Echoes of Reconstruction: Jubal Early, Stonewall Jackson, and the Enduring Lost Cause
ECW is pleased to welcome back Patrick Young, author of The Reconstruction Era blog.
Whenever an academic historian ventures onto popular Civil War media to discuss the Lost Cause interpretation of the war and its aftermath, anyone reading the comments will note the routine denunciation of the historian for employing a modern term, “Lost Cause,” to describe a 19th Century phenomena. In my own research on the Reconstruction Era, I have seen numerous references by former Confederates to their own “Lost Cause” just months after the Civil War ended. And, of course, one of the most popular Confederate- oriented popular histories of the war was entitled The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates by Edward Pollard, which was first published in 1866. I have also seen many references in Northern newspapers in the late 1860s that criticized the historical revisionism of former Confederates using the term “Lost Cause” as the designation for this rewriting of history.
The Lost Cause version of history was a fundamental rewriting of the cause of the war, its conduct, and the reasons for Confederate defeat in order to restructure the Confederate legacy into an enduring ideology for a post-slavery South. If you are interested in the details of this pervasive reinterpretation of history, University of Virginia historian Caroline Janney discusses it in this video.
The Library of Virginia published a history several years ago about the erection of the statue of Stonewall Jackson that still stands on the grounds of the Virginia state capitol in Richmond. The statue was funded by British admirers of Thomas “Stonewall” Jackson. They actually began fundraising soon after Jackson’s death in 1863. The Library of Virginia account looks at the interesting history of the British effort to raise money for a statue during the Civil War, the creation of the monument, and why it was not actually erected until twelve years later, but what I found most interesting was the participation of Confederate General Jubal Early in the design of the dedication ceremony.
Early was an important figure in Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia. He led troops under Stonewall Jackson and later he commanded the Second Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia. In 1864, Early was given command of the small Army of the Valley and, after several victories in the Shenandoah Valley, he launched his ill-fated attack on Washington, D.C. After the Confederate defeat, Early became one of the architects of the Lost Cause narrative of the Civil War. 21st Century versions of the Lost Cause, which venerates Confederate leaders like Lee and Jackson, and identifies them as the the defenders of state and individual rights, owe much of their worldview to the work done by General Early in the decades after the war. He helped craft the revisionist narrative and he excoriated those who deviated from it. In 1873 he was elected the president of the Southern Historical Society, a leading guardian of the Lost Cause interpretation of the Civil War.
The Jackson statue arrived in Richmond from England on September 22, 1875, at 21st and Dock Streets. The next day it was dragged by 300 men to the Capitol. The formal unveiling was set for October 26. Before the unveiling, Jubal Early wrote to Virginia Governor James Kemper to complain that he had heard that troops from Black militia companies had been invited to participate in the unveiling. He told Kemper that having African American troops present was “an indignity to the memory of Jackson and an insult to all Confederates who shall attend the inauguration of the statue, and in fact to all who cannot attend.” Early threatened to boycott the ceremony if Black troops were participants, writing “the sun shall not shine on me in Richmond on the day when such an outrage shall be committed.” Early also predicted that if Black soldiers marched in the ceremony, a large number of African American civilians would attend to see the companies from their community parade in Richmond.
Governor Kemper was a former Confederate general and a founder of Virginia’s Conservative Party. Early was a prominent Kemper supporter when Kemper was elected governor, ending Reconstruction in the state. He listened to men like Early.
Others joined in the criticism of Black participation in the ceremony. The Lynchburg Virginian newspaper said that former Confederates should remember that the same Black militia companies that would be at the unveiling, “insult them by parade and banners on every anniversary…of the Emancipation Proclamation.”
Black troops did not participate in the unveiling.
Note: The Library of Virginia has posted photos of the original documents used in this article.
————
[Editor’s Note: For more on the background of the Jackson statue in Richmond, read Chris Mackowski’s June 2021 review of Stonewall Jackson, Beresford Hope, and the Meaning of the American Civil War by Michael J. Turner (LSU, 2020).]
It was a lost cause because the South did not have the men, material, and money to win the war.
Also because a large part of the population opposed the Confederate government and tens of thousands took up arms against it. This was something rarely admitted by Lost Cause histories.
Pollard coined the phrase “The Lost Cause” and a certain school of “historians” seized upon it, to manufacture a lecture for gullible students to ingest as the objective truth of history, through the silly device of claiming the lecture is an “historical study of “tenets.”
Gallagher and his graduate students, Carmichael and his “institute,” as examples, wax poetic over the “tenets,” the purpose of which is to convince the serious student that the people of the seceded states dumped the Union, to preserve slavery, when the reality is they dumped the Union to preserve their position as “White” people being on top, that is, being in political control of their respective communities. Their “cause” was undisputably the same “cause” their fathers were fighting for, from 1776 tp 1781–independence.
They felt the imperative need to go out of the Union, knowing that in the resulting war they would be outnumbered and outgunned, because they saw their future in the Union, was to be saddled with four million freed Africans seeking the right to vote in their political communities, with the people of the Northern states refusing to accept their fair share of the economic, social, and political burdens, freedom for the Africans entailed. Since it was plain the “Union” was leaving the burdens on their shoulders, putting their security at risk, upending their way of life, which the British monarchs had saddled them with, the Union was a vexation best got rid of quick.
In the Why Slavery was so Wrong comment section, the question is raised, which no one seems interested in answering, what if the founders, at the first Congress of the Union, in 1790, had sat down together at the table and attempted to find a basis for adopting a national policy of emancipation for the 700,000 Africans residing as slaves in the Union.
The cliques of civil war “historians” that pontificate endlessly about the “tenets” of “The Lost Cause,” despite their seminars and symposiums, and lectures, have never had the courage to face their audiences and debate, as the founders certainly did among themselves, how to accomplish the up-ending social and political event of agreeing how to make the Africans free, in 1790. Instead, they whine and prat about “The Lost Cause.”
It is interesting, too, that the architects of the schools of historical studies lack the courage to tell the kids the truth: that to preserve the Union as it was, in 1861, Abraham Lincoln endorsed the Republican-controlled Congress’s resolution that the Constitution be amended to command that slavery be perpetual in the Union, while the Confederate constitution left the matter entirely to the States to resolve as they might will. Lincoln’s own state–as racist as Mississippi–ratified the proposed amendment in December 1862, just as Lincoln was, at Congress’s direction, proclaiming the Africans to be free as long as they were Africans residing in the seceded States. Finally, the “historians” in their prattle ignore the human reality that, in 1500, had the tables been turned and the Europeans were Black and the Africans white the same result would have occurred, as it was purely a matter of Economics, of the evolution of the human race.
“The Lost Cause” is a myth, a silly creation by the architects of “schools of historical studies” in order to write books no one reads. Without question, notwithstanding, Jubal Early was a very angry man, and like the whole white people of Antebellum America, a racist.
Pollard did not coin the phrase ‘Lost Cause’ at all. It first originated in 1862, then was printed with content relevant the thesis in international newspapers in 1865.
As I’ve said again and again, the LC is not a myth; it is a historiography.
And may I ask then how you explain that a fair number of prominent ex-Confederates supported at least limited Black American suffrage, such as Robert E. Lee, Longstreet, Alexander Stephens, Pierre G.T. Beauregarde, William Mahone.
I am not stating in any way that this was ‘satisfactory’, or at all a universal thing all over the South at all; but at the same time, it was in line with the views of a number of their Union ex-foes.
English grammar can be tough for some to get. Pollard coined the noun phrase “The Lost Cause” in 1866 as the title to his history of the war.
The word “cause” is used here as a noun: Webster’s first definition of the word is that it “is a thing that gives rise to an action.” The “thing” that gave rise to the action, was the fact that the people of the Northern states, 20 million strong, mostly German and Irish immigrants led by the nose of the Republican Party, made their position clear, by their laws, that the 4 million Africans residing in the Southern states would not be allowed to migrate either into their States or into the territories of the United States they wished to occupy for themselves, alone. Recognizing what this meant in the long run, as Malthusian doctrine took hold, the people of the South took action. (The ratio was 3 to 1 in 1861; today it is 30 to 1)
Webster’s second definition for the noun is, “a principle, an aim one is prepared to defend. The people of the South, seeing the handwriting on the wall, aimed at achieving political independence from the federal union they had voluntarily allowed their political communities to join. Modifying the noun with the adjective, “Lost” means merely that they failed in achieving their aim.
The New York Times, on December 22, 1861, used the noun phrase “lost cause” first in newspaper print. Referring to the reality that the Confederacy’s “cause” would be “lost” without the material support of Great Britain, The Times wrote: “It would convert an accident into an insult; and invite the army and navy of Her Britannic Majesty to do their worst. To these extremes would rebeldom gladly commit the Federal Government, for in their necessary consequences would be the redemption of the lost cause of secession.”
The noun phrase was used in December 1862 to March 1863, when the press across the North printed a speech made by an Frenchman named Laboulaye in December 1862: “He says `it is evident that the South has all the wrong on its side. . . As to the canonization of slavery, that must be left to Southern preachers; all the intellect in the country cannot revive that lost cause.'”
in March 1862, the Daily Missouri Republican used the phrase this way: “Paying no attention to the panic which at this time reigns in Dixie. . . , and disregarding the plain evidence of a lost cause, . . The Times professes to think there is no testimony to prove that the insurgents will ever lay down their arms, or that the Union will ever be recemented.”
In June 1862, the Indiana State Sentinel used the phrase this way: “Richmond now in danger. . . against the steady advance of the legions of McClellan. . . till now [Johnson’s army] is held at bay before the very walls of the Confederate Capital. That lost, their cause is lost.”
At the end of his 751 page history of the war book, Pollard, a newspaper man, tells us, at page 743, that “the surrender of Gen. Lee’s army was not the simple act of a defeated and over powered general; it was not the misfortune of an individual. The public mind of the South was fully represented in that surrender. The people had become convinced that the Confederate cause was lost; they saw that the exertions of four years, misdirected and abused, had not availed, and they submitted to what they conceived now to be the determined fortune of the war.”
So much smoke with the school of historical studies, playing with a noun phrase. But how come they shy from facing the objective reality the founders were confounded with, sitting at the table in 1790? They are all full of wind, no substance.
Hugh, the Lost Cause explanation of the Civil War and Reconstruction is not about a historiographical school that developed in 1790. Someone examining the extensive development of Lost Cause historiography from 1865 until the late 20th Century does not have to resolve how the first Congress could have resolved the slavey question in the 18th Century.
Joe, the Confederacy was not founded over the question of the disposition of of free Blacks. It was founded, according to the resolutions adopted by the original seceding states, to defend slavery and provide for the expansion of slavery into new territories.
The real primary rewrite of history is that produced by those who champion the “Pious Cause Myth” which is nothing more than the fashionable agenda driven narrative that has consumed academia for nearly 60 years now. It has its roots in attempts, that began before the war was even over, to sanitize a war that was everything about economic and political conquest and really nothing to do with a moral concern for slaves. The lie covered for a fundamental transformation of the Constitution from a voluntary compact between sovereign States into an involuntary union where the foundational principle of “government by consent of the governed” was yielded to yet another centralized sovereign authority from which there was no escape.
The so-called post war “Lost Cause School” was actually Southern apologists attempting to head off the spectacular embellishment that the North fought a war to free slaves while the South had some morbid love of bondage that led it to secede and fight to “preserve and extend slavery.” The pejorative “lost cause myth” is a convenient means of modern historians to dismiss the Southern viewpoint without having to risk being exposed by an objective analysis of the primary source evidence. When the evidence is examined properly, including the antebellum, bellum, and postbellum context, the so-called “lost cause myth” loses the element of myth.
On the Right of the political spectrum this spectacular lie was adopted as a means to promote “American Exceptionalism,” and dominated political oratory for one hundred years after the war. On the Left, which now dominates the academic history discipline at a 33:1 ratio, the spectacular lie serves a Marxist style analysis through which all of history is viewed as an oppressor/oppressed paradigm. True history is sacrificed on the alter of political agenda.
The late Dr. Ludwell Johnson, Professor of History Emeritus at the College of William and Mary, sounded the alarm about fashionable ideology when he said:
“Various theoretical ‘isms’ arriving from Europe in the 1960’s still endanger the very existence of what has so long been thought of as history… Of all fields of scholarship, history is perhaps most attractive and vulnerable to Political Correctness. It decrees that some things should be accepted without question – otherwise the elaborate machinery of academic control and social hostility will exact their full measure of retribution on the dissenter… Readers with special interest in the period of the Civil War need to be particularly alert because the South and Southerners offer many tempting Targets to the holier-than-thou.”
Rod appears to have missed a central point of Mr. Young’s offering – the “Lost Cause'” myth as the lipstick on the pig of racism.
The Lost Cause is not a myth; it is a historiography, a school of historical studies.
Like many other various historiographies, it has a measure of validity to at least a fair number of its tenets. It also has particular errs and limits to how how much history it can provide at least a reasonably satisfactory explanation for.
In this, it is similar to say ‘The Australian Legend’ historiography of Russel Ward and ‘A New Britainia’ by Humphrey McQueen, or Settler Colonialism by Patrick Wolfe, all of Australian historical studies.
the “pig of racism” did not reside exclusively in the South. The west was being settled by white immigrants who received 160 acres while the “freedmen” had only a vague promise of “40 acres and a mule.” Why was there no exodus of African Americans from the South to the homestead areas? Why was there no government aid to assist them in making the move? Why did Midwestern states later adopt racial segregation laws? Why did Pacific Coast states pass laws to prevent Asian immigrants from purchasing land? The “Myth of the Holy Cause” has a great deal of lipstick on its face as well.
So if one disagrees with you, he favors racism? Perhaps if you read primary sources, instead of buying into the popular “Official Myth,” you’d discover that all the lipstick has already been used on the latter.
THE best, in my opinion, explanation of the origin, structure, tenets, strengths/flaws/limits/etc, about the Lost Cause school of Civil War/War Between The States studies to date, by the best historian in the world today, Matt Atkinson of Gettysburg NPS.
See on You Tube his seminar, ‘Jubal Early & The Moulding of Confederate Memory’.
Some interesting replies/comments here, but the simple fact of the matter is that the Black militia referred to were technically Union troops and it was still Reconstruction. There is no comment on any white militia, so we don’t have that information to consider. While I can’t speak to Early’s state of mind, he definitely wasn’t happy about losing. “Losing” is why they called it “The Lost Cause”, not because they were lying, which is the upshot of all the accusations. If Early’s comments were based on racism, which seems odd since Jackson was not at all racist, he nevertheless had plenty of company in Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Morrill, Trumbull, and most if not all Northern politicians whose names we remember. And, Mr. Young’s comment about Kemper ending Reconstruction in Virginia completely ignores the fact that the North ended Reconstruction, not the South, as a trade for votes for Hayes and because they were tired of it. Their level of integrity re Reconstruction seems to have been frayed by 1877, perhaps because all the state funds raiding that could be done had already been done. The continual beating of the “Lost Cause” drum speaks of desperation to deny disturbing truths, rather than giving the issue any moderately impartial and intelligent analysis which doesn’t start with the assumption that all Southerners were liars.
I think Jubal Early was telling the truth. He did not want Blacks to play a role in the dedication of the statue.
That is true. He clearly did not.
Was that consistent with an honouring of Jackson and Jackson’s life and legacy? Those are different questions with very different answers.
I placed this response on Patrick Young’s ‘The Reconstruction Era’ in a linked topic thread-
*****************************************************************************************************************
Alright! THIS is one of THE most glaring examples of how Jubal Early, as an individual historian and who might arguably be called the ‘Founder of the Lost Cause School of Historical Studies about the American Civil War/War Between The States’, (the equivalent to Donald Creighton in the Laurentian Thesis and/or Patrick Wolfe in Settler Colonialism), deliberately changed and manipulated the occurrence and connections of the historical events from the writing of it and celebration of culture.
Early was overall a brave and skilled Officer in the war. In short, no matter the various flaws and limits of the historiography he crafted, the fact that he did this, in addition to documenting so much primary and secondary evidence, was itself a heuristic contribution to scholarship.
But this post shows how he deliberately posed HIMSELF as the prism through which to view historical figures, events, etc. And his goal in doing this was his self-accumulation of POWER, (the ability to influence others, outcomes, etc). His arguments inherent in the tenets of the LC thesis have at least some merit, (again in short, for the sake of brevity herein), but this example of Jackson’s statue shows how he would flat out lie/deny the actual history that he had personally either witnessed or was informed about!
Early KNEW as good or better than anyone of the 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty attempt! And same of the 1864 Duncan F. Kenner Mission! It’s clear that he never supported ending slavery, or advancing the civil rights of Black Americans, which a number, (by no means all), of the very figures he venerated came to support!
Jackson’s support of education for Black Americans, in defiance of Virginia state law, is so well known, nothing more about it need be said. It is true that a fair measure of the support of Black American education in the pre-war South made use of literature that espoused White Supremacy, but there is no evidence that Jackson did this. And education was a power that could not be constrained; once Black Americans gained literacy, no matter the means by which, this ability could not be controlled. Jackson knew this better than anyone, as after teaching one of his Uncle Cummings Jackson’s slaves to read as a youth, that slave used the newly gained literacy to run away soon after! Jackson knew what he was doing and that literacy was destructive to slavery. He also defied American culture, (particularly that of the South), by publicly treating Black Americans with the same courtesy as he did White Americans, (addressing them as ‘Mr’, ‘Mrs’., ‘Ma’am’, etc, etc), and shaking hands with them.
Jackson also owned several slaves, at war’s start he made some public statements in defense of slavery and his Corps of the Army of Northern Virginia forcibly impressed Black Americans into bondage in areas such as Harper’s Ferry and Maryland and these were conveyed back into the CSA for sale.
However, his experiences in the war evoked a change in his outlook; according to the memoirs of his surgeon, Hunter Holmes Maguire, Jackson came to be open to Emancipationism, feeling that freeing of slaves was the path consistent with the formal Christian that defined his very existence.
Likewise, of Robert E. Lee, I pose the question: Why, exactly, did Early hagiograph and deify him? A: So he would never actually have to DO anything that Lee advocated or exemplified. The context of Early’s sentiments above and elsewhere about slavery and his total refusal to adopt a more progressive outlook about Black Americans can not be reconciled with what the evidence reveals about The Gray Fox! Any reading of such evidences as Lee’s advocacy of education for Black Americans, his support Black American suffrage in the same terms as Abraham Lincoln, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Oliver O. Howard, his changed and much more progressive views about Black Americans as present in his 27 and 29 March 1865 orders to Richard Ewell and the fact he was willing to personally lead ‘would-have-been’ national Black Confederate troops into battle destroy any legitimacy that Early would claim to reflect the character and views of Lee!
This was so much the case that 15 years later at the 29 May 1890 unveiling of the Lee Monument in Richmond, Virginia, Early could not even attempt to put the same sentiments forth. Not only were Black Americans part of the work crew that set Lee’s statue in place, not only were Lee’s anti-slavery views an important theme in the various speeches, not only were Black Americans in the crowds cheering, Black Americans took an active role in the day’s ceremonies by appearing as re-enactors in a mock battle, apparently as USCT figures.
(Please to note: I am have no interest or intention towards arguing about the existence or non-existence in any way/shape/form of Black Confederates whatsoever at this time.)
From all discernible evidence that I have examined, and the meaning from it gleaned that I can, I can only see Early’s stance above as a dishonoring to Jackson and the promulgation of his own racism over the more progressive views that his contemporaries like Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, James Longstreet, Felix Brannigan, Robert E. Lee, William T. Sherman and even Alexander Stephens came to embrace, albeit all imperfectly, but still heroically.
In short, Early’s main interest was in using history to legitimise and spread his own emotional nationalism!
Anyone who wants a great newspaper clipping of when after the war he was confronted by James Longstreet in person about the demonisation that Early was depicting ‘Old Pete’ with and how Early tucked tail and ran, simply ask me.
The fact is hat Lee, Early, and Longstreet made the conscious decision to take up arms against the United States and to fight to preserve slavery, and an economic system dependent on slave labor.
You only have to look at the Cornerstone Speech to read that they all left to fight because of slavery.
By above, I mean to say I personally draw a fine distinction between the Lost Cause thesis/historiography and Jubal Early as an individual.
Early perpetuated the myth of the Lost cause.
Early claimed inspiration from two letters Lee had sent him in 1865.[54] In Lee’s published farewell order to the Army of Northern Virginia, the general had noted the “overwhelming resources and numbers” that the Confederate army had fought against. In one letter to Early, Lee requested information about enemy strengths from May 1864 to April 1865, the war’s last year, in which his army fought against Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (the Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg). Lee wrote, “My only object is to transmit, if possible, the truth to posterity, and do justice to our brave Soldiers.”[55] Lee also wrote, “I have not thought proper to notice, or even to correct misrepresentations of my words & acts. We shall have to be patient, & suffer for awhile at least. … At present the public mind is not prepared to receive the truth.”[55]
Early in his elder years
In his final years, Early became an outspoken proponent of white supremacy, believing it justified by his religion; he despised abolitionists. In the preface to his memoirs, Early characterized former slaves as “barbarous natives of Africa”, considering them “in a civilized and Christianized condition” as a result of their enslavement. He continued:
The Creator of the Universe had stamped them, indelibly, with a different color and an inferior physical and mental organization. He had not done this from mere caprice or whim, but for wise purposes. An amalgamation of the races was in contravention of His designs or He would not have made them so different. This immense number of people could not have been transported back to the wilds from which their ancestors were taken, or, if they could have been, it would have resulted in their relapse into barbarism. Reason, common sense, true humanity to the black, as well as the safety of the white race, required that the inferior race should be kept in a state of subordination. The conditions of domestic slavery, as it existed in the South, had not only resulted in a great improvement in the moral and physical condition of the negro race, but had furnished a class of laborers as happy and contented as any in the world.[56]
Early’s biographer, Gary Gallagher, noted that Early understood the struggle to control public memory of the war, and that he “worked hard to help shape that memory, and ultimately enjoyed more success than he probably imagined possible.”[69] Other modern historians such as James Loewen believed Early’s views fomented racial hatred.[70]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jubal_Early
YYYYYYYYYEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!
Won and disproved!!!!
Lol!!!!!
Who was it that told the ANV on the eve of 8 April 1865 to the assembled Officers, ‘Well, it is over. Slavery disappears never to be known again. He further for them to accept the new way post-war, return home and go to work? Who took inspiration from this to his Readjuster Party in Virginia’s policies?
Robert E. Lee!!! See the Mahone biography!!
Booms! Won 1!
Which historians lied about the history they wrote by omitting that?!
Alan T. Nolan!! Where is it in Gallagher’s, McPherson’s, etc work?!
Won 2!
Who was it that told Jubal Early to accept the new regime? To disavow nationalism and embrace a true and new sense of patriotism?
LEE!!!
Come on! Tell me that didn’t happen….!!!! Then I can win again by showing them!!!
Booms!!!!!! Winning!
Hey!!! What did US Grant say in his letter to Henry Halleck just after the war ended…?!!!!!
I dare you to say it!!!!!!!
Btw, here’s Lees vision of Black Americans in the South…!!!!
Now what did Gary Gallagher say about the willingness to enlist Black Americans as troops and reflecting a changed attitude in regards to racial out looks?
https://www.historynet.com/robert-e-lee-on-black-troops-and-the-confederacy-february-1998-civil-war-times-feature/
Robert E. Lee – Richard EWELL, 27 March 1865.
“…When a negro is willing, and his master objects, there would be less objection to compulsion, if the state has the authority. It is however of primary importance that the negroes should know that the service is voluntary on their part. As to the name of the troops, the general thinks you cannot do better than consult the men themselves. His only objection to calling them colored troops was that the enemy had selected that designation for theirs. But this has no weight against the choice of the troops and he recommends that they be called colored or if they prefer, they can be called simply Confederate troops or volunteers. Everything should be done to impress them with the responsibility and character of their position, and while of course due respect and subordination should be exacted, they should be so treated as to feel that their obligations are those of any other soldier and their rights and privileges dependent in law & order as obligations upon others as upon theirselves. Harshness and contemptuous or offensive language or conduct to them must be forbidden and they should be made to forget as soon as possible that they were regarded as menials. You will readily understand however how to conciliate their good will & elevate the tone and character of the men…”
Hey!!!! What’s heavily implied in there as ‘rights and privileges’?
The vote!!!!!
Winning!!!!
If Alan T. Nolan himself had the courage to be here, we’re he alive, in this debate, then, strictly figuratively speaking, he’d have had his butt kicked so hard, his stool’d have footprints in it!
Winning!
HEY!
Speaking of Gary Gallagher, in his assessment of Grant’s memoirs,
Did he mention Grant’s slave?! No!
Did he mention Grant swore to return all presumed fugitive slaves to bondage when he graduated from West Point? No!
Did he mention Grant returned 12 slaves in Ft. Donelson to Confederate slave owners..??? NO!
Did he even mention that Grant made that statement at that POW exchange in Kentucky in 1861…??!!!!!!!!
I’ll answer that…
WINNING!!!!!!!!
DID Gary know that?! Any of that above?!! If he did, why’d he not come out with it?! Why lie by hiding?
Well I can’t know that but I sure know it’s fun to point it out!!!!
And I know it’s absolutely indefensible to do so, IF one is genuinely against slavery!
Booms!!!! God that was so EASY!!!!
Grant personally owned one slave, William Jones, given to him by his father-in-law and freed by Grant on March 29, 1859.
And he didn’t’t fight to preserve slavery.
The Lost Cause, an interpretation of the American Civil War viewed by most historians as a myth that attempts to preserve the honor of the South by casting the Confederate defeat in the best possible light.
Before the Civil War, the South wrote that they left the Union because of slavery.
After the Civil War, the South wrote that they left the Union because of States Rights.
No matter how you look at it, the Last Cause is a myth.
C’mon guys, you know NYGiant is entirely correct, just admit it … stop reading all this post-war junk from Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stevens, Pollard, Early, and other southern apologists. What else would you expect them to say after beating they took — destroyed infrastructure and economy, 1 in 4 young males dead and countless more wounded and crippled, slave society destroyed, etc.
They knew they were out of step with 19th century western societies (France, Great Britain, et al) regarding slavery and needed an explanation for the destruction they wrought … hence the tall tale that’s the Lost Cause
And it is a tall tale, make no mistake … for the Lost Cause and its tenants to withstand the “is it historiography smell test?” it needs to have some factual underpinning to qualify as simply another historical interpretation… and i have yet to see facts supporting the Lost Cause that matter … so, no facts = mythology … sorry.
the ultimate irony for the south is that the institution they held so dear and fought so hard to protect was destroyed 4 years after they seceded … talk about a strategic miscalculation … that one’s doozy.
so, lets start holding these southern boys accountable so we can move on to more important stuff like our favorite cannon, out most beloved or least liked general, etc.
Thank Mark!
I always felt that the South made the biggest mistake by leaving the Congress, so they really had no say on the slavery issue. And the fact that they started the war.
Sir, may I ask, if you posit that there is absolutely no factual basis in any context to the Lost Cause thesis, allow me to suggest an ‘example topic’ to permit an exchange of views.
Let us take an example of how the LC school cited ‘states rights’ as an important cause for the war occurring.
Were the only states rights that ever mattered those that pertained to slavery? Separate from that, there is no evidence of American federalism ever possibly be a reason for hostilities of any kind?
Did the Lost Cause school ‘make this up?’
I welcome your views.
Came back to be lose more?
Well, to take up the words of William Aberhart, ‘If you’ve not suffered enough, it’s your God-given right to suffer some more.”
In your case, to be disproven.
I can play any game, especially winning. Going to win some more now!
Before the war started, the South wrote that it was leaving for a wide variety of reasons, of which slavery was one. The Union attempted to convince them to stay and offered slavery as it existed, forever.
