*Civil War Thread*

[Schadenfroh]

The Southern states were the ones to actually start the war when they fired on the Star of the West and eventually Fort Sumter.

No one was killed during the battle for Fort Sumter. The southern forces gave them plenty of time to leave the fort and return home. A couple of Union soldiers blew themselves up during a 100-gun salute to the US flag, but that is it in terms of casualties.

Confederate forces had seized many federal installations throughout the south without any problems or violence. The USA had no need to have these facilities on another nation's soil.

This gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to invade the sovereign republics in the CSA.

once the CSA attacked the issue of slavery was decided anyway, it would be abolished nationwide once the Union put down the rebellion

Crittenden-Johnson Resolution says:

Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south's "peculiar institution" of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery.

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation excluded...

The Proclamation exempted slaveholding border states which had not seceded from the Union, and those states already under Union control.

 

[K1052]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

The Southern states were the ones to actually start the war when they fired on the Star of the West and eventually Fort Sumter.

No one was killed during the battle for fort sumter. The southern forces gave them plenty of time to leave the fort and return home. A couple of union soldiers blew themselves up during a 100-gun salute to the US flag, but that is it in terms of casualties.

Confederate forces had seized many federal installations throughout the south without any problems or violence. The USA had no need to have these facilities on another nation's soil.

This gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to invade the sovereign republics in the CSA.

once the CSA attacked the issue of slavery was decided anyway, it would be abolished nationwide once the Union put down the rebellion

Crittenden-Johnson Resolution says:

Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south's "peculiar institution" of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery.

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation excluded...

The Proclamation exempted slaveholding border states which had not seceded from the Union, and those states already under Union control.

Still an act of war on a federally maintained/manned installation.

A good number of congressmen had raised a significant amount of political capitol on selling this as a war to end slavery (to their abolitionist constituents) and they were going to deliver.

Of course the proclamation didn't extend the border states that had sided with the Union. I never said it extended from some higher moral ground (even though he successfully sold it that way to foreign powers). Lincoln had no interest in possibly altering the course of the war in the south's advantage. He knew that once the CSA was defeated that congress would make slavery history in the entire US.

 

[Linflas]

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

The Southern states were the ones to actually start the war when they fired on the Star of the West and eventually Fort Sumter.

No one was killed during the battle for fort sumter. The southern forces gave them plenty of time to leave the fort and return home. A couple of union soldiers blew themselves up during a 100-gun salute to the US flag, but that is it in terms of casualties.

Confederate forces had seized many federal installations throughout the south without any problems or violence. The USA had no need to have these facilities on another nation's soil.

This gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to invade the sovereign republics in the CSA.

once the CSA attacked the issue of slavery was decided anyway, it would be abolished nationwide once the Union put down the rebellion

Crittenden-Johnson Resolution says:

Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south's "peculiar institution" of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery.

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation excluded...

The Proclamation exempted slaveholding border states which had not seceded from the Union, and those states already under Union control.

Still an act of war on a federally maintained/manned installation.

A good number of congressmen had raised a significant amount of political capitol on selling this as a war to end slavery (to their abolitionist constituents) and they were going to deliver.

Of course the proclamation didn't extend the border states that had sided with the Union. I never said it extended from some higher moral ground (even though he successfully sold it that way to foreign powers). Lincoln had no interest in possibly altering the course of the war in the south's advantage. He knew that once the CSA was defeated that congress would make slavery history in the entire US.

Had they not fired on Sumter there was probably a good chance that the firebrands would have lost the momentum for secession. One thing to keep in mind is that secession was not the product of a mass popular movement in the South. No more than 33% of the population were slave owners.

 

[XMan]

Originally posted by: Linflas

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

The Southern states were the ones to actually start the war when they fired on the Star of the West and eventually Fort Sumter.

No one was killed during the battle for fort sumter. The southern forces gave them plenty of time to leave the fort and return home. A couple of union soldiers blew themselves up during a 100-gun salute to the US flag, but that is it in terms of casualties.

Confederate forces had seized many federal installations throughout the south without any problems or violence. The USA had no need to have these facilities on another nation's soil.

This gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to invade the sovereign republics in the CSA.

once the CSA attacked the issue of slavery was decided anyway, it would be abolished nationwide once the Union put down the rebellion

Crittenden-Johnson Resolution says:

Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south's "peculiar institution" of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery.

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation excluded...

The Proclamation exempted slaveholding border states which had not seceded from the Union, and those states already under Union control.

Still an act of war on a federally maintained/manned installation.

