Posted on 07/18/2004 8:40:59 PM PDT by canalabamian
Bump for intelligence.
Know what would be even better though?
NINE OF 'EM!
A Wanderer. A square rigged whaling vessel that last attempted a whaling voyage in 1923. Surely somewhere in that Google dump is a website that points out that the Wanderer seized in Georgia was schooner rigged and was lost off Cuba in 1871. Different ships.
So, it would seem that a 'Wanderer' was sailing out of New Bedfore, was engaging in the slave trade like stand watie said, and that you falsely accused him of lying.
On the contrary, the manuscript you list is titled 'Boston vessels apprehended in the slave trade'. Even if it is the same Wanderer, apparently a common name for ships, New Bedford is not Boston. Is is some ways away from Boston. My doubt about stand waite's honesty still stands.
You should apologize.
I think not.
Bump.
You find quotes that Lincoln cared about revenue and tariffs. That's only natural. Administrators spend a lot of time with budgets and revenues are important to any enterprise. And it's only natural that a President would write to his Secretary of the Treasury and Attorney General about the Treasury's ability to go on collecting taxes in a time of national crisis. The obsession, if obsession is what were talking about, is more DiLorenzo's and the neo-confederates' than Lincoln's. It involves digging up every reference to tariffs and ignoring the rest of the record to create a mistaken impression.
You are still thinking of things as too clear cut, and don't see how things changed after the fall of Pickens. I notice for example, that at the meeting you referred to, Army and Navy leaders disagreed about whether Sumter could be successfully reprovisioned. And resupply and a military expedition were considered as separate options and deserved to be. As time went on most of the cabinet came to support resupply, with only Seward dissenting.
I certainly don't argue that Lincoln always chose the right course of action. But it also looks to me mistaken to argue that he had some secret agenda throughout the crisis. So far as I can see Lincoln did believe all along that he could not absolutely give in and leave the nation with no symbolic presence in the rebel states, but that's hardly nefarious. Lincoln's handling of the crisis was far from perfect. There were mistakes and false starts, confusion and misunderstanding, panic, mixed motives and confused messages. But the messiness of the Union response works against the hypothesis of some hidden agenda or clear covert course of action.
If I'm not coming up with a lot of quotes, it's because I don't have predigested accounts at my fingertips, but have to find out things on my own. I do notice, for example, that your sources misuse the Meigs quote, taking it as some final judgment that the responsibility of the war lay "in the office of the President." In fact, it's nothing of the kind. It's an exhortation at the time to the effect that the war is beginning, and you in Washington have to commit resources to it now. Meigs assertion that the war had been expected since secession is rhetoric, designed to convince at the moment of action, not a considered judgment of the factual record after the fact. It simply wasn't true. But Meigs wasn't writing to be true, but to express an emotion and instill the same emotion in his reader. And Meigs does not assign responsibility for the beginning of the war.
Similarly, the quotation from Anderson reflects his reaction to a specific action at a specific moment under specific circumstances. He had not been opposed to resupply as such and indeed, had called for it earlier. It may have been just that his knowledge or assessment of affairs at given time and Washington's didn't coincide. There was a three or four day communications delay from Charleston to Washington and back and with both Sumter and the government in communication with Confederates directly or indirectly it was difficult to coordinate outlooks and actions between the fort and the capital. But Anderson's frustration at that moment can't be taken as a verdict on the policy of resupply. If these examples are typical of how neoconfederate historians use or abuse the official records, it's an indication that they aren't trustworthy.
Now as before, your suggestion that Lincoln ought to have been working on emancipation at a time when that was what Southern leaders feared more than anything else is a true "red herring" and provocation thrown in out of ignorance, carelessness, perversity, or malice. At a time when every "compromise measure" involved extending guarantees to the slave states that nothing would be done about slavery -- at the demand of slave owners themselves -- it's clear that working towards any sort of emancipation wouldn't have cooled things down.
And if you think that any government doesn't have contingency plans for dealing with military crises at home and abroad, you are exceptionally naive. Any recently elected President is briefed on what dangerous military situations exist and what the possible responses are. It's only prudent for an elected head of state to examine what dangerous situations exist and what the possible responses are.
Elected officials expect to be able to exercise the powers of their office. And Lincoln expected to be able to do so. His expectations came into conflict with the wishes of the Confederate leaders, and that conflict had to be resolved in some way. Lincoln wasn't simply going to lie down and let the rebels have everything that they wanted the way they wanted it. He was firm in that -- in maintaining the idea that the union was unbroken. That certainly wasn't something the rebels wanted to hear or put up with, but it would be a distortion of history to portray Lincoln as scheming for war or repression. His conviction was that patriotic sentiments would prevail in the South if he acted with firmness. That conviction may have been mistaken, but it was an honorable one.
You are missing the point. Charleston was not collecting revenues for Lincoln because Charleston sat in South Carolina, which had seceded from Lincoln's government. Fort Sumter was previously a mothballed defensive location built on an artificial island in the middle of the harbor entrance to Charleston. When Anderson occupied it he literally assumed a position that allowed him to be the gatekeeper to the city. From Sumter Lincoln could stop any ship he wanted from entering until it paid its tariff, regardless of who controlled the customs house in town.
It's hard to see how holding onto the fort would bring any more money into the federal coffers.
Perhaps, though it is not hard at all to see why allowing the confederacy to go on its own way threatened to completely undermine the north's protectionist trade scheme. In fact most northern newspapers openly admitted that to be the case while calling for war.
You find quotes that Lincoln cared about revenue and tariffs. That's only natural. Administrators spend a lot of time with budgets and revenues are important to any enterprise.
You are obfuscating around the issue. Lincoln did not simply care about tariffs in general. He cared about a specific type of tariff - high protectionist ones. He cared about them because he took office at the exact point of a major and drastic change in U.S. tariff policy from one of free trade to one of heavy protection, the latter being a position with which he closely aligned and on which he had campaigned heavily to win the presidency.
The obsession, if obsession is what were talking about, is more DiLorenzo's and the neo-confederates' than Lincoln's. It involves digging up every reference to tariffs and ignoring the rest of the record to create a mistaken impression.
The only mistaken impression is that which neglects Lincoln's thoroughly documented espousal of protectionism. There was a widely distributed Republican Party campaign poster in the 1860 election. It featured dual engravings of Lincoln and Hamlin with a slogan and two decorative engravings in between. One engraving was of two factory workers holding steelmaking tools. The other engraving was of a factory smokestack and a ship being loaded with manufactured goods. Emblazoned across them were two slogans - one pertaining to the GOP backed and Democrat opposed Homestead Act instructing citizens to vote for "free speech, free homes, and free territory." Below it and in between the two factory workers was a large federal-style shield with bolded lettering reading "Protectionism to American Industry" in reference to the GOP backed and Democrat opposed Morrill Tariff Act. The campaign poster contained not so much as a single word about the plight of the slaves.
But it also looks to me mistaken to argue that he had some secret agenda throughout the crisis.
One need not accuse him of a nefariously connotated mass conspiracy, though it is perfectly truthful to note that Lincoln was an extremely secretive man who carried out many policies in private that he was neither open about nor an advocate of in his public appearances.
Hey, I've seen that poster ;o) Free this, free that, protectionism in more ways than just economic. No room for blacks.
thanks!
This was just an after thought at the time this took place no in my family ever concidered it was anti-north.
I only in the last couple of months became aware that there exist this contempt for the North!
The focus on American history was more what took place in Michigan like the Wyandottes Indians the french in Detroit, Pontiac etc.
There was little discussion on the Civil War more on the highlights.
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