Confederate Veteran John Mosby Knew the Lost Cause Was Bull

War is Boring ^ | May 1, 2017 | Kevin Knodell

[C19fan]

John S. Mosby, known as the “Gray Ghost,” was a Virginian who became legendary for his leadership of Mosby’s Rangers—a band of Confederate guerrilla fighters that harassed the Union Army and went toe-to-toe with George Armstrong Custer in the Shenandoah Valley.

Mosby is still highly regarded as a strategist and tactician and is studied to this day by practitioners of unconventional warfare. He lived a long life, dying early in the 20th century, and was also a lawyer, a diplomat and author who wrote about his experiences during the war.

[DiogenesLamp]

General Butler's story is also mentioned & put in context.

You mean assailed by spin doctors in an effort to normalize Lincoln's then common beliefs with modern day morality.

Modern Liberals wish to believe Lincoln "Grew". (meaning adopted even more liberal policies and ideas.)

Either Butler was lying or he was not. I would sooner believe that a Major General would speak the truth than I would that he made something up to make himself sound more significant.

I have some confidence in the Military notion of Honor, I have no confidence at all in what Modern day History scrubbers/spin doctors attempt to do with the evidence available.

[DoodleDawg]

Robert Greenhalgh Albion, in his laudatory history of the Port of New York, openly boasts of this selfish monopoly. "By creating a three-cornered trade in the 'cotton triangle,' New York dragged the commerce between the southern ports and Europe out of its normal course some two hundred miles to collect a heavy toll upon it. This trade might perfectly well have taken the form of direct shuttles between Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, or New Orleans on the one hand and Liverpool or Havre on the other, leaving New York far to one side had it not interfered in this way. To clinch this abnormal arrangement, moreover, New York developed the coastal packet lines without which it would have been extremely difficult to make the east-bound trips of the ocean packets profitable."[2]

So you would have us believe that U.S. ships from Europe, crammed to the gunwales with imported goods destined for Southern customers, would leave England, dock in New York, unload the goods, pay the tariffs, load the goods back onboard again, sail down to Charleston, unload the goods, load with cotton, and then sail back to England? Really?

[DiogenesLamp]

If you'd read the article in its entirety you would know that while it puts Butler in a meeting with Lincoln just shortly before the Fords Theater incident, it claims that nobody knows what they conferred about.

Because it's much too irrational to simply take General Butler's word on it?

In the previous message to which I responded, BroJoeK pointed out that Lincoln had discussed this very issue mid 1864, so is it now such a far stretch to believe he discussed it again, and with the very man with whom he had previously discussed this very same issue?

This is another stupid quibble. Lincoln had articulated some form of this idea throughout his entire adult life. To simply refuse to believe that he ever discussed it again after mid 1864 is an attempt to rehabilitate his actual history.

Lincoln very likely discussed this issue with General Butler in April of 1865, and even if he didn't, according to BroJoeK he had discussed it a mere 10 months earlier. (Seward also said he never gave up on the idea)

So we are in effect quibbling over 10 months out of his entire adult life.

Silly crap, this.

[DiogenesLamp]

Just trying to be objective.

I don't see where the specifics of various plans are terribly relevant. We can grasp what we need to know simply from the general outline.

Lincoln favored getting black people out of the USA in any manner of which he or others could contemplate. He was apparently interested in doing this up until he died.

You don't like this because it casts a blemish on his legacy. For me it is simply another means of revealing that Lincoln was not at all the saint people have made him out to be, and that he cared more about controlling Southern whites than he ever had concern for blacks in general.

You don't like it because Lincoln's efforts to get them out of the country undermine the belief that concern for them had a significant role in why he fought that war.

[DiogenesLamp]

Certainly blockade was effective by war's end when one in three blockade runners was captured or sunk, a total of 1,500 during the war. But 1861 & 1862 were a different story. In those years nine of ten blockade runners made it and even Northerners considered blockade a joke:

You like to move the goal posts. Unremarked in your argument is the loss of traffic which occurred simply as a result of declaring the blockade.

You speak of 1,500 blockade runners, but the normal traffic for a three year period was something like 20,000 ships.

There are nearly 16,000 ships that did not attempt to sail to Southern ports, but which likely would have done so without a blockade.

The early blockade was less physically effective than it was mentally effective. It did far more damage by prevention than it did by intervention.

[DiogenesLamp]

Hit & run poster.

