Conference smurf::civil_war

    
    
     I just visited there last month. During the begining of the Civil
    War, Fort Sumter was still under construction, and the Federal troops
    under Maj Anderson evacuated from Fort Moultrie to Sumter disguised as 
    construction workers. Once on the island, they worked on the
    fortifications. During the lectures on the tour, I don't recall anybody
    mentioning how Sumter got it's name.
    
     Other interesting things that they did mention:
    
     o Major Anderson and his men were never captured. They were allowed to
    abandon the fort, but were not taken as P.O.W.s , and were greeted to a
    hero's welcome up north.
    
    o  During WWII, big anti-battleship guns were mounted at the fort to
    protect Charleston Harbor from enemy ships.
    
    o   During WWII, an anti-submarine net was placed between Sumter and 
    Charleston to protect against enemy subs and U-boats. 
    
    o  Around the end of WWII, it was decomissioned as a Fort.
    
     Bob
    

    Construction of Fort Sumter was begun in 1829; the fort was designed to
    mount 136 guns in three tiers, two in embrasure and one "en barbette."
    On the eve of the ACW, the works were substantially finished but the
    armament consisted of only 6 24-pounders, 41 32-pounders, 10 8-inch
    Rodman guns, 10 42-pounders, 3 10-inch columbiads, and 8 8-inch
    seacoast howitzers.  The openings for the remaining guns were bricked
    up to render them as strong as possible.
    
    The fort was probably named after Col. Thomas Sumter (1734-1832), who
    had been prominent in the events leading up to the American Revolution
    and commanded the 2nd South Carolina Riflemen in the Revolution.  He
    was later a member of the convention that adopted the Federal
    Constitution.  He was a member of Congress 1789-93 and 1797-1801,
    Senator 1801-09, US Minister to Brazil 1809-11.
    
    This info comes from Johnson's Universal Cyclopedia, (c) 1897.
    
    -dick

    As a side note, the same Major Anderson was the person who re-raised
    the National Flag over Fort Sumter when the War ended. He was brought
    down there to expressly do that having been forced to evacuate the
    fort, it was thought fitting (and I personally concur) that he be
    the one to reclaim it with the war over.

    FWIW, my great grandfather, E.J. Anderson, said in a letter to his
    daughter (who was doing family research) that Major Anderson was one
    of our family.  He said the physical resemblance to others in the
    family was striking, but he supplied no documentation...
    
    -dick

    Memory fails me a bit, but, I think in the Time-Life Series of
    Books on the Civil War there may be at least one photo of Major
    Anderson in it. Perhaps if you can get a look at that and then
    compare it with any other phonot's of members of your family
    which you referred to you might strike gold?
    
    Good luck
     J

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EST::RANDOLPH "Tom R. N1OOQ"                         12 lines   7-AUG-1995 16:32
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>       <<< Note 505.110 by DECWIN::RALTO "Stay in bed, float upstream" >>>
>    rests.  If we accept these, we've bought into the whole mess.  So
>    I'm compelled to question these assumptions and ask:  Why should
>    a group of states be forced to remain in a politicial entity that
>    they no longer wish to be associated with?  What is so unacceptable
>    about this, that it demands a response involving half a million deaths?

They shouldn't necessarily, in fact our Declaration of Independence says they
shouldn't. But once they start firing on forts and garrisons of that
political entity, anything goes. The feeling among Sherman's troops on
reaching Charleston toward the end of the war was "this is where treason
started, and this is where it will end". Not unlike Pearl Harbor in effect...

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    .117
    
    The firing on Fort Sumter was in direct response to an attempt by the
    Federals to resupply the fort by sea.  The fort was in Confederate
    territory, and its commandant had been ordered by the army of the
    nation whose territory he was violating to abandon the fort - had he
    done so, there would have been no firing.  The Federal resupply effort
    was thus the first act of war, not the firing by the shore batteries.