A good number of congressmen had raised a significant amount of political capitol on selling this as a war to end slavery (to their abolitionist constituents) and they were going to deliver.

Of course the proclamation didn't extend the border states that had sided with the Union. I never said it extended from some higher moral ground (even though he successfully sold it that way to foreign powers). Lincoln had no interest in possibly altering the course of the war in the south's advantage. He knew that once the CSA was defeated that congress would make slavery history in the entire US.

Had they not fired on Sumter there was probably a good chance that the firebrands would have lost the momentum for secession. One thing to keep in mind is that secession was not the product of a mass popular movement in the South. No more than 33% of the population were slave owners .

Yup. Slaves were expensive.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: X-Man

Originally posted by: Linflas

Originally posted by: K1052

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

The Southern states were the ones to actually start the war when they fired on the Star of the West and eventually Fort Sumter.

No one was killed during the battle for fort sumter. The southern forces gave them plenty of time to leave the fort and return home. A couple of union soldiers blew themselves up during a 100-gun salute to the US flag, but that is it in terms of casualties.

Confederate forces had seized many federal installations throughout the south without any problems or violence. The USA had no need to have these facilities on another nation's soil.

This gave Lincoln the excuse he needed to invade the sovereign republics in the CSA.

once the CSA attacked the issue of slavery was decided anyway, it would be abolished nationwide once the Union put down the rebellion

Crittenden-Johnson Resolution says:

Specifically, the resolution stated that the war was being waged for the reunion of the states, and not to abolish the south's "peculiar institution" of slavery. The resolution required the Union Government to take no actions against institution of slavery.

Too bad the Emancipation Proclamation excluded...

The Proclamation exempted slaveholding border states which had not seceded from the Union, and those states already under Union control.

Still an act of war on a federally maintained/manned installation.

A good number of congressmen had raised a significant amount of political capitol on selling this as a war to end slavery (to their abolitionist constituents) and they were going to deliver.

Of course the proclamation didn't extend the border states that had sided with the Union. I never said it extended from some higher moral ground (even though he successfully sold it that way to foreign powers). Lincoln had no interest in possibly altering the course of the war in the south's advantage. He knew that once the CSA was defeated that congress would make slavery history in the entire US.

Had they not fired on Sumter there was probably a good chance that the firebrands would have lost the momentum for secession. One thing to keep in mind is that secession was not the product of a mass popular movement in the South. No more than 33% of the population were slave owners .

Yup. Slaves were expensive.

Extremely, not only did you have to pay for the slave (western civ book says around $1800 in the mid 1800s currency for a field worker, non artisan) but you also had to pay for housing, food, and other expenses to protect the investment. Also, the major slave owners were capitalist businessmen and it was not in their best of interests to subject them to extreme abuse and starve them to the point of being unproductive or die (and lose their investment).

If they had hired some impoverished free southerners to work in the fields and perform artisan work (rather than importing slaves), most southerners would not have been impoverished as badly as they were. Hence one of the reasons I am completely against slavery and would have been against it back then as well.

BTW, adjusted for inflation, how much is $1800 in 1850 currency now?

 

[GalvanizedYankee]

The tarrif enacted in 1832 was hated by the Southern States. Fory Sumter was a customs house.
The South wanted the transcontinental railroad to head through Texas. This was years before hostilities.
Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War under Pres.Buchanan and during that time Davis moved huge stores of canon & powder to the Southern armories.
U.S.Grant was married to kin of James Longstreet, a Miss Jullia Dent.
The South needed a scape goat after the war. Longstreet was it.
R.E.Lee was the best field General at the time and was a man of driven virtue. His father was a respected General during the Revolutionary War but after the War went through the fortunes of two wives then went to the Caribbean to breed slaves(no nice way to say it).
Never forget, cotton was king and we were to the world what the Middle East is today with thier oil. Both France and Britain loved interfering in our affairs.
The South could never had won a clear victory after the first year. If they had moved quickly on The Capitol in the first few months...Yes, victory was probable.
Lincoln would have preserved The Union w/slavery, if he could have.
It truely was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight. Still true today.

It pisses me off no end that Northerers want to lay slavery in the laps of the South. We all own it, then & now. It IS OUR History. Where did the money come from that built the North??
The song Dixie was written by a Northerner and the cotton gin was a Northern invention that freed many from seed pulling to return to the fields. This was a real boon as cotton was labor intensive and slavery was not supporting itself well till the gin came along.

http://www.juneteenth.com/ should prove interesting to some.

