Great Civil War site

[PCScipio42]

I am certainly no expert, either. The more I read about the war, the more I realize I don't know that much at all about it at all. I will have to pick up the Trudeau book on Gettysburg as the numbers listed above are siginficantly higher in terms of army strengths and casualties that I have seen.

 

[renrich]

I had always heard the casualty number for Gettysburg was a total of around 51000 but he has it as about 45000-46000. He has it broken down as low as the regiment level. The War was tragic and a calamity for the South and plenty bad enough for the North. I believe that the war could have been avoided and the outcome would have been a better Country than we have today. When one analyses it the South only wanted to do what our ancestors had done in 1776, that is get out from under what they believed was a despotic government. With a cooling off by all parties and some compromise the Union could have been preserved in a slightly different form. After all the most populous states that ultimately seceded had not done so until Lincoln called up the state militia which was after Sumter. Oh well, we will never know.

 

[PCScipio42]

True, we will never know. The deep south seceded even before Lincoln took office, so I have to wonder how "despotic" the government was in the south's mind at that time. Unfortunately, the constitution never spelled out secession one way or another, hence the dispute over that issue. Considering the majority of southern presidents, and hence the federal courts packed with southern judges as a result, to that time, maybe they should have taken it to the Supreme Court if they were so sure secession was legal. I am sure the intent is that you can't leave the union just because you don't like an election result.
How much "anti- southern" legislation do you think Lincoln could have passed if the south had stayed in the Union? My thought is not very much, but the south had become so accustomed to having things their own way in terms of compromises, that anything less than an extension of slavery was unacceptable to them. My point being that in my opinion, the government was not despotic, and there was nothing passed that could be contrued as despotic for the south.
The articles of secession written by the states of South Carolina and Mississippi prove that the main and most significant reason for the secession of those states was slavery. Virginia and the rest who left later more or less gave Lincoln no choice. More or less....give it up or we're leaving, too.
Just my .02.....

 

[renrich]

You will notice that I said they believed it was a despotic government. That is what counts; whether it was true or not. In Texas they held a referendum on secession and secession won handily although the majority of the voters did not own slaves. I think that one has to try and look at the situation from the point of view of what were people's attitudes in the 1840s-50s. Many in the North including Lincoln were opposed to the annexation of Texas because it would be a slave state. Many in the North were opposed to the Mexican War including Lincoln. The fight for independence from Britain had happened during the lifetimes of many people both North and South. Northern states had threatened secession both in the 1812 War and during the Mexican War so it was not some new idea. Slavery was legal (although an abomination) ( the worst event in the history of this country was when the institution of slavery was introduced, for more reasons than one) but if one is open minded one can see that a threat to take legal propety away from citizens and bankrupt those citizens would raise hackels. The South was filled with people who did not like other people telling them what they could and could not do. That was one of the big cultural differences between North and South. If Lincoln had not called up the state militias and then invaded the South but rather let things simmer down and then tried compromise, there were plenty of people on both sides who wanted a better solution than war. It was a long shot but almost anything would have been better than what happened. Slavery was going away anyway eventually but the hotheads on both sides got their way and the tragedy ensued.

 

[renrich]

Whether or not the War could have been avoided or not it did take place and the ramifications were enormous and still impact our lives today. Besides the 620000-750000 deaths, there were many, many men who were crippled and many who were left in poor health from diseases for the rest of their lives. The South was ruined. It's major cities were in ruins, it's already sketchy railroad system was in shambles and it's agricultural industry was almost reduced to subsistence farming. All of my grandparents on both sides in Texas were agriculturists and were poor. Some had moved from Tennessee, dead broke, after the war and some had been in Texas since the 1830s. My father's father, in 1917, tried to reup in the Texas Rangers because he was trying to support a large family by chopping cotton for 50 cents per acre. He was turned down because he was too old. The Rangers were having an expansion becuse of the Mexican threat during WW1.