    	Theoretically, had the Union accepted the right of a state to
    secede, which Lincoln categorically denied them not even asking for
    a Sumpreme Court decision that I know of, then a seceded state would
    be obligated to compensate the federal government for federal
    properties within the state that it had seized.
    	Anderson had withdrawn his troops from Charleston early after the
    S. Carolinian legislature voted for secession to avoid any violence and
    did not choose to try to defend federal properties, such as the post
    office.
    	Anderson had been a West point instructor. The Confederate
    commander, Beareguard, was a former student of his. Before the firing
    on the fort, they had several courteous meetings. It is no surprise
    that the federal troops were allowed to go free, the Secessionists had
    no desire to go to war other than to defend their soil and their right
    to secede.
    	The point is moot, however, as both sides were spoiling for a
    fight. War was seen as manly, heroic, an epic adventure (many men lived
    their entire lives without leaving the county in which they were born)
    and that it would be over in one summer. At its end, we saw the kernal
    of modern trench warfare with the frontal infantry assault a relic of
    the past.   BillM

>                       <<< Note 81.7 by PKHUB1::MROPRT >>>
>    	The point is moot, however, as both sides were spoiling for a
>    fight. War was seen as manly, heroic, an epic adventure (many men lived
>    their entire lives without leaving the county in which they were born)
>    and that it would be over in one summer.

Yup. My point is simple... Once Beauregard fired that first shot, that was
all the reason needed back then to wage the bloodiest war imaginable.

Remember the incident when two Confederate diplomats on the way to London
were captured by the Navy... England almost declared war on the North.
British troops were prepared to move into Canada.  Lincoln said, "One war at
a time", and let them go. It didn't take much back then!

I don't recall Anderson doing or intending to do anything particularly
warlike other than just sitting there in a strategic position. It may well
have ended in a stalemate had the Confederates not fired...

    Lincoln's failure to ascertain the Constitutinal validity of his
    actions appears to me an unforgiveable, possible impeachable, breach of
    office.  I suggest that the right of secession, not being explicitly
    denied under the Constitution, is guaranteed by the 9th and 10th
    Amendments.
    
    On another note, by the unsupported word of my great-grandfather E. J.
    Anderson, the commander of Fort Sumter is a collateral ancestor of mine.
    I really ought to do the research to see if E. J. A. was right.

    	Lincoln was crafty in not seeking the court's advice, as he would
    have lost. The court was stacked with Whig appointees high on state's
    rights (e.g. the Dread Scott decision where escaped slaves in the 
    North had to be returned to their southern owners as their rightful
    property.)
    	Lincoln jailed hundreds, including the mayor of Baltimore. He
    suspended the right of habeous corpus and generally did what he
    wanted to save the union! If Congress had given him a mandate to
    stop the war he would have probably sent them home at bayonet
    point!
    	It was interesting to find out that most New England farming
    communities' populations peaked just before The Civil War and 
    rapidly declined after it. There was just no way those vets were
    going to stay tilling those rocky farms after they'd seen the
    fertile soils of the Midwest, seen the elephant and fallen to
    the ways of cards, whiskey and Hooker's girls. And that's where
    all those stonewalls going up the hillsides came from!   BillM

    RE .9:
    
    This subject has been debated many times, both here and in the History
    file, and I suspect it will be fought out forever.  However, it may be
    worth a try at clarifying some background and focusing the debate.
    
    I assume in .9 that "Lincoln's actions" are those related to Ft.
    Sumter, Ft. Pickens, and "starting the war", rather than his political
    appointments or suspension of habeus corpus or emancipation, all of
    which have their _own_ debates! :^)  On that assumption, there is NO
    Constitutional validity question about the actions Lincoln took - which
    has nothing to do with the secession question (a separate issue). 
    Lincoln issued lawful orders as Commander-in-Cheif of the armed forces
    to reinforce Pickens and to hold Sumter, both of which were United
    States property UNTIL negotiation with some "foreign" government
    changed their status.  The Supreme Court has no say in how the
    government assigns troops to its bases, or whether those bases should
    be held.  _Congress_ could get involved if a declaration of war against
    a foreign power was required, but Lincoln wasn't declaring war on
    anybody.  The request at Sumter was to resupply food, using an unarmed
    ship.
    
