The American Civil War Timeline- 150th Anniversary (8 Viewers)

[Yankee23Fan]

For a long time (until well after the ACW began) Lincoln favored colonization of negroes. He was not an radical republican (abolitionist), and at no time did he argue for social equality. Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks.

We can look at history through the wrong end of the telescope, and applying our own current views, conclude that so-and-so was racist by todays standards. Imagine if someone were judging you based on the social thinking that rules the day in the year 2160.

Lincoln's prewar racist views were typical of his age. During the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth. His conversations with Grant and Sherman in the Spring of 1865 indicate Reconstruction would have taken far different turns had he lived.

ETA: added

In terms of Lincoln's views on blacks, when we get to his debates with Douglas, these will be covered in some detail.

I don't know if you have it listed in your notes or whatever it is you do to do this, but you do need to give at least one poast to Lincolnc's Cooper Union Address.

 

[KnowledgeReignsSupreme]

An instructive place to begin is to look at the numbers of African-American slaves. The ownership of black slaves began in 1654. By 1780, the number of slaves was 694,307. 70 years later, when the issues that would lead to the Civil War began to explode across the nation, the number of slaves was 3,200,600. (In 1840, the number was 2.4 million, so this represents a rapid increase.) Of course the main reason was the Industrial Revolution in England created a need for American cotton, and cotton was based upon a labor of slavery. Though other plantation crops were also considered "slave crops" (rice in South Carolina, sugar in Lousiana and Florida, tobacco in Virginia and North Carolina), the overwhelming plantation crop was cotton. As James Hammond of Virginia put it in a famous speech in 1857, "Cotton is king."Here are the numbers of slaves for each state in 1850. If I don't list a state here, it effectively had no slaves:Virginia 472,528South Carolina 384,984Georgia 381,682Alabama 342,844Mississippi 309,878North Carolina 288,548Louisiana 244,809Kentucky 210,681Maryland 90,368Missouri 87,322Texas 58,161Arkansas 47,100Florida 39,310Delaware 2,290New Jersey 236Wisconsin 4With the exception of Virginia, the bulk of slaves were located in the deep South, (South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi): the cotton country. Virginia had the most slaves because it also had the most people in the South. Richmond remained the key city for trade and commerce, although by 1850 Charleston and Atlanta were in some competition for this. But it's important to note that Virginia slave owners, beginning around 1830 or so, made a good chunk of their money breeding slaves and selling them south to work in the larger plantations, usually at incredibly high prices. The reason that the slave trade from Africa was abolished earlier in the century was that Virginia, Maryland, and North Carolina joined the northern states in supporting this, because they saw selling slaves as a form of income. There was also friction therefore between the lower South, which wanted a resumption of the slave trade in order to compete with Virginia, and the upper South, which desired to protect their own source of income. This dispute would come to a head and create problems with the formation of the Confederacy.With regard to the numbers of slaves in the "border" and western states, those numbers are extremely significant to the narrative and we will discuss that in detail later on.

If you replace slave with steel, it's interesting to see the rent seeking behavior from VA, MD and NC.

 

[BroncoFreak_2K3]

I'm related to this guy.

Any relation to Colin Dowling? I'm also related to a Civil War vet, this guy is my 6th great grandfather. Thank God I don't look like him.

Certainly not as notable, but he still led a very interesting life during the War, My GGG Uncle, Captain Tinker Dave Beaty

 

[AcerFC]

Haven't been able to keep up but now that I am caught up, Yankee dropping serious knowledge.

So it seemed that with the compromise of 1850 and the now strongly enforced fugitive slave law, the Southerners were getting what they wanted. Will be interesting to see what happens.

One question about California's senators. One was anti slave and one was pro slave. Did this happen by concidence or was they system different back then.

 

[Eephus]

Haven't been able to keep up but now that I am caught up, Yankee dropping serious knowledge. So it seemed that with the compromise of 1850 and the now strongly enforced fugitive slave law, the Southerners were getting what they wanted. Will be interesting to see what happens. One question about California's senators. One was anti slave and one was pro slave. Did this happen by concidence or was they system different back then.

Senators used to be elected by State legislatures. Popular elections didn't become mandatory until the 17th Amendment in 1923

 

[AcerFC]

Haven't been able to keep up but now that I am caught up, Yankee dropping serious knowledge. So it seemed that with the compromise of 1850 and the now strongly enforced fugitive slave law, the Southerners were getting what they wanted. Will be interesting to see what happens. One question about California's senators. One was anti slave and one was pro slave. Did this happen by concidence or was they system different back then.

Senators used to be elected by State legislatures. Popular elections didn't become mandatory until the 17th Amendment in 1923

Thanks. I was not thinking straight. That is something I did know. Direct election of senators came with Lafolletes Wisconsin idea when the Progressives were strong. Appreciate you reminding me.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Haven't been able to keep up but now that I am caught up, Yankee dropping serious knowledge. So it seemed that with the compromise of 1850 and the now strongly enforced fugitive slave law, the Southerners were getting what they wanted. Will be interesting to see what happens. One question about California's senators. One was anti slave and one was pro slave. Did this happen by concidence or was they system different back then.