The South was largely supportive of the Democrat party before the War and were even more so after the War. The interesting point about that was the South as a whole wanted smaller government, not larger but the "Solid South" could be counted on to vote Democrat because of the War and was a reliable base for the election four times of FDR. The Democrat party chose Lyndon Johnson as the VP candidate for John Kennedy because he could and did deliver the votes of Texas. LBJ wound up being president and perhaps the history of this country would have been different without the Viet Nam War or the Great Society programs. After LBJ, Texas was no longer a Democrat state. The impacts of the War Between the States undoubtedly still have an effect on our government in Washington today.

 

[michaelmaltby]

"... If Lincoln had not called up the state militias and then invaded the South but rather let things simmer down and then tried compromise, there were plenty of people on both sides who wanted a better solution than war. It was a long shot but almost anything would have been better than what happened. Slavery was going away anyway eventually but the hotheads on both sides got their way and the tragedy ensued. "

We know from the Lincoln-Douglas debates that Lincoln-the-lawyer publically entertained (and is on the record) advancing notions such as "buying" the slaves from their owners while abolishing future slavery. He was definately not a war monger, but, a very determined preservationist (of the Union) once hostilities began.

Did Lincoln "invade the south" before or after succession had commenced, renrich ....?

IMHO - if Lincoln had had a general who shared his views on the conduct of the war, and had not had General McClelland - little Napoleon - who yearned for a "European" type war but kept insisting on more "superiority" on the battlefield, the War would have ended much sooner.

MM

PS - "Slavery was going away anyway eventually". Not a certainty. There is still slavery in parts of Brazil ASAIK

 

[renrich]

No question that Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union and the question of slavery was probably secondary to him. There is also no question that in the US the abolition of slavery was just a matter of time. No country like the US is today or like it became in the 1900s could tolerate slavery. It would have been ostracized by the rest of the modern world. I am not aware that slavery still exists in Brazil but if it does it will soon be gone.

If R E Lee had been commanding the Army of the Potomac in 1962 instead of The Army of Northern Virginia the war might have been concluded much sooner.

Where in the Constitution does it provide for the US Government to invade and force states back into the Union by armed force?

I am not postulating that the Union should have been dissolved or that Lincoln was wrong to want the Union preserved but only that other measures might have prevented the catastrophe that took place.

I submit that if one does not believe that the War was an absolute catastrophe for at least the South then one is very obtuse. Even preventing the secession of the southern states was not worth what the war cost. The US could have gotten along nicely without those states that seceded. The ones that seceded would have had a much more difficult time which would have, in the long run, probably brought them back into the fold.

 

[michaelmaltby]

".... If R E Lee had been commanding the Army of the Potomac in 1962 instead of The Army of Northern Virginia the war might have been concluded much sooner"

True.

I am not arguing that the war wasn't ruinous for the South -- clearly it was -- and I am constantly amazed at how well the south fought given the inequalities between the two.

RE Contemporary Slavery: http://lo-de-alla.org/2012/05/slave-labor-continues-in-brazil-124-years-after-abolition/

MM

 

[mikewint]