Since you keep posting the same repetitious assertions, (and I do mean repetitious and I do mean *assertions*) I don't see much point in spending a lot of time fooling with you.

"Hitting and stopping" just so I can hit you some more is tedious. You simply repost the same stuff that I have previously rebutted.

What good does it do me to take each of your points and rebut them over and over and over and over again?

You simply repackage your same unsupported assertions, and want me to pay attention to you. If your messages aren't too long, I'll bother with them, but I have no interest in reading the same old rants and false premises i've already read and rebutted many times before.

[Rockingham]

In my understanding, the most likely explanation for the fiasco of the conflicting orders to the Powhatan is that Lincoln, Welles, and Seward got at cross purposes and, without meaning to, issued poorly conceived and mistimed orders for the despatch of the Powhatan to relieve Ft. Pickens in Pensacola harbor. The last critical lapse was that Seward signed his name and not Lincoln's name to the order to the shipyard to return the Powhatan to the Sumter relief expedition. Had the order been correctly signed, the Powhatan would have been at Ft. Sumter.

So, how does this affect that it was foolish for the Confederates to fire on Fort Sumter? Not one bit. Not even if it is assumed that Jefferson Davis and the Confederacy somehow learned through spies of not just where the Powhatan sailed for but of the details of the manifests of all the other ships in the expedition.

Notably, Davis's written post-war account explains that the Confederate government objected to any naval force being sent to provision Ft. Sumter. Davis's account in his The Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government states:

As soon as the Confederate Government at Montgomery had received official information of the intention of the Federal Government at Washington, in violation of its pledges, to provision Fort Sumter, by force if necessary, it directed General Beauregard to demand its evacuation, and to proceed to reduce it if Major Anderson, its commander, should refuse to surrender.

In short, Davis and the Confederacy fired on Ft. Sumter to prevent the landing of supplies.

[DiogenesLamp]

If HandyDandy responds by citing more historical facts DiogenesLamp will pay him the ultimate complement, by refusing to even read HandyDandy’s posts.

If you think that's a compliment, then I can see why you are having trouble understanding the economic evidence that made a war for economic control a necessity for the North.

[DiogenesLamp]

More like they unloaded the European goods for New York, (and of course collected the tariff's there) then loaded the cheaper quality but inflated priced Northern manufactured goods, and then delivered those to the Southern ports.

Of course goods that were intended to go from Europe to the Southern ports might not have been unloaded at all. I would suppose the Federal agents in charge of Tariff collection would simply inspect the cargo and manifest and then assign the appropriate charges based on applying whatever tariff under which the goods happened to fall.

They could probably find out if any ships were cheating on their declarations by the records kept by other Federal personnel at the eventual port where the cargo was unloaded.

Why don't you research this point further yourself and get back to us?

Of course, since this line of questioning will lead away from your preferred narrative, I will be surprised if you bother to learn anything. It's far simpler to sit there and carp about information other people (in this case, BroJoeK) found.

[DiogenesLamp]

In my understanding, the most likely explanation for the fiasco of the conflicting orders to the Powhatan is that Lincoln, Welles, and Seward got at cross purposes and, without meaning to, issued poorly conceived and mistimed orders for the despatch of the Powhatan to relieve Ft. Pickens in Pensacola harbor.

Are you grasping the point that had the Powhatan shown up, it would have precipitated a Union initiated bloodbath?

The orders were to force an entry into the harbor.

It having been decided to succor Fort Sumter, you have been selected for this important duty. Accordingly, you will take charge of the transports in New-York, having the troops and supplies on board, to the port of Charleston Harbor, and endeavor, in the first instance, to deliver the subsistence. If you are opposed in this, you are directed to report the fact to the senior naval officer of the harbor, who will be instructed by the Secretary of the Navy to use his entire force to open a passage, when you will, if possible, effect an entrance, and place both the troops and supplies on Fort Sumter.

I am, Sir, &c., &c.,

SIMON CAMERON, Secretary of War.

.

.

Should the authorities at Charleston, however, refuse to permit or attempt to prevent the vessel or vessels having supplies on board from entering the har bor or from peaceably proceeding to Fort Sumter, you will protect the transports or boats of the expedition in the object of this mission -- disposing of your force in such a manner as to open the way for their ingress, and afford, so far as practicable, security to the men and boats, and repelling, by force if necessary, all obstructions to provisioning the fort and reinforcing it; for in case of resistance to the peaceable primary object of the expedition, a reinforcement of the garrison will also be attempted.These purposes will be under the supervision of the War Department, which has charge of the expedition. The expedition has been intrusted to Capt. G.V. FOX, with whom you will put yourself in communication, and cooperate with him to accomplish and carry into effect its object.

