Posted on 01/31/2004 11:18:21 AM PST by GOPcapitalist
You: You mean you don't remember the Federal troops who charged civilian laborers with bayonets inside Fort Sumter on December 26, 1860 or the Federal troops who fought and overpowered a ship captain and took his schooner to Fort Sumter that same evening? Those kind of hostile acts? Not hostile I guess unless you were on the receiving end.
I ask you why no one remembers the Star of the West, and you write about some othe event(s) no one remembers. Why doesn't anyone (or nearly anyone) think of these as initiating events of the WBTS? I think I know why. Do you?
ML/NJ
You're here, aren't you?
Not anymore. Have fun.
Does that mean you are returning to the "vasty deep" from whence you came?
Are you playing 20 questions? If no one remembers it, why can I easily find information on it? The incidents certainly were events that led to the war, just as John Brown's actions did and the refusal of Northern states to obey the Constitution where escaped slaves were concerned.
It takes two sides to make a war. As the Bouvier Law Dictionary says, "War is not only an act, but a state or condition, for nations are said to be at war not only when their armies are engaged, so as to be in the very act of contention, but also when, they have any matter of controversy or dispute subsisting between them which they are determined to decide by the use of force, and have declared publicly, or by their acts, their determination so to decide it."
Anderson didn't fire at the attackers of the Star. The Star didn't fire back either. The armies were not engaged. Only one side used force. It was just an incident, not a war. The Federal side blinked and withdrew the Star and its troops. At Sumter the Feds fired back, and both armies were engaged.
Buchanan didn't follow up after the attack on the Star like Lincoln did after the attack on Fort Sumter. Buchanan acquiesced; Lincoln recognized what he called an insurrection and called up ordered up 75,000 troops on April 15th and declared a blockade on April 19th. Buchanan didn't do that. Lincoln took an action he knew would lead to war (resupplying the fort), and he got it.
Of course, Lincoln didn't have the power to declare war. That power resided in Congress, which he didn't convene until July 4th so they wouldn't get in his way.
Not surprisingly perhaps, in a speech to the Confederate Congress, Jefferson Davis said, "The declaration of war made against this Confederacy, by Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in his proclamation, issued on the 15th day of the present month [April] ..."; That was the proclamation that called for 75,000 troops. Davis knew about the Star, of course, but didn't call that incident a declaration of war.
BTW, when it came our way, we in Texas captured the Star (April 17, 1861).
The tariff was not an issue to those that went to war in 1861. In fact the South if it won their war of independence would have imposed a tariff in an effort to build their newly minted industrial base.
These arguments evolve amongst those that look to either blame or absolve the North or South.
It certainly was to Lincoln; he brought it up himself in conversation. And it certainly was to people in New York City, whose newspapers' editorials record the collective gasp of realization that went up as the Southern States began to leave the Union.
These arguments evolve amongst those that look to either blame or absolve the North or South.
Well, the principal dialogue is between the incriminators, like McPherson, who have a further political agenda (they would call it "applying lessons learned" or something like that), and the traditionalists who are arguing back against the Marxists' revisionism and their sometimes implicit, sometimes explicit moral accusations against the South, Southern leaders, or more to the point, modern white Southerners.
McPherson and his fellows are engaged in attempting to fix a scarlet letter of their own devising on Southerners, for their own purposes. Naturally, some of the Southerners are resisting indignantly.
Lincoln did not declare war on the South. The South declared war on the North and did so via arms without a chance at negotiations. The South did not reject the North over tariffs and Lincoln did not fight the war over that issue either.
That Lincoln may have mentioned it in passing is noted. I am also sure Lincoln mentioned the price of cotton in London markets on occasion but that is not why the war was fought for either.
It was indeed an issue. There are literally hundreds of speeches, editorials, newspaper articles, and pamphlets on the tariff issue by leading secessionists from 1860-61. The tariff was the subject of one of the longest southern speeches in the winter 1860-61 session of the U.S. Senate. It was also a topic at several secession conventions and a belief shared by virtually all of the leading southerners and so-called secessionist "fire-eaters" in Congress: Thomas Clingman, Louis Wigfall, James M. Mason, Robert Toombs, Lawrence Keitt, Robert M.T. Hunter, Jabez L.M. Curry and dozens of other leading southern senators and congressmen like them all made speeches on the tariff between Lincoln's November 1860 election and the April 1861 battle of Fort Sumter.
In fact the South if it won their war of independence would have imposed a tariff in an effort to build their newly minted industrial base.
Wrong. The confederate constitution prohibited any significant protectionist tariff system. The tariff that the confederates tried to adopt before Lincoln's blockade cut off their trade was also among the lowest revenue tariffs in the world and was lower than any tariff rate the United States had used since the Jefferson administration.