If asked most Americans idolize Lincoln and praise him for ending slavery, racial injustice, and preserving the union. Revisionist history is a wonderful thing.
Why did he not allow the South to secede? The answer seems obvious — he held the union to be important and did not desire to see the country split in two (although by declaring a war he succeeded in splitting the country and destroying the infrastructure). Yet, if he felt unity to be sacred, he did not make a point of saying so earlier on.
On January 12, 1848, he said:
"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so many of the territory as they inhabit."
During his first inaugural address (March 4, 1861), he declared, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." These words are inspired by such an important document as the Declaration of Independence, which reads:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
A constitutional right to overthrow the government? Apparently Lincoln forgot about this once the South raised their voices. On the 50th anniversary of the Constitution (1839), John Quincy Adams reaffirmed the Constitutional right of secession:
"If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interests shall fester into hatred, the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint."
Lincoln had forgotten his own words, the Constitution, and the words of Jefferson who said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in the union … I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'" Even the newspapers stood to support the South. New York favored it in the New York Tribune editorial on February 5, 1860, where they wrote, "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." And Maryland Representative Jacob M. Kunkel said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."
Ending slavery and racial injustice is not why the North invaded. As Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley on Aug. 22, 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it"
Congress announced to the world on July 22, 1861, that the purpose of the war was not "interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states" (i.e., slavery), but to preserve the Union "with the rights of the several states unimpaired." At the time of Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) only the seven states of the deep South had seceded. There were more slaves in the Union than out of it, and Lincoln had no plans to free any of them.
The North invaded to regain lost federal tax revenue by keeping the Union intact by force of arms. In his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect "the duties and imposts," and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that "the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed" in the states that had seceded.
The Civil war may have saved the Union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically by destroying its voluntary nature. In the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, the states described themselves as "free and independent." They delegated certain powers to the federal government they had created as their agent but retained sovereignty for themselves.
This was widely understood in the North as well as the South in 1861. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorialized on Nov. 13, 1860, the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." The New York Journal of Commerce concurred, writing on Jan. 12, 1861, that a coerced Union changes the nature of government from "a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves." The majority of Northern newspapers agreed.
Lincoln wanted nothing to do with either equality or natural rights. His words: "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he announced in his Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. "I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." And, "Free them [slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot, then, make them equals."
In Springfield, Ill., on July 17, 1858, Lincoln said, "What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races." On Sept. 18, 1858, in Charleston, Ill., he said: "I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes."
Lincoln supported the Illinois Constitution, which prohibited the emigration of black people into the state, and he also supported the Illinois Black Codes, which deprived the small number of free blacks in the state any semblance of citizenship. He strongly supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled Northern states to capture runaway slaves and return them to their owners. In his First Inaugural he pledged his support of a proposed constitutional amendment that had just passed the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives that would have prohibited the federal government from ever having the power "to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." In his First Inaugural Lincoln advocated making this amendment "express and irrevocable."

 

[mikewint]

If asked most Americans idolize Lincoln and praise him for ending slavery, racial injustice, and preserving the union. Revisionist history is a wonderful thing.
Why did he not allow the South to secede? The answer seems obvious — he held the union to be important and did not desire to see the country split in two (although by declaring a war he succeeded in splitting the country and destroying the infrastructure). Yet, if he felt unity to be sacred, he did not make a point of saying so earlier on.
On January 12, 1848, he said:
"Any people, anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable and most sacred right – a right which we hope and believe is to liberate the world. Nor is this right confined to cases in which the whole people of an existing government may choose to exercise it. Any portion of such people that can, may revolutionize, and make their own, of so many of the territory as they inhabit."
During his first inaugural address (March 4, 1861), he declared, "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing Government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." These words are inspired by such an important document as the Declaration of Independence, which reads:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government.
A constitutional right to overthrow the government? Apparently Lincoln forgot about this once the South raised their voices. On the 50th anniversary of the Constitution (1839), John Quincy Adams reaffirmed the Constitutional right of secession:
"If the day should ever come (may Heaven avert it!) when the affections of the people of these States shall be alienated from each other; when the fraternal spirit shall give way to cold indifference, or collision of interests shall fester into hatred, the bands of political associations will not long hold together parties no longer attracted by the magnetism of conciliated interests and kindly sympathies; and far better will it be for the people of the disunited states to part in friendship from each other, than to be held together by constraint."
Lincoln had forgotten his own words, the Constitution, and the words of Jefferson who said, "If any state in the Union will declare that it prefers separation … to a continuance in the union … I have no hesitation in saying, 'Let us separate.'" Even the newspapers stood to support the South. New York favored it in the New York Tribune editorial on February 5, 1860, where they wrote, "If tyranny and despotism justified the Revolution of 1776, then we do not see why it would not justify the secession of Five Millions of Southrons from the Federal Union in 1861." And Maryland Representative Jacob M. Kunkel said, "Any attempt to preserve the Union between the States of this Confederacy by force would be impractical, and destructive of republican liberty."
Ending slavery and racial injustice is not why the North invaded. As Lincoln wrote to Horace Greeley on Aug. 22, 1862: "My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it"
Congress announced to the world on July 22, 1861, that the purpose of the war was not "interfering with the rights or established institutions of those states" (i.e., slavery), but to preserve the Union "with the rights of the several states unimpaired." At the time of Fort Sumter (April 12, 1861) only the seven states of the deep South had seceded. There were more slaves in the Union than out of it, and Lincoln had no plans to free any of them.
The North invaded to regain lost federal tax revenue by keeping the Union intact by force of arms. In his First Inaugural Lincoln promised to invade any state that failed to collect "the duties and imposts," and he kept his promise. On April 19, 1861, the reason Lincoln gave for his naval blockade of the Southern ports was that "the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed" in the states that had seceded.
The Civil war may have saved the Union geographically, but it destroyed it philosophically by destroying its voluntary nature. In the Articles of Confederation, the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution, the states described themselves as "free and independent." They delegated certain powers to the federal government they had created as their agent but retained sovereignty for themselves.
This was widely understood in the North as well as the South in 1861. As the Brooklyn Daily Eagle editorialized on Nov. 13, 1860, the Union "depends for its continuance on the free consent and will of the sovereign people of each state, and when that consent and will is withdrawn on either part, their Union is gone." The New York Journal of Commerce concurred, writing on Jan. 12, 1861, that a coerced Union changes the nature of government from "a voluntary one, in which the people are sovereigns, to a despotism where one part of the people are slaves." The majority of Northern newspapers agreed.
Lincoln wanted nothing to do with either equality or natural rights. His words: "I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and black races," he announced in his Aug. 21, 1858, debate with Stephen Douglas. "I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong having the superior position." And, "Free them [slaves] and make them politically and socially our equals? My own feelings will not admit of this. We cannot, then, make them equals."
In Springfield, Ill., on July 17, 1858, Lincoln said, "What I would most desire would be the separation of the white and black races." On Sept. 18, 1858, in Charleston, Ill., he said: "I will to the very last stand by the law of this state, which forbids the marrying of white people with Negroes."
Lincoln supported the Illinois Constitution, which prohibited the emigration of black people into the state, and he also supported the Illinois Black Codes, which deprived the small number of free blacks in the state any semblance of citizenship. He strongly supported the Fugitive Slave Act, which compelled Northern states to capture runaway slaves and return them to their owners. In his First Inaugural he pledged his support of a proposed constitutional amendment that had just passed the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives that would have prohibited the federal government from ever having the power "to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State." In his First Inaugural Lincoln advocated making this amendment "express and irrevocable."

