Ft. Sumter: The First Act of Aggression

I don't know why one would expect evidence when the ones asking never have any for their opinion. Just the way I see it.

Let’s be fair Reb, maybe they think their personal opinion or some newly discovered information by some amateur historian hack is all the evidence we need to know. :wink:

Summation: Evidence offered in opposition to various claims of those offering the opinion that Lincoln was at fault can be found at posts:

11, 15, 24, 45, 66, 74, 92, 99, 106, 109, 124, 132, 146, 147, 168, 182, 196, 232, 235, 237, 259, 267, 278, 323, 325, 327, 344, 356, 377, 401, 421, 430, 444, 453, 467, 469, 472, 474, 476, 478, 479, 480, 481, 581, 594, 625, 630, 636, 640, 642, 643, 645, 661, 677, 680, 681, 694, 696, 699, 714, 715, 717, 723, 741, 755, 717, 723, 741, 755, 769, 820, 823, 830, and 832, all ignored by those holding the opinion that Lincoln was at fault.

Evidence offered by those who hold the opinion that Lincoln was at fault [excluding the article at the OP]:

Post 254, shown by post 327 to not support the claim made.
Post 391, shown by posts 402, 403, and 405 to not support the claim made.
Post 498, which applies to Charleston only and not to the south as a whole as claimed.
Post 639, rebutted by post 642.
Post 679
Post 797, shown by posts 798, 800, 801, 810, and 824 to not support the claim made.

Quite obviously, the two claims quoted above are deliberate falsehoods. I'll leave it to others to determine what that makes those two posters to be.
 
My summation is this quote:
Davis’s Choice
The fact is that by April 1861 both Lincoln and Davis were prepared to go to war. Just days before Sumter Lincoln was making sure about the preparedness of northern governors to respond to a call for troops, while the Confederacy was already engaged in raising its own army. It would have been foolish for either president to have done otherwise. Having explored several alternatives and found then unsatisfactory, Lincoln was willing to risk war in order to prolong the stalemate at Sumter, and Davis was willing to fire the first shot and risk what followed because the stalemate no longer served his interests, while opening hostilities served Confederate interests.

The way in which some people approach the Sumter crisis strikes me as amusing and childlike, as if the discussion between two kids on a playground, each telling the teacher that the other kid started it. Lincoln and Davis walked together on the path toward war. Each made choices that together commenced the conflict. The idea that either was an innocent man who was forced to do something against his inclination because of the cleverness of his counterpart strikes me as ludicrous, and a sign that some people would rather point fingers and cry “He started it!” as if that would absolve the other participant of any responsibility. To those people I say … grow up.

It is my position that the CSA got significant tactical, political and strategic advantages by attacking Fort Sumter. I would go so far as to say what the CSA got from it exceeded the unification the Union got in the short term. The CSA was unable to take advantage of it in the long term and the unification of the Union was decisive in the end. The unification was a roll of the dice, it was not foreordained and in many ways Lincoln blundered into his good fortune.
 
I have searched through the numbers in the above post and the sequence of numbers are left out on
purpose. I would suggest to all to reflected over the thread and you will see how many responses are left out
because they are disagreeable to some.
 

W. Richardson, I respect you for posting this knowing how it so upsets some folks around here. The 43 pages in a few days is all that is needed as evidence. I have been away, so this is my first chance seeing it. This is a very important subject to me. From the article:

During the transition period from the Presidency of Buchanan to Lincoln, there had been two occurrences that had raised the ire of South Carolinians. First was the fact that Major Robert Anderson, who commanded the US troops at Sumter, had of his own discretion moved the troops from Ft Moultrie, an indefensible position, to Ft Sumter. He had done so without the direction of President Buchanan, and because the Carolinians were unaware of this, they received the information as a signal that the US intended to forcefully maintain possession of the Fort. Although they refrained from attacking the fort, this action by US troops was regarded as an act of war.

I have been in numerous arguments on here over this exact subject matter. No one can refute it even remotely. It may be hard to swallow that Anderson made a grave error of foolishness, but it is a medicine that is healthy for someone who is a serious Civil War student.
 