    Now, concerning the "right" to secede:  There have been two main
    approaches to this question - the "Declaration of Independence" idea
    and the "Constitutional" idea.  The former ignores the whether the
    Constitution gives a right to secede, and goes back to a Lockeian
    philosophy of government.  Since in .9 you raise the question of a
    Constitutional right to secede, I assume you are coming from the second
    approach, not the first.
    
    Some historical context is needed here.  After the Revolution, the US
    adopted the Articles of Confederation, which were just that - a
    _con_federation of sovereign states, who gave almost no power to the
    "national" government machinery.  In particular, they gave it no power
    to tax or otherwise compel a State to do anything.  It didn't work, and
    by 1797 lots of people could see it wasn't working, so a convention was
    called to "fix" the Articles.  The "fix" they came up with was a total,
    radical replacement - though the preamble shows the aim was still a
    "fix", in looking for a "more perfect union".
    
    The Constitution differed from the Articles in a lot of ways, but the
    most important for _this_ discussion is that the Constitution created a
    _federation_, not a confederation.  In other words, the Constitution
    was a union of entities who gave up "sovereignty" in joining it,
    creating a federal government which _had_ the power to compel the
    people and the member States to do certain things.  Clearly, the areas
    of federal "compulsion" were limited (we have lots of debates over the
    years about exactly _how_ limited, and to _what_ they were limited, but
    the Constitution is clear that the national government can't simply
    stick its finger in any pie it chooses), which is what the
    "exclusionary" clauses are for, but it is also clear that in _some_
    areas the national government can override the objections of individual
    states.
    
    To me, it is this clear shift from an association of sovereign equals
    to a union which undercuts any argument about a Constitutional "right"
    to secede.  Joining was voluntary, but it was a one-way street; a State
    could not decide on Monday to give the feds the power to tax them, and
    then withdraw from the group when they got out-voted on some tax that
    Friday.
    
    What happened in the lead-in to the Civil War was that the South saw
    the handwriting on the wall, and didn't like it.  The British Empire
    abolished slavery in 1833; there was growing anti-slavery sentiment
    (though not much of a "racial equality" sentiment) in the United
    States, and the South (using convenient shorthand - they certainly were
    not a monolith, as West Virginia proved) looked ahead to a time when
    they might be out-voted on slavery.  As long as the voting in the
    federal government left slavery alone, the South was content to remain,
    and let the anti-slavery faction be "out-voted".  Once the vote might
    go against them, they decided they weren't going to play in the game
    anymore.
    
    The above is a considerable simplification of a complex nest of issues,
    but attempts to focus discussion on the circumstances under which the
    supposed "right to secede" might operate.  Note that even some Southern
    states did not whole-heartedly endorse a right to secede - Virginia
    denied that the West Virginians could "secede from secession", and east
    Tennessee was held in the Confederacy by armed force.  If you look at
    the size of the initial armed forces raised by both sides, when the
    only real cause for the North was preservation of the Union, the "anti-
    secession" group "out-voted" the secessionists, in that the North
    raised a bigger army.  As a further aside, if the "right" to secession
    was so clearly _implicit_ in the U.S. Constitution, why did the CSA see
    the need to make it _explicit_ in theirs?
    
    So, I think in debating the merits of secession, one needs to clearly
    define the ground for arguing a "right" to secede, and to consider the
    consequences of that choice of ground.  And, of course, whether there
    was a right to secede or not is a different question from whether it
    was worth starting a war over - and different yet from who actually
    "started" it! ;^)
    
    MikeR
    

    
.7>    	Theoretically, had the Union accepted the right of a state to
  >  secede, which Lincoln categorically denied them not even asking for
  >  a Sumpreme Court decision that I know of, then a seceded state would
  >  be obligated to compensate the federal government for federal
  >  properties within the state that it had seized.

