The Sunken Fact: Lincoln Instigated the War

Not the subject of this thread, but there were very good reasons why Jefferson was not able to free his slaves. You might want to look into the laws of Virginia at the time, laws which were specifically written to stop manumission.
Jefferson didn't free his slaves because he didn't want to free his slaves. Jefferson was definitely Team Slavery later in his life.

His "firebell" comment is perceptive, however. Slavery was a fraught institution for all sorts of reasons.
 
why, it is all of us, North and South! Privileged in this age to have access to period documents in well-stocked local libraries and online, the additional benefit of decades of academic scrutiny and authorship, Lost Cause no longer convincing in the full light of disclosure.

Glory Hallelujah, the South can rise again! All the South for once.
Post 1960 revisionist academia even more so.
 
Post 1960 revisionist academia even more so.

Generic post-1960 revisionist academia exists, but not much in textbooks at least. Public School texts are vetted nationally. Since 1960s Texas in particular has been a lead vetter of the academics evident in text books chosen to be used in districts nationwide.
 
I hope not.

Yet hope is all you have, public education having evolved to where it is. I would say get involved in your local school board if you don't like the direction history education has taken. Or just vent, we can handle it.
 
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Some folks apparently don't know Lincoln had no objection to allowing slavery in the South in perpetuity as long as the Southern States stayed in his union.
Apparently some folks don't know, or more precisely, refuse to know, that both Lincoln and the secessionist leaders knew that slavery would die if it couldn't expand, and they both said so! The war was over the expansion of slavery. No matter how many times that gets pointed out, Lost Causers instantly forget that crucial defining, inconvenient fact of the conflict, because it shoots their arguments in the butt.
 
...Which basically means only that Confederacy leaders thought patterns were predictable.
Wars are not started by one person or one event.Study any opening to a war and the fact is that there are different and substantial number of events or reasons for a war.To say that Lincoln conspired is to say that the political leadership on both sides were not responsible for any of the causes that brought on the war.The causes of a war must be traced not to recent events but follow a Fateful path which always leads to the event that brings it on.World War ll was a war brought on by the failure of the peace treaty from World War l.,and the failure of the diplomacy of the West to believe that Hitler would not bring on a war even when the tanks were rolling into Poland.Follow the events of the territories see the hostilities increase with each event,trying. to compromise over things that finally came to a non negotiable end . Lincoln realized that the end of compromise was at a conclusion,he offered the South a olive branch but for the South this was the only solution for their survival .They believed as arrogant leaders have ,that the North would not go to war over the Black and if they did Confederate superiority would rule.
 
Somehow the event is perceived as "provocative." Southern authorities know what the ship is carrying, and its arrival is announced ahead of time. Not surrendering another illegally seized property to people who have no right to what they have already stolen is "provocative?" I agree it is — as long as the "provoked" is seeking something, anything however minor to start a fight over.
”Provocative” came from some of Lincoln’s own cabinet and General in Chief as they accurately predicted the war would commence with the supply mission.
 
”Provocative” came from some of Lincoln’s own cabinet and General in Chief as they accurately predicted the war would commence with the supply mission.

They did predict that, indeed. Which, of course, changes nothing. It wasn't hard to predict how the Confederacy would respond. Predicting is not the same as provoking. The choice of how to respond to an effort to bring food and nothing more to men who were running out of supplies remained with the Confederacy.
 
They did predict that, indeed. Which, of course, changes nothing. It wasn't hard to predict how the Confederacy would respond. Predicting is not the same as provoking. The choice of how to respond to an effort to bring food and nothing more to men who were running out of supplies remained with the Confederacy.
The warship with the food maybe had something to do with it.
 
From the csa point of view, resupply=we are staying and ain't going anywhere, something they were not willing to allow. You have to remember all that had happened. No recognition, no meeting with the pres., the back and forth hope and then hopelessness with Seward. Then word a fleet is coming. A tense time indeed.
 
From the csa point of view, resupply=we are staying and ain't going anywhere, something they were not willing to allow. You have to remember all that had happened. No recognition, no meeting with the pres., the back and forth hope and then hopelessness with Seward. Then word a fleet is coming. A tense time indeed.

Yes, Seward was way out of line. He imagined himself as the power behind the throne and muddied the waters considerably. Much of that happened before Lincoln arrived in Washington. It had to be incredibly frustrating and confusing for southerners.
 