Senators used to be elected by State legislatures. Popular elections didn't become mandatory until the 17th Amendment in 1923

1913. The year the Constitution became the constitution.

 

[timschochet]

Great stuff Yankee. Of course, I am aware of your prejudice against Jefferson. You almost have nothing good to say about the man. But I'm not going to challenge you on that because I am undereducated on the subject. Still, most historians seem to give old Thomas a great deal more credit than you are willing to afford.

As I wrote earlier, I am also not prepared to take you on as to whether or not secession is constitutional, though I have always agreed with your position on this matter. Hopefully Christo, who so easily defeated my arguments in the past, will choose to take you on regarding this. It sounds like this discussion has happened in the past already, but I never got a chance to read it, and neither did most of the people reading this thread, I suspect. I'd be fascinated to hear more.

However, I will challenge you on your dispute of my statement that the most of those who fought on the side of the South were not traitors or criminals. But we're not there yet. When we get to 1861, and specifically to Robert E. Lee's decision whether to fight for the North or South, that could be a platform to have a debate on this matter, if you're willing. Could be fun and interesting.

Your posts are insightful and terrific, and I hope you continue to post your thoughts throughout the thread.

 

[DartTeamGoalie]

 

[Uwe Blab]

 

[timschochet]

The Fugitive Slave Act, Continued

Christiana was a Pennsylvania village on the Maryland border, about halfway between Philadelphia and another village named Gettysburg. It was largely a Quaker community that had extended a welcome to fugitives. On the morning of September 11, 1851, a Maryland slaveowner accompanied by several relatives and 2 deputy marshals came seeking 2 fugitives who had escaped 2 years earlier and were reported to be hiding in the house of another black man. They found the fugitives, along with 24 armed black men vowing to resist capture. Some Quakers appeared and advised the slave hunters to retreat for their own good. The owner refused, declaring that "I will have my property, or go to hell." Shooting broke out. When it was over the slaveowner lay dead and his son seriously wounded (2 other whites and 2 blacks were lightly wounded.) The blacks disappeared into the countryside; their 3 leaders sped on the underground railroad to Canada.

The "Battle of Christiana" became a national event. "Civil War- The First Blow Struck" proclaimed a Lancaster, Pennsylvania newspaper. The New York Tribune pronounced the verdict of many Yankees: "But for slavery such things would not be; but for the Fugitive Slave Act they would not be in the free States." The conservative press took a different view of this "act of insurrection" that "never would have taken place but for the instigations which have been applied to the ignorant and deluded blacks by the fanatics of the 'higher law' creed." Southerners announced that "unless the Christiana rioters are hung...WE LEAVE YOU!...If you fail in this simple act of justice, THE BONDS WILL BE DISSOLVED."

This time Fillmore called out the Marines. Together with federal marshals they scoured the countryside and arrested more than 30 black men and 6 whites. The government sought extradition of the 3 fugitives who had escaped to Ontario, but Canadian officials refused. To show that it meant business, the administration prosecuted alleged participants not merely for resisting the Fugitive Slave Act but for treason. A federal grand jury so indicted 36 blacks and 5 whites. The government's case quickly degenerated into farce. A defense attorney's ridicule made the point: "Sir- did you hear it? That 3 harmless non-resisting Quakers and 38 wretched, miserable, penniless negroes, armed with corn cutters, clubs, and a few muskets, and headed by a miller, in a felt hat, without arms and mounted on a sorrel nag, levied war against the United States." The government's effort to discredit resistance produced increased sympathy for abolitionists, one of whom reported that "the cause is in a very promising position just now...These Treason Trials have been a great windfall." After the jury acquitted the first defendant, one of the Quakers, the government dropped the remaining indictments and decided not to press other charges.

All of this fed the resentment of the fire-eaters still seething over the admission of California. "We cannot stay in the Union any longer," said one, "with such dishonor attached to the terms of our remaining." South Carolina, Georgia, and Mississippi held conventions in 1851 to calculate the value of the Union. The fire-eater William L. Yancey toured Alabama stirring up demands for similar action. But already a reaction was setting in. The highest cotton prices in a decade and the largest cotton crops ever caused many a planter to think twice about secession. Unionism reasserted itself under the leadership of Toombs and Stephens. Most Southerners, as angry and annoyed as they were against the North, thought that Yancey and Rhett were simply too extreme. They were citizens of the United States and had no desire to be anything else.

I will conclude the narrative of the Fugitve Slave Act with a discussion of the most famous case of all, Anthony Burns.

 

[BobbyLayne]

For a long time (until well after the ACW began) Lincoln favored colonization of negroes. He was not an radical republican (abolitionist), and at no time did he argue for social equality. Although Lincoln believed in the destruction of slavery, he desired the complete separation of the whites and blacks.

We can look at history through the wrong end of the telescope, and applying our own current views, conclude that so-and-so was racist by todays standards. Imagine if someone were judging you based on the social thinking that rules the day in the year 2160.