 

[mikewint]

Lincoln was also a lifelong advocate of "colonization" or shipping all black people to Africa, Central America, Haiti--anywhere but here. "I cannot make it better known than it already is," he stated in a Dec. 1, 1862, Message to Congress, "that I strongly favor colonization." To Lincoln, blacks could be "equal," but not in the United States.
Generations of historians have labeled Lincoln a "dictator." "Dictatorship played a decisive role in the North's successful effort to maintain the Union by force of arms," wrote Clinton Rossiter in "Constitutional Dictatorship." And, "Lincoln's amazing disregard for the Constitution was considered by nobody as legal."
James G. Randall documented Lincoln's assault on the Constitution in "Constitutional Problems Under Lincoln." Lincoln unconstitutionally suspended the writ of habeas corpus and had the military arrest tens of thousands of Northern political opponents, including dozens of newspaper editors and owners. Some 300 newspapers were shut down and all telegraph communication was censored. Francis Key Howard, grandson of Francis Scott Key, was arrested on September 13, 1861 by U.S. major general Nathaniel Prentice Banks on the direct orders of general George B. McClellan enforcing the policy of President Abraham Lincoln. The basis for his arrest was for writing a critical editorial in his newspaper of Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus, and the fact that the Lincoln administration had declared martial law in Baltimore and imprisoned without due process Baltimore mayor George William Brown, Unionist Congressman Henry May, the police commissioners of Baltimore and the entire city council. Howard was confined to Fort McHenry, the same fort his grandfather Francis Scott Key saw withstand a British bombardment during the War of 1812, which inspired him to write The Star Spangled Banner .
Lincoln established a secret police force under Secretary of State William Seward that arbitrarily arrested thousands of Northern citizens. Some historians put the number of detainees as high as 13,000.
Northern elections were rigged, the army watched over the New York elections of 1864 — and the Republicans took the state by 7000 votes. Ballots were made of different colors during the November 1861 elections in Maryland. Those who voted for the wrong party were arrested on the charge of "polluting the ballot box"
Hundreds of New York City draft protesters were gunned down by federal troops.
West Virginia was unconstitutionally carved out of Virginia; and the most outspoken member of the Democratic Party opposition, Congressman Clement L. Vallandigham of Ohio, was deported. Duly elected members of the Maryland legislature were imprisoned, as was the mayor of Baltimore and Congressman Henry May. The border states were systematically disarmed in violation of the Second Amendment and private property was confiscated. Lincoln's apologists say he had "to destroy the Constitution in order to save it."
Lincoln is widely portrayed as a great humanitarian with "malice toward none." This is inconsistent with the fact that Lincoln micromanaged the waging of war on civilians, including the burning of entire towns populated only by civilians; massive looting and plundering; rape; and the execution of civilians (See Mark Grimsley, "The Hard Hand of War"). Union Army Major General Benjamin Butler hung William Bruce Mumford in New Orleans on June 7, 1862 for the "crime" of removing an American flag from the US Mint building. Lincoln refused to pay money owed to Native Americans in the summer of 1862, and instead sent out General John Pope to deal with them. Pope said, "It is my purpose to utterly exterminate the Sioux. They are to be treated as maniacs or wild beasts, and by no means as people with whom treaties or compromise can be made."
Lincoln ordered the execution of 39 Indians (without charges against them) from Minnesota on December 26, 1862 — the largest mass execution in American history.
Lincoln's so-called greatest achievement, the Emancipation Proclamation (1863), is believed by many to be the act that freed slaves in the United States. But this is a complete misunderstanding of what the declaration was. Lincoln did not declare slaves free altogether — he declared them free in the seceded states, which at the time he had no legal authority over in the eyes of the South. Secretary of State William Seward was aware of how pointless this exercise was when he said, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." None of the Northern states were ordered to free their slaves.
Newspapers at the time were well aware of the emptiness of the Proclamation. The New York World said Lincoln "has proclaimed emancipation only where he has notoriously no power to execute it." His words were "not merely futile, but ridiculous." The London Spectator was even more cynical, saying, "The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States." And one of Lincoln's greatest generals, Ulysses S. Grant, concurred. On the issue of the Civil War being fueled by slavery, he said, "If I thought this war was to abolish slavery, I would resign my commission, and offer my sword to the other side."
Paper money carries the phrase that declares paper as being Legal Tender. Rather than use taxation or borrowing to fund the war, Lincoln decided to print his own legal tender. Up to this point, money was based on a gold standard — where the value of money had to match the value of gold that could back it up. Lincoln ordered money be printed at taken at face value, a move that in the long term decreased the value of money and led to numerous economic problems.
Worse than simply creating imaginary money, Lincoln did this in direct violation of the United States Constitution, which prohibited the government (both state and federal) from issuing legal tender. They could makes coins and decide the value of coins, but not create new money from nothing (gold coins come from gold, whereas paper money comes from paper — a substance that prior to social construction has no value).
The Legal Tender Act of 1862 was enacted to issue paper money to finance the Civil War without raising taxes. The paper money depreciated in terms of gold and became the subject of controversy, particularly because debts contracted earlier could be paid in this cheaper currency.
In the ultimate irony, the issue reached the Supreme Court in Hepburn versus Griswold. The justice writing the opinion that Lincoln's law was unconstitutional was Salmon Chase, who during Lincoln's presidency was the Secretary of the Treasury. According to Hornberger, "Chase pointed out that there was no express power in the Constitution authorizing legal-tender laws. And he rejected the notion that the express power to wage war included an implied power to enact legal-tender legislation, observing that the Constitution expressly gave the government the powers to tax and borrow to finance its wars."

 

[javlin]

Lincoln was also a lifelong advocate of "colonization" or shipping all black people to Africa, Central America, Haiti--anywhere but here. "I cannot make it better known than it already is," he stated in a Dec. 1, 1862, Message to Congress, "that I strongly favor colonization." To Lincoln, blacks could be "equal," but not in the United States.
Worse than simply creating imaginary money, Lincoln did this in direct violation of the United States Constitution, which prohibited the government (both state and federal) from issuing legal tender. They could makes coins and decide the value of coins, but not create new money from nothing (gold coins come from gold, whereas paper money comes from paper — a substance that prior to social construction has no value).