After the war, a number of the South’s historians did try to de-emphasise the issue of slavery; a number of the North’s tried to put it as the only reason and hide their own historical responsibility to this.
Those such as Giant are guilty, guilty, guilty and wrong, wrong, wrong. It’s pretty funny to expose that so easily.
LOL, I’ll take a sec from the CS 21-03-61 speech and disproving them with it to show the LC is a historiography and historians like Alan T. Nolan were dishonest in their methodology by hiding evidence to show Giant and all stuff like this!
Hey, Giant! Was US Grant ALWAYS to be considered a hero against slavery? Look what at how he vowed to keep the promise of the North to reconvene slavery as it existed forever.
LOL!!!!
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/collection/glc04501013
Randal Gibson – Tobias Gibson, 9 December 1861, Kentucky, POW Exchange.
“…I have been on two excursions lately. One with a Flag of Truce up the River in charge of Gen’l Cheatham to convey Col. Daugherty wounded & taken prisoner in the Battle of Belmont to Gen’l Grant comdg. army at Cairo. Our boats met about seven miles above this and were lashed together & turned up stream. Gen’l Cheatham, CoL Lappan & a few other officers – some from my Regiment went up. On the other side were Gen’l Grant – & others whose names escape me. I was introduced to Col. Daugherty at request & while I could not help but feel sympathy with a man on his back – with one leg less – having had it amputated three different times – yet I could take no interest in conversation with him and retired quickly. And so, with the Federal officers generally to all appearances, there had been a meeting of friends shaking hands, & drinking toasts but I did not partake of any sociability of feeling that way may have existed. Gen’l Grant had somewhat the appearance of a Southerner but the rest seemed to me impudent – upstarts. Some among them made known their confidence in the “On to New Orleans” intention and all of them declared they were fighting for us – that they came to save not to destroy – Gen’l Grant – even saying he would resign his commission if war should be made against slavery – but it was evident from the whole tenor of their remarks that their purpose individually was subjugation and confiscation. I am thoroughly disgusted with the whole party.”
Win, win, win! That’s all I ever do! The LC is a historiography and no amount of phoney research from anyone can change that!
Back on The CS speech in a sec!!!!!!
All the talk about the Lost Cause was just the way White Supremacists kept the Afro-American denied the rights guaranteed by the US Constitution.
Interesting that many of the statures to Confederate soldiers were placed next to the County Court House.
The South wrote they we’re leaving for a number of reasons and yes, slavery is certainly in there. Other factors are quite prominent in there, too.
The booklet prepared by the South Carolina secession convention makes this above very clear as a singular example, as do the two Cornerstone Speeches by Toombs and Stephens.
The North stated over and over it was going to restore the Union with slavery 100% intact, as the Corwin and Crittenden Amendments and Measures make just as clear, along with the 1st Inaugural Address of Abraham Lincoln, in addition to other issues.
The Lost Cause is not a myth; it has a variable measure of validity to at least a fair number of its tenets. It also has particular limits and flaws to how much history it can satisfactorily explain, exactly like how the Chez Nous school of Quebecois Separatiste historiography is highly contestable in its argument that Canada was ‘founded by two races; the British and the French’. What is not disputable is the attempt, as cited in the above, is that English speakers had tried over and over to eradicate the language, culture, etc, of French speakers in what is now French speaking areas of Canada, especially Quebec.
Now, at this point, you and I appear to have two options: We can either go at it again relentlessly, or we can put the matter as I am convinced the thesis has a measure of merit, and you are not.
What do we do?
Thank your admitting that the South left the Union because of slavery. THAT, in and of itself, makes the Lost Cause a myth.
5 states passed the Corwin Amendment, not reaching the 3/4ths of the states thresh-hold. The Crittenden proposal was unsuccessful. Lincoln wanted to preserve the Union, but opposed any expansion of slavery to the Western territories.
The Lost Cause says that if the South had had the same number of troops, the same number of ships, the same number of factories and arsenals, the South would have won. That’s not how wars are fought. In order for the South to have won, they woujd have insisted that the North fight with both hands behind its back.
The Lost Cause portrays slave owners as benevolent towards their slaves and casts the slaves as being quite happy in their bondage, and ignores that slavery was the cause of the war. The Lost Cause is the foundation of the racial violence of the KKK to reverse reconstruction and reimpose white supremacy and Jim Crow Laws. Accepting the Lost Cause may have facilitated the national reunion after the war, but at the cost of the civl rights for all African Americans.
Now, we can continue this, and I will end up out-debating you like I did the last-time, or you can admit that the Lost Cause is a figment of the South’s imagination.
Personally, I hope you pick up the gauntlet as I enjoy the discussion with you.
You really want to do this?
Above is a complete misrepresentation of my prior statements.
Because frankly, I don’t appreciate the provocative sentiments whatsoever the question you put there above, all points of historical debate to the side.
It is my contention that the Lost Cause is a myth. I don’t believe there is anything provocative about that.
And both the Corwin Amendment and the Crittenden proposals did not have the support of the North.
Hugh de Mann…as healthy competition brings out the best in people, so does a healthy debate.
There is a fine line between a robust debate and deliberately trying to incite the other party.
Now, would you like to discuss the aspect of, ‘did the North support the Crittenden and Corwin proposals’?
I’m going to look aside all you have put in the two or so prior responses to me and consider this one, (above left at 4:17 PM, 28-07-22)-
You are not personally satisfied that the Lost Cause thesis can be viably defended.
I disagree with your terming the LC a ‘myth’ for reasons I have already laid out, either here or else where, that the LC is not a ‘myth’: It is a historiography, a school of historical studies.
Per all the sub-definitions of the term ‘myth’ upon the American Heritage Dictionary’s webpage boiled down and taken holistically together, a ‘myth’ is basically one of two thigs-
A) What is commonly ascribed to a person/place/thing/etc, can not be at least reasonably supported by the known evidence.
B) What is unknown (better put, can’t be disproven) about a person/place/thing/etc, is more important than what the known evidence can prove/reasonably support about same.
I contend what you state about the Corwin and Crittenden proposals not being supported by the North.
Would you like to discuss this?
Incite? Maybe I shouldn’t have thrown down the gauntlet.
Why do you mean by historiography? Let’s use this definition….the writing of history, especially the writing of history based on the critical examination of sources, the selection of particular details from the authentic materials in those sources, and the synthesis of those details into a narrative that stands the test of critical examination.
For defining myth…I propose this definition….a widely held but false belief or idea.
As far as the Lost Cause is concerned, it doesn’t fit historiography at all. The writing of the history changed from 1860 to 1865, certain details are omitted and the synthesis of the narrative doesn;t hold fast with what really happened. It does fir the definition of a myth though.
As far as the Corwin Amendment is concerned, only 5 states passed the Amendment….Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, Maryland and Illinois. Ohio and Maryland rescinded there actions…leaving only 3 states to pass it. It required passage in 3/4ths of the states.
I put that your definitions above, ‘Why do…or idea’, are sound, as basic terms of the words.
The Lost Cause is a historiography, a school of historical studies. Originating with Early and Pollard, (though the actual writing of the history of the Confederate war effort begins in disparate style particularly in newspapers from what are now New Zealand, Australia and Canadian sources from as early as 1865), in that it resulted in patterns of engaging with the evidence, gleaning ‘meaning’ from it, codifying this information into discernible arguments to produce an overall thesis/narrative/argument/etc. And this established methodology and practice of examining/writing/teaching history is passed on from one generation to another in an educational manner.
Now, for the purpose of keeping some order to our discussion, let me suggest that we put further looking at the LC to the back burner for this time. We can return to this at will.
Allow me to suggest we try to keep our focus on the above Corwin, Crittenden, etc.
In my view, while I understand the perspective you are putting forth about these ‘not being accepted by the North’, that is not a sufficient explanation.
Understand I say that with no intent to ‘rattle your chain’, etc.
As I see it, the fact that these could even whatsoever the question be put forth as options for the North to concede to as a means to save the Union are clear indications that the North was willing to go to war to reconvene all the rights to slavery as they had been granted and guarantee them for all perpetuity.
The fact that the elected President of the United States, whom represented the northern section of the country, was willing not just to advocate acceptance of the Corwin Amendment in his 1st Inngr. Addrss. for the entire country to accept as a means to stave off war, but to send a copy of it to each and every single State Governor in the Union is clearly an indication that Lincoln was not only personally willing to see it passed and would have given it force; in being elected by the North, he was performing duties that had at least the broad approval of the North. An Ohioan was its creator.
Shall we examine the newspapers, letters, journals, texts of speeches in Congress/State legislatures/city halls/church meetings, etc, etc etc of politicians/military/people of the North to attempt to ‘get at’ what they truly thought of it, as best we can? From all I’ve ever seen, by far the majority of these in the end were willing to support it.
They were willing to agree to convene for all time to come the rights to own other human beings as property where/how/as these rights already existed.
As well, what ‘killed’ the Corwin Amendment is that hostilities broke out before it could actually be passed. It became clear to both sides that victory was going to be achieved only through emancipation, by such indicators as the 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty, the Emancipation Proclamation, the Duncan F. Kenner Mission and the 13th Amendment, not to mention various state emancipations as in Maryland in November of 1864 and Missouri in January of 1865, both in the Union.
There is no indication that it not passing was because it did not have support in the North at the time the war began. That is more of a technicality than a true, substantive indicator. The fact that the North had begun the process with the Corwin even in process can be taken as an indicator.
Hugh, don’t worry about rattling any chains. I have a thick skin and don’t take things personally even when comments are personally directed towards me.
I disagree with a few of your comments.
1. Your comment….”the North to concede to as a means to save the Union are clear indications that the North was willing to go to war to reconvene all the rights to slavery as they had been granted and guarantee them for all perpetuity.” The Crittenden proposals were rejected. The Corwin Amendment passed the Congress, barely, and only 5 states ratified it, with 2 of those states receding their approval. The Amendment needed 3/4ths of the states to pass. The amendment failed to achieve its goal of bringing the Southern states back into the Union as it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery, in addition to its preservation.
2. Your comment… President of the United States, whom represented the northern section of the country,”. As President, Lincoln represented the entire United States, not just the North.
3. It was apparent that Lincoln also said that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed. So, yes, he would approve of that Amendment. But thats not how Amendments are added to the Constitution.
4.Your comment…”in being elected by the North,” Actually he won the election by getting the most votes in the Electoral College.
5. The hostilities you speak of was the Rebel attack on a US Government military installation, Fort Sumter. To say that the start of the war killed the Corwin Amendment is wrong. The amendment failed to achieve its goal of bringing the Southern states back into the Union as it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery, in addition to its preservation. Also failed because of the speed with which the secession movement acted almost immediately after Lincoln’s election as president in 1860, and the inability of Southern moderates to realize the threat the movement posed.
6.”1862 Confederate Emancipation Treat”…Confederate diplomats, in their search for support in England and France, somewhat disingenuously implied that the South planned to eventually abandon slavery.
7. “Duncan F Kenner mission”….Kenner made his way to New York and sailed for Europe on Feb. 11, 1865. The South was clearly defeated by the time he arrived, however, and the mission accomplished nothing.
Alright, now we’re getting somewhere. The tone of this so far is much more conducive to an actual historical examination.
I was busy all day.
What I can tell you is that no matter how thick a skin you may have, you can’t control how thick the other person’s isn’t. I’m am not talking about myself in saying that. I can’t go into detail but I can say that I’ve had to personally sort out where inciting vitriol and frenzy in internet exchanges carried out in the real world.
I don’t ever want to see that again. Not ever.
It also mars the quality of the historical debate and rigorous examination. Because what it quickly does is render an atmosphere in which evidence doesn’t count; what counts is how one ‘feels’ about it, or rather, how you attempt to make the other person ‘feel’ about it.
That is to attempt to achieve the same effect as the depiction in a court room of a lawyer whom represents a client accused of murder that the deceased victim will walk through the court room doors. All jurors look in the direction of the door, to which the lawyer states that this is proof that they have a reasonable doubt that the victim is in fact deceased, which is in turn proof that they have a reasonable doubt that the accused is in fact guilty. They then have no choice but to acquit, given that this equates into a reasonable doubt.
The above scenario is in fact absolute fiction: Such descriptions would NEVER be admitted in basically any Western court of law.
What the above analogy in fact describes is an emotional encirclement; not a rational point of argument. If the lawyer informed the same jurors that in a moment, a living, breathing brontosaurs will enter the court, and the jurors look in the direction it would presumably enter, this is NOT proof that the jurors either believe that brontosaurus’ still exist, or that they have been convinced they might; it is proof they have been physically distracted.
The same essential point carries into ‘inciting your debate opponent into a rage’; it is not proof that the evidence that one has presented has actually rationally set a better argument, but rather proof that it has engendered an emotional reaction.
So what is it you seek? Will you seek to present a historical argument or an emotional distraction?
The question to pre-set the above is, ‘What does history meant to you?’
Is it there to cause an emotional rage for your own satisfaction, or do you have a respect for the past?
I’ve seen what happens in ‘real life’ when ‘triggering’ people with rage online. I don’t ever want to see it again, and dealing with it isn’t funny when it affects the real world.
Now, returning to the body of the discourse here, I will put my arguments or such to you. Allow me to ‘copy/paste’ what you cite here, just for the sake of precision. I’ll put my replies below a line of ****.
1. Your comment….”the North to concede to as a means to save the Union are clear indications that the North was willing to go to war to reconvene all the rights to slavery as they had been granted and guarantee them for all perpetuity.” The Crittenden proposals were rejected. The Corwin Amendment passed the Congress, barely, and only 5 states ratified it, with 2 of those states receding their approval. The Amendment needed 3/4ths of the states to pass. The amendment failed to achieve its goal of bringing the Southern states back into the Union as it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery, in addition to its preservation.
********
The fact that the Crittenden Measure was rejected is true, but that it could even be submitted shows that its terms had a substantive amount of support in the North. It merely encapsulated what the North, the Republican party had stated for years; it was willing to tolerate slavery when/where/how it existed. That it could even be put forth is significant.
Next, the Corwin WAS passed. This conveyed essentially the same point as above: Leave slavery where/etc, it existed for all time to come, as Americans had done for decades. This, too, is indisputable proof it had a great deal of support in the North and for a President to inspire it, and the next to endorse it by personally drawing attention to it in his 1st. Innagraul and write all state Govs. about it endorsing it tacitly but firmly.
And the Johnson-Crittenden Measure did pass. It emphasized the same points as above by virtue of a different method, by overtly emphasizing that the war was to restore the Union and would not affect the domestic institutions of the South.
Lincoln returns again to the same point in his 2nd Inngrl. Address; the South he argued had begun the war with the desire to expand the institution of slavery; the North had merely sought to prevent its expansion.
That is openly conceding the very point: The North was willing to reconvene all the rights to slavery and guarantee them in perpetuity for as long or until the South desired to end/amend it.
Even if none of the above had ever been put forward, the provisions to slavery of the Union, (the 3/5, the Fugitive Slave tenets in the Constitution), would have endured and have had to be upheld. And that would have rendered the same outcome.
And if one makes the argument that the expansion of slavery is a graver sin, that forces the historian to reckon with the issue that Lincoln and all whom demonise the South avoid; that was exactly the point of the 1846-48 Mexican American War. The Union fought that war with the primary goal of gaining the opportunity to be able to expand American slavery. We know that from the ocean of primary evidence.
So, are you willing to put the same views which you possess of the South to the Union in the MA War?
2. Your comment… President of the United States, whom represented the northern section of the country,”. As President, Lincoln represented the entire United States, not just the North.
*****************************
Yes, this is true. But come one; the platform that he ran on was completely geared to the North and the voting data bears this out.
Now, was this wrong? Is he to be criticised for this? Does running on a political basis set to win a political office that recognised the minutia and big picture of the various moods of the electorate and the formulas/apparatuses of the political structure make one in any era, or this specific one, a villain? That entirely depends on the views of the given historian. But that is an entirely separate question.
(Shrug) Was the South wrong to take the stand that it did in claiming that he did not represent them? That again, leads to an entirely separate point of personal view and argument.
Was their stance w/o precedent? No. Same or similar enough to be relevant and informative actions had been taken between the state governments/leaders of New England in the War of 1812, South Carolina and the Nullification Crisis and Maine in the Aroostook War, and the US Federal government, President, etc.
3. It was apparent that Lincoln also said that he would not interfere with slavery where it existed. So, yes, he would approve of that Amendment. But thats not how Amendments are added to the Constitution.
**********************************
The President himself supporting the Amendment, as with the Platform of his party in the recent Presidential election, to leave slavery untouched in the areas where it already existed, etc, is the point. He’s only going to do this, especially in the high stakes of the situation, if he’s confident that the North would support this.
4.Your comment…”in being elected by the North,” Actually he won the election by getting the most votes in the Electoral College.
******************************
That again is a technicality that does not add any clarity to the historical context.
Had he been elected by the North in a ‘First Past the Post’ system as with Britain’s elections of the time and supposing the US utilised this, had he been elected with Single Transferable Voting, as with Australia and Ireland have today, with the majority of the Electoral College as he did, the inescapable conclusion of the data was that his support for the Presidency came from the North in the 1860 election. He did not even appear on the ballot in a number of Southern states.
As with the reply in 2), it shows that he was elected by the North solidly. And the views he espoused about tolerating slavery where it already existed were the acceptable ones to that section of America.
5. The hostilities you speak of was the Rebel attack on a US Government military installation, Fort Sumter. To say that the start of the war killed the Corwin Amendment is wrong. The amendment failed to achieve its goal of bringing the Southern states back into the Union as it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery, in addition to its preservation. Also failed because of the speed with which the secession movement acted almost immediately after Lincoln’s election as president in 1860, and the inability of Southern moderates to realize the threat the movement posed.
*************
I’m not getting into a ‘side debate’ over, ‘Was the firing upon Ft. Sumter by the Confederates justified?’, any more than you will desire, I may presume, to answer, ‘Was not just the IRA justified in not just ambushing the British Forces dead in their own beds on Bloody Sunday, 1921, but assassinating them while forcing the wives of these to watch in order to drive them literally insane a wholly and absolutely morally justified way for an oppressed people of nearly 8 centuries to combat the forces which had been so racist towards them? The wives did this to themselves by being married to such monsters and making themselves part of the racist invasion.’
Yes, I’ve heard these sort of sentiments in Irish history circles.
And no, the outbreak of hostilities in the American Civil War/War Between the States did signify that there was little point in resorting to any measures for either side that were not connected to the battlefield in one significant way or another.
Again, as I’ve said before; did the South believe the North’s offer of the Corwin is a good focal point to engage. The fact that it was even ever offered is another. It was set directly against the expansion of slavery; it was absolutely committed to preserving it on the terms of the South. It would end when and where slave states chose to end it.
6.”1862 Confederate Emancipation Treat”…Confederate diplomats, in their search for support in England and France, somewhat disingenuously implied that the South planned to eventually abandon slavery.
********************************
(Shrug)
how was this ‘disingenuous’? What makes you to put that precise term to the near-clinched 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty between the South, France and Britain? How was this pretending to be sincere?
The 25 January 1862 copy of the ‘UK Spectator’ made the terms of this explicitly clear; in exchange for arrangement of trade between the three, Britain and France would recognise the Confederacy as a sovereign nation and intervene in the war on its behalf. In return, the South would declare all Black Americans whom would have been otherwise have been born into slavery to be born and live as Free Persons of Colour from the date of the Treaty’s signing, going forward.
So how was this not sincere?
Are you more accurately putting criticism to the limits of emancipation in the Treaty? That’d make two of us. There were clear and disappointing limits to which slaves would have been manumitted by it.
I’m also disappointed, like Frederick Douglass was, at the limits of the Emancipation Proclamation, that neither did that free all slaves. Also, that Lincoln feared that as an Executive act, it could be likewise withdrawn and effectually negated by another Executive act by another President and made retroactive to possibly even re-enslave all those whom had been freed by it.
Back to the 1862 CET, at the same time, while it can certainly be criticised for being ‘immediately limited’, this was the manner broadly in which slavery had come to an end in many Northern states by the late 18th Ce. It had been phased out with a policy of Emancipationism, not Abolitionism. So, is it fair to demonise, rather than criticise, in absolute terms, one section but not the other for the same policy? Or are we willing to be consistent and apply a measure of fair and balanced criticism to both for the same thing?
The end of American slavery was imperfect, period. Largely because it had ever existed.
7. “Duncan F Kenner mission”….Kenner made his way to New York and sailed for Europe on Feb. 11, 1865. The South was clearly defeated by the time he arrived, however, and the mission accomplished nothing.
************************
No, Kenner left for France in December of 1864, reaching there around the New Year.
But a minor aspect of timing aside, now, what you indicate in there is that the South was absolutely desperate at this point. And there is a good deal of truth to that.
At the same time, when Lincoln had launched the EP, it can’t be debated that there was as much desperation to it as his noble sentiments. Europe was on the brink of recognition and we know from the timing and other evidence like from US Consul to Britain, Charles Francis Adams, and Stanton’s devouring of the British publications, (as cited in ‘Team of Rivals’), that he was aware of the South’s offer mentioned above. So desperation was a big boost to BOTH North and South’s path to accepting emancipation, as the diary of Gideon Welles attests to when Lincoln first brought up his plan of the EP in a carriage ride to him and Seward.
I would not say he accomplished nothing; Napoleon III positively agreed to it, (he actually had been waiting for conclusive proof of this since 1863). The reason that the DFK Mission did not prevail was that by the time it was broached, the North was in the real and perceived position of going to win. Britain figured it could possibly engender even more animosity, possibly even war, by further provoking the North, (Horace Porter bears witness that this was not at all an unfounded fear in his memoir, ‘Campaigning With Grant’).
At the same time, it can, and must never, for the sake of historical honesty, be denied that both this and the 1862 CET were attempted. The South took the same path as the North to abolishing slavery with the DFK Mission just two calendar years after the EP. That itself is a significant way to consider the situation.
Now, we can examine; did the South believe that the North was genuinely going to adhere to the principles as espoused in the Corwin Amendment? They clearly didn’t and that’s a good challenge to the LC thesis.
However, just because this was so, does this mean we ought to ‘close the box’ at that stage of looking at the Corwin Amendment/the principles it represented? In other words does the North ‘get off the hook’ at this point?
No, the North was clearly willing to offer them up and William H. Seward, of all people, willing to be its sponsor in the Senate is clearly an indicator the North was willing to do just this. As well, the Republican Party had over and over again made its stand on that it would not interfere with slavery where it already existed, (this is what made Thomas Corwin of Ohio a Republican party oddity, as he was willing to abide by the Stephen Douglas principle of ‘popular sovereignty’). So the spirit of both the Corwin and Crittenden transcends in clear manner.
The amendment failed to achieve its goal of bringing the Southern states back into the Union as it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery, in addition to its preservation.
Lincoln was elected , the Republican platform was endorsed as to preventing the expansion of slavery into the territories and the new states that entered the Union.
The South feared that Lincoln and the Republicans would abolish slavery since more free states wool due admitted into the union.
Lincoln’s victory and imminent inauguration as president was the immediate cause for declarations of secession by seven Southern states. All of the secessionist activity was motivated by fear for the institution of slavery in the South. If the President (and, by extension, the appointed federal officials in the South, such as district attorneys, marshals, postmasters, and judges) opposed slavery, it might collapse.
What started the civil war was when Confederate President Jefferson Davis ordered Confederate troops to bombard and capture Fort Sumter.
There is definitely that set of evidence about the war that Lincoln considered, as all historians of the war should. But when one looks at ALL the evidence that can provide meaning about the war, to maintain, in short, that the war was entirely caused by slavery simply can not be successfully maintained. The only way to do that is to refuse to look at the abundance of evidence that exists.
I will say this as one example; to argue that the only ‘states rights’ that existed at all were those pertaining to slavery fails to consider the significant example of the Mexican states of Nuevo Leon and Coauhilia (not sure of the latter’s spelling).
Why? Because the ultra-adamant Abolitionist Governor of these two Mexican states, Santiago Vidaurri, tried very hard to have his states annexed to Texas during the Civil War. Prior to the war, he had personally stymied and obstructed for years all attempts of the US government, Texas and private interests to pursue fugitive slaves into the his areas and he had been a great supporter of the ‘Southern Underground Railroad’. He loathed slavery.
So why would he attempt to have his areas become part of the Confederacy, even sending representation to Richmond to meet with both Judah Benjamin and Jefferson Davis?
Because he despised Mexico’s highly centralised system of federalism, (whereby almost all real power was held by the national government in Mexico City), and he admired greatly the Confederacy’s emphasis on the states as the main political units in the South’s style of federalism.
His areas may have been adjoined to Texas being a slave state; an act of the Texas legislature would have been immediately passed to render these off-limits to slavery.
Davis declined the offer, but not in absolute terms and with desiring to have good relations with Vidaurri, out of political motivations; he desired France’s recognition which was colonising Mexico at this time.
My reading of comments on this website over the past year or so have made me conclude that the Civil War may not end in my grandchildrens’ lifetimes, and that some people have entirely too much time on their hands.
my wife tells me that all the time …
The bottom line is only 5 States voted in favor of the Corwin Amendment…Kentucky, Ohio , Rhode Island, Maryland and Illinois, and 2 of those states rescinded their vote, Ohio and Maryland. And there is a question about the validity of the Illinois state vote.
So 2 States passed it, and it required passage in 3/4th of the States. I think we can agree that it never became Law.
I think we can agree that it was a last-ditch effort to try and keep the border States in the Union, and it had nothing to do with the start of the Civil War.
I think we can agree that the Civil War started when Jefferson Davis ordered Rebel troops to attack and occupy the US Military installation at Fort Sumter.
And I think we can agree that the US went war to preserve the Union.
Taylor, I can agree with you about the Civil War not ending in our grandchildren life time. Too much emphasis was placed on reconciliation with the defeated South.
I can’t agree with you about people having too much time on there hands. One of the theories on preventing senility and Alzheimer’s disease is to study a new subject. For instance, learning a new language, or studying a new subject, or trying to master the intricacies of a hand-held GPS…that all keeps the brain active.
And that’s why many of us take up the study of the American Civil War, the defining moment that made the US what we are today.
Hugh de Mann…..sorry but you are wrong.
1. Thank you for agreeing with me that the Crittenden proposals did not pass. Just because they were submitted does not mean that the North was going to agree to the perpetuation of slavery.
Recall that the Corwin Amendment barely passed the House with a 2/3rd vote and it passed the Senate on Lincoln’s Inauguration Day by the 2/3rds vote barely. But it did not pass the criteria to become an Amendment as only 2 States in reality voted for it. Recall the criteria for an Amendment to be added to the US Constitution. An amendment may be proposed by a two-thirds vote of both Houses of Congress, or, if two-thirds of the States request one, by a convention called for that purpose. The amendment must then be ratified by three-fourths of the State legislatures, or three-fourths of conventions called in each State for ratification.
As far as Lincoln is concerned, he said in his first Inaugural he “had no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” But, when he sent the proposal to all the States as required, there was no such endorsement included.
Bottom line…Why don’t we read what the 13th Amendment says. THAT is the final determination as to whether the Corwin Amendment passed. Right?
2. Thank your agreeing with me! And you agree with Lincoln in that the Union territory was ALL of the United States.
3. The North did support the Republican platform and voted for it.. The South could have defeated it at the Polls, but they didn’t. The South never figured that a regional Political Party would ever dominate American politics. As I said in #1, As far as Lincoln is concerned, he said in his first Inaugural he “had no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.” But, when he sent the proposal to all the States as required, there was no such endorsement included.
4. No, that is NOT a technicality. It is how the US Constitution tells his how the President is elected. And you didn’t mention that he win the West too…Oregon and California. Your mention of Great Britain is just a diversion.
