized that the topic has nothing to do with the thread. A harmless deviation, but a deviation nontheless.
ole
Thanks Ole for my resisisting the urge to bring up the topic of Winfield Scott Hancock and his twin brother, Hilary Baker Hancock.
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"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
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The topic would make an interesting thread by itself.
ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
I think if a politician offers up a bill, and then withdraws said bill, that act is hardly cause to show a problem which did not exist. Strom Thurmond came up with some wild bills, none of which were a reflection of the country as a whole.
Jeff Davis may have had universal conscription, which is a draft with few loopholes, but the draft in itself is based on coercion and putting the state before the individual. There is no way to "make it fair" unless there is the choice of not getting involved. While there may have been revelry with the Hookers following Hooker, the battlefield is hardly the place to "pursue happiness".
Why did our founding fathers want three branches of government at each others necks? Because I believe, they knew any one branch could accumulate too much power. They didn't reckon on a Lincoln coming along and stomping free speech, a free press the law and the South into pieces.
Why would our founding fathers also want the states at each others necks? Perhaps by hoping that we wouldn't try to become a world power, the new Rome, we could avoid getting involved in Europe's affairs.
No Spanish American War. No Indian Wars. The South may have sat out many conflicts the North was eager to wage war over.
The Founding Fathers never saw The Great Consolidator coming.
I think if a politician offers up a bill, and then withdraws said bill, that act is hardly cause to show a problem which did not exist. Strom Thurmond came up with some wild bills, none of which were a reflection of the country as a whole.
Ah, but therein lies the question. Why was the bill pulled? If secession was no problem for the Confederacy, why not a formal declaration or procedure to reduce misunderstandings and confusion when attempted? After all, what about all the misunderstanding and hard feelings about secession that now embroiled the CSA in a bloody war? Should the Confederate Congress want such an outline to peaceful secession to avoid such a bloody result in their own future? Sure would like to know the why of it all.
Jeff Davis may have had universal conscription, which is a draft with few loopholes, but the draft in itself is based on coercion and putting the state before the individual. There is no way to "make it fair" unless there is the choice of not getting involved. While there may have been revelry with the Hookers following Hooker, the battlefield is hardly the place to "pursue happiness".
Now here is where it gets even stranger. Davis was arguing conscription with the States, not individual citizens, trying to get the States to drop their particular wants and needs about taking their soldiers and militias out of those states in order to defend the "people" of the South. Davis was trying to make it fair for the entire country and the individual States fought him tooth and nail not to be so universal in deploying their soldiers and citizens in defense of national interests.When Davis said the words, "Died of a Theory" should be on the Confedercy's headstone, it was all the arguing about State Rights and each State stubbornly defending those rights that killed the attempted shot at nationhood.
Why did our founding fathers want three branches of government at each others necks? Because I believe, they knew any one branch could accumulate too much power.
If you do a bit of research and reading, you'll find the CSA did not establish a third branch of government, the Supreme Court, because they were of the opinion that judical review would trump State Rights.
They didn't reckon on a Lincoln coming along and stomping free speech, a free press the law and the South into pieces.
Again, you make this charge, without evidence or sources to back it up. Please point to specific times Lincoln "stomped" free speech and the free press to the point ALL dissent was crushed and no newspaper ever published a disfavorable account of Lincoln. If you can't or won't, at least have the guts to say that this is simply your own, personal, unresearched opinion.
Why would our founding fathers also want the states at each others necks? Perhaps by hoping that we wouldn't try to become a world power, the new Rome, we could avoid getting involved in Europe's affairs.
Careful, your Illuminati bias is showing.
No Spanish American War. No Indian Wars. The South may have sat out many conflicts the North was eager to wage war over.
Out and out BULL. The South wanted badly to expand, to the point of declaring war on Mexico and Cuba to acquire new lands and new slaves. Good Grief! The Mexican War was fought in SPITE of mainly Northern opposition to it and Grant called it an unjust war of conquest. Check it out, DJ, where was the President of the US from when this war was declared? Hint, he wasn't from the North.
No, the South would not have "sat out many conflicts" because it would have been too busy starting its own.
The Founding Fathers never saw The Great Consolidator coming.
Modern-day clap-trap excuses for the ones who started a war to expand and protect The Great Enslavers.