I find this interesting here and did not know!!

The Legal Tender Act of 1862 was enacted to issue paper money to finance the Civil War without raising taxes. The paper money depreciated in terms of gold and became the subject of controversy, particularly because debts contracted earlier could be paid in this cheaper currency.
In the ultimate irony, the issue reached the Supreme Court in Hepburn versus Griswold. The justice writing the opinion that Lincoln's law was unconstitutional was Salmon Chase, who during Lincoln's presidency was the Secretary of the Treasury. According to Hornberger, "Chase pointed out that there was no express power in the Constitution authorizing legal-tender laws. And he rejected the notion that the express power to wage war included an implied power to enact legal-tender legislation, observing that the Constitution expressly gave the government the powers to tax and borrow to finance its wars."

Not a Lincoln fan?? I have had some doubts on some of the other issues myself but have never relly delved into them though.

 

[michaelmaltby]

Lincoln stood for re-election in the middle of a Civil War - against a former General of his - and bitter opponent (George McClelland) - and won. No democracy has ever pulled that off - before or after.

"Dictator"...... Mike? Hardly.

I'd enjoy hearing your views on the "constitutional abuses" of FDR.

MM

 

[PCScipio42]

LOL.....the tired old "Lincoln was a tyrant' or "Lincoln was a dictator" line of thought. Nevermind that Jefferson Davis suspended habues corpus or instituted conscription as well. In fact, there was very little that Lincoln's detractors point out that Davis did not do as well.

For another point of view on legal tender, see this link here: THE HISTORY OF MONEY Abraham Lincoln's Greenback Dollar. Some might find it enlightening.

Vallandingham got off light...there was some that wanted him tried and hanged for treason. But why make a martyr out of him?

US policy with Native Americans was shameful, something that occurred before, during and after Lincoln.

Lincoln was hardly a micromanager of the military effort. Grant and Sherman had pretty much free reign to prosecute the war as they seemed fit. Maybe the south should have protected their country and land better to prevent the evil north from marching across whole states doing what it pleased.

I live in Maryland and I wish someone would lock up the politicians currently in office now.

 

[mikewint]

MichaelM, Don't get me started on FDR. I am not so much anti-Lincoln as anti-St. Lincoln revisionist history. Don't call someone "The great Emancipator" when in fact he emacipated no one, and so on with all the St. Abe myths that have become part of our culture in America.
Sherman should have been tried for war crimes and to a lesser extent Grant also. The corruption in Grant's presidency was almost beyond belief

 

[renrich]

Enjoyed your thought provoking post, Mike. Many thanks. Some further thoughts and observations.

I have heard it said and written; "The US has never lost a war." Perhaps Viet Nam was not a loss or maybe it was but one part of our country did lose a war. The South lost the War and was occupied and treated like a " red headed step child." In Texas our representatives elected and sent to Washington were rejected. All who had served in the CSA Army were disenfranchised while at the same time former slaves were rounded up and "voted."

In thinking about the situation I wonder about the following scenario: The Deep South secedes and Lincoln and Congress say, "Ok, if you want to go, go and don't let the door knob hit you in the rear and good luck." Maybe Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, etc. stay or maybe they go. The Union does not lift a finger to stop them. The Union still exists from the Atlantic to the Pacific with it's industry, railroads, now spanning the continent and roads and canals and many immigrants flooding in. The Southern Confederacy has little industry, a weak transportation system and it's agricultural exports and not much immigration as before. The Confederacy is fractious.

If the Union treats it's remaining slave states equably and the dust settles, there is a strong possibilty that the states that seceded, if the Union extends the invitation, will return. If they don't, so what. The Union will be that much stronger if all it's members are there purely because they want to be there. The above is a fantasy and probably unlikely but stranger things have happened.

 

[PCScipio42]

In thinking about the situation I wonder about the following scenario: The Deep South secedes and Lincoln and Congress say, "Ok, if you want to go, go and don't let the door knob hit you in the rear and good luck." Maybe Virginia, Tennessee, North Carolina, etc. stay or maybe they go. The Union does not lift a finger to stop them. The Union still exists from the Atlantic to the Pacific with it's industry, railroads, now spanning the continent and roads and canals and many immigrants flooding in. The Southern Confederacy has little industry, a weak transportation system and it's agricultural exports and not much immigration as before. The Confederacy is fractious.