5. The South ignored a political solution and decided on the military one. They made choice and choices have consequences, as do elections.
Though a diversion, the tactics of Michael Collins, the Big Fellow, and his patriots in arm, are still studied to this day. A shame that he was killed in the Irish Civil War.
6.(shaking head with and closing eyes)
The South was never going to free its slaves, no matter what they said. Their entire economy was based on slave labor. And the fact is, Great Britain didn’t believe them either. Fact is, GB had outlawed slavery and could not accept fighting for a country that made slavery the basis for its existence. The workers in GB got it correct…the American Civil War was a fight between wage labor and slave labor.
7. The books I read say he left in 1865. What is your citation for 1864?
And it was not successful.
As far as Great Britain was concerned, I have covered this in multiple posts,. Suffice it to say, There was NO WAY Great Britain was going to come in on the side of the South. Queen Victoria was against it, and she had the final say. Plus it put as risk all of Canada. Realize that Palmerston rattled his sword, but when it came to backing up his words with action, he was incapacitated.
So, what else do you have that says the Corwin Amendment was passed? I just looked up the 13th Amendment ( I have only memorized the first 10 Amendments), and this is what it says..
Thirteenth Amendment
Section 1
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Section 2
Congress shall have power to enforce this article by appropriate legislation.
Right!
Hold on there.
We’ve found some common ground but no, you’re trying to posit I’ve made some kind of admission that I haven’t.
We both know that’s not the case.
Again, I put it to you that you’re trying to make your argument largely on technicalities and are putting your argument in the manner that if you simply refuse to look at anything but the deliberately very narrow scope you have set, then the historical case is ‘won’, at least by default.
No, the Crittenden Measure didn’t pass. There is no debate to that.
But the fact that the essence of it was so adhered to before the war even started, and the essentials of it were attempted again and again, that even w/o any particular measures being put forth, what it encapsulated would have been conveyed anyways by the Union government and US Constitution, and what Lincoln fully admitted in his Second Inaugural Address about these points, that simply discloses a historical clarity that can’t be invalidated.
This is what you appear to set the parameters of your argument so narrowly for; that by doing so, you need not make any concessions.
Next, we come to the great question: Yes, as President, Lincoln was such of the whole Union. But! What was the exact nature of that Union of that Union and the states that comprised it?
Where, exactly and precisely, not maybe, not perhaps, but in all and absolute terms, did the powers of one state end and those of the Union start? There was no absolute agreement or consensus because this was itself an unfolding matter. So by 1860, who could say where the absolute line was, given all the past?
This Carrie’s itself through to Lincoln personally as President: For, if he was in the same Office as Executive with same powers, etc, as all Presidents before him, then how is it that not all men who were President before him with these same powers, whom took the same oath, believed the same thing about the Union?
There is almost, given all known evidence, Abe even divide between the Presidents who thought secession lawful and those who did not.
Your point about reading the 13th over the Corwin reads as a means of exempting from having to consider the evidence and development of history as it happened and why. It’s like seeing that the Mughal Dynasty fell in pre-Raj India and stating, ‘See? It was inevitable that it would fall!’ That’s a logical fallacy of presumption of inevitability. The fact that the North would ever even consider such a measure as the Corwin, Crittenden, etc, is a major indicator of not just historical guilt and responsibility for American slavery and race relations; denying or attempting to minimise them from critical reflection openly indicates historical deniaism.
Exactly as how Settler Colonialists deny/legitimise/etc such Aboriginal practices as the genocide by the Iroquois.
No, mentioning Great Britain is not a diversion. It was offered as an example of how Lincoln likely would have won the election no matter the exact details of how the election was conducted.
Why is it so important for you to state definitively he won the West? I said nothing about it as the point was obvious or at least implied. The clear point I was making was that all data that can be examined from the 1860 election shows Lincoln’s support came from the North and almost none from the South, if any.
The South DID attempt a political means to avoid war when they sent the Peace Commissioners to Washington DC and their extensive corro with the federal government.
Now that point goes right back to the differing understandings of American federalism and the Constitution the parties had at the time: Was it a valid thing for the South to do? Was Lincoln correct to refuse to let them? It came down to the interpretation of American federalism and the Constitution the parties embraced.
I’m distantly related to Michael Collins and I’m very proud of him and Irish history actually has a great deal to inform about America’s in many ways. No one is disputing that his methods are still studied but I find your terminology shows a lot. Do you deny he utilised terrorist methods? It can’t be denied. Does that mean he and his colleagues were not patriotic? Do I deny that the English used same? Do you deny the British forces patriotic to their cause of keeping the UK together and ensuring public safety?
How do you know the South’s offer to free their slaves was never going to happen? How do you know that? It reads as if you argue this out of a devout sense of personal conviction. I can respect your devotion but I am simply unconvinced of the historical arguments, based on a critical reflection of the evidence. And had not Britain engaged in relations with USA since the end of the Revolution, wherein this country constitutionally embraced slavery? And Brazil?
Ive seen a huge amount of evidence that both supports what you put about how the UK viewed the war, and pretty much as much against it. At the same time about as Manchester was giving a salute to Abraham Lincoln, Leicester, just as much a cotton mill powerhouse was writing huge coverage of praise of the South in the local papers. So what does this prove?
The sources on DFK I have read state he was commissioned by Jefferson Davis in December of 1864. Perhaps he left then, perhaps soon after in early 1865. There is nothing to gain or lose one way or the other to the point on that that the South showed it was indeed willing to end slavery, again. That is the point that must never be ignored, hidden, etc. Otherwise one is hiding evidence.
We have discussed Britain on the side of the South, etc, etc, very much in the past. And I still do not see the arguments you have put as vindicated based on the evidence. Palmerston’s biography by Jasper Ridley records him in about Dec. of 1862 very satisfied that the troops he’d sent to Canada had been a decisive factor in the Union’s release of the prisoners and he’d actually been keen for an opportunity to have a go at all the Irish in the Union Army with the British forces. All the evidence I’ve ever seen shows a VERY extensive and global preparedness for war by the Empire upon the Union.
You can disagree with that as much as you choose. I refer to the evidence.
I never said the Corwin was passed. Why are you stating that I did?
In history, so it seems, you make the assertion, whereas I ask the question.
Before the Civil War, the South wrote that it was slavery that caused them to leave the Union. There was not mention of States Rights. Just look at Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech.
“he new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution….Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
On Dec. 24, 1860, delegates at South Carolina’s secession convention adopted a “Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union.” It noted “an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery” and protested that Northern states had failed to “fulfill their constitutional obligations” by interfering with the return of fugitive slaves to bondage. Slavery, not states’ rights, birthed the Civil War.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery — the greatest material interest of the world,” proclaimed Mississippi in its own secession declaration.
No mention of States Rights.
I will return to this post.
Repeat EXACTLY what you just said in THIS post! Please.
Copy and paste this exact post.
Quite a discussion of the Lost Cause.
Ain’t it!
In my mind, it’s Gary Gallagher and Matt Atkinson each presenting their arguments of the Lost Cause school!
Yeah, right…! Sure it is. Lol
In my mind, it’s Alan Nolan, who was a friend of mine, presenting the arguments along with Robert Krick another friend.
I pointed out to Atkinson a mistake he made.
Hugh de Mann…. you wrote this…”Next, the Corwin WAS passed” Comment made at July 29, 2022 at 10:54 AM
And then you wrote this….”I never said the Corwin was passed. Why are you stating that I did?” Comment made at 11:09 PM 7/29/22
So, I think we should clear this up before we proceed, don’t you?
As I pointed out to Eric Foner a mistake he made, and as I could have done to Gary Gallagher.
So I rather to fancy the model of Gallagher and Atkinson.
Another possibility is Tim Pat Coogan and Peter Hart.
The classic Russel Ward and Humphrey McQueen.
Perhaps Ernie O’Malley and Rex Taylor.
Or perhaps Keith Windschuttle and the late, great, Stuart Macintyre, (whom was my Professor and Supervisor, RIP).
Very well.
The Corwin Amendment was passed by Congress by vote, but never succeeded in becoming ratified by the states.
That is what I meant.
From this, we can glean that the Corwin Amendment certainly did have an appreciable amount of support in the North.
Next issue.
1. Woids have meaning. That’s what I love them
2.your woids….The Corwin Amendment was passed by Congress by vote, but never succeeded in becoming ratified by the states.
That is what I meant.
From this, we can glean that the Corwin Amendment certainly did have an appreciable amount of support in the North.
====================================================================
We call that a stretch….and I don’t mean Willie McCovey.
Not a stretch at all.
It clearly shows that it had the support of the US Congress to pass and become a constitutional amendment.
The break out of fighting and both sides digging in their heels rendered the Corwin Amendment not to become part of the Constitution but the expressed willingness was clearly there.
That’s a good example of what I mean by your views resting upon technicalities to be cogent. You set the bar for it to mean the the North was willing to reconvene all the rights to slavery as and where they existed forever as to mean that the Amendment actually passed and was made part of the Constitution.
If this did not happen, then that means the measure had no support at all and you do not have to consider it, but can dismiss it from consideration utterly.
I put it that that is an untenable argument and deliberately attempting to evade the events of the past.
At your earliest opportunity, please to tell me, do you maintain EXACTLY this argument that you put here-
“Before the Civil War…no mention of States Rights.”
Now, do you maintain your views exactly as you put in this post?
And of course, I meant in the entirety of the post. Not the abbreviated part, (though that forms part of it).
Again, I meant your argument in the whole of the past that that abbreviation comes from.
Simple….you saw my post regarding the Cornerstone Speech and what the states of South Carolina and Mississippi wrote as to why they were leaving the Union.
It was only after the South had been beaten that States Rights became the cause.
In fact, the SCV still maintains the war started because of “States Rights”
This post encapsulates 100% the flaws methodology of such historians as Alan T. Nolan and the arguments that you make.
You refuse to consider all the evidence that abounds. That is historical denialism.
That is EXACTLY the same flaw to the arguments which Keith Windschuttle put when he said that it was not invasion or wrong in any way for Europeans to have driven off the Aboriginals of Tasmania from the lands the occupied. He put that the argument that British descended Australians as having ‘stolen’ the land from the Aboriginals as ludicrous and lying.
He stated that in his research he had discovered there was not Tasmanian Aboriginal word for ‘property’. He then put the question, ‘How can you steal what is not owned? How can you ‘invade’ lands that a people do not even see themselves as possessing?’
The argument seemed sound…until it became clear he utterly discounted the Tasmanian Aboriginal statement, ‘My country’.
This had an indisputably clear, possessive conception of the land belonging to the Aboriginal People. In fact, there were innumerable variations of this same saying.
As long as Windschuttle did not have to consider this evidence, his argument seemed sound. The instant it was brought into focus, then questions arose to his arguments that could not be satisfactorily addressed.
That is the origin of the title, ‘the circle in the sand’, as Patricia Grimshaw described his methodology; it was as if he had drawn a circle in the sand and packed inside of it only the evidences which supported his views. Just as importantly, he tried very hard to pretend that the only relevant or pertinent evidence to consider at all was exactly what he had placed within the sand circle and his mission was to convince any intended audience that this was indeed so.
The arguments of historians as Alan T. Nolan and yourself, (yes; I will put you in his company), extend this methodological flaw even further. Nolan was a great historian, but his arguments rested upon refusing to acknowledge, let alone engage with, evidence that did not advantage him.
That is absolutely ahistorical; a historian MUST openly acknowledge ALL the evidence that exists. The best historical arguments can demonstrate they have actively engaged and considered the widest possible scope of evidence and put the higher, not lower, number of questions to it. The best historical arguments can prove they have done this openly and in as exhaustive and holistic a manner as possible and adequately show how at least their main points are largely intact. Especially the evidence and questions that challenge your stance!
Nolan explicitly did not do this.
If the only way that your arguments make sense is by refusing to look at any evidence that challenges them, deflecting the point by trying to frame them within technicalities rather than head on, that is to concede the debate.
Now I put to you, do you maintain the essence of your post and what you have observed of the Cornerstone Speech and ‘states rights’?
Let me just respond to a few of your comments. I really enjoy our discussions.
You wrote..”Again, I put it to you that you’re trying to make your argument largely on technicalities”
===========================================================================
I’d like to think I am making my points based on the facts and what the Constitution says. I look at the Constitution as the Law of the Land, and not a technicality.
You wrote… “President, Lincoln was such of the whole Union. But! What was the exact nature of that Union of that Union and the states that comprised it?”
===========================================================================
As Lincoln took an oath to protect the Constitution. Article II, Section 1, Clause 8:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
He was defending the US Constitution, which did not allow states to secede. The Constitution also says this….Article IV Relationships Between the States
Section 4 Government
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
You wrote….’The fact that the North would ever even consider such a measure as the Corwin, Crittenden, etc, is a major indicator of not just historical guilt and responsibility for American slavery and race relations; denying or attempting to minimise them from critical reflection openly indicates historical deniaism.”[sic]
==========================================================================
The fact is the North wanted to reserve the Union, and the Corwin Amendment which you say passed and did not pass, was the last ditch effort to preserve that Union. The facts are the men who enlisted after the attack on Fort Sumter told us why they enlisted…to preserve the Union. That’s a pretty strong fact.
You wrote…”No, mentioning Great Britain is not a diversion. It was offered as an example of how Lincoln likely would have won the election no matter the exact details of how the election was conducted.”
==========================================================================
Last I checked, the American Colonies threw off the yoke of oppression and tyranny and soundly defeated the greatest military and naval force up to that time. Our written Constitution tells us the way to elect a President. Or…as they said in the musical 1776, To Hell With Great Britain!, the Eagle inside, belongs to us.( a humorous interlude)
You wrote….The South DID attempt a political means to avoid war when they sent the Peace Commissioners to Washington DC and their extensive corro [sic] with the federal government
===========================================================================.
Seward was assuring Justice John Archibald Campbell, the intermediary with the Confederate commissioners who had come to Washington in an attempt to secure recognition, that no hostile action would be taken.
Problem is, Lincoln was the President, not Seward.
You wrote…I’m distantly related to Michael Collins
===========================================================================
So am I.
You wrote….Do you deny the British forces patriotic to their cause of keeping the UK together and ensuring public safety?
==========================================================================
I refer you to Oliver Cromwell.
You wrote…How do you know the South’s offer to free their slaves was never going to happen?
=========================================================================
It didn’t happen at all.
You wrote….”Palmerston’s biography by Jasper Ridley records him in about Dec. of 1862 very satisfied that the troops he’d sent to Canada had been a decisive factor in the Union’s release of the prisoners and he’d actually been keen for an opportunity to have a go at all the Irish in the Union Army with the British forces.”
=========================================================================
December 1862, the Union had won at Antietam. Palmerston’s cabinet did not meet since many were with the Queen on the Continent. Realize that Palmerston sent the equivalent of the 6 Corps at Gettysburg, hardly enough troops to change any outcome. And, when offered war in 1864 , the Brits backed down and stopped building and arming Confederate Raiders.
Your comment also pales when compared with the Prussian war with Denmark. Palmerston had warned Prussia that GB would defend Denmark, but when push came to shove, GB did NOTHING. Why? Because Queen Victoria was pro-Prussia and forbade any intervention.
You know I hate it when those pesky facts get in the pesky way…and I am not referring to Johnny Pesky.
I’d like to think I am making my points based on the facts and what the Constitution says. I look at the Constitution as the Law of the Land, and not a technicality.
************ I do maintain that you rely on technicalities to make your arguments cogent. You also rely on a number of logical fallacies such as, ‘the assumption of inevitability’; that is often a technique utilised by historians as Donald Creighton, of whom the criticism was passed, ‘unable to imagine themselves and the historic forces they aligned with as anything but the victors.’ In other words, it’s a way of justifying not having to engage with ALL that the evidence can support.
You wrote… “President, Lincoln was such of the whole Union. But! What was the exact nature of that Union of that Union and the states that comprised it?”
===========================================================================
As Lincoln took an oath to protect the Constitution. Article II, Section 1, Clause 8:
Before he enter on the Execution of his Office, he shall take the following Oath or Affirmation:–I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States.
He was defending the US Constitution, which did not allow states to secede. The Constitution also says this….Article IV Relationships Between the States
Section 4 Government
The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion; and on Application of the Legislature, or of the Executive (when the Legislature cannot be convened) against domestic Violence.
************** Incorrect. The Constitution is silent entirely upon the aspect of secession. There is absolutely nothing in there, stated or implied, that says that a state did not necessarily have the right to extricate itself from the Constitution.
Lincoln beyond debate DID interpret his Oath as above to convey what you claim. However, your argument can not explain how all 15 men whom swore the Presidential Oath above and occupied the same office that he did all viewed the topic of secession in the exact same manner as he did.
George Washington, James Monroe, Andrew Jackson, Zachary Taylor and Lincoln all made statements or performed actions consistent with the interpretation of ibid that you outline.
However…Thomas Jefferson, John Quincy Adams, James Madison, John Tyler and James Buchanan made same to the exact opposite effect; that secession was either lawful in some form and/or impossible for the President to stop or prevent.
The exact sources can be put upon request.
Your views are untenable with this evidence. They oblige you to state that ‘Lincoln falls into a given tradition of Presidents in this manner’.
You wrote….’The fact that the North would ever even consider such a measure as the Corwin, Crittenden, etc, is a major indicator of not just historical guilt and responsibility for American slavery and race relations; denying or attempting to minimise them from critical reflection openly indicates historical deniaism.”[sic]
==========================================================================
The fact is the North wanted to reserve the Union, and the Corwin Amendment which you say passed and did not pass, was the last ditch effort to preserve that Union. The facts are the men who enlisted after the attack on Fort Sumter told us why they enlisted…to preserve the Union. That’s a pretty strong fact.
************************The fact is that the Corwin Amendment did pass both Houses of Congress. We have already clarified that issue and its terms were Lincoln himself and the Republican party had been saying for all time, as voted into office by the vast majority of voters in the North.
***********************We can return to the other causes of the war and who said what, where, when and what evidence matters in a moment. In fact, that’s exactly the point of why I asked you to repeat that particular post.
You wrote…”No, mentioning Great Britain is not a diversion. It was offered as an example of how Lincoln likely would have won the election no matter the exact details of how the election was conducted.”
==========================================================================
Last I checked, the American Colonies threw off the yoke of oppression and tyranny and soundly defeated the greatest military and naval force up to that time. Our written Constitution tells us the way to elect a President. Or…as they said in the musical 1776, To Hell With Great Britain!, the Eagle inside, belongs to us.( a humorous interlude)
**************************************** And regardless if the USA had retained the British system of democracy, the Westminster system, of first past the post voting, as India and Ireland did when they became republics from Britain, (though India is a republic within the British Commonwealth), if the USA in the 1860 election for the President had had Single Transferable Voting like Australia presently does, or if the US Constitution had even more strongly tried to ban political parties than what was done at Independence, (as the territorial assembly of the Canadian territory of Nunavut did), then Lincoln still would have won the Presidency with veritably all of his support coming from the northern states of the USA.
That was the point of me saying that. Do not try to distract. The point was and carries that regardless of what system of voting that Americans had had in the 1860 Presidential election, Lincoln was going to win with his support coming from the North.
You wrote….The South DID attempt a political means to avoid war when they sent the Peace Commissioners to Washington DC and their extensive corro [sic] with the federal government
===========================================================================.
Seward was assuring Justice John Archibald Campbell, the intermediary with the Confederate commissioners who had come to Washington in an attempt to secure recognition, that no hostile action would be taken.
Problem is, Lincoln was the President, not Seward.
*********************************So you do not deny that the South did indeed send the Peace Commissioners to Washington in order to attempt to resolve a peaceful outcome, along with the lengthy corro.
That’s another good example of what I mean by your argument residing in the main on technicalities. You attempt to point out that as Lincoln was President that that somehow translates into yourself not having to in any way acknowledge that the South did do exactly what you said they didn’t; attempt to use peaceful means before the use of violence to determine the dispute.
You wrote…I’m distantly related to Michael Collins
===========================================================================
So am I.
******************Very good.
You wrote….Do you deny the British forces patriotic to their cause of keeping the UK together and ensuring public safety?
==========================================================================
I refer you to Oliver Cromwell.
***************************** I ask again; do you deny that the British forces were patriotic to the cause they fought for in say, Easter 1916, the Young Irelander Rising, the Police whom detected the dynamite plot in Queen Victoria’s jubilee when the Fenians planned to bomb a ferris wheel and amusements, and in keeping to the unity of the United Kingdom?
Yes; about Oliver Cromwell. In the examination of his actions, do we refuse to look at the massacre and torture of English settler women and children at Portadown?
Or how about the same type of deaths of children of loyalists in the 1798 and 1803 risings?
Now, do we simply refuse to look at this historical evidence because it doesn’t advantage the views we want to put forth? Do we have an obligation to look at this and openly concede its existence and put forth some type of explanation to it? If
You wrote…How do you know the South’s offer to free their slaves was never going to happen?
=========================================================================
It didn’t happen at all.
************************From the very diary of Charles Francis Adams on 17 February 1862, the paper of Abraham Lincoln dated 15 July 1862, we know for a fact that this was a definite possibility. I have previously sent you hereupon about 20 newspaper articles from around the world attesting to the 1862 Confederate Emancipation Treaty and that such persons as Harriet Beecher Stowe publicly stated that Confederate emancipation could very well occur.
The very timing of the announcement of the Emancipation Proclamation first being announced in private to Seward and Welles in a carriage ride is consistent with Lincoln being presented by the Border State reps of their public awareness of the looming Confederate Emancipation Treaty. It is clear from the timeline of events that it was a prime motivating factor that rendered the EP was Lincoln’s move to ‘retake the lead’ from the South on this issue in order to prevent their recognition by Britain and France, whereas, they were using emancipation to procure this.
Your dismissal of Confederate emancipation is a means to not have to concede historical events and facts that challenge the narrative that you favour.
You wrote….”Palmerston’s biography by Jasper Ridley records him in about Dec. of 1862 very satisfied that the troops he’d sent to Canada had been a decisive factor in the Union’s release of the prisoners and he’d actually been keen for an opportunity to have a go at all the Irish in the Union Army with the British forces.”
=========================================================================
December 1862, the Union had won at Antietam. Palmerston’s cabinet did not meet since many were with the Queen on the Continent. Realize that Palmerston sent the equivalent of the 6 Corps at Gettysburg, hardly enough troops to change any outcome. And, when offered war in 1864 , the Brits backed down and stopped building and arming Confederate Raiders.
*************************************
I refer to Palmerston himself-
‘he held a deep seated animosity to the USA and thought that the secession of the South would bolster the power of the Empire and Britain. Regarding the Confederacy, he viewed it “would afford a valuable and extensive market for British manufactures”.
By October of 1862, he stated-
“…the American War… has manifestly ceased to have any attainable object as far as the Northerns are concerned, except to get rid of some more thousand troublesome Irish and Germans. It must be owned, however, that the Anglo-Saxon race on both sides have shown courage and endurance highly honourable to their stock.”
After the arrest of Mason and Slidell, he wrote in a letter to Queen Victoria-
“Great Britain is in a better state than at any former time to inflict a severe blow upon and to read a lesson to the United States which will not soon be forgotten.”
In another letter to a civil servant he wrote-
“It is difficult not to come to the conclusion that the rabid hatred of England which animates the exiled Irishmen who direct almost all the Northern newspapers, will so excite the masses as to make it impossible for Lincoln and Seward to grant our demands; and we must therefore look forward to war as the probable result.”
When Lincoln did release Mason and Slidell from custody, Palmerston was convinced that it was his sending troops to Canada that had effected this.
*All above can be gleaned from, Ridley, Jasper, ‘Lord Palmerston, London: Constable, 1970, 552-59; Kevin Peraino, “Lincoln vs. Palmerston” in Peraino, Lincoln in the World: The Making of a Statesman and the Dawn of American Power (2013) pp. 120–69; Kenneth Bourne, “British Preparations for War with the North, 1861–1862,” The English Historical Review Vol 76 No 301 (Oct 1961) pp. 600–632.
Your comment also pales when compared with the Prussian war with Denmark. Palmerston had warned Prussia that GB would defend Denmark, but when push came to shove, GB did NOTHING. Why? Because Queen Victoria was pro-Prussia and forbade any intervention.
*********************Incorrect, again. That matter eventuated as it did simply because Palmerston as Prime Minister and head of the British government, thus embodying the tenet of Supremacy of Parliament over Supremacy of the Monarch, (which the historical individual you referred to earlier, Oliver Cromwell, personally set to precedent), had no viable alternative, the titanic complexities of the issue, the division within the Cabinet itself over the matter, meant that simply on this occasion he acquiesced to her bullish actions.
What happened when Queen Victoria aske Lord Salisbury if she ought to simply dismiss Prime Minister Gladstone, which technically, a Monarch/Rep. thereof can do?
She was advised in the strongest terms against this, as it would invoke the Crown itself into active politics.
She did not dismiss the Prime Minister.
You attempt to conflate at that time one incident to overturn nearly 600 years of an evolved system known as responsible government. That isn’t convincing to anyone.
You know I hate it when those pesky facts get in the pesky way…and I am not referring to Johnny Pesky.
*********************What you present as facts and arguments are unconvincing.
1, I am dealing with facts…you seem to be dealing with minute technicalities…in my humble opinion. Your fallacies thinking Rhode Island is the entire North.
2.Andrew Jackson viewed secession as Lincoln.And if you had read the Founding documents of the United States you would be aware that the FF stated in the Articles of Confederation that the Union was to be perpetual. Lincoln believed THAT too. There are 5 or 6 references in the US Constitution which state that a revolt against the sitting Government is illegal…article 4. section 4 for instance.
3. You said the Corwin Amendment passed and then you said you never said that. What gives? Are you flip-flopping again?
4. Possibilities don’t translate into action.
5.Palmerston also states that Winfield Scott was sent to France and offered Quebec to the French in exchange for France going to war against GB…yet there is no source for that. In other words..nothing Palmerston said can be believed
6. Palmerston was dead at the time the Prussia Denmark war. Youare 1000% incorrect . Queen Victoria decided against it, much to the chagrin of her Danish daughter-in Law.
Nice try.
Hugh de Mann…
There is a process that a proposed Amendment to the US Constitution has to go through order to become an Amendment. Passing Congress with 2/3rd the vote is only the 1st step. It have to be passed by 3/4ths of the States. It is a fact that only one Northern state passed it…Rhode Island. So, one cannot say that the Corwin Amendment had the support of the North.
If as you say, the Corwin Amendment had the support of the North, one would have to acknowledge that it should have received more than one Northern vote.
What rendered the Corwin Amendment not to become part of the Constitution was the fact that is it did not guarantee the expansion of slavery, in addition to its preservation.
If the US Constitution is a “technicality”, then I am guilty. Here in the US, at least in the public school I attended, we study the US Constitution in the 8th and 11th years of school. Plus I carry around a copy of it in my back pocket just to bring out and show people where they are basically wrong on what it says.
Now I can understand why you look at it as a ‘technicality” because the US Constitution is written. The British Constitution is largely written, but in different documents. But it has never been codified, brought together in a single document. In this respect, the UK is different from most other countries, which have codified constitutions.
Again, you attempt to confer that you are correct by referring to technicalities that simply do not convince.
If the Corwin Amendment passed both Houses of Congress, and those Reps and Senators can at all be said to have represented in any way the views of the voters in their ridings, then this is itself an indication of Northern support for the Corwin.
Not to mention it encapsulated the essence of what Lincoln and the Republican Party had stated all through the 1860 election; that nothing would be done to touch slavery where it already existed.
Not to mention that Lincoln made the same acknowledgement in his 2nd Inngrl in 1865.
For you to try to dismiss the clear implications of this out of hand is completely ahistorical. It’s a way of trying to avoid conceding the historical obvious.