(And my apologies to the millions of Southern yeomen and nonslaveholders who had to pay the price.)
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
No Spanish American War. No Indian Wars. The South may have sat out many conflicts the North was eager to wage war over.
Politely put, balderdash. It has been pointed out to you earlier, by me and by others, that the South was extremely interested in expanding, and that many Southerners intended to do so by conquest. Before the Civil War even started, it was assumed by many that we went to war with Mexico largely because of Southern determination to conquer new territory.
Note: The following is taken from "the Warrior Generals" by Thomas Buell. This book came out about 1996 or so. Buell chronicles the Civil War through the careers of six generals: Lee & Grant, Hood & Thomas, Gordon & Barlow. This excerpt is taken from one of the chapters on John B. Gordon.
Before the war, Gordon was a young, up-and-coming Fire-Eater down along the GA-AL line. During the war, he bacame a successful Confederate general, commanding the last attack of Lee's ANV at Petersburg. After the war, he was eventually elected to Congress.
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'Figures like William L. Yancey, the most prominent Democrat in Alabama and an ardent, influential advocate of secession and slavery, shaped Gordon's political thinking. On July 18, 1860, Gordon spoke as Yancey's surrogate during commencement at Ogelthorpe University near Milledgeville. His speech, entitled "Progress of Civil Liberty," was delivered before the university's literary societies. "African slavery," said Gordon, "is the mightiest engine in the universe for the civilization, elevation and refinement of mankind -- the surest guarantee of the continuance of liberty among ourselves. Then let us do our duty, protect our liberties and leave the consequences with God, who alone can control them."
'Gordon had a dream. "Do this and the day is not far distant," he said, "when the Southern flag shall be omnipotent from the Gulf of Panama to the coast of Delaware; when Cuba shall be ours; when the western breeze shall kiss our flag, as it floats in triumph from the gilded turrets of Mexico's capital; when the well clad, well fed, Southern Christian slave shall beat his tamborine and banjo amid the orange-bowered groves of Central America; and when a pro-slavery legislature shall meet in council in the Halls of Montezuma. And our foreign population, too, shall be encouraged by a successful resistance, on our part, to the aggressions of these Northern agrresssors."
This was Gordon's credo: white liberty was dependent upon black slavery in perpetuity. The Southern Recorder accorded his speech a measure of attention. "Mr. Gordon was for protection to our slave property in its broadest sense, and was for expansion and extension. ... He was an unadulterated 'filibuster' ... A distinguished friend in commenting upon it, said that it commenced with an eulogy upon liberty, but wound up with an eulogy on slavery. But, upon the whole, we liked the speech."
'During the presidential campaign Gordon went on the stump in Georgia and Alabama for John C. Breckenridge, the proslavery Democratic candidate, occassionally sharing the platform with Yancey. When Lincoln won, secession was certain. A special convention convened in Montgomery, Alabama, on January 11, 1861, and voted to secede. Crowds hurrahed, cannons roared, and church bells pealed. Orators, Yancey among them, whipped the crowds into delerium. Gordon too came before them. The act of secession was repeated eight days later in Milledgeville amid rejoicing. Gordon harangued the shrieking Georgia crowd."
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So there you have it in his own words, the vision of the future of a Southern Confederacy by one of the Fire-Eaters of Alabama and Georgia. A vision of apparent conquest and enslavement of other people for the greater glory of the South, and of secession from the United States. I note this is in July, 1860. That is four months before Lincoln's election and nine months before Ft. Sumter.
Not everyone in the South accepted that vision, although it was commonly spoken about. Jefferson Davis, not considered a Fire-Eater, also wanted Cuba and said so openly. Davis was asked to command a filibustering expedition to Cuba in the 1850s; after some thought he turned it down. He recommended the organizers contact Robert E. Lee, and Lee also turned it down. But when the expedition failed and the resulting public uproar was going on, Davis gave a speech down in Mississippi where he said "I want Cuba, and I intend to have her" (from memory; may not be exact).
Davis himself, while down in Montgomery in early 1861, newly appointed President of a hopefully new nation, actually refused to see an ambassador from Mexico. That was very strange, because the Confederacy desperately needed foreign recognition, and the ambassador was sent there to talk about it. But Davis stood on his honor. He thought it would be embarassing to treat with the Mexican government for recognition when he might be invading them shortly.