Lincoln's prewar racist views were typical of his age. During the Civil War displayed a remarkable capacity for moral and political growth. His conversations with Grant and Sherman in the Spring of 1865 indicate Reconstruction would have taken far different turns had he lived.

ETA: added

In terms of Lincoln's views on blacks, when we get to his debates with Douglas, these will be covered in some detail.

I don't know if you have it listed in your notes or whatever it is you do to do this, but you do need to give at least one poast to Lincolnc's Cooper Union Address.

Lincoln was originally scheduled to speak at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims in Brooklyn Heights, having been invited there by Beecher (SEE post #132) in February 1860. The speech was moved to Cooper Union to accomodate the anticipated large crowd. He was in Brooklyn and Manhattan for several days. It was his only speech in NYC, and also the only time he worshipped here (The Lincolns would also stop in Manhattan on his way to Washington after the election). Today there is a plaque in Plymouth Church which denotes where he sat.

Before the speech he stopped into a store at 462 Broadway to purchase two top hats and a Brooks Brothers suit, and then Matthew Brady's studio at 10th and Broadway, where he was photographed.

The Cooper Union portrait

text

 

[hook014]

Great thread.

 

[timschochet]

The Cooper Union speech will be narrated as part of the Election of 1860.

 

[timschochet]

The Fugitive Slave Act, Concluded

I'm jumping ahead to 1854 for my last story about the Fugitive Slave Act. By this time Franklin Pierce was President and one of the most prominent members of his administration was the Secretary of War, Jefferson Davis. Pierce was determined that in these fugitive matters he would not make the mistakes of his predecessors, Taylor and Fillmore.

In March 1854, Anthony Burns escaped from slavery in Virginia and stowed away on a ship to Boston. There he found a job in a clothing store. BUt the literate Burns made the mistake of writing to his brother, still a slave. Intercepting the letter, their owner learned of Burns' whereabouts and headed north to reclaim his property. A deputy marshal arrested Burns on May 24 and placed him under heavy guard in the federal courthouse. The vigilance committee went into action, sponsoring a Faneuil Hall meeting which resolved that "resistance to tyrants is obedience to God." Suiting action to words, a biracial group of abolitionists led by 30 year old Unitarian clergyman Thomas Wentworth Higginson tried to rescue Burns in an attack on the courthouse with axes, revolvers, and a battering ram. Higginson and a black man broke through the door but were clubbed back outside by deputy marshals as a shot rang out and one of the deputies fell dead.

Appealed to for help, President Pierce ordered several companies of marines, calvary, and artillery to Boston, where they joined state militia and local police to keep the peace while a federal commissioner determined Burn's fate. "Incur any expense," Pierce wired the district attorney in Boston, "to insure the execution of the law." The president also ordered a revenue cutter to stand by to carry Burns back to Virginia. Knowing it was futile, vigilance committee lawyers nevertheless tried every legal maneuver they could think of while Bostonians raised money to purchase Burns's freedom. His owner seemed willing to sell, but the U.S. attorney refused to sanction this solution. To vindicate the law he pushed the case to a successful conclusion. On June 2 the troops marched Burns to the wharf through streets lined with sullen Yankees standing in front of buildings draped in black with the American flag hanging upside down an church bells tolling a dirge to liberty in the cradle of the American Revolution. At the cost of $100,000, the Pierce administration had upheld the majesty of the law.

The fallout from this affair radiated widely. "When it was all over, and I was left alone in my office," wrote a heretofore conservative Whig, "I put my face in my hands and wept. I could do nothing less." The textile magnet Amos A. Lawrence said that "we went to bed one night old fashioned, conservative, Compromise Union Whigs & waked up stark mad Abolitionists." A federal grand jury indicted Higginson, Theodore Parker, Wendell Phillips, and 4 other white and black abolitionists for riot and inciting to riot. After a district judge quashed the first indictment on a technicality, the government dropped the charges because it recognized the impossibility of winning a jury trial in Massachusetts.

But the most famous (or infamous, depending on what part of the country you were from) response to the Burns Affair came from William Lloyd Garrison. Garrison was best known as the editor of the radical abolitionist newspaper, The Liberator, and as one of the founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society, On July 4, while thousands gathered to watch, Garrison took a copy of the United States Constitution, lit a match to it, and watched it burn. He stated:

This document has become a covenant with death.

 

[timschochet]

Regarding the $100,000 spent by the Pierce Administration to recapture Burns, the source I am using, Battle Cry of Freedom, asserts that this would be 2 million in terms of 1987 dollars. I am assuming that, 23 years later, it might be 3 times that amount, but I'm not sure of this. It is instructive to learn that the richest man in America (possibly the world) in 1860, a New York businessman, had a net worth of 17 million.

 

[BobbyLayne]

Actually, timschochet, that statement was also printed on the top of every edition of The Liberator.

The full text of the masthead:

All men are born free and equal, with certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights - among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Three millions of the American people are in chains and slavery - held as chattels personal, and bought and sold as marketable commodities.