The Corwin Amendment WOULD have rendered the institution to slavery completely in the hands of the Southern states by its terms-
“No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress 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 other words, slavery was placed 100% out of the federal government’s hands, forever. The wording of this Amendment meant it could never be altered. The only way for slavery to be abolished or amended was by the will of that state, period.
There is no point in your saying you carried around the constitution to me.
I put it to you; do you want to analyse the Cornerstone Speech in full?
And I put the argument that an rigorous examination of that and ‘states rights’ in full will not validate your stance.
Actually, the post is factually incorrect on the entire question of Reconstruction’s end in Virginia. William Mahone’s Readjustor Coalition party was a potent force in Virginia political life for over a generation after Kershaw’s governorship.
Alan Nolan wrote several well acclaimed books on the Civil War and his book on the iron Brigade is the standard to which all brigade histories a compared to.
I have every one and they are autographed.
When you write a book on the Civil war, I’ll get it autographed.
as far Queen Victoria is concerned….
QUEEN VICTORIA’S role in the shaping of foreign policy
during the middle portion of her reign has not been fully
examined. This is true, more particularly, of her activities during
the tedious but passion-stirring Schleswig-Holstein crisis of 1863-4.
In that crisis the future of the Danish Monarchy, considered
European interest, was at stake. Britain, due to ambiguous treaty
obligations, was in danger of becoming involved in hostilities with
two major powers.
The queen felt passionately both about the
issues in dispute and the danger of intervention. Her views,
these respects, differed from those of her prime minister and foreign
secretary.
In consequence, situations repeatedly arose when she
strained to the limit her prerogatives in the field of foreign affairs.
Her views, in the end, prevailed.
Operative words….He views, in the end, prevailed.
I rest my case.
Game set match to the NYiant1952!
Hugh de Mann wrote…”And may I ask then how you explain that a fair number of prominent ex-Confederates supported at least limited Black American suffrage, such as Robert E. Lee, Longstreet, Alexander Stephens, Pierre G.T. Beauregarde, William Mahone.”
How about Nathan Bedford Forrest?
How about the formation of the KKK to deny newly freed slaves there rights under the Constitution?
pesky thing those pesky facts
I’m no expert on Forrest in any capacity. I am not prepared to put any kind of argument about him in any way.
True; the KKK did develop after the war and those aims it certainly had.
No one is denying or minimising that.
Do you deny what I have wrote above about the cited ex-Confederates and their support for at least limited Black American suffrage? Do you put the argument that it is factually inaccurate to state that?
Do you wish to expand that point? Do you wish to also examine those in the North whom sought to deny Black Americans their new voting and other rights?
Would you be willing to look at how Michigan voted against Black Americans receiving the vote in a state referendum in 1866?
Or how about the next man to occupy the Office of the US Presidency, Andrew Johnson, was adamant against Black American suffrage, emphatically stating to Frederick Douglass’ face in a White House meeting in the same year that if Black Americans desired this, they ought to leave the USA and settle in a country where this was permitted?
Or how when Thomas Morris Chester met with Francis Pierpoint, whom Lincoln personally supported as WV Governor, Pierpont told Chester to his face he was against Black Americans voting?
As with Forrest, I am in no way whatsoever an authority upon Reconstruction. I simply don’t have that knowledge to make a solid argument. But if you wish to enter the views you put above, let us put those, too, in open fashion.
The point is those Confederates supported “limited” suffrage for newly freed Blacks.
No mention of full suffrage which they were entitled to.
Argument Put-
1, I am dealing with facts…you seem to be dealing with minute technicalities…in my humble opinion. Your fallacies thinking Rhode Island is the entire North.
******What you stipulate as ‘facts’ are more accurately articulated as a determination to not consider the evidence.
2.Andrew Jackson viewed secession as Lincoln.And if you had read the Founding documents of the United States you would be aware that the FF stated in the Articles of Confederation that the Union was to be perpetual. Lincoln believed THAT too. There are 5 or 6 references in the US Constitution which state that a revolt against the sitting Government is illegal…article 4. section 4 for instance.
************ And who else agreed with Lincoln that secession was unlawful? To the best of my knowledge, I can cite at this time George Washington and Zachary Taylor.
Who else was President of the United States as Lincoln was, having sworn the same oath as he did upon taking it up and believed the exact opposite of ibid about secession being unlawful or beyond the power of any to stop?
Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler and James Buchanan.
What does that say? You again refuse to deal with the evidence that challenges you and simply refusing to acknowledge it when it is put is to concede the point.
3. You said the Corwin Amendment passed and then you said you never said that. What gives? Are you flip-flopping again?
**********************I have already clarified that issue. Trying to bring it up again is wasting time.
4. Possibilities don’t translate into action.
*******************************The Confederate Emancipation Treaty and the DFK Mission do prove the point; the South was willing to emancipate. To refuse to acknowledge that and openly concede and address it is to concede the point.
5.Palmerston also states that Winfield Scott was sent to France and offered Quebec to the French in exchange for France going to war against GB…yet there is no source for that. In other words..nothing Palmerston said can be believed.
*********************Yet again, I direct you and all to the ‘Letters of Queen Victoria’, Vol. III, (1911), 29 November 1861, Palmerston – Queen Victoria, pages 595-96
https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.83373/page/n607/mode/2up?q=canada&view=theater
6. Palmerston was dead at the time the Prussia Denmark war. Youare 1000% incorrect . Queen Victoria decided against it, much to the chagrin of her Danish daughter-in Law.
Nice try.
*************Then if I have mistyped Palmerston in that stead, that is a moment of slight err.
Nothing takes away from the point that the Prime Minister of the day acquiesced to the views of the Monarch in this singular issue and incident for the reasons I have outlined.
Queen Victoria thought it improper for British politicians to make speeches from trains, but it developed and continued through her reign.
Hugh..
1. The facts are evidence. What isn’t evidence are fallacies.
2. Lincoln had no reason to consider what previous President had thought about secession .He was his own man. And the times called for action.
BTW, Buchanan is considered the worst President in American History , just because of his indecision and inaction.
3. Your flip-flop on the Corwin Amendment, 2 opposite comments 12 hours apart, is the determining factor in you losing the debate.
4. Pipe dream. Please name for me the African American regiment that served in the Civil War and fought for the Confederacy. I can name several Black regiments that fought for the Union…the 54th Massachusetts is one.
Now, I will concede that isolated Blacks may have taken up a firearm, and I concede that Blacks did the work of building fortifications and acting as teamsters. But a concerted active involvement in the Civil War is lacking.
5. Palmerston never did admit to where he heard that about Scott. Fake news. And nothing in the American achieves admits to this either.
6.Palmerston nor fellow statesman John Russell could win the support of Queen Victoria or the cabinet for a pro-Danish policy.
Looks like he acquiesced to the Queen.
Now, who was the beneficiary of the United States remaining one country, instead of 2?Undoubtedly, it was Great Britain!!
1. It was the presence of American soldiers on the European battlefields of WW I, that turned the tide in favor of the Allies.
2.It was the American Lend-Lease which kept Great Britain an independent country when the Brits stood alone against the onslaught of Nazi Germany. The united United States provided food ,bullets, ships and armor which had been lost in 1940 at Dunkirque.
Hugh..
1. The facts are evidence. What isn’t evidence are fallacies.
********************* And that is why your arguments do not rest on any. Every time that you are unable to answer any of the pertinent historical questions, answers to which would refute pretty much all the arguments you have tried by sheer will power to put, the point is proven over and over again-
Your arguments have little merit.
Mine have rested upon evidence over and over again and you keep trying to ‘shift’ from it. When you tried to erroneously claim that I had no evidence of Lincoln offering Quebec to France if the latter would join in with the North against Britain and the South, due to the Trent Affair, for the umpteenth time, (as I have no qualm with repeating as often), I directed you to the Letters of Queen Victoria, Vol. III, and the letter from November of 1861 by Palmerston to HM advising her of that.
When that conclusively disproved you, you tried to shift the point to being that there was no evidence as to how Palmerston acquired this information. I thus directed you to the contents of the letter itself and the ‘law officers’, it mentioned.
You have defended dishonest historical practices by Alan T. Nolan and others; you defended that he was right to examine and cite limited sources despite the fact that the arguments Nolan extrapolated was disproven by both situation context and other evidence also directly stemming from Robert E. Lee.
Despite all data to the contrary in plain view and easily accessible, you have tried to shift over and over again that Lincoln was not elected to the office of President by the northern section of America. You have inserted red herrings as a distraction by trying to ‘shift’ that fact by drawing irrelevant attention to the voting procedures of the Presidency of the Electoral College or by that means he assumed the Office as US President. These are distractions from the point and your refusal to concede them openly does your historical credibility disservice.
Your aggressive ignorance is not a valid methodology. The only way that you can retain the views and arguments you persist is by refusing willfully to consider the greater evidence laid before you.
(Shrug) You are free to keep at all this. I’m not going to let the matter slide.
If you attempt to put it, I shall come back.
2. Lincoln had no reason to consider what previous President had thought about secession .He was his own man. And the times called for action.
BTW, Buchanan is considered the worst President in American History , just because of his indecision and inaction.
******************************* Did I just read that correctly…?!
Lincoln, as the man holding the office of President, had no reason to consider what other Presidents had done in any regards to secession, or by logical extension, no President has any obligation to consider what any other President has done about anything?!
Then that is to say such things as that, despite John Tyler setting the first precedent and founding a tradition that has carried to the present day, a Vice-President whom becomes President because the other President has died/become incapacitated/etc, is ONLY President in the strictest terms; they are to perform the absolute barest of duties essential to being a caretaker President, (the equivalent of a Governor General of Canada), and they have absolutely no right to effect any of the powers or set policy as they were not elected to the office; the country did not vote THAT individual to THAT office. The such President is to defer to the Cabinet and Congress on all matters possible.
For these were EXACTLY the views put forth about John Tyler when he became the first President to assume the Office as Vice-President. It was no question he would assume the office; but did he have the right to be ‘his own man’ in the position? There was a very loud and large segment that answered ‘no’.
Tyler determined that he was the President in full. BUT!!!! Your logic then assumes another such VP whom assumes the Presidential Office has the complete right to disavow what every like precedent has happened before and is at perfect liberty to disregard tradition and to perform in the office alternatively as I described above!
Would you then say that another President has the right to do as Andrew Jackson did and completely ignore a SCOTUS ruling?
The faulty logic in your stance betrays your argument. As well, it is a further ‘shift’, for it skillfully is an attempt by you to dodge the original question entirely; if the outcome and analysis of the secession issue was always, no matter what, exactly as you say from the beginning of the American republic, then how was it possible that other Presidents could believe the exact opposite from Lincoln?
Your attempt to shift is to concede the point.
3. Your flip-flop on the Corwin Amendment, 2 opposite comments 12 hours apart, is the determining factor in you losing the debate.
******************************1) That has long been addressed. The bank has long refused you credit on that one. And I take that your harking on that to mean that you are desperate to ‘feel’ that it means you can claim some kind of victory. 2) I don’t see or feel myself as having lost/won anything and I do not need you to state I’ve won or lost anything whatsoever, nor do I feel the need to state anything for myself other than that I’m 150% happy to keep this engagement proceeding.
4. Pipe dream. Please name for me the African American regiment that served in the Civil War and fought for the Confederacy. I can name several Black regiments that fought for the Union…the 54th Massachusetts is one.
Now, I will concede that isolated Blacks may have taken up a firearm, and I concede that Blacks did the work of building fortifications and acting as teamsters. But a concerted active involvement in the Civil War is lacking.
************************** I have no interest in debating the existence or non-existence of Black Confederates at this time, whatsoever.
I have stated that both Porter Alexander and James Longstreet in their memoirs made comments that could be taken as heavily implying that these existed, or at the bare minimum, Black Americans whom showed support for the Confederate war effort, and that these two individuals left the matter for future historians to examine and debate if that’s what they were meaning.
I’ve also stated that Robert E. Lee showed his willingness to personally lead would-be national Black Confederate troops into battle, and that I had no interest in how persons would use same evidence to argue the actual viability of these same would-be national Black Confederate troops actually forming.
So, exactly as with making arguments in any way about Nathan Bedford Forrest or most of Reconstruction, such a debate about Black Confederates is not going to occur with me.
Moving on…
5. Palmerston never did admit to where he heard that about Scott. Fake news. And nothing in the American achieves admits to this either.
*************************Again, you refuse to concede the plain evidence by ‘shifting’, (See reply in 1). He heard it from the ‘law officers’ whom obtained the information. That term is code in British documents for ‘secret service/paid informers’.
…now, perhaps…I have misread that. Perhaps the matter is that you need to ‘correct’ a point made here. Very well.
But you would not state something as nationalistic or prejudiced as to say, something pertaining to American history HAS to be found in American evidence to be considered true, valid, accurate, etc.
That would be the epitome of prejudice. It would be Xenophobic.
It would also be absolutely indefensible in any capacity and be contrary to all logic to assert such a stance.
It would be agreeing with a potential historian stating that if there is no evidence in China itself that Marco Polo ever actually reached China, that absolutely proves that he did not ever reach there.
And yet, we have his startlingly well detailed description of all of it, including of Ghengis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan…
Or, would you put the argument that there had to be AMERICAN evidence within AMERICAN sources to accept as AMERICAN history the fact that a mass grave was discovered beneath Benjamin Franklin’s house in London?
Only AMERICAN evidence counts about AMERICAN evidence?
Don’t try to shift now.
6.Palmerston nor fellow statesman John Russell could win the support of Queen Victoria or the cabinet for a pro-Danish policy.
Looks like he acquiesced to the Queen.
*************************So now you are even using my language and by the very wording of this point, you are conceding that the Cabinet chose to defer to HM on this instance?
You are conceding that the above example was merely one example in the history of responsible government and is not indicative of the entire tradition?
********************
Now, who was the beneficiary of the United States remaining one country, instead of 2?Undoubtedly, it was Great Britain!!
1. It was the presence of American soldiers on the European battlefields of WW I, that turned the tide in favor of the Allies.
2.It was the American Lend-Lease which kept Great Britain an independent country when the Brits stood alone against the onslaught of Nazi Germany. The united United States provided food ,bullets, ships and armor which had been lost in 1940 at Dunkirque.
********************
If you are making a point by invoking this, please to put it another way. Can you please explain to me how the essence of this contributes to our discussion of the Civil War/War Between The States with some further clarification?
I have made the other points I have by citing Marco Polo as above, or the other one I posed to you about Michael Collins to articulate my point about the pitfalls of refusing to acknowledge or engage with relevant evidence as a means to clarify.
Alan Nolan wrote several well acclaimed books on the Civil War and his book on the iron Brigade is the standard to which all brigade histories a compared to.
I have every one and they are autographed.
When you write a book on the Civil war, I’ll get it autographed.
****Reply.
I have written several works, though not a book yet, (that’s coming). He was a talented historian, and his articulation of the structure and tenets of the Lost Cause historiography was the best attempt to outline it.
But there were several marked flaws in his works, especially in those in which, (in some manner), he addressed the Lost Cause historiography and/or figures/themes of the South. These fall into a pattern which Janney, Seidule, Dombey, Thompson, Cox, Serwer, Coates, Foner, Chernow, (and even Gallagher, McPherson and Connolly all incorporate to a lesser extent).
He did not adequately disclose the evidence which existed that challenged his arguments.
For example, he cited emphatically Robert E. Lee’s 11 January 1865 letter to Andrew Hunter as ‘proving’ Lee’s comprehensive views about slavery, Black Americans and the latter’s place in Southern society and army.
The problem is…that’s not the ONLY pertinent evidence on the matter. Lee’s comments to Edward Sparrow when shown a letter of the Cleburne Plan and Lee’s 27 and 29 March 1865 orders to Richard Ewell drastically render Nolan’s arguments about this aspect of Lee’s life inaccurate; nor does Nolan openly consider the context of Lee’s words in the 11-01-65 letter, (he had said that the Confederate Congress did nothing but chew tobacco and eat peanuts while his army starved and he was aware of the desperate need to convince politicians of a given outcome upon issues whom did not agree with him in principle). In other words, Nolan fails to see that Lee was making these statements in the same circumstantial context to achieve a desperately needed result and playing to the biases of those whose support he had to have, exactly like how the film Lincoln accurately depicts the President counselling Thaddeus Stevens to tone down his rhetoric and to actually voice racist sentiments in Congress to get the 13th Amendment passed.
Nolan did not adequately disclose and engage with evidence that challenged him.
And ultimately, what are you saying? I’m not attacking your friend in ad hominem manner.
Exactly like we’ve done to each other, I’m offering critical reflection upon how he wrote history, exactly as I’ve done upon Bede Nairn, Keith Windschuttle, Patrick Wolfe, Ron Chernow, Douglas Southall Freeman, Rex Taylor, Edward Steers Jr., Barbara Messamore, etc, etc, etc.
Are you putting an argument forward of ‘appeal to achievement’? Are you saying because I’ve never personally written a book that means I’m unfit to assess one?
Reply
nygiant1952 says:
July 30, 2022 at 12:35 PM
as far Queen Victoria is concerned….
QUEEN VICTORIA’S role in the shaping of foreign policy
during the middle portion of her reign has not been fully
examined. This is true, more particularly, of her activities during
the tedious but passion-stirring Schleswig-Holstein crisis of 1863-4.
In that crisis the future of the Danish Monarchy, considered
European interest, was at stake. Britain, due to ambiguous treaty
obligations, was in danger of becoming involved in hostilities with
two major powers.
The queen felt passionately both about the
issues in dispute and the danger of intervention. Her views,
these respects, differed from those of her prime minister and foreign
secretary.
In consequence, situations repeatedly arose when she
strained to the limit her prerogatives in the field of foreign affairs.
Her views, in the end, prevailed.
Operative words….He views, in the end, prevailed.
I rest my case.
Game set match to the NYiant1952!
********Again, her views prevailed because the Government of the day chose to acquiesce to them. The elected Ministry had no overall better policy to action, the circumstances were confusing and complex as could be and they chose not to action differently.
If they had, that would have been the end of it. Supremacy of Parliament.
1. Alan Nolan , if he were alive today, would bask in the fact that his name is being remembered on Civil war battlefields.
Since it relies on Lee’s writing, it has to be taken as an authoritative work.
And it’s stood the test of time.
2.As far as the Queen is concerned…she told the ministers what to do.
Final Tally.
I have to admit that I won the debate. What hurt you Hugh , was the flip-flop on the Corwin Amendment, saying it passed and then saying it didn’t pass 12 hours later. That cost you quite a few points.
Now we can go to the Lost Cause as a myth debate.
What hurts the Lost Cause is the change in reasons of why the South left the Union. First they said it was slavery before the actual fighting took place.
But after the war, it was States Rights for which they left the Union, ( that state right being abet take their property, i.e. slaves to other states.). Even today, the SCV says that the war was fought over “States Rights”.
The whole “Lost Cause” falls apart when you change the reasons for leaving after the war.
You’ve won nothing. I call you out 100%. True victors in a debate don’t need to verbally claim anything as the case is clear
You attempting to describe me as ‘flip flopping’ on that point is indicative of dishonesty on your part in light that I clearly said that I was confused at the time as I thought you were stating I’d argued the CA had been ‘passed’ as in been ‘passed’ through the final steps to become part of the constitution.
I had said that it had passed through both houses of Congress, but I didn’t understand at the time that that was what you were referring to.
That has been clarified and you’re the one who is looking dishonest by trying to claim anything else.
I dismiss your arguments 100%. They are unconvincing and every time I put a question you were not able to answer to a personal advantage, you tried to ‘shift’ it and distract with a red herring that gave nothing substantive to the discussion in any context.
If evidence arose to challenge your arguments, you simply refused to address it directly.
When you tried to state that there was no proof of Lincoln offering Quebec to France in the event of a war with Britain over the Trent Affair, I brought up the significant source of Queen Victoria’s letters, and the one from Palmerston himself outlining the developments.
Then, you tried to say that it should not be counted as you tried to say it didn’t cite where he got his information from. Within the report, it clearly stated, ‘Law Officers’, which is British code for, ‘Secret Service’.
Next, you’ll shift again, all along with the presumption that if you simply refuse to admit something, the world sees no different.
None of your arguments have convinced me of anything and if anything, they have all the more confirmed my opinion that not only is ‘myth’ the wrong term to apply to the Lost Cause school of Civil War/War Between the States studies; myth has been so bastardised from its actual meaning that it has been rendered useless by that and the terms, ‘incorrect’, ‘inaccuracy’, etc, are best utilised instead.
The substance of your arguments and the evidence you have brought forth to support them have convinced me of no merit in them.
Hugh,
You made 2 contradictory statements. In a debate, you lose points for that.
I proved to you that one can hardly say the North wanted the Corwin Amendment when only one Northern state voted in favor of it.
Pure conjecture on Palmerston’s behalf regarding Scott. Unless you believe Mrs Slidell and Miss Slidell
As far as the myth of the Lost Cause, even the cause is in dispute. The so called War of Northern Aggression, is part of that myth as the Rebels fired the first shots.
You can take center stage for the next few days as I will be at Nationals Park studying the effects of a wicked googly upon a sticky wicket
The Lost Cause historiography, which is what it is, did minimise slavery as a significant factor in bringing on the war. But it wasn’t at all wrong that there were other important factors and the war would have come anyways. More to the point, we know that about the Civil War since 1787 with the Federalist Papers 6-8 of Alexander Hamilton.
Are you sure you want to have that part of the debate at this stage?
Hugh…your comment…”the war would have come anyways.”
That’s pure conjecture.
Now, as to the myth of the Lost Cause, all those issues other than slavery were discussed after the war, not before the war.
Here’s list if you study the original documents..
Slavery
1) Each declaration makes the defense of slavery a clear objective.
2) Some states argue that slavery should be expanded.
3) Abolitionism is attacked as a method of inciting violent uprisings.
4) Mississippi and Georgia point out that slavery accounts for a huge portion of the Southern economy.
States’ Rights
1) The states argue that the Union is a compact, one that can be annulled if the states are not satisfied with what they receive in return from other states and/or from the federal government.
2) The states argue that the North’s reluctance to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (mandating that fugitive slaves be returned to the South) means that the compact is no longer satisfactory
Other Grievances
1) All of the states negatively mention Abraham Lincoln’s election and his suspected abolitionist leanings.
2) Georgia accuses Northern manufacturing interests of exploiting the South and dominating the federal government.
3) Texas expresses dissatisfaction with federal military protection.
Lost Cause
Now after the war,the Lost Cause tradition took root in selective reinterpretations of the war’s causes, in Southern resistance to Reconstruction, in ever more virulent doctrines of white supremacy, and in a nostalgic popular culture enjoyed and promoted by Northern as well as Southern culture brokers. Lost Cause advocates—from high-ranking officers to common soldiers writing reminiscences and women leading memorial associations—argued that the Confederates had lost only to superior Yankee numbers and resources, minimized the role that slavery had played in catalyzing secession and the war or claimed that the war had never been about slavery,The defeat of Black civil and political rights and, for some, even the terrorist violence it took to accomplish the white Southern Democrats’ counterrevolution against Reconstruction emerged as honoured central themes of Lost Cause culture.
In his two-volume memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881), former Confederate president Jefferson Davis argued that slavery “was in no wise the cause of the conflict” and that slaves had been “contented with their lot.” He too declared the Lost Cause not lost: “Well may we rejoice in the regained possession of self-government.…This is the great victory…a total non-interference by the Federal Government with the domestic affairs of the States.” When 21st-century conservative politicians or judges demand the return of power to the “states,” we often hear, knowingly or not, echoes of Jefferson Davis.
Who is denying that Black Americans were entitled to full suffrage?
Who is saying that the views of those ex-Confederates I cited can’t have a measure of fair and balanced criticism put to their the limited extent they envisioned the matter in?
But the thing is, you are now just as obliged to put whatever criticism you would to them to figures of the North as Abraham Lincoln, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Oliver O. Howard.
They all supported Black Americans voting in the same terms as those ex-Confederates I cited.
Are you prepared to do that? If not, that stance can’t be justified.
And on Nolan, you’ve just vindicated his flawed methodology in open fashion. In making the stance you do, you are supporting dishonest methodology by not at least attempting to disclose all the relevant and pertinent evidence. That’s methodological dishonesty.
And on Queen Victoria, no.
Oliver Cromwell himself 220 years before the CW/WBTS established the principle of Supremacy of Parliament. The Monarch is duty bound in veritably 98% of situations to act upon the ‘advice’ of their elected Ministers.
Hugh, your comment above….And may I ask then how you explain that a fair number of prominent ex-Confederates supported at least limited Black American suffrage.
You used the word limited, I didn’t.
Yes. Do you deny that the Confederates I cited above supported impartial suffrage? Not to mention Pierre G.T. Beauregarde.
Do you deny that Abraham Lincoln, Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, Oliver O. Howard supported this in the same or similar enough terms? Or that Longstreet supported Black American suffrage with the view that White Americans in the South ought to see it as an opportunity as ‘influencing them on how to vote correctly for who/what/etc?’
Shrug, do you want to see the sources such as Lincoln’s 11 April 1865 speech or the passage in Jeffry D. Wert’s biography?
Or are you going to attempt to shift the question again as you know that answering it in forthright manner will not advantage your position?
Hugh…first you said…Do you deny what I have wrote above about the cited ex-Confederates and their support for at least limited Black American suffrage?
Then you said… Do you deny that the Confederates I cited above supported impartial suffrage?
First you said Limited suffrage,,….now you say impartial suffrage.
Again..help me out here…which is it?
Now, I’m not saying they were correct or that if I were alive back then, or from my position even today, that I agree with them in part or in whole, but if we’re on that topic of impartial suffrage at all for Black Americans in the immediate post-war, I ask you, ‘what very well-known and powerful organisation for Black Americans, based in the North, and run by Black Americans in the main, supported limited voting rights for the Black American community and why did it take this line?’
It was set in Pennsylvania. Refer to R.J. Blackett’s Thomas Morris Chester biography.
This is a test; will you actually engage with evidence that you disagree with, if only so that you can understand it and not to agree with it. That is the mark of a calibre historian.
Hugh…limited suffrage or impartial suffrage?
I guess Queen Victoria used the 2% to be duty un-bound?
And your argument would be that that 2% undoes the other 98% going back all the way to Edward the Longshanks convening the first English Parliament?
Or, the other vast scope of legislation passed, governmental policies taken in the UK and abroad, that she disagreed with, but still which were actioned?
No, I still say that the Ministers listened to the wishes of their Queen.
Hugh, let me know when you write your book, and I’ll read it.
Until then, I’ll stick with Nolan , whose book has stood the test of time.
Now and forever, you’re free to read and to not read as you choose.
But to cite Nolan alone and in veritable isolation is not being a historian.
That’s delving into ideolougism.
Why Nolan?
Why not Bearrs? Why not Foote? Why not Holzer? Why not Flood? Why not Robertson Jr.? Why not Sandburg? Why not Current? Why not Donald? Why not Burke Davis? Why not Henderson? Why not Gates Jr.? Why not Hope Franklin? Why not T. Williams? Why not Hari Jones? Why not Wert? Why not Porter? Why not McPherson? Why not DiLorenzo? Why not McLanahan? Why not Gallagher? Why not Atkinson? not…
Bruce Lee once had a saying that has as much value when it is inverted for the historian.
He said, “I do not fear the man who has practiced 10,000 kicks; I fear the man who has practiced one kick 10,00 times.”
‘I do not respect the historian who has read and cited one historian 10,000 times; I respect the historian who has read and cited 10,000 historians, 10,000 times.’
********************
“I need no lead or powder to avenge my cause and if words be louder I will appose your laws.”
-Ned Kelly, the Jerilderie Letter.
Why not de Mann?