        The South viewed this as a no-fault divorce, in which each state
        got its share of U.S. government assets. For simplicity, this was
        assumed to be those Federal assets within their state. Perhaps
        Lincoln could have instead insisted on a complete cost accounting
        where the C.S.A. would get a share of the U.S. treasury, assume a
        share of the national debt, etc., but the point was moot as of
        course Lincoln denied their right to secede at all.

        A similar situation arose at the Norfolk Navy Yard. The U.S. Navy
        held the yard but could not defend it against the Virginia militia.
        The militia didn't attack because they assumed it would later be
        handed over intact. The commandant refused to let the "Merrimack" 
        be towed from the yard because it might antagonize the militia, who
        considered it part of Virginia's share. In fact the militia seized
        the yard immediately when the Navy began to destroy things.

        A similar situation arose with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.,
        where each area assumed control of former Soviet bases on its
        territory (with squabbles over the Baltic fleet).

.11>    Lincoln issued lawful orders as Commander-in-Cheif of the armed forces
   > to reinforce Pickens and to hold Sumter, both of which were United
   > States property UNTIL negotiation with some "foreign" government
   > changed their status.  The Supreme Court has no say in how the

        Realistically, most bases were turned over to the Confederates
        because there weren't sufficient troops to hold them, or the troops
        didn't want to shoot and start a war :-). But the Confederates never
        got some, including Fortress Monroe in Virginia.

        A sidelight - in Midwest states admitted to the Union before the
        Civil War, unsold public lands within the state were given to the
        state. In western states admitted later, unsold public lands were
        retained by the U.S. and managed by the Bureau of Land Management,
        currently a sore point with some "wise use" groups. Anyone know
        if this is related to the issue of states assuming title to Federal
        property?

.11>    be held.  _Congress_ could get involved if a declaration of war against
   > a foreign power was required, but Lincoln wasn't declaring war on
   > anybody.  The request at Sumter was to resupply food, using an unarmed
   > ship.

        Perhaps someone trained in conflict resolution might have suggested 
        that the Confederates could avoid firing the first shot by offering to
        supply food from Charleston if they were afraid the ship might carry 
        munitions. This could have provided additional time for negotiations.
        Or a large unarmed force could have been sent to the fort 
        in boats, hoping that Anderson wouldn't shoot first and the fort could
        be taken without bloodshed. But a military officer who tried that might
        be court-martialed for cowardice!

        But the war was bound to happen by then, if shots weren't fired at
        Fort Sumter they would have been elsewhere.
    
.11>    to secede.  Joining was voluntary, but it was a one-way street; a State
   > could not decide on Monday to give the feds the power to tax them, and
   > then withdraw from the group when they got out-voted on some tax that
   > Friday.

        I think that the argument over a constitutional right to secede was
        like the present fight over a constitutional right to abortion, i.e.
        you aren't going to change your mind on what is right based on what
        legal scholars say is in the Constitution.  And Congress could have 
        voted to allow secession in spite of whether it was explicitly allowed
        by the Constitution, or the President could have negotiated conditions
        of secession with the Confederate government.

        Of course once the Southern representatives left Congress, the 
        Northern representatives were mostly pro-Union and couldn't be 
        expected to allow secession. Similarly, the time to secede was
        under a pro-Southern president (when the Union was relatively
        tolerable) rather than after a pro-Union president has just been
        elected who can be expected to resist. 

.10> Lincoln was crafty in not seeking the court's advice, as he would
   > have lost. The court was stacked with Whig appointees high on state's
   > rights (e.g. the Dread Scott decision where escaped slaves in the 
   > North had to be returned to their southern owners as their rightful
   > property.)