Seventy thousand infants, the offspring of slave parents, kidnapped as soon as born, and permanently added to the slave population of Christian (!), Republican (!!) Democratic (!!!) America every year.

Immediate, unconditional emancipation.

Slave-holders, slave-traders, slave-drivers are to be placed on the same level of infamy, and in the same fiendish category, as kidnappers and men-stealers - a race of monsters unparalleled in their assumption of power, and their despotic cruelty.

The existing Constitution of the United States is a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.

No Union with Slave-holders!

ETA: First printed in The Liberator January 1, 1847

 

[timschochet]

Actually, timschochet, that statement was also printed on the top of every edition of The Liberator.

The full text of the masthead:

All men are born free and equal, with certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights - among which are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

Three millions of the American people are in chains and slavery - held as chattels personal, and bought and sold as marketable commodities.

Seventy thousand infants, the offspring of slave parents, kidnapped as soon as born, and permanently added to the slave population of Christian (!), Republican (!!) Democratic (!!!) America every year.

Immediate, unconditional emancipation.

Slave-holders, slave-traders, slave-drivers are to be placed on the same level of infamy, and in the same fiendish category, as kidnappers and men-stealers - a race of monsters unparalleled in their assumption of power, and their despotic cruelty.

The existing Constitution of the United States is a covenant with death, and an agreement with hell.

No Union with Slave-holders!

ETA: First printed in The Liberator January 1, 1847

Thanks BL! This is the sort of detail I don't have and absolutely need.

 

[timschochet]

Garrison's masthead raises some interesting issues. Were the abolitionists trying to goad the South into seceeding?

As we examine the events of the 1850s, it often seems like the abolitionists and the fire-eaters, at opposite ends of the political spectrum were working together towards the same goals. They constantly confirmed the worst fears of each other, almost with glee. Both sides wanted a fight. The majority of Americans, however, did not, but they were pushed into it. As BL pointed out earlier in the thread, there is a lesson to be learned here. It was the one decade where the extremists took over.

 

[BobbyLayne]

Garrison was as far left as a radical abolitionist could be. The same could not be said of Henry Ward Beecher, whose viewpoint evolved over time. The son of a famous abolitionist preacher in Boston, Lyman Beecher, he argued as a seminary student in favor of colonization - freeing the slaves, but then shipping them back to Liberia or some other suitable African nation. This view was shared by Lincoln, and future cabinet members Chase and Seward.

The abolitionist argued that because the Constitution had no more power to free slaves in the south then serfs in Russia, it was an immoral document, and the Christian man was bound to a higher law. As an aside, one man who did foresee the Constitution as having the power to emancipate slaves was John Quincy Adams. He argued on the Senate floor if civil war came about over slavery, that under the war powers act, they could be set free. Is it not amazing that he foresaw what would eventually happen??

Many politicians (and, I think its fair to say, most reasonable men) felt the abolitionist view was impractical. It would not abolish slavery, but in fact establish it - because the radicals wanted separation from the slave-holders, yet they offered no workable solution. Preserving the Union was paramount.

Back to my favorite Brooklynite...Beecher's first congregation was in Indianapolis (1939-47). His members there were anti-slavery, but staunchly contemptuous of abolitionism. He never spoke on slavery until his final year, and then only on slavery with respect to its existence in the Old and New testament.

Arriving in Brooklyn to oversee a newly formed church (which came from a merger of the Congregational and Pilgrim churches in Brooklyn Heights), he concentrated on growing his membership - from 27 to 325 in the first two years. In late 1848, he was persuaded to raise $2,250 from his congregation to purchase the freedom of the Edmonson sisters. Beecher went to Washington to arrange the transaction, and Mary Edmonson and Emily Edmonson were emancipated on November 4, 1848.

Two important things grew out of this. First, Henry Ward Beecher began to periodically organize mock slave auctions at Plymouth Church of the Pilgrims, highly publicized affairs that would continue for 12 years. He was criticized for wasting his energies in the emancipation of a few individuals, while the great slave empire went untouched. But Beecher's object was not the manumission of a few individual slaves; he believed that thousands of his fellow citizens - who would regard with apathy if not complacency the slave system at a distance - would regard with abhorrence the return of an individual slave girl to a life of enforced sin and shame.

ASIDE - Beecher always used light skinned mulatto women for the slave auctions

The mock slave auctions were one result of Beecher's involvement with the Edmonson sisters. The second? His sister wrote a book that changed the world's view of the peculiar institution. I'll let timschochet tell the story of Harriet Beecher Stowe and Uncle Tom's Cabin.

 

[Mrs. BSR]

Finally caught up. Great thread.

I have an ancestor that was a Confederate soldier, 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry.

On a girly side note, I go to Victorian balls and I am in the process of making a ball gown based on the Civil War era. My intent is to make is as period correct as possible.

 

[timschochet]

Finally caught up. Great thread.I have an ancestor that was a Confederate soldier, 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry.On a girly side note, I go to Victorian balls and I am in the process of making a ball gown based on the Civil War era. My intent is to make is as period correct as possible.