.

That was pretty much what Seward wanted to do. How long before disputes over the western territories start given the above scenario?

How did John B Gordon and Joseph Wheeler become members of Congress if everyone who served in the CSA army was disenfranchised?

 

[mikewint]

In the very beginning of Lincoln's presidential term, a group of "Peace Democrats" proposed a peaceful resolution to the developing Civil War by offering a truce with the South, and forming a constitutional convention to amend the U.S. Constitution to protect States' rights. The proposal was ignored by the Unionists of the North and not taken seriously by the South. However, the Peace Democrats, also called copperheads (for the venomous snake but worn as a badge as they cut out the liberty on pennies and wore them) by their enemies, publicly criticized Lincoln's belief that violating the U.S. Constitution was required to save it as a whole. With Congress not in session until July, Lincoln assumed all powers not delegated in the Constitution, including the power to suspend habeas corpus. In 1861, Lincoln had already suspended civil law in territories where resistance to the North's military power would be dangerous. In 1862, when copperhead democrats began criticizing Lincoln's violation of the Constitution, Lincoln suspended habeas corpus throughout the nation and had many copperhead democrats arrested under military authority because he felt that the State Courts in the north west would not convict war protesters such as the copperheads. He proclaimed that all persons who discouraged enlistments or engaged in disloyal practices would come under Martial Law.
Copperheads were suspected of disloyalty, and their leaders were sometimes arrested and held for months in military prisons without trial. One famous example was General Ambrose Burnside's 1863 General Order Number 38, issued in Ohio, which made it an offence (to be tried in military court) to criticize the war in any way. The order was used to arrest Ohio congressman Clement L. Vallandigham when he criticized the order itself. Lincoln, however, commuted his sentence while requiring his exile to the Confederacy.
Among the other13,000 people arrested under martial law was a Maryland Secessionist, John Merryman. Immediately, Hon. Roger B. Taney, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of the United States issued a writ of habeas corpus commanding the military to bring Merryman before him. The military refused to follow the writ. Justice Taney, in Ex parte MERRYMAN, then ruled the suspension of habeas corpus unconstitutional because the writ could not be suspended without an Act of Congress. President Lincoln and the military ignored Justice Taney's ruling.

 

[renrich]

Those former Confederates were undisenfranchised ( is that a word) after reconstruction which took around ten years. At the same time, shortly after the war, when former Confederates were not allowed to vote in Texas and former slaves were "voted" blacks could not vote in New York. IMO, as I have stated, slavery was an abomination and the introduction of slavery was the worst event in the history of the US. The attack by the Union on the South to force them back into the Union was also an abomination and was one of the worst events in the history of the US.

For those interested, if you want a few clues as to why the War Between the States took place, read "Albion's Seed" by David Hackett Fischer. The book outlines the differences between the four different groups of settlers who migrated to the US from England in the period 1600-1775. The book is not about the origin of the War but it is clear that there were major differences among the early settlers which obtain even today.

 

[PCScipio42]

Ah.....Judge Taney....author of the Dred Scott decision. Talk about abominations.... Judge Taney by himself had no power or authority to do anything. That would reside with the Supreme Court as a whole, not one justice....and a severely misguided one at that.

The copperheads were doing more than just voicing their opinions about the war, up to and including meeting with CSA officials.

Sorry if I am not overly sympathetic towards the south about the war. My opinion is that the deep south left because they didn't like the results of an election, were worried about the extension of slavery, and even more worried about the eventual abolition of slavery altogether. And to think that only a small percentage of the population owned slaves.....the rich, who held the power and manipulated the rest of the citizenry towards secession. Read the articles of seccession for Mississippi and see how slavery was the main factor here: Mississippi Declarations of Causes of Seceding States.

So while the war was wasteful, in terms of lives and property being destroyed, not counting the money spent, I don't see the south compromising after Lincoln's election.

All of which is my opinion, and we will have to agree to disagree.