You will leave New-York with the Powhatan in time to be off Charleston bar, ten miles distant from and due east of the lighthouse, on the morning of the 11th inst., there to await the arrival of the transport or transports with troops and stores. The Pawnee and Pocahontas will be ordered to join you there at the time mentioned, and also the Harriet Lane, which latter vessel has been placed under the control of this Department for this service.

On the termination of the expedition, whether it be peaceable or otherwise, the several vessels under your command will return to the respective ports as above directed, unless some unforseen circumstances shall prevent. I am, &c., &c.

(Signed,) GIDEON WELLES,

Secretary of the Navy.

Had the Powhatan shown up, the mission would have proceeded, and those warships would have entered the Harbor and initiated a war, with the Union seen as the aggressor.

It is a safe bet that both the orders of the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Navy were made known to the Confederates.

Had Lincoln not given David Porter the secret order to take command of the Powhatan, it would have been there at Charleston Harbor and that flotilla of ships would have soon thereafter exchanged gunfire with the Confederates.

The Confederates expected those ships to follow the orders which they had been given. They had reserved 12 artillery batteries to engage those ships had those ships followed through on their known orders.

By secretly sending the Powhatan of to Florida, deliberately and secretly countermanding the orders of the Secretary of the Navy, Lincoln prevented those ships from initiating the War.

It wasn't a mistake. It wasn't a case of being at "cross purpose" by accident. It was a deliberate feint. It was as if two men were confronting each other, and one throws a punch at the other, only to pull back before it connects, just so he can make the other man lash out for the purpose of saying that the other man hit him first.

And here is something else you need to consider. 12 land based artillery batteries against those ships would have destroyed those ships and killed those men.

You think Lincoln accidentally "forgot" that he was about to get a whole lot of men killed and ships sunk? You think he forgot?

[DoodleDawg]

More like they unloaded the European goods for New York, (and of course collected the tariff's there) then loaded the cheaper quality but inflated priced Northern manufactured goods, and then delivered those to the Southern ports.

You don't know, do you?

[HandyDandy]

He felt that it was absolutely acceptable so long as the white man kept paying into his Treasury and to his Crony Industrialist friends in the North East.

I didn't expect an honest answer. You aren't capable of an honest answer. In fact you have deluded yourself to the extent that you don't know what the truth is anymore. I have politely and kindly demonstrate several places in just the last 50 posts, or so, where you have been talking out of your butt (or been just plain incorrect). You are incapable of admitting to any of the mistakes I have pointed out. You are now squirming and covering your tracks like a child by covering your mistakes with conscious mistakes. It is sad and pitiable. Don't you realize that your juvenile tactic is obvious to any one reading? You claim that it is ok for you to spout nonsense. I claim you disrespect the thread by continuing to post. My advice to you, is to stop digging. The more you try to trash Lincoln, the smaller you look. You have run out of ammo to discharge against Lincoln and have become hysterical in your puny rants. You once vowed to never again respond to me (in another thread). Please, demonstrate that you care to begin to reclaim a modicum of decency, and renew that vow. Otherwise, own my charge that you are a fraud and a fruitcake, and reply.

[BroJoeK]

x: "I don't see any serious analyses of coastal shipping rates in the 19th century online or in book form.
I do see references to rants by slaveowning politicians and secessionist propagandists about how Yankee shippers were charging all the traffic would bear, but there's nothing objective or unprejudiced or serious about such complaints."

Here's a serious question, not a trick question, I don't know the answer and maybe others do:
First, is it true that Southern shipbuilding, owning & operating dwindled & died out after, say, 1830?
Second, if so, why, and why did not alleged Northern price "gouging" revive Southern shipping?

I should note here Bubba Ho-Tep's (post #73) stunning quote from Texas Senator & Fire Eater leader Louis Whigfall:

"We are a peculiar people, sir!
We are an agricultural people; we are a primitive but a civilized people.
We have no cities – we don’t want them.
We have no literature – we don’t need any yet …
We want no manufactures; we desire no trading, no mechanical or manufacturing classes …
As long as we have our rice, our sugar, our tobacco, and our cotton, we can command wealth to purchase all we want from those nations with which we are in amity, and to lay up money besides."