“Always include the strongest possible evidence and works that challenge your argument and address them squarely. This is demonstrating to the reader, or the marker, you are completely aware of the track record of the evidence and sends the clearest signal your argument not only strives to clear the highest threshold, but that you have no fear of it.”
-The late, great Stuart Macintyre, University of Melbourne. RIP
Aways read with discernment what the other guy has written and see if he contradicts himself.
NYGiant1952, School of Hard Knox, Whattsamatta U.
Per your statement above re. the LC thesis, I first again put the questions I already have to you.
Your shifting and attempt to not answer is not an adequate answer.
I re-put my them to you.
Do you know what impartial suffrage was? Have you read, say, Frederick Douglass’ critiques on the it? Have you read JL Chamberlain’s speech espousing it? Have you read Alexander Stephens’ statement to a vast crowd of Black American supporters of his on his front lawn, wherein he tacitly but plainly endorsed them voting?
And I put the question to you again; are you prepared to give the same criticism/condemnation/or whatever measure you engage to the Union figures I’ve cited as to the Confederates for their like views on the same issue? Why or why not? If not, I call into question how genuinely you actually claim to feel towards the issue.
HM’s elected Ministers chose to acquiesce to Her views on the German matter in this individual situation for the reasons previously put. Otherwise, what you are in point of fact arguing is that responsible government does not exist in Britain and veritably never has.
No; there was no contradiction on my part. I simply misunderstood the specific nature of the question you put. The technical term for that kind of situation is, ‘a clarification of a misunderstood representation.’ So stop wasting time and energy on trying to state something as inaccurate as that an elephant is an insect. You’re not making me look anything, you’re not going to get me angry and I’m not going to be deviated in the slightest from the enquiry at hand.
If people choose to reference my work or not, then that’s that. So are you still maintaining that Nolan was to be taken as completely and utterly correct in his book, ‘Lee Considered’, re. his arguments about Lee’s views on slavery as the 11 January 1865 letter to Hunter because that letter is found in Lee’s personal papers?
But then again…how can that view of Nolan be taken as comprehensive when the evidence he cites stands in complete contrast to another letter in Lee’s papers, such as his letter to his wife 21 December 1862, wherein he states about completing the manumission of his Father in law’s estate slaves, ‘I desire to do what is right and best for the people.’
How can you reconcile not just these two mutually exclusive evidences, and, how is it Nolan could justify not adequately attempting to disclose that they both existed w/o a reasonable explanatory attempt?
I put these questions to you.
A few things before I’m off to the ball game.
1. YOU used the word limited suffrage and then used the word impartial suffrage. Help me out here and tell me which one do you NOW want to talk about.
2. About Lee….According to historians, not only did Lee own slaves, but he also fought in court to keep working slaves from his father-in-law’s estate. Claims casting Lee as an anti-slavery figure are tied to a false narrative known as the Lost Cause, which says the Confederate experience in the Civil War was not about slavery, but state’s rights.
John Reeves, a historian and author of the book, “The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon,” said the claim about Lee is false.
“Between owning a handful of slaves from his own family and then managing his father-in-law’s 200 slaves, Lee was very, very involved with slavery during his life up until the end of 1862,” he said.
Reeves explained that Lee worked the slaves for about five years in order to pay off legacies associated with his father-in-law’s estate. “He was utilizing the slave labor in order to pay the legacies,” Reeves explained.
Lee wanted to work the slaves beyond the five-year limit stated in his father-in-law’s will. Lee fought in court to keep the slaves working because he didn’t know if he would be able to pay off his legacies.
Wesley Norris was born a slave on the plantation that Lee managed after his father-in-law died. Norris testified during the court fight that Lee beat him when he tried to run away. “Every one of the facts in Wesley Norris’ account has been shown to be true,” Reeves noted
L
I will put to you at this time, that I would retract that statement that all mention of states rights (federalism) separate from slavery that the Lost Cause cited as a major war factor was invented by the LC AFTER the war.
I put it to you that you wish to retract that statement in the greatest urgency for the purpose of argumentation.
A few things before I’m off to the ball game.
*******Be safe and enjoy your outing.
1. YOU used the word limited suffrage and then used the word impartial suffrage. Help me out here and tell me which one do you NOW want to talk about.
*******The fact you are trying to put the question back to me shows you are attempting to evade having to understand the historical issue.
No one is attempting to say that full voting rights ought not to have been dispensed to all Black Americans.
No one is attempting to say that impartial suffrage was a perfect historical subject worthy of hagiography.
What is being put is that the support for the limited voting basis that the list of Union and Confederates I cited is proof of a measure of progressive growth on their part. In the circumstances of the times, to support this at all was heroic.
2. About Lee….According to historians, not only did Lee own slaves, but he also fought in court to keep working slaves from his father-in-law’s estate. Claims casting Lee as an anti-slavery figure are tied to a false narrative known as the Lost Cause, which says the Confederate experience in the Civil War was not about slavery, but state’s rights.
*********************************
Nope…not going there until more is settled. But since you cite ‘states rights/federalism’, I put it to you again that it is best for you to amend or at least be open to re-considering that statement that these, apart from connected to slavery, had nothing to do with the war and that the LC invented them as ever an issue AFTER the Civil War/War Between the States.
Do you maintain that still?
*****************************************************************************************************************
John Reeves, a historian and author of the book, “The Lost Indictment of Robert E. Lee: The Forgotten Case Against an American Icon,” said the claim about Lee is false.
“Between owning a handful of slaves from his own family and then managing his father-in-law’s 200 slaves, Lee was very, very involved with slavery during his life up until the end of 1862,” he said.
Reeves explained that Lee worked the slaves for about five years in order to pay off legacies associated with his father-in-law’s estate. “He was utilizing the slave labor in order to pay the legacies,” Reeves explained.
Lee wanted to work the slaves beyond the five-year limit stated in his father-in-law’s will. Lee fought in court to keep the slaves working because he didn’t know if he would be able to pay off his legacies.
Wesley Norris was born a slave on the plantation that Lee managed after his father-in-law died. Norris testified during the court fight that Lee beat him when he tried to run away. “Every one of the facts in Wesley Norris’ account has been shown to be true,” Reeves noted
L
I would direct you to at least peruse here before you do so maintain and consider that 1787 comes well and long before 1861-65.
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/full-text
Hmmmmmm…
I’ve just thought of something here.
Perhaps the most productive means by which to convey my point, that the arguments of yourself, Nolan and the vast of the rest of those who write history in the same manner, (the merits of their works aside), is to utilise an example that we could both relate to.
That specifically, the number one flaw of their works and arguments is OMISSION.
Not only do they systematically refuse to engage with evidence that challenges their stance; they openly refuse to even concede it exists.
The danger in that is that it leaves the argument of such a writer to be not just ambushed, but struck down and appear as having lied by omission. They have refused to disclose what they knew was relevant and pertinent and what would force a fundamental change of perspective if it were disclosed.
From this chat, it’s clear we have some things in common: We are both related to Michael Collins, we both view him in a positive light, etc.
Now, can I ask you: Do you agree with the argument that Michael Collins ‘sold out’ the Republic at the negotiations with David Lloyd-George? Do you state there is no evidence of this?
Michael Collins did not “sell out” the Republic. He made the best deal possible at the time, and gave Ireland its first Independence in hundreds of years. And put Ireland on the road to full Independence. Collins certainly did not study the efforts of Lee and Jefferson Davis.
Better to find fault with deValera who could have had the 6 counties to the North if he had allowed the Brits access to naval stations on the Irish Coast.
You do know that had HItler invaded Ireland, after invading England, Irish Jews would not have been spared.
And NOW you will learn the danger of ONLY engaging with evidence that you agree with in history!
This is the methodological err that Nolan et al, incurred and which I will demonstrate by showing the same nature of historical methodology err to you from another field.
You realise that significant evidence exists Michael Collins had not only made up his mind, but was actively working in secret from all the rest of the IRA, the Irish government and everyone else to already accept the status of a Ireland becoming a Dominion of the British Empire, like Canada, Australia, etc, long before the ceasefire in July of 1921…?
When De Valera went to Ireland to begin negotiations, the die was already set; Ireland would become a Dominion or nothing, because of what Michael Collins had done in complete secret and without authority from anyone but himself.
Now, set aside 100% whatever can be said of Michael Collins as an agent of history for this; what about all the people whom wrote Irish history about him?
What about Tim Pat Coogan, Rex Taylor, Margery Forster, David Neligan, Batt O’Connor, Hayden Talbot, James Mackay, Piaras Beaslai, etc, etc, etc…
Not to mention all those whom in any capacity endorsed their works…
This evidence puts them in the position where they can all be accused of setting themselves against the evidence that NECESSARILY forces a different outlook on Collins and the events of his life and the times. They can be accused of deliberately omitting evidence they knew challenged their stance and ‘hiding’ it. The ONLY saving grace from such an accusation, which if proven means a discredit to their credibility, is that the evidence was only recently discovered, long after they had written their histories.
But imagine if the evidence had been in plain view all along and the accusation could be put to them that they had deliberately evaded it.
That is EXACTLY the situation that Nolan et al put themselves in when they espouse arguments the likes of which you have adhered to all along here.
Here’s the evidence about Collins.
(Shrug) how would a historian then engage with this evidence to form an understanding of it?
Here’s the Collins evidence
************Hugh…your comment…”the war would have come anyways.”
That’s pure conjecture.
Now, as to the myth of the Lost Cause, all those issues other than slavery were discussed after the war, not before the war.
Here’s list if you study the original documents..
Slavery
1) Each declaration makes the defense of slavery a clear objective.
2) Some states argue that slavery should be expanded.
3) Abolitionism is attacked as a method of inciting violent uprisings.
4) Mississippi and Georgia point out that slavery accounts for a huge portion of the Southern economy.
States’ Rights
1) The states argue that the Union is a compact, one that can be annulled if the states are not satisfied with what they receive in return from other states and/or from the federal government.
2) The states argue that the North’s reluctance to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 (mandating that fugitive slaves be returned to the South) means that the compact is no longer satisfactory
Other Grievances
1) All of the states negatively mention Abraham Lincoln’s election and his suspected abolitionist leanings.
2) Georgia accuses Northern manufacturing interests of exploiting the South and dominating the federal government.
3) Texas expresses dissatisfaction with federal military protection.
Lost Cause
Now after the war,the Lost Cause tradition took root in selective reinterpretations of the war’s causes, in Southern resistance to Reconstruction, in ever more virulent doctrines of white supremacy, and in a nostalgic popular culture enjoyed and promoted by Northern as well as Southern culture brokers. Lost Cause advocates—from high-ranking officers to common soldiers writing reminiscences and women leading memorial associations—argued that the Confederates had lost only to superior Yankee numbers and resources, minimized the role that slavery had played in catalyzing secession and the war or claimed that the war had never been about slavery,The defeat of Black civil and political rights and, for some, even the terrorist violence it took to accomplish the white Southern Democrats’ counterrevolution against Reconstruction emerged as honoured central themes of Lost Cause culture.
In his two-volume memoir, The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government (1881), former Confederate president Jefferson Davis argued that slavery “was in no wise the cause of the conflict” and that slaves had been “contented with their lot.” He too declared the Lost Cause not lost: “Well may we rejoice in the regained possession of self-government.…This is the great victory…a total non-interference by the Federal Government with the domestic affairs of the States.” When 21st-century conservative politicians or judges demand the return of power to the “states,” we often hear, knowingly or not, echoes of Jefferson Davis.
*****************
Nope.
I already said, we’re not going there yet.
It’s my opinion we haven’t yet adequately addressed the prior subject matter.
Have we?
If so from your perspective, what outcome have we arrived at?
I just finished Professor Janney’s lecture/ power point presentation on the Mythology of The Lost Cause. While oriented towards the curricular needs of high school and community college professors, it provides a wonderful overview of the historical and thematic issues for all students of the Civil War and beyond.
I would rather to direct you to this about the Lost Cause. It’s the best explanation out there-
It is very good.
Oh, so when I show that the Lost cause is a myth, you no longer want to go there?
Oh darn! AndI was having so much fun!!!!
And I was going to mention that this AM before the game, we visited the Ford Theater and the Petersen House across the street. I posed the question about Palmerston and Winfield Scott, and the docents and rangers and experts were very skeptical.
My thoughts are like Ron Reagan’s…trust but verify. No one can verify Palsmerston’s comment and source.
Oh, so when I show that the Lost cause is a myth, you no longer want to go there?
******************That’s not it at all. We’re not done here. You have not in any way convincingly argued that the LC is a ‘myth’ and not a ‘historiography’.
I’m still awaiting at least a reasonably satisfactory explanation as to why this should be considered so.
We have not even gotten around to analysing the Cornerstone Speech.
A lot of unfinished business yet.
Oh darn! AndI was having so much fun!!!!
***********************(Shrug) ok.
And I was going to mention that this AM before the game, we visited the Ford Theater and the Petersen House across the street. I posed the question about Palmerston and Winfield Scott, and the docents and rangers and experts were very skeptical.
*********************Were they aware of the evidence that I have long disclosed? Tell me their names and I’ll happily forward it to them so that they can have the evidence to consider.
That’s funny, when I explained the same situation to the staff of the Lincoln Cottage in Washington, they were like as sceptical. Until I showed the exact same evidence upon presenting it to them…then they were floored. They couldn’t deny that the very letters of Queen Victoria, and coming from the British Prime Minister about information gleaned from apparent British Secret Service that was passed onto HM was a about as vouchable a source as you can get.
Erin Carlson Mast, the Director, (and whom is an outstanding contributor to history in every capacity), was especially stunned as the Director before here was himself a Canadian and he’d never mentioned it. But then again, he had had no awareness of the evidence.
My thoughts are like Ron Reagan’s…trust but verify. No one can verify Palsmerston’s comment and source.
**************************So the fact that the intelligence had been obtained by the British Secret Service, analysed and passed all the way up to the chain of command to Prime Minister and Monarch, and you will still attempt to ‘shift’ that the evidence is unreliable?
Such a position comes from an aggressive ignorance, alone.
Hugh…your woids…”I already said, we’re not going there yet.”
Why don’t you return when you are ready it go there add discuss the reasons the Lost Cause is a myth.
From what I understand, the so called British Secret Service, received , interpreted and sent the information to Palmerston to allow him to send a letter to the Queen, all in 2 days?
1. Never happened
2.Palmerston NEVER said the got the information from so it could be verified. Another pesky fact.
1 I continue to put facts into play, and you always concede that I am correct…the Corwin Amendment, the fact that there were no organize Black regiments that fought fo the South. I’ll let the facts stand for themselves.
2. In the United States, no President is beholding to what his predecessor did.
1. FDR did not follow the works of Hoover when he made a Bank Holiday.
2. JFK did not go along with the Bay of Pigs invasion
3. Trump tried to dismantle the ACA…but failed.
Do YOU really want to go down this road?
3.Corwin did not have the approval of the North.
4.Thank you. Another win for me. No Black regiments fought for the South.
5. As the docents at the Ford theater were skeptical about Palmerston, and the fact that his comment to the Queen cannot be verified it can’t be used in any discussion. Plus there are no American documents that support such a claim.
recall that Reagan said…Trust but verify.
6.I always said that the Queen had the final say…and she did!!
7. Marco Polo?
1 I continue to put facts into play,
****************You do not. Your arguments have resided on bad logic, ‘shifting the focal point’, and aggressive ignorance.
and you always concede that I am correct
**************I have not. You have attempted to conflate where I conceded you had merit on a few outlier, immaterial things that did not mean either my acceptance of your arguments in the whole, or that your arguments themselves were valid.
I find it suspicious that in the last few posts you have gone to great lengths to attempt to say with force you have ‘won’ or I have conceded something significant towards your position, whereby, I am fine to keep coming back and back to these same points.
…the Corwin Amendment,
**************You are incorrect. The fact that it captured the essence of what Lincoln, the Northern public, the Republican Party, etc, had stated so emphatically for so long, in addition to being espoused by two Presidents and having passed the two Houses of Congress undeniably show that the North was in earnest about making it and the nature of what it conveyed effectual:
That the North was willing to reconvene all the rights that had already been given to slavery where/etc, it already existed and cement these rights with an unalterable Constitutional Amendment. The federal gov’t could not affect the institution whatsoever and the only way slavery could ever change would be by virtue of the states where it already existed.
Your argument that the fact it was never actually adopted by being ratified by all the States and becoming an actual part of the Constitution rings not just hollow, but deceitful and aggressively ignorant. It speaks to the nationalism that defines your emotional outlook that you ‘need’ to not ‘feel’ that the following was factually the case.
If the South had simply accepted it, it would have happened and the North was willing for it to happen.
The North was willing to reconvene all the rights to the fields, barns, whips, chains, bills of sale and bedrooms exactly as they already existed and guarantee them for all time to come speaks to the fact that the North had a historical responsibility to slavery and the racism which underpinned it. This is the truth that Lincoln came to and had the courage to tell the world about.
the fact that there were no organize Black regiments that fought fo the South. I’ll let the facts stand for themselves.
**********************I have not addressed the issue of the existence or non-existence of Black Americans to any argumentative point in any capacity. I have drawn attention to what a few evidences indicate about the topic and stood back for all others to draw their own conclusions. You introducing when it was unnecessary to the flow of the debate and when it served no substantive point was itself pointless.
I have no argument or position to put on the topic of any kind.
2. In the United States, no President is beholding to what his predecessor did.
*******************then that means, for example, the next VP to assume the Presidency is 100% free to retract from essentially any but the absolute barest minimum of action and break the tradition set by Tyler.
But in a larger sense, you are then conceding that secession is in point of fact a perfectly logical and valid thing to occur. For if you state that as above, what you are saying is that Thomas Jefferson was not bound in any way by George Washington’s stance against it, and nor was James Madison or John Quincy Adams; that John Tyler was NOT bound by Andrew Jackson’s stance against secession, and that James Buchanan was NOT bound by Zachary Taylor’s stance against it.
So what you are then arguing by the logic above then is that secession is absolutely and completely lawful depending on the view of the President that happens to occupy the Office at that time.
1. FDR did not follow the works of Hoover when he made a Bank Holiday.
2. JFK did not go along with the Bay of Pigs invasion
3. Trump tried to dismantle the ACA…but failed.
Do YOU really want to go down this road?
**************I’ve no familiarity with any of these. But I’m very happy to further explore the issue of if your argument that secession was ALWAYS illegal and Lincoln’s views on it as President were IRREVOCABLY correct and comprehensive, given the Constitution and the Oath he swore, then how was it possible that not all prior Presidents, with the same Constitution and Oath of Office, held the same view about the same topic?
3.Corwin did not have the approval of the North.
*********************************It did. See above.
4.Thank you. Another win for me. No Black regiments fought for the South.
***************************I’ve put no argument whatsoever to the topic. It would appear that you have introduced it out of a point of desperation as your terminology, ‘another win for me’, further indicates.
5. As the docents at the Ford theater were skeptical about Palmerston, and the fact that his comment to the Queen cannot be verified it can’t be used in any discussion. Plus there are no American documents that support such a claim.
****************************The first part is absolutely ludicrous and ahistorical. If you truly hold this view, then your credibility upon the matter is affected. The arguments you put against it are specious and fall flat upon review.
The second point you put there is nationalistic, prejudiced and Xenophobic.
recall that Reagan said…Trust but verify.
************************Who is this Reagan whom you seem to expect me to trust; I will verify.
6.I always said that the Queen had the final say…and she did!!
***************Incorrect. HM is bound by the outcome of the English Civil War and legislation, litigation, convention, tradition and precedent to yield to Supremacy of Parliament. These date back to the reign of Edward the Longshanks.
The actions of Queen Victoria being enabled by the British government in the one incident you draw attention to do not mean that she would have personally prevented war had the British Ministry decided to fight alongside the South, most particularly in the Trent Affair.
7. Marco Polo?
************************Your stance that the Letters of Queen Victoria, in addition to being Xenophobic in arguing that any stance upon American history can only be validated by American evidence as true is illogical.
It is like stating that since there is no Chinese evidence that Marco Polo reached China, it must be taken that he never did reach there. The amazing and minute description of detail in his Account must be taken as proof that he did reach China and the court of Kublai Khan.
“I’ve no familiarity with any of these.”
Well, now you do.
So Hugh, since you no longer want to go down the discussion regarding the Last Cause,
I’ll see you on some other discussion here!
stay safe man!
(Long cane comes out from off screen)
Hold on there!
Where are you going?
We’re not done here; we haven’t even gotten to the Cornerstone Speech analysis yet.
Your arguments put that the Lost Cause of the Civil War/War Between The States is a ‘myth’, and not a historiograpy with a variable measure of validity to at least a fair number of its tenets, along with particular inset flaws and limits as to how much history it can satisfactorily explain, have not been convincing in the least.
You have constantly attempted to utilise technicalities that do not clinch the point, and either subtly or dramatically ‘shifted’ the focal point of any given aspect we’ve discussed, rather than openly concede that evidence forces a reconsideration of your views. The few arguments that you have offered fly directly in the face of all evidence, (ie. that Lincoln was elected President in the 1860 election as an expression of American regionalism – the North, and that the Corwin Amendment was not acceptable to the North with all that it would mean).
I put it to you that your arguments have not been defended.
Yo you said you didn’t want to go down this road.
Hugh…your woids…”I already said, we’re not going there yet.”
*******************And that is to mean…?
Why don’t you return when you are ready it go there add discuss the reasons the Lost Cause is a myth.
******************You have provided no convincing argument or evidence as to why it would be considered a ‘myth’ and not a ‘historiography’.
From what I understand, the so called British Secret Service, received , interpreted and sent the information to Palmerston to allow him to send a letter to the Queen, all in 2 days?
1. Never happened
***********************Obviously, it did.
Now, when WAS the telegraph put in place between England and France? 1851.
When is this letter dated? 1861.
Tell me what you know about how the British enacted coded messages via telegraph…
Because if you are going to put the argument that 48 hours is not enough time to action events such as this, then you are unfamiliar with the workings of the British, such as with Michael Collins.
Again, you setting your own aggressive ignorance to this is a discredit to your personal credibility.
2.Palmerston NEVER said the got the information from so it could be verified. Another pesky fact.
*********************
Actually, he did. Your statement is dishonest.
He got it from the ‘law officers’ which is code in British history for secret service.
Generally speaking, secret services do not disclose 100% of the source of their information sources. The fact that this was communicated by the Prime Minister to HM is absolute proof that the information was deemed credible.
Neither did the FBI obviously fully disclose where they got all the info they obtained about the KKK, (see attachment’s blacked out sections).
Would you like to see Royal Canadian Mounted Police or (Australian) Commonwealth Investigative Bureau records of similar content? Will you hold these are unreliable? Or if they happen to advantage you, will you likewise accept them at face value?
So, according to your logic and arguments, absolutely none of the FBI evidence about the Klan can be put forth as evidence.
What is your point in saying I do now? What is the argument you are making?
Your own argument does entrap you; that if you say one President is not bound by the views before him, then you can not state that secession was always and absolutely illegal. You are thereby acknowledging that was 100% determined by the views of the President at any given time and that it would have been absolutely legal with Jefferson or JQ Adams in office, etc.
Well…?
Do you have anything to say when we call upon your statement to the effect that a war within America was not a great likelihood, and yet Alexander Hamilton foresaw it in 1787 in Federalist Papers 6, 7, 8?
What do you have to say about New England attempting and advocating by public speech and actions exactly and de facto this in the War of 1812?
What do you have to say about states rights/federalism separate from any connection to slavery when the facts of Maine in the Aroostook War are considered?
How can you possibly maintain Lincoln’s views about secession were compulsory for him as President due to the Constitution and his Oath when Jefferson, James Madison, JQ Adams, John Tyler and James Buchanan viewed the situation in the 180 degree opposite despite same Constitution and Presidential Oath?
None of your answers have shown anything but sloppy logic, aggressive ignorance and Sophism.
Your views are disproven as veritably all major points you’ve entered into this.
Well? It’s time for you to come up to scratch as Lincoln did.
Do you have any arguments that otherwise you might tender?
Well?
New England above is to mean ‘secession’
I put it to you a number of things, chief among them that none of your sophistic, aggressive ignorant, nationalistic and at times Xenophobic arguments have come even close to establishing that the LC is a myth, rather than a historiography, albeit one I don’t personally ascribe to.
Hugh…your words…”your …. arguments have come even close to establishing that the LC is a myth,”
Thank you for agreeing with me that the Lost Cause is a myth.
Game set match to the NYGiant1952.
More dishonesty, more aggressive ignorance, more of the termination upon the arguments upon which you claim to stand, yet.
Go ahead.
Put a Sophistic response in.
Giant, I am not following this thread closely. Sixty plus pages (or so my print function tells me if I chose to send this thread to my printer) is too much for me to want to spend time on. Also, I am not discussing the LC. However, it appears to me from the wording of his comment that he has not agreed with you.
Well..?
Hold on…you agree with me.
Now you don’t agree with me?
Listen, you remind me of the Burgoyne at Saratoga. He was stopped at Bemis Heights by the sophisticated defenses erected by the brilliant Polish military engineer, Thaddeus Kosciuszko, and had to fall back.
Like Burgoyne, you have to re-assess before commencing.
Your sophistic games, built on nationalism, aggressive ignorance and prejudice are not historical arguments.
You’ve proven nothing.
And I rise to any historical debate or challenge we’ve broached you care to put.
Let’s discuss the Cornerstone Speech.
But which one? Toombs or Stephens?
And if you cite Stephens’, and accept that at face value, you are obliged to accept his speech in the Georgia legislature in 1866 at face value or be an absolute total hypocrite.
Not to mention what he told the huge crowd of Black Americans whom serenaded him on his front lawn.
Or, we can read all relevant evidence about the CS Speech, critically.
So? What do we do?
OK…so you no longer want to discuss the myth the Lost Cause. Looks like I won that debate too
Ok..so now you want to discuss the Cornerstone Speech, with conditions.
Let me give you what my lawyer friends call a counter-offer: Let’s discuss Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech, delivered on March 21, 1861. And ONLY this speech.
I said plainly I wasn’t prepared at that point to discuss anything further until you had put at least a satisfactory historical argument and explanation to me to validate your views.
Given that none has been forthcoming or apparently possible to be put, let us turn a fresh page.
And no; see below why I reject such an approach.
I will openly posit if you attempt to frame the discussion as such as a historian, that is a screaming signal clear you are attempting the very ‘circle in the sand’-
You fear being able to look at what relevant evidence can indicate about Stephens CS speech because you know it suspect it will challenge what you would put.
Hugh…your words…..”I already said, we’re not going there yet.”
I like my counter-offer…”Let’s discuss Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech, delivered on March 21, 1861. And ONLY this speech.”
***Hugh, the Lost Cause explanation of the Civil War and Reconstruction is not about a historiographical school that developed in 1790. Someone examining the extensive development of Lost Cause historiography from 1865 until the late 20th Century does not have to resolve how the first Congress could have resolved the slavey question in the 18th Century.***
Patrick Young,
First off, thank you for giving your time to put your thoughts to this discussion. Your comments are always appreciated by me.
But, I must put back I can not agree with the line of argument you’ve stated. The Lost Cause thesis argued, in part, that such factors as regionalism and disputes over the jurisdictional spheres of power between the American federal government and the states were major factors that brought forth the CW/WBTS.
Now, I am aware that the LC thesis tried to say these were the ONLY important factors besides tariffs/economics and a few other things. It also tried to diminish or dismiss slavery as a factor.
To point out the err of the LC’s diminishing of slavery is plainly enough accurate. But did this mean that these other factors were thereby disproven as important factors from the emergence of an internal American conflict?
I can not see that by stating ‘yes’ to such a question is anything but ahistorical and evasive when one looks at Hamilton’s three Federalist Papers wherein he openly states that such a war would come over such factors. The evidence is plainly there and the historian has an obligation to consider it.