I imagine the materials used for balls in the antebellum era (prior to the war) were different from gowns made during the Civil War itself. Probably with raw materials in short supply, women (especially those from the South) had to be creative.

 

[BobbyLayne]

Finally caught up. Great thread.

I have an ancestor that was a Confederate soldier, 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry.

On a girly side note, I go to Victorian balls and I am in the process of making a ball gown based on the Civil War era. My intent is to make is as period correct as possible.

I imagine the materials used for balls in the antebellum era (prior to the war) were different from gowns made during the Civil War itself. Probably with raw materials in short supply, women (especially those from the South) had to be creative.

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.
(the singer is Bobby Horton)Lyrics

 

[Mrs. BSR]

Finally caught up. Great thread.I have an ancestor that was a Confederate soldier, 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry.On a girly side note, I go to Victorian balls and I am in the process of making a ball gown based on the Civil War era. My intent is to make is as period correct as possible.

I imagine the materials used for balls in the antebellum era (prior to the war) were different from gowns made during the Civil War itself. Probably with raw materials in short supply, women (especially those from the South) had to be creative.

Well, during the war, when it was so difficult to get materials and trim, women had to be creative. They would add a ruffle to the hem of their gowns to hide any stains or tattered hems for example, sometimes using material from a gown that did not fit the anymore. They reused everything they could. I wanted to find you a link to this info but I can't remember where I read it and it's bugging me now.

 

[Mrs. BSR]

Finally caught up. Great thread.

I have an ancestor that was a Confederate soldier, 3rd Georgia Volunteer Infantry.

On a girly side note, I go to Victorian balls and I am in the process of making a ball gown based on the Civil War era. My intent is to make is as period correct as possible.

I imagine the materials used for balls in the antebellum era (prior to the war) were different from gowns made during the Civil War itself. Probably with raw materials in short supply, women (especially those from the South) had to be creative.

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.

This quote is from a website that gives information to reenactors. link

 

[roadkill1292]

Garrison's masthead raises some interesting issues. Were the abolitionists trying to goad the South into seceeding? As we examine the events of the 1850s, it often seems like the abolitionists and the fire-eaters, at opposite ends of the political spectrum were working together towards the same goals. They constantly confirmed the worst fears of each other, almost with glee. Both sides wanted a fight. The majority of Americans, however, did not, but they were pushed into it. As BL pointed out earlier in the thread, there is a lesson to be learned here. It was the one decade where the extremists took over.

I think it was a time where it was very difficult to be a moderate. The prevailing issue allowed for little middle ground. Reading of the events after the Mexican War, it's a miracle that outright war didn't break out until 1861.

 

[Mjolnirs]

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.

Youtube is blocked at my work, but by reading the lyrics I'm guessing this was to the tune of The Bonnie Blue Flag.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Garrison was as far left as a radical abolitionist could be. The same could not be said of Henry Ward Beecher, whose viewpoint evolved over time. The son of a famous abolitionist preacher in Boston, Lyman Beecher, he argued as a seminary student in favor of colonization - freeing the slaves, but then shipping them back to Liberia or some other suitable African nation. This view was shared by Lincoln, and future cabinet members Chase and Seward.The abolitionist argued that because the Constitution had no more power to free slaves in the south then serfs in Russia, it was an immoral document, and the Christian man was bound to a higher law. As an aside, one man who did foresee the Constitution as having the power to emancipate slaves was John Quincy Adams. He argued on the Senate floor if civil war came about over slavery, that under the war powers act, they could be set free. Is it not amazing that he foresaw what would eventually happen??

Not ot me. The Adams family - John more then John Quincy - are the most underrated underappreciated family of servants to this country that we may have in our history. Both spent their life in service becoming the pinnacle of their respective positions - diplomats, leaders, thinkers, and both eventually President. In the history of our country when you actually sit down to rank the important and accomplishments of our foreign ministers, diplomats and the like you are hard pressed to find two more important men in our history at any point then John and John Quincy. To continue my clever refrain, Jefferson, for example, wasn't anywhere near the important world player that these two men were.It's actually interesting how much their respective careers mirror each other so much. John worked tirelessly at home and abroad for years building and creating this country. John Quincy did the same abroad and later at home to keep the country going. As President John Adams lost re-election due to the popular will of the people in backing Jefferson's party in the face of everything proving that John Adams was right about foreign policy. John had to follow the most popular and important man of the era - and possibly all time - in George Washington. And John refused to remove the Washington cabinet members becuase he felt that some continuity with Washington was important for the people tos ee in their government.John Quincy won his election on a House vote due to the 12th Amendment. Andrew Jackson was the Thomas Jefferson of his time. Jackson claimed that Adams' election was a backroom political deal and spent the next 4 years hitting him every chance he got. The Jacksonian Democrats tore down John Quincy before he could actually do anything - and his plans and policies were important building blocks for the country that eventually just about every President implemented. John Quincy had to follow James Monroe, who was the only President save Washington unanimously elected. And John Quincy refused to remove members of Monroe's cabinet that were actually loyal to Jackson because he felt that exercising that kind of raw political power for no end wasn't honorqble, and that people should only lose their positition in government by choice or incompetence. Like his father, not having a loyal cabinet destroyed any chance at re-election. Although, in the end, lilke his father, he was proven right on most things after he left. Unlike his father, he actually had made less personal enemies along the way and got himself elected to Congress after being President and served a long and distinguished career there.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Great stuff Yankee. Of course, I am aware of your prejudice against Jefferson. You almost have nothing good to say about the man. But I'm not going to challenge you on that because I am undereducated on the subject. Still, most historians seem to give old Thomas a great deal more credit than you are willing to afford.