Wrong. The south sent no less than three teams of negotiators to meet with Lincoln in an attempt to avert war. He refused to meet with any of them AND refused to even meet with the confederates through a neutral intermediary after several sitting US Senators and a sitting US Supreme Court justice offered to fill that role. Lincoln declared war on the south the day that he sent a fleet of warships to Fort Sumter with explicit directions to fight their way into Charleston harbor over the inevitable confederate refusal to allow them entry. The confederates fortunately caught wind of this operation before Lincoln's warships arrived. They fired on Fort Sumter to preempt Lincoln from using his ships against him, just like we fired on Bagdhad to preempt Saddam from making terror attacks on us.
The South did not reject the North over tariffs and Lincoln did not fight the war over that issue either.
Their speeches indicate otherwise. So do Lincoln's speeches, which repeatedly pledged that he was going to send ships to the south in order to enforce the tariff.
That Lincoln may have mentioned it in passing is noted.
It was hardly in passing. In February of 1861 he was en route to Washington for the inauguration and made a stop at Pittsburgh. Ward Hill Lamon, his close friend and bodyguard, later recalled that this was the largest attended and single most important pre-inaugural speech he made. While in Pittsburgh he publicly pledged to make obtaining a protectionist tariff his highest legislative priority for the next session of Congress if it did not do so by his inauguration. He also sent dozens of private assurances to steel industry cronies that he would push a tariff during the 1860 campaign and personally credited his position on that issue with his win in Pennsylvania, the state that gave him enough electoral votes to win the presidency.
Why can I easily find information
The fact that it is not a secret doesn't mean that it is well known. Ask any set of reasonably well educated people (whose business isn't WBTS history) and I doubt that more than a percent or two would have any clue what the Star of the West was. Ask the same set of people then about Fort Sumter, and my guess is that at least half would associate it with the WBTS.
John Brown
John Brown was not associated with any government in any way. It would be hard to imagine why anyone would even think that his raid was the first in a long series of military conflicts between the Union and the Confederacy.
It takes two sides to make a war.
I think there were sides (see below) but this sort of argument would eliminate Pearl Harbor from consideration as regards WWII.
Anderson didn't fire at the attackers of the Star.
Well someone down there did. See Star of the West.
I believe the reason no one learns about the Star of the West is that it was a clear case of agression by the North. (The North couldn't have started the war, could it?) It is easier to sugar coat the events around April 12, and suggest that the South should have permitted a foreign country to occupy forts in their harbors and collect tribute from passing ships. We let the British do that, didn't we?!
ML/NJ
Huh? Source please.
Hi Ditto,
See my post 34. An on-line source for Governor Pickens' words would be an address he made to the SC Legislature.
Also see this reference from the Official Records. That is Confederate General Beauregard writing about it to Federal Major Anderson before the attack on Fort Sumter.
You owe me a beer. Cheers.
You are right. Let's don't forget what happened before.
12/6/1860
South Carolina had Union troops on her soil. Most were stationed at Fort Moultrie. This fort and Castle Pinckney in Charleston Harbor were built on land owned by South Carolina, but ceded to the US Government for “purposes of navigation and protection of the city and the harbor”.
There was a US arsenal in downtown Charleston. There was also a large pentagonal fort under construction on a shoal in the middle of Charleston Harbor. This was Ft. Sumter, and it was in its final states of construction.
Representatives from the Governor of South Carolina were sent to Washington on this date, and later met with members of the US Government to address the anticipated issue of the forts. These men were Robert Barnwell, James Adams, and James Orr. They were delegated the responsibility of discussing with the Buchanan administration the ‘important questions’ arising from the possibility that the state would secede, and revert to its original status as a sovereign state.
South Carolina, if it seceded, wanted the forts returned to the state, and the Union troops peacefully withdrawn. These representatives offered to buy, and thus compensate the government if the fortifications were returned.
Buchanan would only agree to a truce between South Carolina and the US Government that stated that the troops in garrison and the government would not improve their current locations, and that South Carolina would not attack any of the Federal locations. This agreement ensured that the forts would not be attacked or seized before further negotiations for peace could occur.
Therefore, from this point, any act of either side to garrison Ft. Sumter was a violation of the armistice, and an act of war.
So, a waiting game began, and whoever got to Ft. Sumter first, risked initiating the war.
This agreement was broken on December 26 with the secret movement of Commanding Major Anderson and the Federal troops out of their positions at Ft. Moultrie to Ft. Sumter.
To the citizens of South Carolina, who had fought the British military 70 years earlier, the movement by Anderson was much more explosive than the 'Star of the West'. However, to many other Southern states, the approach of the 'Star of the West' meant that the Federal government was prepared to send the military to attack their property.
This was fundamental to the secession of others, who cited in their secession documents, that the threat to their security was so great, they were joining in secession.
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