As moderator:
What I am looking for is closing statements summarizing their evidence and argument by everyone.

One statement per poster, unless new evidence shows up.
Completely understood. :smile:

What you replied to was mine. I've posted my links too many times, only to be ignored, to waste time posting them for people who are going to ignore them again.
 
W. Richardson, I respect you for posting this knowing how it so upsets some folks around here. The 43 pages in a few days is all that is needed as evidence. I have been away, so this is my first chance seeing it. This is a very important subject to me. From the article:



I have been in numerous arguments on here over this exact subject matter. No one can refute it even remotely. It may be hard to swallow that Anderson made a grave error of foolishness, but it is a medicine that is healthy for someone who is a serious Civil War student.
Gee are we forgetting that evidence of him given the descretion to move has been posted many times before...
 
Sorry Jgood just saw your post, my closing argument on this is that there has been no evidence that Lincoln wanted a war and the course of events was set in motion by Confederates who wanted and needed a conflict to bring the border states in..The only evidence presented in regards to Lincoln was that he wouldn't meet with reps from the Confederacy to give away the artificial island the fort was on even though he didn;t have the authority and that he sent supplies to the men in the fort who had their food cut off..
 
Last edited:
No one can refute it even remotely. It may be hard to swallow that Anderson made a grave error of foolishness...
Unless, of course, you count the refutation made at least half-a-dozen times on this very thread: This is yet another misleading statement by the author of the original article, in that it implies Anderson's move was disobedience. The fact is, however, that Anderson was the commander of all troops and Army facilities in Charleston Harbor, and it was up to his discretion which facility to garrison the troops in; he acted without orders from President Buchanan because he didn't need any orders from Buchanan. Going from an indefensible position to a far-more-defensible one when you know you're about to be besieged is the opposite of "foolishness".
I have searched through the numbers in the above post and the sequence of numbers are left out on
purpose. I would suggest to all to reflected over the thread and you will see how many responses are left out
because they are disagreeable to some.
Care to tell us what sequence you're talking about? Making the claim without backing it up proves exactly nothing.

====================

In the course of this thread, we have seen evidence of one thing used as evidence of something else entirely, claims that the Constitution says things it does not, complete revisions of history, impressive redefinitions of several English words, an unwillingness to acknowledge calendars, and the insistence that Lincoln was so manipulative that he controlled events from not only before he took office, but indeed from before he was born. Ultimately, the only way to make the case that it was Lincoln's aggression that started the war is to do as the original article's author has done; ignore history and make repeated inaccurate statements.

It is not even remotely possible to rationally use the term "defense" to refer to the act of firing first, and not only has every single shred of "evidence" that Lincoln somehow manipulated the Confederates into doing so been debunked - repeatedly - but the defenders of that theory are only able to do so by clinging to the twin absurdities that the first shot was also the first act of aggression and that it was the fault of the people who were on the receiving end - and who for over four months had been on the receiving end of multiple acts of aggression, from theft, to siege, to kidnapping. No matter how often you try to change the conversation to the false belief that unilateral secession was legal or that American property is somehow illegal on American soil, you still can not reconcile the idea that Lincoln was the primary commencer of the war with reality:

That a small group of whiney aristocrats started an insurrection because they lost an election and were afraid of a diminished ability to trample on the rights of other states over the issue of whether or not other human beings could be considered property, and then when they threatened harm to their fellow countrymen to get their way blamed those same countrymen for not giving in to extortion.
 
Post #840.

I have searched through the numbers in the above post and the sequence of numbers are left out on
purpose. I would suggest to all to reflected over the thread and you will see how many responses are left out
because they are disagreeable to some.

I've seen some unintelligible posts over the years. Heck, I've made some of them. This one takes the cake. What in the world are you yammering about now? Who is "some"? Honestly, either say something useful or don't say anything at all. You were told to make a final statement, and frankly, you've been shown remarkable tolerance by the moderator who's been handling this thread. I make no such claims.