        Suppose that rather than unilaterally seceding, the Southern states 
        had asked for a Supreme Court ruling on secession. If they had won,
        this might have gotten them enough swing votes in Congress to pass
        a bill approving terms of secession. Lincoln might not have resisted
        both the Supreme Court and Congress to veto such a bill. And if
        the South seceded after a favorable ruling, it might have gotten 
        them more support from foreign countries, while reducing the will
        of ordinary people in the North to fight for a Union.

    
    	Lincoln also cleverly used the "save the union" slogan and to deny
    the right of a state to secede to rally northerners to a cause that
    would not have worked if he'd stated that he wanted to end slavery,
    greatly increase the federal army and greatly restrict the activities
    of state militias.  Notice, after the war, militias that stayed intact
    became parts of a US Army.
    	The War of Northern agression was good business for the banking
    and railroad tycoons. Four years of bloodshed took hundreds of
    thousands of boys off family farms and led to much more rapid western
    expansion, more needed cheap immigrant labor, and a solid majority of
    eastern, midwestern and pacific states that could overcome and Old
    South issue in future congresses.  
    	Uncle Abe knew he could not get more than a fraction of
    abolishtionist volunteers to rally to a call of free the black man.
    Even Abe, doubted that Blacks were the equals to whites. It is ironic
    that his freeing of the slaves was done to save the union and defeat
    the south, not for moral purposes.  He gets the credit in history for
    an act he was reluctant to do politically!
    BillM

    RE .13:
    
    "Smoke screen"?  I'm somewhat confused by your statements.
    
    1) You say "Lincoln also cleverly used the 'save the union' slogan...to
    rally northerners to a cause that would not have worked if he'd stated
    that he wanted to end slavery."  This seems to imply that Lincoln had
    ending slavery as an aim, and tried to conceal his real aim by focusing
    on secession.  However, I am not aware of anything Lincoln said or
    wrote which indicates ANY intention of taking action to eliminate
    slavery.  He was certainly committed to trying to prevent the
    _expansion_ of slavery, but made repeated statements about his
    intention, as president, to leave it alone where it then was.  He also
    took no action to end slavery, even in states that stayed in the Union,
    until two years into the war - in fact, he overruled an army
    commander's proclamation freeing slaves in an occupied part of the
    South.  So, unless you can cite some evidence of his "intent" to
    eliminate slavery, I don't see how you can say he was using a "smoke
    screen".  (In fact, you later on say "...his freeing of the slaves was
    done to save the union and defeat the south..." which not only agrees
    with available evidence about his thinking on the Emancipation
    Proclamation, but also seems to imply that he did _not_ directly intend
    to free the slaves.)
    
    2) I'm not sure I see what you're getting at in your second paragraph. 
    True, many northern businesses (and many English businesses selling
    goods to the South) made money during the war.  Are you trying to say
    that the war was started so some people could make money?  I doubt the
    folks in the South who worked for secession were trying to aid Northern
    and English business interests, nor am I sure you can make a solid case
    that the U.S. Congress and the various state governments (including the
    solid agricultural states of the midwest) were under the control of
    "business" - especially since _nobody_ I have heard of expected the
    length and scope of war we got.  If the war had ended in 90 days (the
    length of the first call-up of volunteers, prior to Manasas), little
    profit would have been made by business interests.
    
    3) I fail to see how putting lots of people in uniform for four years,
    and making 600,000 of them casualties, could have "led to much more
    rapid western expansion".  Expansion is generally driven by increasing
    population, not killing it off.  In fact, the war was used as a reason
    for several politicians to oppose building the first transcontinental
    railway, but it was chartered anyway (though construction did not
    really get going until the war was over).  Cheap immigrant labor?  The
    immigrants who came and stayed to man the eastern factory towns came
    because of conditions they were _leaving_, not because the U.S. had
    fought a war.  The only cases I know of where immigrants were solicited
    to come involved filling up the land grant territory in the midwest;
    and they became farmers, mostly, not cheap labor.
    