Likewise, it can not be anything but ahistorical and evasion driven to state it is either a fabrication and/or irrelevant on the LC’s part to put that states rights/federalism, apart from a connection to slavery, could in any way be a factor of war, when we have in plain view the example of Maine in the Aroostook War.
I can only see the lack of a holistic manner of looking upon the relevant evidence as akin to Jubal Early himself; taking the methodology of a lawyer, and not a historian.
A lawyer is like a historian in that they review the evidence and attempt to put an argument that is based on having gleaned meaning from it. But a lawyer has a spirited interest in presenting emphasis on some evidence, and attempting to prevent other components from ever even being brought forth. They also have a very keen interest in putting only very certain questions to it, and actively try to prevent other ones from being allowed to be put.
A historian is thereby fundamentally different; they have an obligation to holistically and openly look at all possible evidence that can provide any value and ask the higher, not fewer, questions of it.
It would be like stating that the Lambing Flat Riots are irrelevant as to why the Australian Parliament passed the White Australia Policy as this didn’t happen‘immediately’ around Australian Federation; or that clashes that occur before the Great Trek North between Boers and Zulus are of no value in understanding the rise of Apartheid; that the actions of King John (yes, of Robin Hood fame), and his staff upon their visit to Ireland and their humiliation of the Irish for their grooming and cultural habits are of no importance in understanding the very prominent tone of militancy and hatred of the English/British monarchy in the Irregular historiography of Ernie O’Malley and Gerry Adams.
*** Hugh…your words…..”I already said, we’re not going there yet.”
I like my counter-offer…”Let’s discuss Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech, delivered on March 21, 1861. And ONLY this speech.”***
I re-put my response-
Your counter-offer is proof you know a full, open, and holistic discussion will successfully challenge the argument you will try to put.
I put it to you that you fear the evidence that can be arrayed against your stance.
Hugh…
“Your counter-offer is proof you know a full, open, and holistic discussion will successfully challenge the argument you will try to put.”
No, my counter-offer limits the discussion to avoid going down any rabbit holes.
“I put it to you that you fear the evidence that can be arrayed against your stance”
Never let the fear of striking out keep you from playing the game. -Babe Ruth
Fear is only as deep as the mind allows. -Japanese Proverb
I have learned over the years that when one’s mind is made up, this diminishes fear; knowing what must be done does away with fear. -Rosa Parks
Nothing in life is to be feared, it is only to be understood. Now is the time to understand more, so that we may fear less. -Marie Curie
I put it to you that have well and truly established you will utilise ‘the circle in the sand’, as did Keith Windschuttle and Alan T. Nolan; talented historians they might have been, but their works are marred by being dishonest.
They are dishonest due by omission.
Your argument reads EXACTLY like trying to understand the Lincoln Assassination by ONLY permitting as evidence the transcripts of the trial; the most accurate as possible understanding of that historical event can not be gleaned from reading that evidence alone.
I put it to you that IF you were truly confident your argument about the CS speech of Alexander Stephens is utterly beyond reproach, you would openly advocate as much evidence as possible to be brought in argument against you; for your ultimate presumed successful defense in such a debate would render it that much more.
But you do not; you shy from the challenge.
No, I don’t care to debate while in a rabbit hole
I guess I win this debate too!
You stand in a position of compromised credibility, exactly as Alan T. Nolan.
He knew the evidence disproved his arguments, so he evaded it.
And if you really had, or felt like you had, won this debate, you’d have had no need to state that as you have.
Honest people don’t tell you they’re honest.
Strong people don’t state they’re strong.
Kind people don’t come out and announce, ‘I’m kind.
I let my historical arguments to stand-
The South was willing to emancipate and organised efforts to this demonstrably twice.
The North was willing to reconvene all the rights to slavery that already existed for all time to come.
Abraham Lincoln was elected President in 1860 of the Union in a demonstration of nigh total regionalism.
Your attempt to ignore the evidence that Britain so nearly entered the war on the South’s side over the Trent Affair resulted in Lincoln attempting to curry support from France by offering to restore Quebec as a French colony. The British secret service obtained this information and passed it via chain of command to the British Prime Minister to HM the Queen.
Had the British government determined to go to war with the Union on the South’s side, HM was in no position to stop this, no matter her personal views.
Your arguments against this rest on sloppy logic, a singular episode wherein the British government determined it would choose to accept her views as policy out of the high complexities, no better or more viable policy to enact.
Your other arguments against the Lincoln-Napoleon III-Quebec-Palmerston-HM rest on bad methodology that I have disproven via the FBI-KKK files, and your own nationalism and Xenophobic views.
There is a measure of variable validity to the Lost Cause historiography of the Civil War – War Between The States studies. There are also particular flaws and limits within it as to how much history it can satisfactorily explain.
The Lost Cause is a historiography.
Alan T. Nolan, Brookes Simpson, Adam Serwer, Karen L. Cox, Craig Swain, Ta Nahesi Coates, Ty Seidule, Adam Dombey, etc, whom describe the LC as a myth, whatever their other talents, have all, in part or in whole, been dishonest by omission in their works.
Alan T. Nolan by making his arguments in the above manner severely compromised his academic credibility. He deliberately withheld evidence he knew to be relevant and pertinent in order to gain a wrongful advantage.
If you justify this on his part, I dismiss what you say 100% out of hand. You have likewise compromised your credibility by trying to defend this academic and methodological dishonesty.
What you refer to as facts are non-entities.
Go ahead; make another sophistic remark.
I put my argument back.
Hugh…your woids…”Let’s discuss the Cornerstone Speech.”
My woids…Let’s discuss Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech, delivered on March 21, 1861. And ONLY this speech.
Now, do you want to change and discuss Lee Considered? Or The Myth of the Lost Cause and Civil War History?
If you now want to discuss Lee Considered of The Myth if the Lost Cause and Civil War History, thats’s ok with me….but I am declaring another win in our debate about the Cornerstone Speech.
Ah! Very well!
So are you saying you’re prepared to discuss it openly?
Or are you yet intimidated by the evidence that can be arrayed about it?!
Because your wording there above shows you are plainly fearful of all the evidence that can be brought forth to shed on Alexander Stephens CS on 21 March 1861.
‘Tad, you can call a calf’s tail a leg, but that doesn’t make it so. It’s still a tail.’
-Abraham Lincoln.
Don’t know if Lincoln ever said that in fact but it proves the point; you can say you won this debate but…
I re-put my argument.
psst….that’s not an exact Lincoln quote.
Rice’s book is a collection of reminiscences of others, exactly as the title suggests. Among those doing the reminiscing are ex-president and Gen. U. S. Grant, Massachusetts Gov. Benjamin Butler (also a former Member of Congress), Charles A. Dana the editor and former Assistant Secretary of War, and several others. In describing Lincoln and the Emancipation Proclamation, George W. Julian relates the story. Julian was a Free-Soil Party leader and a Member of Congress during Lincoln’s administration. Julian’s story begins on page 241:
Few subjects have been more debated and less understood than the Proclamation of Emancipation. Mr. Lincoln was himself opposed to the measure, and when he very reluctantly issued the preliminary proclamation in September, 1862, he wished it distinctly understood that the deportation of the slaves was, in his mind, inseparably connected with the policy. Like Mr. Clay and other prominent leaders of the old Whig party, he believed in colonization, and that the separation of the two races was necessary to the welfare of both. He was at that time pressing upon the attention of Congress a scheme of colonization in Chiriqui, in Central America, which Senator Pomeroy espoused with great zeal, and in which he had the favor of a majority of the Cabinet, including Secretary Smith, who warmly indorsed the project. Subsequent developments, however, proved that it was simply an organization for land-stealing and plunder, and it was abandoned; but it is by no means certain that if the President had foreseen this fact his preliminary notice to the rebels would have been given. There are strong reasons for saying that he doubted his right to emancipate under the war power, and he doubtless meant what he said when he compared an Executive order to that effect to “the Pope’s Bull against the comet.” In discussing the question, he used to liken the case to that of the boy who, when asked how many legs his calf would have if he called its tail a leg, replied, ” Five,” to which the prompt response was made that calling the tail a leg would not make it a leg.
I believe it is fair to call the story “confirmed.” It’s not an exact quote, but it’s an accurate story.
There…I fixed your comment for you…You’re welcome!
=======================================================
Let me know what you want to discuss…the Cornerstone Speech, Lee Considered or The Myth of the Lost Cause and the Civil War.
Hugh de Mann, help me out here….What do you want to discuss?
You seem to be bringing up material I already showed you was inaccurate regarding the Trent affair, the Corwin Amendment, how the South never emancipated it slaves. Just because you keep repeating it, doesn’t make it so. If you want to go down that road again, I’m game!
But I think enough has been said about the issue here, and other members think so too! Your effort to continually bring it up assures me that I won that debate.
I get the feeling you no longer care to debate the issues.
Nope, your arguments were Xenophobic and otherwise totally unsatisfactory to put it most mildly.
I call you out as scared to debate the CS speech!
Didn’t say Lincoln literally said it; I read it once in a reader about him.
I already made that clear; what are you hoping to gain by the pretend scenarios?
Hugh…you. wrote…‘Tad, you can call a calf’s tail a leg, but that doesn’t make it so. It’s still a tail.’
-Abraham Lincoln.
So, that quote does’t exist.
You can not claim you won against what you hadn’t the courage to or historical skill to take on.
As you hesitate to do so, you forfeit and your lack of historical courage and skill is noted.
You fear an open debate about the CS speech of Stephens; that is why you try to put the limits to it you do!
No…I put the limits on it. so that we discuss one thing and not go down a rabbit hole with a discussion about something that has no relevance to the issue at hand.
You are scared of the relevant and pertinent evidence that will be brought out to examine it.
Nolan’s methodology.
Answer me a question; do you agree with me that Genocide is a crime against humanity?
Like I said….going down a rabbit hole.
No, if that’s your argument, DONT debate the CS speech!
“No, if that’s your argument, DONT debate the CS speech!”
OK
You are too scared to debate the CS Speech! Like Nolan, you evade evidence.
That’s dishonest methodology.
“No, if that’s your argument, DONT debate the CS speech!”
OK
What part of OK don’t you understand?
If you would wish to examine the racism that accompanied the origins of the Confederacy, as exemplified by Stephens in his opinion, and try to state that this is a difference between it and the origins of the Union, well…DONT try to make that argument.
Because such a discussion is going to lead us to examination of genocide.
Tell me, do you live in NY?
If so, DONT have that discussion whatever you do!
Because, we’ll, you’ve read ‘The Famine Plot’ by Tim Pat Coogan, correct?
You are fearful of the evidence.
Again you are dishonest; I plainly said I didn’t know if Lincoln ever literally said that.
Hugh…you. wrote…‘Tad, you can call a calf’s tail a leg, but that doesn’t make it so. It’s still a tail.’
-Abraham Lincoln.
So, that quote does’t exist.
But you quoted Lincoln…even using quotation marks and ascribing the quote to Lincoln.
Dishonest again and again.
I’ve got no case to make here; plain assay, I said I don’t know if Lincoln ever truly said that.
You are coming across as desperate and dishonest.
Hmmmmmmm…
Now does the CS Speech ‘prove’ the CSA had racist origins that the Union didn’t?
We’d have to look at how well Stephens understood the origins of the Union itself and what it came into existence to oppose!
Do you think that unimportant?
What are your views about genocide in history?
If you have courage as a historian and researcher, to that question, you will give a clear answer.
* What part of OK don’t you understand? *
Do you figure Stephens had an accurate view of the origins of the Union?
What are your thoughts about historical genocide?
Why did Nolan evade this question and others?
“…we’ll, I guess that depends on whether you’re an Indian or not.”
Quigley Down Under
Heck; what did Alexander Stephens and Alan T. Nolan have in common?
Neither posed the question to the reply above.
Shrug
Are YOU willing to engage with it?
If not, debate the CS speech no further.
And history DEMANDS such an explanation…!
No further?
You didn’t agree to my terms.
I think I’m just going to wait for the movie to come out! LOL..
Robert Redford will be playing me in the movie
Good choice. I believe he was born during the Civil War!
I’m guessing it won’t be on the Hallmark channel.
Limiting my comments and evaluations to the Cornerstone Speech..
1.Stephens’s speech declared that disagreements over the enslavement of African Americans were the “immediate cause” of secession and that the Confederate constitution had resolved such issues.
“The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. ”
2.Stephens contended that advances and progress in the sciences proved that the 18th-century view that “all men are created equal” was erroneous and that all men were not created equal. He stated that advances in science proved that enslavement of African Americans by white men was justified and that it coincided with the Bible’s teachings. He also stated that the Confederacy was the first country in the world founded on the principle of white supremacy:
“Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth.”
3. Stephens stated that the Confederacy’s belief in human inequality was adhering to the “laws of nature”:
“May we not therefore look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgement of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence,”
After the Confederacy’s defeat at the hands of the U.S. in the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, Stephens attempted to retroactively deny and retract the opinions he had made in the speech. Denying his earlier statements that slavery was the Confederacy’s cause for leaving the Union, he contended to the contrary that he thought that the war was rooted in constitutional differences .
If you are ‘limiting’ your historical analysis, if you are refusing to look at evidence to gain the most holistic and accurate understanding possible, if you are repeating the flaw that Alan T. Nolan embraced fervently and aware it was a flaw, all which you do, you’ve forfeited the debate and your credibility.
I know the REAL reason you don’t want to examine how Stephens demonstrated a flawed understanding of history when he cited that the Union was founded on the tenet of all men are created equal, or to compare the racist origins openly of the Union and Confederacy, as did Nolan and so many in his wake…
Actually, I am limiting the historical analysis to what Stephens said in the Cornerstone Speech.
Anything else is just a diversion .
The most accurate analysis of the CS speech requires that all relevant evidence that can shed light upon its contents, the context of how the CS Speech was said in historical time and place, the relevant history before, during and after it and the historical agents and social units, and the competing historiographies that it finds a place in give the diligent historian no choice but to conduct an appropriate investigation.
To do any less is trying to hide or lie about history and phenomenon such as racism and genocide.
There can be no coming back, no defense whatsoever the question for whomever would try to do such a thing.
Leave one more sophistic, deliberately intended to irritate comment and I’m going to put it all out there.
And I’m a man of my word.
Please confine your jaded comments to Cornerstone Speech.
Now I put it to you that one of two things can go forward at this point.
Either you can agree that the Lost Cause is a historiography, a school of historical studies, and that it is one you disagree with in the strongest possible terms and see very little, if any, merit in.
It is obvious that neither of us is an adherent of this school…
Or, by the fullest extent of relevant historical evidence possible I will demonstrate how it is so, by means of using the Cornerstone Speeches and what each say, AND DONT SAY, by whom/when/where/etc, and by whom did AND DID NOT state them, and by WHAT ELSE WAS SAID OR WRITTEN BEFORE, DURING and AFTER it.
And I will examine in the most microscopic fashion why anyone would not want to look at the CS in any other deliberately ‘limited’, and why? For what end?
And I will leave no stone unturned.
Again, I’m a man of my word.
The Lost Cause is a myth to try and show the South’s intentions were honorable.
Nice try though
Your historical credibility ends as of now.
The Cornerstone Speech/es is where it starts…!
Ready or not, here I come!
First off, which Cornerstone Speech are you talking about? There were two of them. The one by Stephens you cite and the other by Robert Toombs of Georgia on 13 November 1860.
Toombs w/in here cites issues citing slavery, most certainly.
BUT!!!!!!!!!!!!
He makes it crystal clear that economics/tariffs, states rights/federalism and regionalism/culture, separate from slavery, were clear issues bringing forth the war, as well.
This is his opinion and he cites it at the contemporaneous time.
Those whom evade this or fail to admit it are guilty of laziness or outright historical dishonesty.
Senator Robert Toombs and the Cornerstone of the Confederacy
“GENTLEMEN OF THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY: I very much regret, in appearing before you at your request, to address you on the present state of the country, and the prospect before us, that I can bring you no good tidings.
We have not sought this conflict; we have sought too long to avoid it; our forbearance has been construed into weakness, our magnanimity into fear, until the vindication of our manhood, as well as the defence of our rights, is required at our hands. The door of conciliation and compromise is finally closed by our adversaries, and it remains only to us to meet the conflict with the dignity and firmness of men worthy of freedom. We need no declaration of independence.
Above eighty-four years ago our fathers won that by the sword from Great Britain, and above seventy years ago Georgia, with the twelve other confederates, as free, sovereign, and independent States, having perfect governments already in existence, for purposes and objects clearly expressed, and with powers clearly defined, erected a common agent for the attainment of these purposes by the exercise of those powers, and called this agent the United States of America.
The basis, the corner-stone of this Government, was the perfect equality of the free, sovereign, and independent States which made it. They were unequal in population, wealth, and territorial extent – they had great diversities of interests, pursuits, institutions, and laws; but they had common interests, mainly exterior, which they proposed to protect by this common agent – a constitutional united government – without in any degree subjecting their inequalities and diversities to Federal control or action.
The Executive Department of the Federal Government, for forty- eight out of the first sixty years under the present Constitution, was in the hands of Southern Presidents . . . no advantage was ever sought or obtained by them for their section of the Republic. They never sought to use a single one of the powers of the Government for the advancement of the local or peculiar interests of the South, and they all left office without leaving a single law on the statute-book where repeal would have affected injuriously a single industrial pursuit, or the business of a single human being in the South.
But on the contrary, they had acquiesced in the adoption of a policy in the highest degree beneficial to Northern interests. We can to-day open wide the history of their administrations and point with pride to every act, and challenge the world to point out a single act stained with injustice to the North, or with partiality to their own section. This is our record; let us now examine that of our confederates.
The instant the Government was organized, at the very first Congress, the Northern States evinced a general desire and purpose to use it for their own benefit, and to pervert its powers for sectional advantage, and they have steadily pursued that policy to this day. They demanded a monopoly of the business of ship-building, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign ships to citizens of the United States, which exists to this day.
They demanded a monopoly of the coasting trade, in order to get higher freights than they could get in open competition with the carriers of the world. Congress gave it to them, and they yet hold this monopoly. And now, to-day, if a foreign vessel in Savannah offer[s] to take your rice, cotton, grain or lumber to New-York, or any other American port, for nothing, your laws prohibit it, in order that Northern ship-owners may get enhanced prices for doing your carrying.
This same shipping interest, with cormorant rapacity, have steadily burrowed their way through your legislative halls, until they have saddled the agricultural classes with a large portion of the legitimate expenses of their own business. We pay a million of dollars per annum for the lights which guide them into and out of your ports.
The North, at the very first Congress, demanded and received bounties under the name of protection, for every trade, craft, and calling which they pursue, and there is not an artisan . . . in all of the Northern or Middle States, who has not received what he calls the protection of his government on his industry to the extent of from fifteen to two hundred per cent from the year 1791 to this day. They will not strike a blow, or stretch a muscle, without bounties from the government.
No wonder they cry aloud for the glorious Union . . . by it they got their wealth; by it they levy tribute on honest labor. Thus stands the account between the North and the South. Under its . . . most favorable action . . . the treasury [is] a perpetual fertilizing stream to them and their industry, and a suction-pump to drain away our substance and parch up our lands.
They will have possession of the Federal executive with its vast power, patronage, prestige of legality, its army, its navy, and its revenue on the fourth of March next. Hitherto it has been on the side of the Constitution and the right; after the fourth of March it will be in the hands of your enemy.
What more can you get from them under this Government? You have the Constitution – you have its exposition by themselves for seventy years – you have their oaths – they have broken all these, and will break them again. They tell you everywhere, loudly and defiantly, you shall have no power, no security until you give up the right of governing yourselves according to your own will – until you submit to theirs. For this is the meaning of Mr. Lincoln’s irrepressible conflict – this is his emphatic declaration to all the world.
But we are told that secession would destroy the fairest fabric of liberty the world ever saw, and that we are the most prosperous people in the world under it. The arguments of tyranny as well as its acts, always reenact themselves. The arguments I now hear in favor of this Northern connection are identical in substance, and almost in the same words as those which were used in 1775 and 1776 to sustain the British connection. We won liberty, sovereignty, and independence by the American Revolution – we endeavored to secure and perpetuate these blessings by means of our Constitution.
We are said to be a happy and prosperous people. We have been, because we have hitherto maintained our ancient rights and liberties – we will be until we surrender them. They are in danger; come, freemen, to the rescue. Withdraw yourselves from such a confederacy; it is your right to do so – your duty to do so. As for me, I will take any place in the great conflict for rights which you may assign. I will take none in the Federal Government during Mr. Lincoln’s administration.”
No getting around this now.
http://civilwarcauses.org/toombs.htm
From the start I have mentioned Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech.
This is just a diversion.
As Stephens said right in HIS CS speech, ‘the immediate cause’ for secession was the election of Lincoln and the perceived threat to Southern slavery (which I’ll come back to on Lincoln’s part soon and we’ll!), that outright is saying there WAS MORE THAN A SINGLE CAUSE TO SECESSION AND REACHING BACK INTO THE PAST!!!!!!!
Got you now by the very content of the CS Speech itself!!!!
The CS Speech sets the terms itself!
Ready or not, here I come!!!!!
Now, about Stephens’ CS speech of 21 March 1861-
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/primary-sources/cornerstone-speech
NO! You are wrong!! “the immediate cause’ for secession was the election of Lincoln” does not appear in the Cornerstone Speech!!!!!
“The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.”
Nice try at changing the woids!
“…When perfect quiet is restored, I shall proceed. I cannot speak so long as there is any noise or confusion. I shall take my time I feel quite prepared to spend the night with you if necessary. I very much regret that everyone who desires cannot hear what I have to say. Not that I have any display to make, or anything very entertaining to present, but such views as I have to give, I wish all, not only in this city, but in this State, and throughout our Confederate Republic, could hear, who have a desire to hear them.
I was remarking that we are passing through one of the greatest revolutions in the annals of the world. Seven States have within the last three months thrown off an old government and formed a new. This revolution has been signally marked, up to this time, by the fact of its having been accomplished without the loss of a single drop of blood.
This new constitution. or form of government, constitutes the subject to which your attention will be partly invited. In reference to it, I make this first general remark: it amply secures all our ancient rights, franchises, and liberties********(1)******. All the great principles of Magna Charta are retained in it.*********(1)********* No citizen is deprived of life, liberty, or property, but by the judgment of his peers under the laws of the land.***************(2)************* The great principle of religious liberty, which was the honor and pride of the old constitution, is still maintained and secured.************(2)************* All the essentials of the old constitution, which have endeared it to the hearts of the American people, have been preserved and perpetuated.*************(3)************** Some changes have been made. Some of these I should have preferred not to have seen made; but other important changes do meet my cordial approbation. They form great improvements upon the old constitution.**********************(4)*****************
So, taking the whole new constitution, I have no hesitancy in giving it as my judgment that it is decidedly better than the old…”****************************(5)***********************
(1) Your ancient liberties to view the Original Inhabitants of the Lands of the Continent and French Canadians as sub-human and your demanded right from the 7 Years War onwards to simply storm onto their lands, kill or violently disperse them and wipe their race, culture, language, laws, etc, from the continent?
The wording of S. 29 of the Magna Carta states, ‘no man shall be deprived of his lands…w/o due process.’ The purpose of the 1763 Royal Proclamation and the 1774 Quebec Act was to enshrine the rights, humanity, land ownership rights, etc, of the Aboriginals and French Canadians into British law in conjunction with the Magna Carta. In breaking away from Britain so as to be able to break and dishonour these very laws, the American colonists were seeking to destroy the very fabric OF the Magna Carta.
They wanted the lands of these peoples and felt their continued existence at best an inconvenience and at worst, a scourge to be wiped off the North American continent as it was offensive to the British race and legacy they saw themselves with at that time.
Then, when the British themselves had a change of perspective and decided they would pass laws to protect these peoples, the racism of the American colonists was so great they declared war rather than obey them.
That’s why the RP and QA are cited as two of the ‘Intolerable Acts’ and though not by name, are cited as grievances in the Declaration of Independence.
So it was ‘intolerable’ for the colonists to have to respect the humanity, rights, lands, culture, etc, of the Aboriginals and French Canadians and they would go to war rather than respect these people?
Yes; they did. That’s the first inaccuracy and a massively significant one about the origins of the USA that Stephens didn’t get right in the CS: The USA has origins of not just racism, but genocide to it.
You can not deny this w’/o denying the racism and genocide to Aboriginals.
(2) There’s more than just that to the rights stipulated in the Magna Carta. See above.
The British saw that the Aboriginals had a system of land occupation that had some elemental commonalities with themselves; some groups of people, depending upon their line of ancestry, can have a special association with the lands which they occupy which includes various privileges, status, rights and responsibilities.
If the Monarchy of Britain and the Royal Family, the aristocracy, the chieftains of the various clans of Scotland, can have a form of this due to their lineage and lands, why not Aboriginals?
The RP is a landmark in history as it established that just because the Aboriginals did not view land occupancy and guardianship in the exact same terms as the British, (ie. possession of written deeds), the similarities were enough to be viewed as consistent with the Magna Carta so as they could not be dispossessed of them.
But the American colonists threw all that out the window when they wanted to drive what they saw as sub-human savages off the lands they coveted for themselves, and were angry the British would not simply let them do that in racist fashion.
And for religious freedom at the start? Well, we could have a whole discussion of the sectarian views of Jefferson, etc. That wasn’t something at all necessarily safekept at all in practice as anyone who knows anything of either that or the arrival of the Irish or San Patricio Brigade in the Mexican American War knows.
(3) So people were proud that the old Constitution of the Union had the essence of the 3/5 and Fugitive Slave tenets in it?
That is the fact of the matter of the Union and it compelled all persons with the duty to assist in the hunting down of any and all presumed fugitive slaves.
That’s the oath that such persons as all Presidents, West Point grads, US Naval Officers, members of Congress such as Thaddeus Stevens swore to do and as Frederick Douglass extolled to Boston Abolitionists in 1849, a year before the Fugitive Slave Act passed, that as citizens of America, they were duty bound to do.
Matter of fact, he goes beyond and plainly told them that this reality of the Union’s constitution meant all White Americans in the Union had a connection to slavery they could not disavow themselves from.
(4) Whatever Stephens says are ‘improvements’ from upon the Union’s constitution, it forces us to realise that the accuracy of Frederick Douglass’ statement above. See ‘Liberator’, 8 June 1849.
1. Diversion…..Blacks were imported into the American Colonies.
2. Diversion
3. #/5ths Clause was a compromise
4.Stephens gave us the reason the South left the Union…slavery.
(5) So, everyone left behind in the old Union has the points in (3) & (4) above to content themselves with?
Man, was that ever racist about the Union.
That can not be disputed, minimised or denied.
No one is denying there was racism in the North.
Just another diversion.
HA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What WAS that racism in the North?!!!!
What was it?
It was…THIS!!!!!
Abraham Lincoln notes for a speech in 1859-
“Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain the Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demogougism as this?”
-Tucker, Dan, (ed.), ‘Lincoln’s Notebooks: Letters, Speeches, Journals and Poems’, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers: New York, 2017, 80.
SO!!!! THIS IS THE MAN WITH THESE VIEWS THAT HAS BEEN ELECTED TO THE OFFICE OF THE PRESIDENCY OF THE UNION?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Total, absolute, complete and indefensible RACISM AND WHITE SUPREMACY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
What is the difference between a Confederacy that embraces the worst of the worst sentiments of racism in Stephens’ CS speech and those of the man elected to hold the highest office in the land with THESE VIEWS OF WHITE SUPREMACY?!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It seems Lincoln was disputing the essence of Stephens’ claim that these such racist sentiments of the Confederacy were anything but the essence of the Union!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There was no substantive difference in the worst of these traits!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It was merely one racism and then another!!!!!!!!!!!!!