Because to attack Thomas Jefferson is to attack the romantic notions of honor and nobility we strive to define oursevles and our country with. Most historians who actually give a fair reading of Jefferson - and Joe Ellis is the top dog here - see the clear problem with the man and offer insight into what amounts to a duel personality. I don't give him any credit not because he doesn't deserve it - he deserves some - but because he gets too much int he face of others who don't get nearly enough and usually the post is in the context of defending those others or actually setting forther certain truths that most tend to ignore or not realize.

As I wrote earlier, I am also not prepared to take you on as to whether or not secession is constitutional, though I have always agreed with your position on this matter. Hopefully Christo, who so easily defeated my arguments in the past, will choose to take you on regarding this. It sounds like this discussion has happened in the past already, but I never got a chance to read it, and neither did most of the people reading this thread, I suspect. I'd be fascinated to hear more.

The earliest Civil War threads have long since been erased by the server gods but if you search the civil war and filter by me or Christo you will probably find a few threads. Although while this is probablyt he only constitutional question Christo and I seem to disagree on, most the better debates on the topic came from NCCommish and Mjolnirs and heck even fucla.....

However, I will challenge you on your dispute of my statement that the most of those who fought on the side of the South were not traitors or criminals. But we're not there yet. When we get to 1861, and specifically to Robert E. Lee's decision whether to fight for the North or South, that could be a platform to have a debate on this matter, if you're willing. Could be fun and interesting.

Robert E. Lee's decision was to be a traitor to his country in order to defend his home. Every single one of the confedarate soldiers who shot at a federal soldier, or those who supported their actions, were guilty of crimes. The leaders of the rebellion were guilty of treason. Now, whether most or all should have been actually formally prosecuted for what they did.......... I don't know if I ever would have gone there.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Regarding the $100,000 spent by the Pierce Administration to recapture Burns, the source I am using, Battle Cry of Freedom, asserts that this would be 2 million in terms of 1987 dollars. I am assuming that, 23 years later, it might be 3 times that amount, but I'm not sure of this. It is instructive to learn that the richest man in America (possibly the world) in 1860, a New York businessman, had a net worth of 17 million.

President Pierce is a direct descendant of Barbara Pierce Bush, who of course is the wife of George H.W.Bush and the mother of George W. Bush. With the Adams' and the Kennedy's the Pierce/Bush families are probably the top 3 political dynasty families in our history.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

The Wilmot Proviso

As the victory over Mexico began to seem inevitable, it also became clear that the United States would gain territory all the way to California, and this territory would eventually become states. Thus, the question of slavery, which had been politically dormant despite the arguments of abolitionists ever since the Missouri Compromise, suddenly became prominent in the late 1840s. On August 8, 1846, Pennsylvania's first-term Representatitve David Wilmot rose during the debate on an appropriations bill for the Mexican War and moved an amendment: "that, as an express and fundamental condition of the acquisition of any territory from the Republic of Mexico...neither slavery nor involuntary servitude shall ever exist in any part of said territory."

Antislavery conviction motivated Wilmot and his allies, (northern Democrats), but they were also angered at President Polk for going to war with Mexico and not with England (over Oregon's borders.) They felt that Polk had given in too much to the South, and this was payback. When Wilmot introduced his proviso, therefore,he released the pent up ire of northern Democrats, many of whom cared less about slavery in new territories than about their power within the party. Nothern Whigs, who had a more consistent antislavery recore, were delighted to support the proviso. This bipartisan northern coalition in the House passed it over the united opposition of southern Democrats and Whigs. This was a dire omen. The normal pattern of division in Congress had occured along party lines on issues such as the tarriff, the Bank, etc. The Wilmot Proviso wrenched this division by parties into a conflict of sections. The political landscape would never be the same again.

Congress was adjourned for 1846, but the next year Wilmot reintroduced the proviso again, and it once again passed the House. The Senate was a different matter: there the South had 15 slave states as opposed to 14 free states, and were therefore able to kill the bill. But both sides realized this was merely a postponement. How long, prominent Southerners began to ask themselves, could they maintain their majority in the Senate? There was only one way: to insist that every new state admitted be a slave state. But this would bring the issue to the forefront of the American public, which both sides had long avoided.