Add to that LS post #30 on another thread:

"Study after study has shown that slavery was profitable.
Moreover, even though manufacturing was almost THREE TIMES as profitable, the South clung to its slaves.
Gee, wonder why?"

Statistics on the Civil War blockade say that about 1,500 Confederate blockade runners were captured or sunk -- would those not have mostly been Southern owned & operated?
About 80% of 2,800 blockade runs got through -- over 90% in 1861, down to 65% in 1865.
This suggests the total numbers of ships serving Southern ports in, say, 1860 must be in the thousands.
Do we know how many were Southern owned?

So I question: were Southerners really forced to give up shipping, did they just lose interest?

USS Constellation built first in Baltimore, 1797 (left), rebuilt in Norfolk, VA in 1854 (right):

[DiogenesLamp]

I didn't expect an honest answer. You aren't capable of an honest answer.

You ask a deliberately provocative question that completely ignores Lincolns tolerance of Union slavery for the entire war and his record of repeatedly saying he would do nothing to stop slavery where it existed, and you have the gall to talk to me about Honesty?

You want to play politics with a loaded question? well I just gave you a dose of that same vile medicine you tried to inflict upon me.

I didn't think you would like it very much.

You don't like the ugly truth. Lincoln would tolerate slavery in the South and in the North. What he would not tolerate is not getting a cut of that money they created.

The Liberal Lawyer President from Illinois' position can be summed up as "If you like your slavery you can keep your slavery."

Just let him get his vigorish.

[rockrr]

If the piles of verbal vomit he has spewed onto these pages illustrate any single fact it is that he doesn’t have a] clue. Funny how that fact doesn’t even slow him down ;’

[DiogenesLamp]

Here's a serious question, not a trick question, I don't know the answer and maybe others do: First, is it true that Southern shipbuilding, owning & operating dwindled & died out after, say, 1830? Second, if so, why, and why did not alleged Northern price "gouging" revive Southern shipping?

Now this is an interesting point. I wondered this very thing myself. Why couldn't the Southern ship building/shipping industry compete with that of the North? Charleston built ocean going vessels in 1800, so what happened?

I got a somewhat satisfactory answer from WarIsHellAintItYall.

"Some few ships were bought by Southern investors. Operating them at a profit was another issue. Federal mail and cargo contracts enabled northern lines to operate until freight trade grew to support a packet arrangement. After that began, independent owners were few and far between."

He says his ancestors were heavily involved in the North Eastern shipping industry.

He also had this to say.

The plantation owners that could retain ownership and ship independently found themselves in a bind. If they wanted to ship their own cotton to market, the packet ship owner would charge them very high rates that were slightly under the rate of the foreign ship rate, plus the Federal shipping penalty that would be added. The success of the shipping business produced larger and faster transoceanic freight ships. These larger ships required 18 to 22 feet of depth to operate. Sandbars at the mouth of the Mississippi, and particularly at the shallow Charleston harbor presented the merchants with a major obstacle to using the more efficient new shipping. Northern shipbuilders solved this problem with a unique vessel of shallow draft that had an almost perfectly flat bottom. This made it possible to clear the sandbars without getting stuck. An added benefit was that now bales of cotton could fit more easily in the flat-floored hold and carrying capacity was greatly increased. At first, the sailing qualities of such a vessel was doubted, but soon, to the relief of their owners, these flat-bottomed ships proved to have fine sailing qualities. These were the ships used in the coastal trade. With these technical advancements, cotton was loaded onto the coastal packets, shipped to New York via these fast boats, offloaded to warehousing,and shipped out on the large V-bottomed ships that sailed the high seas to Liverpool. All along the way, the middlemen took their cut and New York merchants prospered. Regularly scheduled coastal packet shipping became a very lucrative trade. Stevedores, dock workers, warehouse owners now had lots of work. Insurance agents, bankers, accountants, livery agents, boat builders, riggers,and cargo shippers vastly benefited. Wharf owners stayed busy and Atlantic packets sailed eastward on the “Downhill Passage” with full cargoes and stayed very busy for years. With the control of the transportation trade business being dominated by Northern interests, and now being vastly aided by the Warehousing Act, southern planters began to complain. Many estimated that New York merchants were making 40 cents on every dollar, but being constantly in debt to the New Yorkers, they were hardly in a position to change this state of affairs. The Northern business interests were in full control of the market. However, by the end of the antebellum period, with southern ship building beginning to establish itself, improvements in both New Orleans and Mobile Bay harbors, and South Carolina's self-financed dredging of Charleston arbor, the entire northern shipping combine was about to become vulnerable to direct European trade. Suddenly, secession totally eliminated the transportation of Southern goods. This brought about a 60% drop in volume for all the Northern operators....IMMEDIATELY. Lincoln's office became filled with Governors and businessmen immediately after his inauguration.