I have about 25 volumes here on this period of our History. Five I'll list.
With My Face to the Enemy, a fantastic selection of essays ISBN 0-399-14737-3
The White Tecumseh, VG Bio of W.T.Sherman ISBN 0-471-28329-0
April 1865 ISBN 0-06-093088-8
Reconstruction, a must read=very little has changed ISBN 0-06-093716-5
Confederaters in The Attic by Tony Horwitz, very funny fact filled read. I gave my copy away.

Google my nick, galvanized yankee. Along with black troops, many galvanized yankees went to the South West to kill native Americans.

OP, if you want any book recs, just PM me.


...Galvanized

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: GalvanizedYankee
The tarrif enacted in 1832 was hated by the Southern States. Fory Sumter was a customs house.
The South wanted the transcontinental railroad to head through Texas. This was years before hostilities.
Jefferson Davis was Secretary of War under Pres.Buchanan and during that time Davis moved huge stores of canon & powder to the Southern armories.
U.S.Grant was married to kin of James Longstreet, a Miss Jullia Dent.
The South needed a scape goat after the war. Longstreet was it.
R.E.Lee was the best field General at the time and was a man of driven virtue. His father was a respected General during the Revolutionary War but after the War went through the fortunes of two wives then went to the Caribbean to breed slaves(no nice way to say it).
Never forget, cotton was king and we were to the world what the Middle East is today with thier oil. Both France and Britain loved interfering in our affairs.
The South could never had won a clear victory after the first year. If they had moved quickly on The Capitol in the first few months...Yes, victory was probable.
Lincoln would have preserved The Union w/slavery, if he could have.
It truely was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight. Still true today.

It pisses me off no end that Northerers want to lay slavery in the laps of the South. We all own it, then & now. It IS OUR History. Where did the money come from that built the North??
The song Dixie was written by a Northerner and the cotton gin was a Northern invention that freed many from seed pulling to return to the fields. This was a real boon as cotton was labor intensive and slavery was not supporting itself well till the gin came along.

http://www.juneteenth.com/ should prove interesting to some.

I have about 25 volumes here on this period of our History. Five I'll list.
With My Face to the Enemy, a fantastic selection of essays ISBN 0-399-14737-3
The White Tecumseh, VG Bio of W.T.Sherman ISBN 0-471-28329-0
April 1865 ISBN 0-06-093088-8
Reconstruction, a must read=very little has changed ISBN 0-06-093716-5
Confederaters in The Attic by Tony Horwitz, very funny fact filled read. I gave my copy away.

Google my nick, galvanized yankee. Along with black troops, many galvanized yankees went to the South West to kill native Americans.

OP, if you want any book recs, just PM me.


...Galvanized

Thanks for the post, interesting read.

 

[raildogg]

Originally posted by: RapidSnail
I have several friends who are from the South. As such, they are huge on the Civil War. Of course since I'm a Northerner, we frequently debate about it. I decided to create this thread as an area for debate and discussion about Civil War topics.

I'll kick it off by asking whether you view Lincoln's choice to preserve the Union through war was right or wrong. (My southern friends believe it was wrong, that's why I ask.)

So what do your Southern friends say? That the South was right?

I'm Southern and I think it was good the North won. The war had more to do with politics than it had to do with the concern about slavery. I think most people overlook that.

 

[fitzov]

Hindsight is 20/20 so we should be able to clearly tell whether the Civil War was right or wrong.

I don't know, I guess hindsight isn't really 20/20.

 

[91TTZ]

They should have let the South secede. They'd be a third world country by now. Look at the literacy,poverty, and teen pregnancy rates in the hardcore Southern states and tell me that I'm wrong.

However, the capitalist Northern states would have probably made the South its trading partner, with its loose pollution laws, and cheap slave labor. They feel it's ok to exploit people, as long as they don't live in your country.

 

[Babbles]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
They should have let the South secede. They'd be a third world country by now. Look at the literacy,poverty, and teen pregnancy rates in the hardcore Southern states and tell me that I'm wrong.

You are wrong.

Look at the "hardcore" ghetto cities in the north with illiteracy, poverty, teen pregnancy and crime. Additionally the largest growing economies by region in this country happen to be in the south.

But frankly you are making some pretty dumb conjectures. Back in the day in the pre-Civil War years (and during and after) the North needed the South for the raw materials and goods, and the South needed the North for the industrial complex. The South would be no more of a third world country than the North would be.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: GalvanizedYankee
Lincoln would have preserved The Union w/slavery, if he could have.