Thus, the stage was set: for the next 13 years, the battle over slavery and its expansion would be THE consuming political issue that would eventually break the nation apart. Here then, is our first important historical question: could the Civil War have been avoided? Or was it inevitable, given the political events that would take place between 1847-1860? This question is hotly debated among historians ever since, and it continues today. As we explore in the narrative the important events of these years, everyone can draw their own conclusions.

I'm not immediately getting the bolded parts- how does the acquisition of land/states affect the country's mindset on slavery?

The Southern power base needed more slave states in order to keep control of the Senate. If those states were fere states all, it was a matter of time before the free outnumbered the slave enough to reverse federal law.

 

[BobbyLayne]

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.

 

[AcerFC]

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.

This might help

 

[Mjolnirs]

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.

Nice! First one of these that have actually worked here.

 

[AcerFC]

That is correct, imported fabric was one of many casualties of the Union blockade. Southern ladies began making do with what was availabe; Carrie Belle Sinclair (niece of steamboat inventor Robert Fulton) wrote a famous poem called "The Homespun Dress", which was later set to music.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

So, I'm guessing I killed another thread?

 

[Phil Elliott]

The Civil War was a rebellion. Rebellions, if they are to be put down, are squashed by force of arms. To quote James Clavell in Shogun:

Toranaga: There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord.

Blackthorne: Unless you win.

Toranaga: Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor.

It's funny that you make that quote, because I thought of making it myself. Great minds think alike! However, it doesn't solve the question from a legal standpoint. In your opinion, does the Constitution of the United States make the act of secession illegal?

Even if it was illegal, isn't that like saying committing suicide is against the law? If you are successful at the secession then what difference does it make if it is legal or not?

 

[beer 30]

1913. The year the Constitution became the constitution.

I didn't realize this until a while ago in another thread regarding the Constitution where you recommended actually reading it. Other than some time in HS I really couldn't tell you a single thing about the document so I took your advice and read it, then re-read the two amendments that basically eviscerated the states power and finally understood what you were talking about. Thanks for that

So, I'm guessing I killed another thread?

Hope not, I'd subscribe just to listen to you talk to yourself at this point

 

[timschochet]

So, I'm guessing I killed another thread?

Given the fact that I'm planning no more than one, at the most two narrative posts per weeknight, this thread will probably last a good year or more.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

The Civil War was a rebellion. Rebellions, if they are to be put down, are squashed by force of arms. To quote James Clavell in Shogun:

Toranaga: There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord.

Blackthorne: Unless you win.

Toranaga: Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor.

It's funny that you make that quote, because I thought of making it myself. Great minds think alike! However, it doesn't solve the question from a legal standpoint. In your opinion, does the Constitution of the United States make the act of secession illegal?

Even if it was illegal, isn't that like saying committing suicide is against the law? If you are successful at the secession then what difference does it make if it is legal or not?

Exactly. Couching the act in legality is a useless argument. For one, it wasn't. For two, if you win then it doesn't matter. Just like our revolutionaries. To the English crown they were terrorists, rebeles and traitors. Once they won, they became leaders, statesmen and heros.

 

[AcerFC]

So, I'm guessing I killed another thread?

Hope not, I'd subscribe just to listen to you talk to yourself at this point

 

[Yankee23Fan]

What the heck- not really doing anything this evening, so I might as well get started...

The Mexican American War

On the morning of September 14, 1847, the American flag rose over the capital of Mexico, Mexico City. During the previous 16 months, American forces under Generals Winfield Scott and Zachary Taylor had won 10 major battles, most of them against larger Mexican armies defending fortified positions. The Duke of Wellington had pronouced Scott's campaign against Mexico City as the most brilliant in modern warfare.

But ironies and squabbles marred the triumphs. The war had been started by a Democratic president in the interest of territorial expansion and opposed by Whigs (at this time in American history, the other major party) whose antiwar position helped them gain control of the House in the congressional elections of 1846. Yet the two commanding generals in this victorious war were Whigs. Democratic President James K. Polk relieved Whig General Scott of command after Scott had ordered the court-martial of two Democratic generals who had inspired newspaper articles claiming credit for American victories. Taylor, the father-in-law of Jefferson Davis (that was his first wife, who died at a young age) was a slaveholder who opposed the expansion of slavery. The Whigs would respond to Polk by nominating Scott for President in 1848 and getting him elected.

The bickering Americans won the Mexican War because their adversaries were even more riven by faction, but they also won because of the marksmanship and elan of the mixed divisions of regulars and volunteers. But above all, they won because of the professionalism and courage of the junior officers. Yet the competence of these men foreshadowed the ultimate irony of the Mexican War, for many of the best of them would fight against each other in the next war:

Lieutenant Sam Grant helped win the decisive battle of Chapultepec. He fought side by side with James Longstreet and Winfield Scott Hancock. When Lieutenant Longstreet fell wounded carrying the colors of the 8th Infantry, George Pickett gained renowned by picking up the flag. Serving together on Scott's staff were two bright lieutenants, Pierre G.T. Beauregard and George B. McClellan. Captain Robert E. Lee's daring reconnaissances behind Mexican lines prepared the way for two crucial American victories. In one of his reports, Captain Lee commended Lieutenant Grant. Albert Sidney Johnston and Joseph Hooker fought together at Monterrey. Colonel Jefferson Davis's Mississippi volunteers broke a Mexican charge at Buena Vista while artillery officers George H. Thomas and Braxton Bragg fought alongside each other. Lee, Joseph E. Johnston, and George Gordon Meade served as Scott's engineer officers at the siege of Vera Cruz, while offshore in the American fleet Lieutenant Raphael Semmes shared a cabin with Lieutenant John Winslow.