He sounds like he knows whereof he speaks.

[LS]

Don’t know those answers, but look at Lebergott’s article in Journal of Ec History, “The Rhett Butler Effect”

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "So far as sending them to the colonies, he had proposed that they be hired by the Federal Government to build a Canal across Panama, and once they were settled in Panama, they could send for their wives and families.
That was his Panama plan.
He was trying for inducement at this point in time. (1863 I think)
He had been pushing various 'Get them out of America' plans since the 1840s, I think. "

Here is an excellent summary of Lincoln's colonization plans & actions.

The first point everybody needs to put firmly in mind is that colonization of freedmen was official US Federal government policy, proposed by Thomas Jefferson and supported by congressional acts & funds since 1819.
In 1819 Congress voted $100,000 for colonization of freedmen, a number corresponding today to around $100 million -- enough to get started.

As a result, about 13,000 African-American freedmen settled in Liberia over a period of 40 years.
In other words, a drop in the bucket.

In 1862, at President Lincoln's request Congress again voted money for colonization, this time $600,000 and again about 14,000 blacks signed up, volunteered, this time for an island off Haiti.
But only a few hundred were actually transported and most returned in 1864 when the experiment failed.

Point is this: since Jefferson, colonization was a permanent fixture in all plans for peaceful abolition, to which Lincoln subscribed.
But Lincoln's ideas were always voluntary and after several failures he gave up on them.
Congress also gave up, in July 1864 withdrawing its authorization of $600,000 for colonization.

Of the $600,000 originally appropriated, Lincoln had spent only $38,000 and had clearly long given up on the idea.

"On July 1, 1864, the day before Congress voted to rescind its colonization appropriations, John Hay, Lincoln's personal secretary, recorded in his diary that 'the President has sloughed off that idea of colonization.' "

So, even if General Butler's account of his meeting with Lincoln in early 1865 can be credited (I don't think it can), but even if, it represents nothing more than casual conversation, not government policy backed by congressional authorization & funding.
All of that was withdrawn, with Lincoln's approval, in July 1864.

[Rockingham]

What happened matters more than what might have happened. As it was, instead of waiting for the surrender and evacuation of Fort Sumter due to lack of supplies on April 15 as promised by its Union commander, the Confederates fired on it on April 12 and began the Civil War. If the Confederates had waited for the Union Navy to arrive in force, the battle might also have included exchanges of fire between Confederate land artillery and Union vessels attempting to supply Fort Sumter. Yet, by Confederate choice, that is not what happened. They fired first.

[x]

Even when the Southern cotton bound for Europe didn't put in at the wharves of Sandy Hook or the East River, unloading and reloading, the combined income from interests, commissions, freight, insurance, and other profits took perhaps 40 cents into New York of every dollar paid for southern cotton.

You left out this sentence: "As for the cotton ports themselves, they did not crave enough imports to justify packet lines until 1851, when New Orleans hosted one sailing to Liverpool."

The consumer demand just wasn't there to support much direct trade between Southern cities and Britain or France -- or rather, trade became more profitable when Northern cities were included in the loop.

The trade went through New York because Northern cities supplied by New York had a great desire for imported consumer goods. As rich as slave owning planters were, the density of prosperous free citizens was greater in the Northeast.

Robert Greenhalgh Albion sounds like a man after your own heart: somebody who stresses the mercenary, cutthroat aspect of commerce and takes pride in the successful exercise of cunning. I would look for rational reasons why New York predominated as a port, and one important reason was the South's lack of interest in seafaring.

Another reason was, as noted, the greater population density in the Northeast, and also the rail and canal connections between New York and other cities. Indeed, once you have many people in banking, finance, insurance, shipping and related fields in a city they attract business.