What do you mean by this? He could have, the south would have loved that. They tried to negotiate that at the end of the war. They actually did negotiate when the Army of Tennessee surrendered to Sherman, but that deal was rejected.

 

[Schadenfroh]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
They should have let the South secede. They'd be a third world country by now. Look at the literacy,poverty, and teen pregnancy

Look at

Camden, New Jersey
Chicago
New York
Washington, D.C.

 

[RapidSnail]

Originally posted by: raildogg

Originally posted by: RapidSnail
I have several friends who are from the South. As such, they are huge on the Civil War. Of course since I'm a Northerner, we frequently debate about it. I decided to create this thread as an area for debate and discussion about Civil War topics.

I'll kick it off by asking whether you view Lincoln's choice to preserve the Union through war was right or wrong. (My southern friends believe it was wrong, that's why I ask.)

So what do your Southern friends say? That the South was right?

I'm Southern and I think it was good the North won. The war had more to do with politics than it had to do with the concern about slavery. I think most people overlook that.

Bingo.

Originally posted by: fitzov
Hindsight is 20/20 so we should be able to clearly tell whether the Civil War was right or wrong.

I don't know, I guess hindsight isn't really 20/20.

I asked a stupid question just so I could see how to respond in real life. It's difficult to argue with someone who has a twisted view.

 

[91TTZ]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
They should have let the South secede. They'd be a third world country by now. Look at the literacy,poverty, and teen pregnancy

Look at

Camden, New Jersey
Chicago
New York
Washington, D.C.

All Confederate LIES!

 

[RCN]

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
They should have let the South secede. They'd be a third world country by now. Look at the literacy,poverty, and teen pregnancy

Look at

Camden, New Jersey
Chicago
New York
Washington, D.C.

also I think sometimes people forget that many southern states were among the wealthiest in the nation............


I honestly think it would have played out for the better had the Cicil War not occured.........

 

[RCN]

Originally posted by: 91TTZ

Originally posted by: Schadenfroh

Originally posted by: 91TTZ
They should have let the South secede. They'd be a third world country by now. Look at the literacy,poverty, and teen pregnancy

Look at

Camden, New Jersey
Chicago
New York
Washington, D.C.

All Confederate LIES!

 

[Rayden]

I know a guy at my university, in Indiana, who is from the south and still thinks the south would be better off if they left. He'd be up for them leaving right now. He's very into reading alternate history fiction where the south won.

 

[mugs]

Originally posted by: Rayden
I know a guy at my university, in Indiana, who is from the south and still thinks the south would be better off if they left. He'd be up for them leaving right now. He's very into reading alternate history fiction where the south won.

He sounds delusional. The south benefits a lot from the tax dollars of the "blue" states.

 

[cker]

Lincoln was personally in favor of emancipation, but would have taken or left it politically. His priority -- rightly so at the time -- was the maintenance of the Union. The North-South differences were simply too great. Setting Lincoln up as a virtuous demigod who gave out freedom out of virtue is inaccurate. It's beautiful, but it misses the facts of the matter.

I don't agree, by the way, that slavery should have been allowed to exist. I'm just saying as the President, Lincoln's first duty was to the nation, and the nation at that time didn't acknowledge Blacks (whether African, Caribbean, et c) as fully human. That policy was despicable but Lincoln's job, which he took very seriously, was the state of the Union. Recall at the time that the nation was still not even 100 years old officially. We think of the USA as always being here, but at the time it was still a new nation, and still a Great Experiment.

If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount objective in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.
- Abraham Lincoln

The comment regarding Eli Whitney's cotton gin was spot-on, too. I don't have any studies or anything, but I've been told and taught in classes that slavery was no longer economically viable in terms of the cotton trade, until the gin came along. The process of combing seeds from cotton was too labor intensive. The gin allowed a machine to do that work, allowing the slaves to collect the cotton bolls, and made cotton a profitable commodity in the South.

I never have heard a good reason that slavery was allowed, except the slave-owners were too wealthy when the nation was formed. Certainly the founders were very against it -- at least Washington, Franklin and John Jay were aware of the ridiculous paradox of forming a nation where people can be free, and allowing slavery to exist in that state.

 

[Excelsior]

Originally posted by: mugs

Originally posted by: Rayden
I know a guy at my university, in Indiana, who is from the south and still thinks the south would be better off if they left. He'd be up for them leaving right now. He's very into reading alternate history fiction where the south won.

He sounds delusional. The south benefits a lot from the tax dollars of the "blue" states.

Yeah, but that is now, not then.