All of these men would play leading military roles in the future murderous savagery that was to tear the nation apart. Most of them had attended West Point, had been friends and comrades and were loyal too each other. They were proud to be the vanguard of a war which seemed to fulfill for the United States its self-proclaimed manifest destiny to occupy the continent from sea to shining sea. But by midcentury the growing pains of this adolescent republic threatened to tear the country apart before it reached maturity.

The Treaty gave the United States control of Texas once and for all. In 1845 the United States annexed Texas and granted it statehood the same day but Mexico never formally recognized that until the end of the war. It's important to note that Texas was annexed by the federal government, granted statehood by the federal government - meaning an act to request statehood by ratifying and accepting the Constitution was made - and then by codifying same with the treaty that ended the war. There was no question from that point that Texas was a state as created by the federal government through its constitutional powers to do so.

 

[Eephus]

Regarding the $100,000 spent by the Pierce Administration to recapture Burns, the source I am using, Battle Cry of Freedom, asserts that this would be 2 million in terms of 1987 dollars. I am assuming that, 23 years later, it might be 3 times that amount, but I'm not sure of this. It is instructive to learn that the richest man in America (possibly the world) in 1860, a New York businessman, had a net worth of 17 million.

President Pierce is a direct descendant of Barbara Pierce Bush, who of course is the wife of George H.W.Bush and the mother of George W. Bush.

Wow, I knew Barbara Bush looked old but 200 years old has to be some kind of a record.

 

[Tecumseh]

The Civil War was a rebellion. Rebellions, if they are to be put down, are squashed by force of arms. To quote James Clavell in Shogun:

Toranaga: There is no mitigating factor for rebellion against your liege lord.

Blackthorne: Unless you win.

Toranaga: Very well, you may have named the one mitigating factor.

It's funny that you make that quote, because I thought of making it myself. Great minds think alike! However, it doesn't solve the question from a legal standpoint. In your opinion, does the Constitution of the United States make the act of secession illegal?

Even if it was illegal, isn't that like saying committing suicide is against the law? If you are successful at the secession then what difference does it make if it is legal or not?

Exactly. Couching the act in legality is a useless argument. For one, it wasn't. For two, if you win then it doesn't matter. Just like our revolutionaries. To the English crown they were terrorists, rebeles and traitors. Once they won, they became leaders, statesmen and heros.

I think it absolutely matters when you lose. Without Johnson's pardon, they all could have been hanged.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Continuing on the theme of the Texas statehood, The Mississippi Territory was organized on April 7, 1798, from territory ceded by Georgia and South Carolina. It was later twice expanded to include disputed territory claimed by both the United States and Spain. From 1800 to about 1830, the United States purchased some lands from Native American tribes. On December 10, 1817, Mississippi was the 20th state admitted to the Union. From land ceded to the federal government for a territory controlled by the federal government and including further lands that the federal government purchased and took in war.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Florida

A state created by the federal government after taking the land in 3 1/2 wars over the period of 20 years.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Alabama -

The French founded the first European settlement in the state with the establishment of Mobile in 1702. Southern Alabama was French from 1702 to 1763, part of British West Florida from 1763 to 1780, and part of Spanish West Florida from 1780 to 1814. Northern and central Alabama was part of British Georgia from 1763 to 1783 and part of the American Mississippi territory thereafter. Its statehood was delayed by the lack of a coastline; rectified when Andrew Jackson captured Spanish Mobile in 1814.

Another state taken by the federal goernment through treaty and war.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Regarding the $100,000 spent by the Pierce Administration to recapture Burns, the source I am using, Battle Cry of Freedom, asserts that this would be 2 million in terms of 1987 dollars. I am assuming that, 23 years later, it might be 3 times that amount, but I'm not sure of this. It is instructive to learn that the richest man in America (possibly the world) in 1860, a New York businessman, had a net worth of 17 million.

President Pierce is a direct descendant of Barbara Pierce Bush, who of course is the wife of George H.W.Bush and the mother of George W. Bush.

Wow, I knew Barbara Bush looked old but 200 years old has to be some kind of a record.

Ha. I just caught that. Good catch. Obviously the direct descendant phrase is in the wrong spot.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Louisiana - purchased by the federal government from France after they took most of the land in war from Spain.

 

[Yankee23Fan]

Arkansas - created first as a territory by the federal government after its purchase in the Louisiana purcahse and later granted statehood.