* “…Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.” * *****(1)*******
Now, here we come to a significant crux: The CS of Stephens itself is NOT just an expression of the racism of this then-views, he spells out in it that tariffs/economics are A MAJOR CAUSE FOR WAR AND SECESSION!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This can’t be debated. It’s there in black and white.
Please read with discernment, Hughie.
Stephens’s speech declared that disagreements over the enslavement of African Americans were the “immediate cause” of secession and that the Confederate constitution had resolved such issues, saying:
The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution—African slavery as it exists among us—the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson, in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old Constitution were, that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with; but the general opinion of the men of that day was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. […] Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the idea of a Government built upon it—when the “storm came and the wind blew, it fell.”
Slavery was the ‘immediate cause”.
What yo mention about tariff/economics is only how the fake Confederate Constitution differs from the Real Constitution
Nice try. And thanks for participating.
Another debate win of the nygiant1952.
Lincoln won the election on the Republican Party Platform of preventing the extension of slavery tot he territories.
Hugh,….let’s define our terms…
Causes:Whats the definition of causes?
1a : a reason for an action or condition : motive. b : something that brings about an effect or a result trying to find the cause of the accident. c : a person or thing that is the occasion of an action or state a cause for celebration especially : an agent that brings something about She is the cause of your troubles.
Now, the Cornerstone Speech is explicit is what it says… The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.
Right? RIGHT!
No where else in the Speech does Stephens use the words.. “immediate cause”.
‘IMMEDIATE CAUSE’
SEE ABOVE!!!!
You like your sports analogies; I will use just such an entirely figurative one here to describe our history debate!!
If you would call yourself a Rangers fan, Ed Hospodar!, The Clark Gillies Railroad, Train No. 9, is coming on fast!!!!
Stephens had previously reiterated the economic factors in the South’s perspective for secession in a previous speech-
He made this speech in the Georgia legislature the day after Toombs’ in November, of 1860.
https://civilwarcauses.org/steph2.htm
” I appear before you tonight at the request of Members of the Legislature and others, to speak of matters of the deepest interest that can possibly concern us all…The consternation that has come upon the people is the result of a sectional election of a President of the United States, one whose opinions and avowed principles are in antagonism to our interests and rights, and we believe, if carried out, would subvert the Constitution under which we now live…***********(1)**********…
Fellow Citizens: I appear before you tonight at the request of Members of the Legislature and others, to speak of matters of the deepest interest that can possibly concern us all, of an earthly character. There is nothing, no question or subject connected with this life, that concerns a free people so intimately as that of the Government under which they live. We are now, indeed, surrounded by evils. Never since I entered upon the public stage, has the country been so environed with difficulties and dangers that threatened the public peace and the very existence of our Institutions as now, I do not appear before you at my own instance. It is not to gratify any desire of my own that I am here. Had I consulted my personal ease and pleasure, I should not be before you; but believing that it is the duty of every good citizen, when called on, to give his counsels and views whenever the country is in danger, as to the best policy to be pursued, I am here. For these reasons, and these only, do I bespeak a calm, patient, and attentive hearing.
My object is not to stir up strife, but to allay it; not to appeal to your passions, but to your reason. Let us, therefore, reason together. It is not my purpose to say aught to wound the feelings of any individual who may be present; and if in the ardency with which I shall express my opinions, I shall say anything which may be deemed too strong, let it be set down to the zeal with which I advocate my own convictions. There is with me no intention to irritate or offend.
I do not, on this occasion, intend to enter into the history of the reasons or causes of the embarassments which press so heavily upon us all at this time. In justice to myself, however, I must barely state upon this point that I do think much of it depended upon ourselves. The consternation that has come upon the people is the result of a sectional election of a President of the United States, one whose opinions and avowed principles are in antagonism to our interests and rights, and we believe, if carried out, would subvert the Constitution under which we now live. But are we entirely blameless in this matter, my countrymen? I give it to you as my opinion, that but for the policy the Southern people pursued, this fearful result would not have occurred.
The first question that presents itself is, shall the people of Georgia secede from the Union in consequence of the election of Mr. Lincoln to the Presidency of the United States? My countrymen, I tell you frankly, candidly, and earnestly, that I do not think that they ought. In my judgment, the election of no man, constitutionally chosen to that high office, is sufficient cause to justify any State to separate from the Union. It ought to stand by and aid still in maintaining the Constitution of the country. To make a point of resistance to the Government, to withdraw from it because any man has been elected, would put us in the wrong. We are pledged to maintain the Constitution. Many of us have sworn to support it. Can we, therefore, for the mere election of any man to the Presidency, and that, too, in accordance with the prescribed forms of the Constitution, make a point of resistance to the Government, without becoming the breakers of that sacred instrument ourselves, by withdrawing ourselves from it? Would we not be in the wrong? Whatever fate is to befall this country, let it never be laid to the charge of the people of the South, and especially the people of Georgia, that we were untrue to our national engagements. Let the fault and the wrong rest upon others. If all our hopes are to be blasted, if the Republic is to go down, let us be found to the last moment standing on the deck with the Constitution of the United States waving over our heads. (Applause.) Let the fanatics of the North break the Constitution, if such is their fell purpose. Let the responsibility be upon them. I shall speak presently more of their acts; but let not the South, let us not be the ones to commit the aggression. We went into the election with this people. The result was different from what we wished; but the election has been constitutionally held. Were we to make a point of resistance to the Government and go out of the Union merely on that account, the record would be made up hereafter against us.
But it is said Mr. Lincoln’s policy and principles are against the Constitution, and that, if he carries them out, it will be destructive of our rights. Let us not anticipate a threatened evil. If he violates the Constitution, then will come our time to act. Do not let us break it because, forsooth, he may. If he does, that is the time for us to act. (Applause.) I think it would be injudicious and unwise to do this sooner. I do not anticipate that Mr. Lincoln will do anything, to jeopardize our safety or security, whatever may be his spirit to do it; for he is bound by the constitutional checks which are thrown around him, which at this time render him powerless to do any great mischief. This shows the wisdom of our system. The President of the United States is no Emperor, no Dictator– he is clothed with no absolute power. He can do nothing, unless he is backed by power in Congress. The House of Representatives is largely in a majority against him. In the very face and teeth of the majority of Electoral votes, which he has obtained in the Northern States, there have been large gains in the House of Representatives, to the Conservative Constitutional Party of the country, which I here will call the National Democratic Party, because that is the cognomen it has at the North. There are twelve of this Party elected from New York, to the next Congress, I believe. In the present House, there are but four, I think. In Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Ohio, and Indiana, there have been gains. In the present Congress, there were one hundred and thirteen Republicans, when it takes one hundred and seventeen to make a majority. The gains in the Democratic Party in Pennsylvania, Ohio, New Jersey, New York, Indiana, and other States, notwithstanding its distractions, have been enough to make a majority of near thirty, in the next House, against Mr. Lincoln. Even in Boston, Mr. Burlingame, one of the noted leaders of the fanatics of that section, has been defeated, and a Conservative man returned in his stead. Is this the time, then, to apprehend that Mr. Lincoln, with this large majority of the House of Representatives against him, can carry out any of this unconstitutional principles in that body?
In the Senate, he will also be powerless. There will be a majority of four against him. This, after the loss of Bigler, Fitch, and others, by the unfortunate dissensions of the National Democratic Party in their States. Mr. Lincoln can not appoint an officer without the consent of the Senate — he can not form a Cabinet without the same consent. He will be in the condition of George the Third (the embodiment of Toryism), who had to ask the Whigs to appoint his ministers, and was compelled to receive a Cabinet utterly opposed to his views; and so Mr. Lincoln will be compelled to ask of the Senate to choose for him a Cabinet, if the Democracy or that Party choose to put him on such terms. He will be compelled to do this, or let the Government stop, if the National Democratic Senators (for that is their name at the North), the Conservative men in the Senate, should so determine. Then how can Mr. Lincoln obtain a Cabinet which would aid him, or allow him to violate the Constitution? Why, then, I say, should we disrupt the ties of this Union, when his hands are tied– when he can do nothing against us?
I have heard it mooted, that no man in the State of Georgia, who is true to her interests, could hold office under Mr. Lincoln. But I ask, who appoints to office? Not the President alone; the Senate has to concur. No man can be appointed without the consent of the Senate. Should any man, then, refuse to hold office that was given him by a Democratic Senate?
]Mr. Toombs interrupted, and said, if the Senate was Democratic, it was for Breckenridge.]
Well, then, [continued Mr. Stephens], I apprehend that no man could be justly considered untrue to the interests of Georgia, or incur any disgrace, if the interests of Georgia required it, to hold an office which a Breckenridge Senate had given him, even though Mr. Lincoln should be President. (Prolonged applause, mingled with interruptions).
I trust, my countrymen, you will be still and silent. I am addressing your good sense. I am giving you my views, in a calm and dispassionate manner, and if any of you differ with me, you can on some other occasion give your views, as I am doing now, and let reason and true patriotism decided between us. In my judgment, I say, under such circumstances, there would be no possible disgrace for a Southern man to hold office. No man will be suffered to be appointed, I have no doubt, who is not true to the Constitution, if Southern Senators are true to their trusts, as I can not permit myself to doubt that they will be.
My honorable friend who addressed you last night [Mr. Toombs], and to whom I listened with the profoundest attention, asks if we would submit to Black Republican rule? I say to you and to him, as a Georgian, I would never submit to any Black Republican aggression upon our Constitutional rights.*******************************(2)**************************
I will never consent myself, as much as I admire this Union, for the glories of the past or the blessings of the present; as much as it has done for civilization; as much as the hopes of the world hang upon it; I would never submit to aggression upon my rights to maintain it longer; and if they can not be maintained in the Union standing on the Georgia Platform, where I have stood from the time of its adoption, I would be in favor of disrupting every tie which binds the States together. I will have equality for Georgia, and for the citizens of Georgia, in this Union, or I will look for new safeguards elsewhere. This is my position. The only question now is, can this be secured in the Union? That is what I am counseling with you tonight about. Can it be secured? In my judgment it may be, yet it may not be; but let us do all we can, so that in the future, if the worst comes, it may never be said we were negligent in doing our duty to the last.
My countrymen, I am not of those who believe this Union has been a curse up to this time. True men, men of integrity, entertain different views from me on this subject. I do not question their right to do so; I would not impugn their motives in so doing. Nor will I undertake to say that this Government of our Fathers is perfect. There is nothing perfect in this world of human origin; nothing connected with human nature, from man himself to any of his works. You may select the wisest and best men for your Judges, and yet how many defects are there in the administration of justice? You may select the wisest and best men for your Legislators, and yet how many defects are apparent in your laws? And it is so in our Government. But that this Government of our Fathers, with all its defects, comes nearer the objects of all good Governments than any other on the face of the earth, is my settled conviction. Contrast it now with any on the face of the earth?
[England, said Mr. Toombs.]
[Mr. Stephens:[ England, my friend says. Well, that is the next best, I grant; but I think we have improved upon England. Statesmen tried their apprentice hand on the Government of England, and then ours was made. Ours sprung from that, avoiding many of its defects, taking most of the good, and leaving out many of its errors, and from the whole our Fathers constructed and built up this model Republic– the best which the history of the world gives any account of. Compare, my friends, this Government with that of France, Spain, Mexico, the South American Republics, Germany, Ireland–(are there any sons of that down-trodden nation here tonight?)– Prussia; or if you will travel further East, to Turkey, or China? Where will you go, following the sun in its circuit round our globe, to find a Government that better protects the liberties of its people, and secures to them the blessings we enjoy? (Applause.) I thinkk that one of the evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty, and exuberance of the priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful. We listened to my honorable friend who addressed you last night (Mr. Toombs) as he recounted the evils of this Government. The first was the Fishing Bounties, paid mostly to the sailors of New England. Our friend states that forty-eight years of our Government was under the administration of Southern Presidents. Well, these fishing bounties begain under the rule of a Southern President, I believe. No one of them, during the whole forty-eight years, ever set his administration against the principle or policy of them. It is not for me to say whether it was a wise policy in the beginning; it probably was not, and I have nothing to say in its defence. But the reason given for it was to encourage our young men to go to sea, and learn to manage ships. We had at the time but a small navy. It was thought best to encourage a class of our people to become acquainted with seafaring life; to become sailors, to man our naval ships. It requires practice to walk the deck of a ship, to pull the ropes, to furl the sails, to go aloft, to climb the mast; and it was thought by offering this bounty, a nursery might be formed, in which young men would become perfected in these arts, and it applied to one section of the country as well as to any other. The result of this was, that in the war of 1812, our sailors, many of whom came from this nursery, were equal to any that England brought against us. At any rate, no small part of the glories of that war were gained by the veteran tars of America, and the object of these national bounties was to foster that branch of the national defence. My opinion is, that whatever may have been the reason at first, this bounty ought to be discontinued– the reason for it at first no longer exists. A bill for this object did pass the Senate the last Congress I was in, to which my honorable friend contributed greatly, but it was not reached in the House of Representatives. I trust that he will yet see that he may with honor continue his connection with the Government, and that his eloquence, unrivalled in the Senate, may hereafter, as heretofore, be displayed in having this bounty, so obnoxious to him, repealed and wiped off from the statute book.
The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together– every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that.
[Mr. Toombs: That tariff lessened the duties.]
[Mr. Stephens:] Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. If reason and argument, with experience, produced such changes in the sentiments of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1857, on the subject of the tariff, may not like changes be effected there by the same means, reason and argument, and appeals to patriotism on the present vexed question? And who can say that by 1875 or 1890, Massachusetts may not vote with South Carolina and Georgia upon all those questions that now distract the country and threaten its peace and existence? I believe in the power and efficiency of truth, in the omnipotence of truth, and its ultimate triumph when properly wielded. (Applause.)
Another matter of grievance alluded to by my honorable friend, was the Navigation Laws. This policy was also commenced under the administration of one of these Southern Presidents, who ruled so well, and has been continued through all of them since. The gentleman’s views of the policy of these laws and my own do not disagree. We occupied the same ground in relation to them in Congress. It is not my purpose to defend them now. But it is proper to state some matters connected with their origin.
One of the objects was to build up a commercial American marine by giving American bottoms the exclusive carrying trade between our own ports. This is a great arm of national power. This object was accomplished. We now have an amount of shipping, not only coastwise but to foreign countries, which puts us in the front rank of the nations of the world. England can no longer be styled the mistress of the seas. What American is not proud of the result? Whether those laws should be continued it another question. But one thing is certain, no President, Northern or Southern, has ever yet recommended their repeal. And my friend’s effort to get them repealed has met with little favor North or South.**************************************(3)********************
“…It was only under our Institutions as they are, that they were developed. Their development is the result of the enterprise of our people under operations of the government and institutions under which we have lived. Even our people, without these, never would have done it. The organization of society has much to do with the development of the natural resources of any country or any land. The Institutions of a people, political and moral, are the matrix in which the germ of their organic structure quickens into life, takes root, and develops in form, nature, and character. Our institutions constitute the basis, the matrix from which spring all our characteristics of development and greatness. Look at Greece: There is the same fertile soil, the same blue sky, the same inlets and harbors, the same Aegean, the same Olympus– there is the same land where Homer sung, where Pericles spoke — it is, in nature, the same old Greece; but it is “living Greece no more.” (Applause.)”**************************(4)***********************
“…our sister Southern States can be induced to act with us; and I have but little doubt, that the States of New York, and Pennsylvania, and Ohio, and the other Western States, will compel their Legislatures to recede from their hostile attitude, if the others do not. Then, with these, we would go on without New England, if she chose to stay out.
[A voice in the Assembly: `We will kick them out.’]
[Mr. Stephens:] No. I would not kick them out. But if they chose to stay out they might. I think, moreover, that these Northern States, being principally engaged in manufactures, would find that they had as much interest in the Union, under the Constitution, as we, and that they would return to their constitutional duty — this would be my hope. If they should not, and if the Middle States and Western States do not join us, we should, at least, have an undivided South.***************(5)***************** I am, as you clearly perceive, for maintaining the Union as it is, if possible. I will exhaust every means, thus, to maintain it with an equality in it. My position, then, in conclusion, is for the maintenance of the honor, the rights, the equality, the security, and the glory of my native State in the Union, if possible; but if these cannot be maintained in the Union, then I am for their maintenance, at all hazards, out of it. Next to the honor and glory of Georgia, the land of my birth, I hold the honor and glory of our common country. In Savannah, I was made to say by the reporters, who very often make me say things which I never did, that I was first for the glory of the whole country, and next for that of Georgia. I said the exact reverse of this. I am proud of Georgia, of her history, of her present standing.” ******************************(6)************************
(1) There it is again. Lincoln was elected in 1860 as an expression of undeniable regional sentiment. Am I saying that that’s wrong? Am I saying he was not the valid President?
Certainly not. I’m the biggest Lincoln fan who ever lived. But the data from the election verifies he got almost literally zilch support in the election in the South. That is a fact.
What that ‘means’ is a whole other ballgame.
(2) This passage from the most well-known CS author stating in his opinion, the Constitution of the Union evidently enabled a wide scope of freedom of policy towards slavery and the racism which underpinned it!
(3) Yet again!!!! Stephens cites tariffs and economic factors! He’s saying as long as the North operates tariffs and economic factors along lines that the South approves of, there was no problem. Trying to ignore these is the destruction of credibility!!!
(4) In citing ‘institutions – political’ above and invoking the example of Greece, Stephens is making crystal clear that when he uses this term, it can’t be taken that he is invariably referring to slavery by another term in all of his usage of it. It has to be read critically. At times, ‘institutions’, does mean slavery, but not always, and at times, both and more at the same time.
(5) Stephens sees it possible that Northern states would want to secede from the Union and join the Southern states in a new country, leaving essentially New England on its own!
The interesting point in this is that he sees that secession is clearly lawful, his vision that non-Southern, non-slave holding states could theoretically want to join the new country, (why would they in his mind if they didn’t have slavery?)
(6) He clearly sees that the states, his state of Georgia in his own circumstance, is the lynch pin of federalism under the Constitution in the Union. This is evidence of how Southerners saw the Constitution and American federalism, as in keeping with the outlook as articulated in the 1774 ‘Letter of the Inhabitants of Quebec’, that the First Continental Congress had sent to Quebec to entice that land, despite their racist and genocidal views of les habitants des terre to join America as a state…and how they openly offered Switzerland as a model.
In the above speech, he clearly cites slavery several times. There’s no debating that whatsoever, as in the CS Speech itself. 100% true.
But he also cites others just as numerously. To deny, is to lie, about this.
We call this…moving the goal posts.
Please confine your comment to the Cornerstone Speech.
Thank you for your cooperation.
‘1774 Letter to the Inhabitants of Quebec’, from the First Continental Congress.
Lookee here at how the Founding Fathers articulate the model of the new country they are forming…!!!
They openly compare it to Switzerland, wherein, the cantons (states) were paramount to the republic which bound them as the wording clearly displays!
https://archive.org/details/cihm_36354
“October 26, 1774,
Friends and fellow-subjects,
We, the Delegates of the Colonies of New-Hampshire, Massachusetts-Bay, Rhode-Island and Providence Plantations, Connecticut, New-York, New-Jersey, Pennsylvania, the Counties of Newcastle, Kent and Sussex on Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, North-Carolina and South-Carolina, deputed by the inhabitants of the said Colonies, to represent them in a General Congress at Philadelphia, in the province of Pennsylvania, to consult together concerning the best methods to obtain redress of our afflicting grievances, having accordingly assembled, and taken into our most serious consideration the state of public affairs on this continent, have thought proper to address your province, as a member therein deeply interested…
The Swiss Cantons furnish a memorable proof of this truth. Their union is composed of…States, living in the utmost concord and peace with one another, and thereby enabled, ever since they bravely vindicated their freedom, to defy and defeat every tyrant that has invaded them.”
Gee, with this notion of the Union and its composite states that Stephens was raised with, no wonder he saw himself as a citizen of Georgia first and the Union second as clearly evidenced!
Guess who else saw this about him in 1864?
The Fathers of Canadian Confederation, many of whom were also active members of the Abolitionist Society of Canada and Underground Railroad and some of the most sincere and aggressive Abolitionists on the Planet!!!
Go ahead! I dare you to say that that evidence is irrelevant!
irrelevant.
Please confine your comments to Stephens’ Cornerstone Speech.
Thank you for your cooperation.
That’s throwing in the towel!!!
A historian has to consider ALL relevant evidence!
Can’t hide like Nolan!
Back to the 21 March 1861 Cornerstone Speech of Stephens!!!
Just getting started and you’re going to see how within that speech itself, it busts wide open looking at ALL evidence that can be put to it, especially from the past!!!!!
Ali for me!
‘Giant came to debate De Mann,
But Giant starts to retreat!
If they back up any more,
They’ll take an audience seat!’
There was a fellow who stood at the stand
Who thought he was a Civil War fan
But he met his match with the NYGiant and was sent back home,
When it was shown that he was Not de Mann.
The Grand De Mann rendered submission from a compliant, formerly defiant Giant!!!!!
And I’m just getting started with the evidence!!!
Already you’re trying to avoid admitting the place of racism and genocide towards Aboriginals and French Canadians in forming the Union that the Confederacy emerged from!!!
Even Malcolm X touched on this in his Autobiography!!!!!!!!
Since you are deviating form the Cornerstone Speech, that we agreed to discuss, I claim that I win.
Game. Set. Match to the NYGiant1952.
I DIDNT AGREE TO NOTHIN YOU PUT OUT THERE!!!!!
Got ’em on the run!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The very terms and wording of the CS Speech itself, in addition to common honest methodology, force a holistic examination!!!
You’re a bully on the beach but I’m bustin’ wide open that circle in the sand you tried to draw!!!!
Sorry to expose that your knowledge of the Civil war is less than my knowledge.
I apologize.
Next time, don’t try changing the woids of the Cornerstone Speech.
21-03-61, CS by AS, con’t-
“…Allow me briefly to allude to some of these improvements. The question of building up class interests, or fostering one branch of industry to the prejudice of another under the exercise of the revenue power, which gave us so much trouble under the old constitution, is put at rest forever under the new. We allow the imposition of no duty with a view of giving advantage to one class of persons, in any trade or business, over those of another. All, under our system, stand upon the same broad principles of perfect equality. Honest labor and enterprise are left free and unrestricted in whatever pursuit they may be engaged. This old thorn of the tariff, which was the cause of so much irritation in the old body politic, is removed forever from the new.
Again, the subject of internal improvements, under the power of Congress to regulate commerce, is put at rest under our system. The power, claimed by construction under the old constitution, was at least a doubtful one; it rested solely upon construction. We of the South, generally apart from considerations of constitutional principles, opposed its exercise upon grounds of its inexpediency and injustice. Notwithstanding this opposition, millions of money, from the common treasury had been drawn for such purposes. Our opposition sprang from no hostility to commerce, or to all necessary aids for facilitating it. With us it was simply a question upon whom the burden should fall. In Georgia, for instance, we have done as much for the cause of internal improvements as any other portion of the country, according to population and means. We have stretched out lines of railroads from the seaboard to the mountains; dug down the hills, and filled up the valleys at a cost of not less than $25,000,000. All this was done to open an outlet for our products of the interior, and those to the west of us, to reach the marts of the world. No State was in greater need of such facilities than Georgia, but we did not ask that these works should be made by appropriations out of the common treasury. The cost of the grading, the superstructure, and the equipment of our roads was borne by those who had entered into the enterprise. Nay, more not only the cost of the iron no small item in the aggregate cost was borne in the same way, but we were compelled to pay into the common treasury several millions of dollars for the privilege of importing the iron, after the price was paid for it abroad. What justice was there in taking this money, which our people paid into the common treasury on the importation of our iron, and applying it to the improvement of rivers and harbors elsewhere? The true principle is to subject the commerce of every locality, to whatever burdens may be necessary to facilitate it. If Charleston harbor needs improvement, let the commerce of Charleston bear the burden. If the mouth of the Savannah river has to be cleared out, let the sea-going navigation which is benefited by it, bear the burden. So with the mouths of the Alabama and Mississippi river. Just as the products of the interior, our cotton, wheat, corn, and other articles, have to bear the necessary rates of freight over our railroads to reach the seas. This is again the broad principle of perfect equality and justice, and it is especially set forth and established in our new constitution…”********************(1)*********************
(1) ABSOLUTELY UNDENIABLE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Stephens openly cites economic factors as an important war cause in the CS Speech!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Go ahead! Deny the plain writing!!!!! I want you to!!!!
Sorry…you are again incorrect.
Stephens is talking about how the Confederate Constitution is different that the US Constitution.
I thought you were more knowledgeable about the Cornerstone Speech.
* “…Another feature to which I will allude is that the new constitution provides that cabinet ministers and heads of departments may have the privilege of seats upon the floor of the Senate and House of Representatives and may have the right to participate in the debates and discussions upon the various subjects of administration. I should have preferred that this provision should have gone further, and required the President to select his constitutional advisers from the Senate and House of Representatives. That would have conformed entirely to the practice in the British Parliament, which, in my judgment, is one of the wisest provisions in the British constitution. It is the only feature that saves that government. It is that which gives it stability in its facility to change its administration. Ours, as it is, is a great approximation to the right principle…”***********(1)********
(1) YEAH, BUDDY!!!!!!!
See?! Stephens openly cites that federalism/states rights/constitutionalism is also a factor that the Confederacy has seceded for!!!! To the extent that he cites it right here in the CS Speech!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Wrong again!
Nothing the sort. He is talking about the Confederate Constitution.
LOL
* Sorry to expose that your knowledge of the Civil war is less than my knowledge.
I apologize.
Next time, don’t try changing the woids of the Cornerstone Speech.*
NOTHIN’ I put as a quote from the CS of 21-03-61 by Stephens ain’t in there!!!!
He’s gettin’ desperate!!!!!
He can’t even mount a defence at this point!!!!!
HE CAN”T EVEN TRY TO DEFEND THE HISTORICAL POINTS!!!!
Your woids…”As Stephens said right in HIS CS speech, ‘the immediate cause’ for secession was the election of Lincoln and the perceived threat to Southern slavery”
That sentence does NOT appear in the Cornerstone Speech.
YOU CAN’T EVEN GET THE WOIDS CORRECT!!! NOW THAT IS PRETTY DESPERATE!!
“…Under the old constitution, a secretary of the treasury for instance, had no opportunity, save by his annual reports, of presenting any scheme or plan of finance or other matter. He had no opportunity of explaining, expounding, enforcing, or defending his views of policy; his only resort was through the medium of an organ. In the British parliament, the premier brings in his budget and stands before the nation responsible for its every item. If it is indefensible, he falls before the attacks upon it, as he ought to. This will now be the case to a limited extent under our system. In the new constitution, provision has been made by which our heads of departments can speak for themselves and the administration, in behalf of its entire policy, without resorting to the indirect and highly objectionable medium of a newspaper. It is to be greatly hoped that under our system we shall never have what is known as a government organ…”***************************************(1)**********************
(1) MORE ECONOMIC AND CONSTITUTIONAL FACTORS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
And he can’t even ATTEMPT to defend or deny it!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
You brought this on yourself!
Your arrogance, your refusal to be reasonably in disposition, your denying and lying, your shiftiness, all of it.
You haven’t even been able to land a single mark!!!
It’s an old maxim; when people show you how they truly are, believe them.
I can see the plain truth, Propagandist!
You thought you could change the woids around and get away with it.
Your lack of knowledge and your refusal to accept the facts caused you to lose the debate.
I can see the plain truth, Revisionist.