[QUOTE="They responded by firing on American troops who were being sent food. It is possible, even when provoked, to refrain from violence. Davis decided to use violence.[/QUOTE]

The objective truth of history is not something this gentleman can bring his mind to recognize. The Confederates were firing on a fort held by a foreign power in their territory that, to their understanding, had war ships packed with troops and ammunition, converging on the harbor entrance to break in and reinforce the garrison. See Understanding For Sumter
 
[QUOTE="They responded by firing on American troops who were being sent food. It is possible, even when provoked, to refrain from violence. Davis decided to use violence.

The objective truth of history is not something this gentleman can bring his mind to recognize. The Confederates were firing on a fort held by a foreign power in their territory that, to their understanding, had war ships packed with troops and ammunition, converging on the harbor entrance to break in and reinforce the garrison. See Understanding For Sumter
[/QUOTE]

Sir, the "objective truth" was that ship was carrying food to American soldiers. The Confederates may well have misconstrued the situation but what they thought is not "objective truth;" it is their perception. In this case is was a mistaken perception. The same applies to a foreign power. They thought they were a separate nation, but in the end they were never recognized by any government and the efforts to secede failed.
 
The "free, legal election" that elected Lincoln President can hardly be reasonably said to have "sent the country down a path of limiting slavery." Presumably the writer's predicate for his use of the phrase "limiting slavery" is the idea that the Republican Party, once in control of the Congress, would repeal the Kansas-Nebraska Act. What, in fact, doing this actually means, is keeping the Africans locked up in the South; i.e., "limiting" the movement of Africans out of the South and into the Territories of the antebellum Union. The phrasing is typical of historians who claim a moral superiority for the white people of the North over the white people of the South, when both groups equally did not want to live with Africans as citizens in community.
No moral superiority.

But it would have limited it to the south... if that happened.... so I’m not sure how my statement is anything more than just that... no ulterior motives.

And... I’m not from the north....
 
"That ship was carrying food to American soldiers."

For you serious students, the "objective" truth of history means, in essence, a statement of provable fact. Clinging to myth because it pleases one's sensibilities may give the mind a good feeling, but the feeling does not transmute into objective fact. In this case, it turns out as historical fact, that "that ship" was carrying nothing to "American soldiers" garrisoning Fort Sumter. For the simple reason that Lincoln ordered that the Powhatan's captain take the ship to the "American soldiers" at Fort Pickens, knowing that the consequence of the order would mean the Pawnee, Pocahontas and Harriet Lane would not enter Charleston Harbor, though Beauregard, seeing that Union war ships were outside the bar, would not know this and would probably open fire on the fort, an event Lincoln would use to inflame the Northern people sufficiently that they would make their militias available for his use. For those of you actually interested in history, as opposed to myth, read what the percipient witnesses wrote about their involvement in Lincoln's ruse. D.D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War; E.D. Keyes, Fifty Years Observation of Men and Events; E.D. Townsend, Anecdotes of he Civil War. For those of you interested only in myth, listen to the popular historians lecture.
 
"That ship was carrying food to American soldiers."

For you serious students, the "objective" truth of history means, in essence, a statement of provable fact. Clinging to myth because it pleases one's sensibilities may give the mind a good feeling, but the feeling does not transmute into objective fact. In this case, it turns out as historical fact, that "that ship" was carrying nothing to "American soldiers" garrisoning Fort Sumter. For the simple reason that Lincoln ordered that the Powhatan's captain take the ship to the "American soldiers" at Fort Pickens, knowing that the consequence of the order would mean the Pawnee, Pocahontas and Harriet Lane would not enter Charleston Harbor, though Beauregard, seeing that Union war ships were outside the bar, would not know this and would probably open fire on the fort, an event Lincoln would use to inflame the Northern people sufficiently that they would make their militias available for his use. For those of you actually interested in history, as opposed to myth, read what the percipient witnesses wrote about their involvement in Lincoln's ruse. D.D. Porter, Incidents and Anecdotes of the Civil War; E.D. Keyes, Fifty Years Observation of Men and Events; E.D. Townsend, Anecdotes of he Civil War. For those of you interested only in myth, listen to the popular historians lecture.


So by "provable fact" in this case you mean reading both Lincoln's and Beauregard's minds and thus knowing their intentions. Once again, believing something does not make it so. Calling what you do not agree with myths, is, in my experience rarely persuasive. There was no "foreign power" although the Confederates might have thought there was and, not knowing what the ship held, the Confederates opened fire.
 
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