Lee, OTOH, would have found the idea of such conquest wrong. I am sure his view would have been such, because he felt the Mexican War of 15 years earlier was immoral, and said so (much like the young Abraham Lincoln thought that war wrong). But I note that he took his duty as a soldier seriously, and went off to serve in the Mexican War after writing his letter, so he probably would have done the same if he had decided to serve the Confederacy. Many other officers seem to have felt the same about that war -- such as young U. S. Grant -- and gone to fight bravely and well in accord with their duty as they saw it.
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
I think if a politician offers up a bill, and then withdraws said bill, that act is hardly cause to show a problem which did not exist. Strom Thurmond came up with some wild bills, none of which were a reflection of the country as a whole.
Jeff Davis may have had universal conscription, which is a draft with few loopholes, but the draft in itself is based on coercion and putting the state before the individual. There is no way to "make it fair" unless there is the choice of not getting involved. While there may have been revelry with the Hookers following Hooker, the battlefield is hardly the place to "pursue happiness".
No. To begin with, "universal conscription" is not a "draft" in the parlance of such things. Take a look at the differences between how the Northern and Southern systems operated; the Northern one is what is considered a "draft". To begin with, notice that the South actually considered all military-age men as effectively enrolled in the Army from the time the law was passed (you might be called to active service or not, but you were in), while the North only considered that to be the case after you were drafted.
Your concept of fairness is also not correct unless you think the individual is always superior to the state, or unless you are an anarchist. The state has obligations to individuals; individuals have obligations to the state. Military service in time of war may be an obligation to the individual if the situation is deemed desperate enough. Both North and South decided it was, but the South's situation was more desperate. As a result, the North went with a "draft" and lottery, while the South went with "universal conscription".
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
Why did our founding fathers want three branches of government at each others necks? Because I believe, they knew any one branch could accumulate too much power. They didn't reckon on a Lincoln coming along and stomping free speech, a free press the law and the South into pieces.
As UnionBlue notes, the US set up the Supreme Court quickly after the Constitution was passed. The Confederacy never set up their Supreme Court because of opposition from the states to a national court superior to their own. In this, the Confederate "Founding Fathers" appear to have disagreed with the concept of three branches of government.
The stuff you spout about Lincoln and free speech is just silly. Check what the Founding Fathers themselves did with the Alien and Sedition laws. Explain to us just why Robert E. Lee's father, Light Horse Harry, had hot candle wax poured down his nostrils while defending a newspaper press against a political mob in Baltimore (aka "Mobtown") several decades before the Civil War (heck, before Lincoln was even born).
Or discuss why the Confederates betrayed, arrested and tortured "Parson" Brownlow, TN Unionist and newspaper publisher during the Winter of 1861-62. (Brownlow was eventually freed by higher authority and exiled to the North -- but when people discuss his vehement hatred of Rebels in later years they need to remember what was done to him by those Rebels.)
Or perhaps it would be better to explain how TN Unionist Fielding Hurst of TN was arrested at the polling place by TN troops, shipped to Nashville and incarcerated for months as a political prisoner on the very day of the election to decide if state would secede or not. Hurst expressed his opinion of secession and secessionists loudly that day; he was punished for it. He and his brothers were nasty men, no doubt about it; even the one who sided with the Confederacy was. Maybe, like Brownlow, Fielding Hurst had good reason to resent and strike back at TN secessionists for their abuses of political power (which he very clearly and viciously did once he was out of prison). In any case, aren't we looking here at clear-cut suppression of freedom of speech by the secessionists to start things off? If you think not, please explain why not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DJ Psychomike
Why would our founding fathers also want the states at each others necks? Perhaps by hoping that we wouldn't try to become a world power, the new Rome, we could avoid getting involved in Europe's affairs.
The Founding Fathers appear to have believed strongly in debate and reason (however heated the debate may have been). That is how they built the United States for themselves after the Revolution. They were not above some definite arm-twisting, either: note the eventual veiled ultimatum to Rhode Island on the Constitution.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Sure seems like Ol Jeff was hot to get the island by "purchase or otherwise" including, it is apparent, armed conquest.
__________________ "There must be more historians of the Civil War than there were generals figthing in it... Of the two groups, the historians are the more belligerent." David Donald, Lincoln Reconsidered (1961)
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