* “…Another change in the constitution relates to the length of the tenure of the presidential office. In the new constitution it is six years instead of four, and the President rendered ineligible for a re-election. This is certainly a decidedly conservative change. It will remove from the incumbent all temptation to use his office or exert the powers confided to him for any objects of personal ambition. The only incentive to that higher ambition which should move and actuate one holding such high trusts in his hands, will be the good of the people, the advancement, prosperity, happiness, safety, honor, and true glory of the confederacy…”
****************More federalism and political factors!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Yawnie..more diversion from the fact that slavery was the cause of the Civil War.
“…But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the “rock upon which the old Union would split.” He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the “storm came and the wind blew.”
Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery subordination to the superior race is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics. Their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal….”
******************THE VERY WORDS “THE IMMEDIATE CAUSE OF THE LAST RUPTURE!!!!!!!!!!!”
So here hes flat out admitting there were other causes for this secession and the previous attempts!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! He’s just not going into ALL of them here now!
“ASSUMPTION OF EQUALITY OF THE RACES”
“Well…I guess that depends on whether you’re an Indian or not.” – Quigley Down Under
Stephens shows that he does not understand the origins of the notion of ‘all men are created equal’ – This was a vehicle that the colonists could use to legally disavow the British notion of how some individuals, such as the Monarch, the Royal Family, the Aristocracy, etc, can have certain statuses, privileges, responsibilities, etc, upon the lands they occupy or hold title to, due to their heritage and lineage.
THE PURPOSE OF THAT WAS TO LIKEWISE DENY THE ABORIGINALS THE SAME IN NORTH AMERICA, AND GIVE VENT TO THEIR RACISM TO NULLIFY THE BRITISH LAWS THAT PROTECTED THEM, AND FRENCH CANADIANS, AND GENOCIDE BOTH GROUPS AND TAKE THEIR LANDS FOR THEMSELVES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
There is no denying this, there is no minimising this, there is absolutely nothing but fully admitting in full view that this is true! Genocide!
What did Tim Pat Coogan say about this in his book, ‘The Famine Plot’?!
page 229, “…The Times wrote complacently in 1848, ‘A Celt will soon be as rare on the banks of the Shannon as the red man (sic) on the banks of Manhattan.'”!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
The racism of this passage above by AS is undeniable and despicable and condemanble in the extreme!!! I stand 100% against the sentiments here and call for this aspect of the CS Speech of his to be openly examined and criticised in full public view. The LC historiography DID attempt to minimise this speech of his and its place in understanding the Confederacy, America and the CW/WBTS!
But then again…that leads us to a whole other set of questions to put to the CS!!!!!!!!
Is this what ALL Confederates believed in and why they fought?!
Let’s look-
Yawn…more diversion.
Well, well!!!!!
Lookee here!
An internal American conflict was SPELLED OUT to come in 1787 by Alexander Hamilton in Federalist Papers 6, 7, 8!! Here is also where we see the origin of the term, ‘War Between The States’, (#8)!!!!
Now at this time, slavery has either only very recently lapsed in the Northern states, or, it was in the process of lapsing! You can not say that this is the reason that Hamilton states for the war to come.
We know that he didn’t, and what did he explicitly write would be the cause?
Regionalism, economics and states rights!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
It’s all in there!!!!!!
(Shrug) Am I saying that this was the entire set of reasons that the CW/WBTS came?
No, not a chance.
Am I saying that slavery had no part in the war coming in 1861?
Thatd be a joke!!! Absolutely undeniably it did!
But anyone who would try to say that other factors, separate from slavery, had nothing to do with the war coming when it was predicted from this early on and would deny their contributing importance, and then, to try to ignore or deny such has destroyed their own credibility!!!
https://guides.loc.gov/federalist-papers/text-1-10
LOOKEE HERE WHO TRIED TO HEAD OFF AT THE PASS ANY NEED FOR THE CS BY STEPHENS BY WRITING TO HIM!!!!!!!
HE WAS GOING TO GUARANTEE SLAVERY AS IT EXISTED FOR ALL TIME TO COME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
https://www.learningforjustice.org/classroom-resources/texts/hard-history/letter-to-alexander-h-stephens-december-22-1860#:~:text=to%20Alexander%20H.-,Stephens%2C%20December%2022%2C%201860,of%20his%20presidency%20threatening%20slavery.
22 December 1860, Abraham Lincoln – Stephens
My dear Sir…
Do the people of the South really entertain fears that a Republican administration would,?directly, or indirectly, interfere with their slaves, or with them, about their slaves? If they do, I wish to assure you, as once a friend, and still, I hope, not an enemy, that there is no cause for such fears.
The South would be in no more danger in this respect, than it was in the days of Washington. I suppose, however, this does not meet the case. You think slavery is?right?and ought to be extended; while we think it is?wrong?and ought to be restricted. That I suppose is the rub. It certainly is the only substantial difference between us.
Yours very truly
A. LINCOLN
I repeat, more from the same to the same old Union!!!!!!!!!
Abraham Lincoln notes for a speech in 1859-
“Negro equality! Fudge!! How long, in the government of a God, great enough to make and maintain the Universe, shall there continue to be knaves to vend, and fools to gulp, so low a piece of demogougism as this?”
-Tucker, Dan, (ed.), ‘Lincoln’s Notebooks: Letters, Speeches, Journals and Poems’, Black Dog & Leventhal Publishers: New York, 2017, 80.
How was THIS racism any different from that in the CS Speech?!!!!
Racism is Racism!!!!
What did Lincoln say about slavery in the Union even before the CS by Stephens?!!!!!!!!
“…Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. It is found in nearly all the published speeches of him who now addresses you. I do but quote from one of those speeches when I declare that–
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
Those who nominated and elected me did so with full knowledge that I had made this and many similar declarations and had never recanted them; and more than this, they placed in the platform for my acceptance, and as a law to themselves and to me, the clear and emphatic resolution which I now read:
Resolved, That the maintenance inviolate of the rights of the States, and especially the right of each State to order and control its own domestic institutions according to its own judgment exclusively, is essential to that balance of power on which the perfection and endurance of our political fabric depend; and we denounce the lawless invasion by armed force of the soil of any State or Territory, no matter what pretext, as among the gravest of crimes.
I now reiterate these sentiments, and in doing so I only press upon the public attention the most conclusive evidence of which the case is susceptible that the property, peace, and security of no section are to be in any wise endangered by the now incoming Administration. I add, too, that all the protection which, consistently with the Constitution and the laws, can be given will be cheerfully given to all the States when lawfully demanded, for whatever cause–as cheerfully to one section as to another.
There is much controversy about the delivering up of fugitives from service or labor. The clause I now read is as plainly written in the Constitution as any other of its provisions:
No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall in consequence of any law or regulation therein be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.
It is scarcely questioned that this provision was intended by those who made it for the reclaiming of what we call fugitive slaves; and the intention of the lawgiver is the law. All members of Congress swear their support to the whole Constitution–to this provision as much as to any other. To the proposition, then, that slaves whose cases come within the terms of this clause “shall be delivered up” their oaths are unanimous. Now, if they would make the effort in good temper, could they not with nearly equal unanimity frame and pass a law by means of which to keep good that unanimous oath?
There is some difference of opinion whether this clause should be enforced by national or by State authority, but surely that difference is not a very material one. If the slave is to be surrendered, it can be of but little consequence to him or to others by which authority it is done. And should anyone in any case be content that his oath shall go unkept on a merely unsubstantial controversy as to how it shall be kept?
Again: In any law upon this subject ought not all the safeguards of liberty known in civilized and humane jurisprudence to be introduced, so that a free man be not in any case surrendered as a slave? And might it not be well at the same time to provide by law for the enforcement of that clause in the Constitution which guarantees that “the citizens of each State shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several States”?
…I do not forget the position assumed by some that constitutional questions are to be decided by the Supreme Court, nor do I deny that such decisions must be binding in any case upon the parties to a suit as to the object of that suit, while they are also entitled to very high respect and consideration in all parallel cases by all other departments of the Government. And while it is obviously possible that such decision may be erroneous in any given case, still the evil effect following it, being limited to that particular case, with the chance that it may be overruled and never become a precedent for other cases, can better be borne than could the evils of a different practice. At the same time, the candid citizen must confess that if the policy of the Government upon vital questions affecting the whole people is to be irrevocably fixed by decisions of the Supreme Court, the instant they are made in ordinary litigation between parties in personal actions the people will have ceased to be their own rulers, having to that extent practically resigned their Government into the hands of that eminent tribunal. Nor is there in this view any assault upon the court or the judges. It is a duty from which they may not shrink to decide cases properly brought before them, and it is no fault of theirs if others seek to turn their decisions to political purposes.
One section of our country believes slavery is right and ought to be extended, while the other believes it is wrong and ought not to be extended. This is the only substantial dispute. The fugitive- slave clause of the Constitution and the law for the suppression of the foreign slave trade are each as well enforced, perhaps, as any law can ever be in a community where the moral sense of the people imperfectly supports the law itself. The great body of the people abide by the dry legal obligation in both cases, and a few break over in each. This, I think, can not be perfectly cured, and it would be worse in both cases after the separation of the sections than before. The foreign slave trade, now imperfectly suppressed, would be ultimately revived without restriction in one section, while fugitive slaves, now only partially surrendered, would not be surrendered at all by the other.”
Total and absolute commitment to standing by slavery, for all time, as it existed, for all time to come…!
All the rights to the fields, barns, whips, chains, bills of sale and bedrooms to be reconvened…!!!!!
There is no minimising this; there is no denying this. Those whom do are guilty of lying about history.
https://www.gilderlehrman.org/history-resources/spotlight-primary-source/president-lincoln%E2%80%99s-first-inaugural-address-1861?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIup7myPWq-QIV1AorCh3QbAjoEAAYASAAEgJjbPD_BwE
What did James Longstreet say he fought for the South for?!
he said he was fighting for his state!!!!
Hey! Look who said he would, too! A Union General To Be, if New York, his home state seceded!!!!
‘From Manassas to Appomattox’, page 29
https://archive.org/details/frommanassastoap00long_0/page/28/mode/2up?view=theater
LOL. Classic bait and switch.
We were talking about why the South left the Union, not why the South was fighting.
LOL
Again.more evidence that I have out-debated you …AGAIN!!
You debated nothing; you’re being destroyed!!!
Say!!!! What’d Maxcy Gregg of South Carolina say about secession?!
Well he said this for starters in 1858 and note it touches on the tariff-
https://archive.org/details/appealtostaterig00greg/page/n9/mode/2up?view=theater
And what about Maxcy Gregg’s comments at the South Carolina secession convention…?!!!!!!!!!!
What did he say on his death?!!!!
“If I am to die now, I give my life cheerfully for the independence of South Carolina.”
https://archive.org/details/addressdelivered00palm/page/6/mode/2up?view=theater
i think you guys — Hugh and Giant1952 — were the cause of the site’s “tech difficulties” yesterday … too many RED-HOT POSTS and name calling … let’s play nice.
Excuse me, sir.
Now, you may well have a point. Our high number of posts to and fro may have been a tech problem.
If there be any truth in that, I offer an apology to all of the group.
But I beg to differ some of your content in your post there. I have been so far a perfect gentleman. Giant has not.
They have consistently engaged me with an attitude deliberately meant to annoy and provoke; their debating style has been provocative in the extreme and they have ignored plain evidence, such as saying that there was no evidence of Lincoln’s willingness to place Quebec back into France’s colonial possessions, etc, despite my providing again and again the ‘Letters of Queen Victoria’ evidence.
All that Giant has had to do is conduct themselves with reasonable manner, that is to say, with at least respect.
That they have deliberately not done and sought to provoke me. I have made crystal clear for the longest duration I sought not their agreement; only at least a reasonable debating atmosphere.
Are you trying to say that some parties or all wish us to discontinue? I can do that gladly for the group.
If none mind us to continue, I can do that, too.
Hugh de Mann cries foul when he has been out-debated.
Mark has asked that we desist and I will.
Wrongfully Denying Black Americans their constitutional rights after the war was the natural thing for a country to do which had founded its origins upon racism and genocide against other groups, the Aboriginals and French Canadians!!!
And had founded slavery and racism towards Black Americans in the 3/5 and Fugitive Slave tenets in that very constitution which ALL White Americans, North and South, enabled and collaborated upon!!!!
That was the Great Lie that Northerners tried to hide after the war, and which Alan T. Nolan attempted to enable!
But that day is done! The world can see the truth, such as the Canadians who enabled Black Americans with the Underground Railroad whom said states rights, separate from slavery, were the main cause of the war!!!
And Santiago Vidaurri of Nuevo León and Coahuila in Mexico, Fanatical Abolitionist, not only validated in his beliefs but with his actions by trying to have his states annexed to Texas!!!
YOW, another two wins!!!
Actually…no!
More as how many FCC said that and how many pieces of evidence are there from Vidaurri?!
Done and dusted…!!!!!
Now, do I believe that uncritically above?
Doesn’t matter, what matters is…
WINNING!!!!!!!!!
Hey! Giant! Know what else about the Vidaurri thing?
Mexicans aren’t White!!!!
The facts are that the 13th , 14th and 15th Amendments to the US Constitution gave the newly freed slaves and all people born in the US the same rights as everyone.
With the Republican Party abandoning the newly freed Afro American to win the 1876 election and the 5 Civil Rights cases of 1883, This paved the way for Jim Crow legislation and the separate but equal decision of Plessy v Ferguson.
HAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!
OMG…!!!!!
Who else saw that?!!!!!
Giant actually tried to deny Grant said he was fighting for the retention of slavery as it existed, DESPITE GRANTS OWN WORDS IN 1862 IN KENTUCKY!!!!!!!
YYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWW!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!
And he also tried to hide how Grant’s life was benefitted by his wife’s slaves!!!!!!!!! And what all federal office holders and such who swore to uphold the Constitution were swear to do!!!!!
All he had to do was read Lincoln’s First Inaugural and/or about Shermanto know that…!!!!
Unless he has and done caught him lyin again!!!!
Lol!!! Nolan be rollin!!!!!!
To deny is your lie!!!!!!
God, that was SO EASY!!!
Grant – Kentucky- 1861.
BUT I STILL WIN!!!!!!!!!!
THIS IS TOO EASY!!!!!!!
YEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!
‘They all will fall in the round I call.’
Ali for me!!!!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!!
You got what you asked for! Think it’s funny?!
WINNING!!!
YYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!
Slaver Grant and Nolan be rollin’!
HEY!!!!!!!!
Is the Lost Cause aspect that Confederates fought with meagre supplies compared to the Union a fabrication that there is no evidence for?!!!!!
(PLEASE LET’ EMSAY YES…!)
“…the men who followed Jefferson Davis
through the late terrible Rebellion,
often marching barefooted and hungry,
naked and penniless…”, Frederick Douglass, ‘The Atlantic’, January 1867
‘Another feather in my cap…!’
WINNING!
Not even a single historical point could they land…!
AND DID YOU SEE THE WAY GIANT TRIED TO MINIMISE THE REALITY OF WHAT SLAVERY WAS BY SAYING GRANT ONLY OWNED PERSONALLY ONE SLAVE?!!!!!!
What did that mean to that one slave, Giant?! His life and freedom!!!!
…and you DARED to minimise that…!
WINNING!
WHATS THAT?!!!!!
HE ADMITTED THE NORTH ABANDONED BLACK AMERICANS AFTER THE WAR!!!!!!!!!!!!
YES!!!!!!!! WINNING!!!!!!
HOW COULD THE DEFEATED DOUTH MAKE THE VICTORIOUS NORTH DO ANYTHING THEY DIDNT WISH TO DO?!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!! He’s trying to minimise racism and slavery just like Alan T. Nolan or Brooks D. Simpson
Actually, I don’t say the North…I said the Republican Party.
Please stop changing my words.
LOL!!!!!
WHERE WAS THE REPUBLICAN PARTY CENTRED AND POWER-BASED OUT OF?!!!!!
Lol!!!!!!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!
It was good that Black Americans were granted the right to vote in the South and eventually all of America; but that happened because of the Republican Party in the North, (not to mention people in the Souty like Lee supported Black Americans voting in the same terms as Abraham Lincoln!!!!!!!)-
SO MY STATEMENT IS TRUE AND YOU WRONG!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!
HEY!!! GIANT!!!!
KNOW HOW BROOKS D. SIMPSON SAID ROBERT E. LEE’s LIFE WAA BUILT ON SLAVERY?!!!!!!!!
HE LIED BY OMISSION ABOUT GRANT!!!!!
YYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!
SEE HERE-
https://www.whitehousehistory.org/the-formerly-enslaved-household-of-the-grant-family
WINNING!!!!!!!!
GOD!!! That was so EASY to win…!
HEY! LITTLE GIANT!!!!
TRUE OR FALSE?!
yyyyyyeeeeeeeEEEEEEEEOOIOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!
In 1850, Jefferson Davis outlined a broad plan of emancipation for slaves in Congress?!!!!!!
(PLEASE LET HIM DENY! Here we go…!)
Lee fought to preserve slavery.
Grant didn’t.
LOL!!!!!!!!
CHECK THE WILLIAM PRESTON JOHNSTON, WILLIAM ALLAN, LEE FAMILY, AND JOSEPH PB WILMER PAPERS!!!!!!!
CENTURY MAGAZINE! NY TIMES!!!!!!
YOU JUST COMMITTED HARA KIRI TO YOUR CREDIBILITY AND ITS HILARIOUS!!!!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
If this debate was a hockey brawl, and it’s isn’t, I’m like John Wensink and you’re the entire Minnesota North Stars bench!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!
Go ahead and defend slavery some more!!!!!!!
Actually, The Civil Rights Cases, 109 U.S. 3 (1883), were a group of five landmark cases in which the Supreme Court of the United States held that the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments did not empower Congress to outlaw racial discrimination by private individuals.
In the wake of the Supreme Court ruling, the federal government adopted as policy that allegations of continuing slavery were matters whose prosecution should be left to local authorities only – a de facto acceptance that white southerners could do as they wished with the black people in their midst.
IN OTHER WORDS, WHITE NORTHERNERS COLLABORATED AND INVOLVED AND ENABLED IT ALL!!!!!!!
YEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!
HE TRIED TO LIE BY DENY!!!!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
No, it just confirms what I said before, that the North and the South were racist in 1860.
HEY, GIANT LITTLE!!!!
WHAT DID TGE REPS OF MAINE SAY ON THE FLOOR OF CONGRESS ABOUT THE AROOSTOOK WAR IN 1839?!!!!!!
-That 13 original sovereign states formed the Union and Constitution!!!!
-That like them, Maine was a sovereign state of the Union!!!!
-That meant they had all the sovereign powers of the original 13 states!!!!
-That meant they had the right, 100% w/o need to so much as inform, let alone involve, the federal government to invade the British colony of New Brunswick, add that conquered territory to their state borders, construct state forts on that disputed territory and post state militia there to occupy it!!!!!!
…(snicker!!!!)…now, why did they say they would want to do that at all…?…
TO DEFEND AND PROTECT THEMSELVES FROM NORTHERN INVADERS!!!!!!!!!!
PLEASE LET HIM ASK ME TO SHOW THE CONGRESSIONAL GLOBE COPY!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!! YYYYYYYYEEEEEEEOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!
I HAVE SOOOOOOO ABSOLUTELY!
UTTERLY!
BEYOND ALL BLEEDIN’ DOUBT, YEEEEEEAAAAAHHHHHH BBBBAAAAAAAAAAAABBBBBBBBEEEEEEEEEEEEIIIIIII!!!!!!!!!
PROVED THE LOST CAUSE AS A HISTORIOGRAPHY AND DESTROYED THE CREDIBILITY OF THOSE WHO CALL IT A MYTH,
THAT IM DANCIN’ AS THE CROWD WATCHES TO THIS!
WINNERS CIRCLE!!!!!!!!!!
https://youtu.be/r-V36UPp7Hc
(Snaps fingers and grooves!)
Of course…it is not a historiography I personally ascribe to anymore than Settler Colonialism.
Too many errs and flaws.
THE NORTH WAS RACIST AND IT ENABLED SLAVERY!!!!!!
HE ADMITS IT!!!!!!
YEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!
PURE WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I admitted it earlier in the discussion that the North was racist.
I never said that the North enabled slavery. There you go again, changing the words around.
Now, I suppose you are going to say that the Corwin Amendment was passed, and they claim it never passed.
LOL
HE ADMITS I WAS RIGHT!!!!!!!!!!
YEEEEEOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!
BY EVEN BEING WILLING TO CONTEMPLATE THE CORWIN AMENDMENT S AS ND ELECT A PRESIDENT WHO ESPOUSED IT, UNDER GOD – HOW COULD THE NORTH CONCEDE EVEN THAT MUCH TO SLAVERY?!!!!!!
RACISTS!!!!!!!
HEY!!!!!
GIANT!!!!!
YYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!
IF THE LC TENET OF STATES RIGHTS AND ROBERT E. LEE SEEING VIRGINIA AS HIS ‘STATE, COUNTRY’ WAS RUBBISH, WHYD SAM HOUSTON SAY WHAT HE DID IN 1827?!!!!
‘TENNESSEE – MY ADOPTED COUNTRY’
WINNING!!!!!!!!!!
Why does the Lost Cause perpetuate White Supremacy?
WHY DID THE NORTHERN EQUIVALENT DO SAME?!!!!!!!!!
WHY DID GRANT ADMIT IN HIS MEMOIRS THAT THE 1846-48 Mexican American War HE CHOSE TO FIGHT IN WAS TO EXPAND AND PROTECT SLAVERY?!!!!!!
WHY IS IT NOLAN, MCPHERSON,GALLAGHER, SERWER, SEIDULE ETC ALL TRY TO HIDE THAT?!!!!!!
STATUES?! BAH; ‘GIVE BACK TO MEXICO’
…the lands that were ripped apart by war from it to perpetuate White supremacy and American slavery!!!!!!!!!!!!!
GOD!!!!! THAT WAS SO EASY!!!!!!
WHY DO YOU DENY THE PLACE OF RACISM AND GENOCIDE IN FOUNDING THE UNION?!!!!!!!!!!
ABORIGINALS AND FRENCH CANADIANS HAD THE RIGHT TO BE SAFE FROM RACISM AND GENOCIDE!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!!!
You’ve shown me long since what you really are, NYGiant1952.
I believe you.
(Wipes hands…!)
Total, absolute, Victory…!!!!!!!
I mean, not even one argumentative strike could they even come close to landing!!!
YYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nothing more I can achieve here…no need to do anymore…!
LOL!!!!!!!!!!!
Verdict: The Lost Cause is proven a historiography, a school of historical studies, with in short, some merit and flaws, limits, etc.
It’s certainly not one I active to, but those who call it a myth are dishonest and historical cowards!
They can only call it that if they run away from and hide evidence! They’re trying to minimise the historical truth that American slavery was due to all Americans as was its end.
Abraham Lincoln had the courage to put the truth to that, however imperfectly. So did RobertE. Lee, and others. I will stand with them all.
I have total respect for those whom will sit down and openly/rigorously examine its structure, tenets, writers, etc; concede its various aspects of merit or usefulness, but apply criticism to its limits and merits.
I’ll be the first to buy coffee and sit down with them to do do, and believe you me; I ain’t shying away from the putting that criticism.
I now retire from this, in total victory.
Nothing left to win!
Note read above as the LC’s flaws, limits.
The Lost Cause continues to be the false narrative of the Civil War.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XP0_wnaW-a0
“Grasping to justify their actions”
The Lost Cause of the Confederacy (or simply Lost Cause) is an American pseudohistorical negationist mytholog that claims the cause of the Confederate States during the American Civil War was just, heroic, and not centered on slavery.
People, beware of revisionism.
The historian Allan Nolan wrote:
… the Lost Cause legacy to history is a caricature of the truth. The caricature wholly misrepresents and distorts the facts of the matter. Surely it is time to start again in our understanding of this decisive element of our past and to do so from the premises of history unadulterated by the distortions, falsehoods, and romantic sentimentality of the Myth of the Lost Cause.
The historian William C. Davis labeled many of the myths which surround the war “frivolous” and these myths include attempts to rename the war by “Confederate partisans.”
Contemporary historians overwhelmingly agree that secession was motivated by slavery. There were numerous causes for secession, but preservation and expansion of slavery was easily the most important of them. The confusion may come from blending the causes of secession with the causes of the war, which were separate but related issues. (Lincoln entered a military conflict not to free the slaves but to put down a rebellion or, as he put it, to preserve the Union.)
According to the historian Kenneth M. Stampp, each side supported states’ rights or federal power only when it was convenient for it to do so. Stampp also cited Confederate Vice President Alexander Stephens’s A Constitutional View of the Late War Between the States as an example of a Southern leader who said that slavery was the “cornerstone of the Confederacy” when the war began and later said after his defeat that the war had not been about slavery but states’ rights. According to Stampp, Stephens became one of the most ardent defenders of the ‘Lost Cause’ myth.
YYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEEEEEOOOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
ONLY!!!!! HISTORICAL COWARDS AND THOSE TRYING TO LIE BY DENY ABOUT HISTORY WOULD SAY SOMETHING LIKE THAT ONE OR TWO PIECES OF EVIDENCE, LIKE ONE ORDINANCE OR SPEECH, AND THAT VERY SPEECH ITSELF CITES OTHER AND OLDER CAUSES FOR WAR, THE RACISM IN IT IS ESSENTIALLY THE SAME AS THE PROVEN VIEWS OF THE MAN ELECTED TO THE UNION’S HIGHEST OFFICE, AND IGNORES THE GENOCIDE OF THE ORIGINS OF THE UNION IT CAME FROM, ACCEPTED AT FACE VALUE BUT NOT A NIGH 180 OPPOSITE SPEECH FROM SAME MAN 5 YEARS LATER (SEE THAT CONTENT!!!!!!!!
(BOOMS!!!!!!!)
AND-
ACTUALLY TRIES TO SAY ITS ONLY NECESSARY TO LOOK AT A FEW PIECES OF EVIDENCE, AND NOT ALL THE SPEECHES AT ALL LEVELS OF CIVICS, ALL THE LETTERS MANUSCRIPTS DIARIES CHURCH SERMONS MILITARY ORDERS NEWSPAPERS HANDBILLS, ETC AS ONE CAN EXAMINE…!!!!!!!!
THATS A PROPAGANDIST RUNNING FROM HISTORY!!!!!!!!!!
WHY DIDNT MCPHERSON CITE ANYTHING OF THE CONFEDERATE 1862 EMANCIPATION TREATY ON PAGE 503 OF BATTLECRY FREEDOM?!!!!!!!!
HE PANICKED!!!!! HE AND NOLAN DIDNT WANT TO HAVE TO ADMIT THE UNION TROOPS WERE FIGHTING FOR SLAVERY BY RESTORING THE UNION AS IT HAD BEEN!!!!!!!!!! EVEN THAT THE CONFEDERATES WERE WILLING TO SO MUCH AS EXAMINE EMANCIPATION IS SOMETHING THAT THEY COULDNT AFFORD TO ADMIT!!!!!!!
ON PAGE 503, I PUT ABOUT 25-30 PRIMARY EVIDENCE ARGUMENT STRIKES TO MCPHERSON!!!!!!!!!!!! INCLUDING LINCOLNS OWN PAPERS!!!!!!!!!
HISTORIANS LOOK AT EVERYTHING!!!!!!!
WINNING!!!!!!!!!!!!!
YYYYYYYYYYEEEEEEEOOOOOOOWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Usually, typing in capital letters indicates someone is shouting.
Hugh…take a chill pill and return when you have calmed down.
My friends, it has been enjoyable to discuss this all.
There is no notwithstanding after this point, however.
I salute all American flags, now and forever, as at Pearl Harbour, I saluted BOTH the Stars and Stripes and Confederate Battle Flag.
Because I respect and honour America and stand against nationalism, I must never hesitate to patriotically question, reflect and even criticise where appropriate what history it’s flags represent.
God bless all Americans and their lands.