    4) As for post-war politics, once you got beyond the Reconstruction
    period (and most new states west of the Mississippi were admitted after
    Reconstruction was over), the Old South tended to be a Democrat
    stronghold.  I think if you classify the major political issues between
    1870 and 1914 (to pick a block of time), you will _not_ find any
    pattern of West, Midwest, and East ganging up on the South.  On a few
    issues you might see such a pattern, though I can't think of any
    offhand (e.g. farmers tended to oppose tariffs as much as the South
    did), but it certainly did not seem prevalent enough to justify your
    contention of a "solid majority...that could overcome and Old South
    issue in future congresses."
    
    If I've misunderstood what you were getting at, please clarify.
    
    MikeR

    
    No, I wasn't using the term smoke screen, meaning that Lincoln's
    War goal was to end slavery.  Merely that Lincoln knew that linking
    the slavery issue to the war would sap union support so that the,
    "Save The Union" slogan distanced him from the abolishtionists. We
    can see that also in his reluctance to use Black troops until troop
    strength requirments forced him to use them and then only in side-
    show arenas such as the sea Islands campaign of the 54th Mass.
    	The railroads did have a very big chokehold on western development.
    Railroads could make or break an area from developing and after an
    area was settled the railroads had a lockhold on the farmers and their
    freight rates strangled a farmer's profit.  It was the foundation of
    the entire Populist movement that culminated in W.J.Bryan's Third party
    run at the Presidency.
    	While 600,000 casualties didn't aid in developing a nation, it was
    more that offset by the thousands of young men who'd been farmboys and
    store clerks in their hometowns in 1861 who'd never been further than 
    the county seat, never rode a railroad train, seen a city, or dreamed
    of doing anything other than marrying a local girl and following in 
    their father's footsteps.
    	A couple years of "seeing the elephant" changed all that!  Rural
    towns in NH were at their population peek at the outbreak of the Civil
    War.  After the war, those mountain slope hard scrabble farms started
    going to seed as men left for the west rather than try to continue to
    till them.  If the eldest son stuck around, he inherited his dad's
    farm and the younger boys followed Horace Greeley's advice, "Go, West,
    young man, go west!"  The union Army had already given them a paid
    tour of much of the country.  Also, since most deaths in the Civil War
    had been from disease rather than from battle casualties, the losses
    were from the weakest of the Darwinian gene pool. (Losses amongst units
    made up of farmboys were far higher due to diseases than from units
    from the cities where early childhood diseases had already culled the
    boys with measles, chicken pox, scarlet fever, cholera, etc.
    	good noting with you. Activity in here is pretty thin.  About as
    hard to find a 4 year vet in here as in the Stonewall brigade!   BillM
    

    Actually, Mike (.14), Lincoln overruled TWO army commanders'
    emancipation efforts.  One was Fr�mont's blanket proclamation, the
    other was a man-by-man version by a commander whose name I've forgotten
    at the moment.  Presumably, those already freed by this second
    commander retained their freedom, because each was in possession of a
    legal manumission paper.
    
    As for the "save the Union" rallying cry's being an adjunct to ending
    slavery, that's poppycock.  Lincoln himself is on record as saying that
    if he could save the Union without freeing a single slave, he would do
    that.  His purpose was clear: to save the Union at whatever cost. 
    Saving the Union was what the North went to war for.  Note that, even
    when he was forced into issuing the Emancipation PRoclamation, Lincoln
    specifically did not free the slaves in the "loyal" states, and it is a
    documented fact that at the time the Emancipation Proclamation was
    issued, there were more slaves in New York than in Georgia. 
    
    The Emancipation Proclamation was a political ploy, pure and simple;
    Lincoln did not care, as President, one way or the other on the matter. 
    (As a private person, he abhorred slavery and said so.)  But he knew
    that the slavery issue would ignite Northern support by making the war,
    which had been a political issue until the EP, into a moral issue - and
    he was right.