Posted in Capacity as Moderator
 
In retrospect it might be better is we could agree on what an act of aggression is. I think we could find people in both the North and South doing aggressive acts back to the founding of the nation or even before. Just what was the aggressive act that push America over the edge?
 
Firing on Fort Sumter seems to be what turned it from "less than peaceful secession" to "war against the United States".
No nation is not resentful of having its flag fired upon. It might have to swallow hard, but it would still resent it.

In the case of Sumter, the little guy kicked the shin of the big guy and he got resented. A lot.

I don't think the tens of thousands of recruits were concerned with keeping seceding states in the Union; I think they were just honked off at the shooting. The war was as much a rumble as it was a noble effort to preserve the Union. "You smacked mine, so we'll stomp you."
 
The two being intertwined certainly made it easy to get recruits. Being able to both stomp and feel that said stomping is to stand up for the proper way of things (religion, in other conflicts, has fit this part) is an enticing combination - who wouldn't want to be able to do both with no more effort than the stomping took?

But that goes into how humans get motivated to act in response to war being on the table, not what got it there.
 
As moderator.
Lets keep it to one closing statement.
If not, mere rhetoric may break out and I just have to close the thread.
 
Here's my summation:
Southern Leaders had been talking Secession since the Mexican War. They were frustrated in every avenue in their quest for new land suitable to Plantation Agriculture. The northern Congressional response to filibustering expeditions to Latin America, including Mexico and Honduras was to offer the Wilmot Proviso some 43 times and simply deny any funds for procuring land suitable for plantation agriculture.

The addition of California as a free state destroyed the balance in the Senate. The fact that no land remaining in the Continental United States was truly suitable for plantation agriculture (not even Kansas), and that Congress could block the acquisition of such land with a simple majority, was a sign to Calhoun and his followers that it was time to get out of the Union. Calhoun predicted in his final address, based on the early Census numbers for 1850, that the Union would dissolve over the next 10 years due to irreconcilable differences, because the trends in population were going to give the free states a 2/3rds majority in both the House and the Senate. Clay's Great Compromise could not even be passed until Calhoun was dead, then it was passed as a series of bills rather than one.

In 1858, Hammond, Calhoun's successor delivered his Cotton is King speech. In it, again using info provided by the 1850 Census, he painted a rosy picture for all the Southern delegation as to what a wonderful, prosperous country they could have if only they broke away from the old Union. If they did, naturally Southerners wanted a peaceful separation. But Hammond assured his listeners nobody wanted to break the Union, but if necessary, and it came to a fight, the Southerners would whip the Yankees.... It is really one of the most insulting speeches ever made to the Representatives of the People of the United States of America.

The die for the Civil War was cast. What followed in 1859 and 1860 was for the most part electioneering by the secessionists to assure they could leave the Union without social discord in their home states. The secession, whether constitutional, or legal was an amazing, bloodless (relatively) success. The problem for Davis, et Al was they were actually unprepared for the success they achieved. With the former US Secretary of War as the new President Select of the Confederacy, it is little wonder that Davis believed war was the only way out. Lincoln's hands were actually constitutionally tied. As long as no act of aggression could be tied to the newly hatched government of the Confederacy, the 1st Amendment of the Constitution (freedom of speech) prevented Lincoln from taking any action. Lincoln was also quite aware that had the Confederacy's former representatives in Congress returned to Washington, they could have demanded and gotten a new Constitutional Convention to deal with the separation.

Fortunately for Lincoln, Davis' head was into shooting instead of debating. And the new Confederacy's first act of agression in Charleston doomed it to an early grave four years later.
 
Last edited:
In Lincoln's First Inaugural Address, gives historical evidence that was convincing to him, that Secession was not only illegal, but, Impossible ,under the Constitution as it existed at his inauguration. and he continues...

"It follows from these views that no starte on its own mere motion can lawfully get out of the Union; that resolves and ordinances to thart effect, are legally void and that acts of violence within any State or States against the authority of the United States are insurrectionary or Revolutionary, according to circumstances."
 
Back
Top