Trouble is, the political crisis and possibility of war disturbed trade. Do you seriously think the cotton planters were just dying to collect the superprofits you think were coming their way? No. They were trying to get through a crisis and trying to make a country, and some of them thought that war would help them to create a strong, united, independent South.
At least one Northern newspaper had already called for the guns of fort Sumter to be fired at Charleston to prevent them from getting out of the tariffs demanded by the Federal Government. Anderson's officers at Fort Sumter actually discussed using the guns of Fort Sumter to attack Charleston.
You find that shocking? Surprising? In some way significant? Nonsense. You can always find some newspaper advocating some fringe policy. Back then, before the Internet, those ideas found their way into newsprint, rather than onto computer screens. And at any meeting of officers in a crisis, some nutty ideas are bound to be floated.
But you'll note that they didn't act on that notion. They recognized that "attacking" or shelling the city would only bring the surrounding forces down on the fort faster than would otherwise be the case. Meanwhile nutty ideas were also circulating on the other side, but they weren't rejected.
The Fort commanded the entrance to the harbor of Charleston, and it would scare away trade so long as the potential existed that those guns might open up on ships attempting to trade with Charleston.
Then the guns of the city and other batteries would open up on the fort. It was a stalemate, and as the fort was at a disadvantage, I'd say they were pretty well deterred from attacking anyone.
So Fort Sumter was not merely an issue of face with the Confederates, it was a sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of Charleston's merchant traders.
Overdramatic in the extreme. And you've already as much as said that secession would destroy New York economically. Why couldn't Charleston wait until the crisis was peacefully resolved? Tell me, were those Charleston merchants just aching for war? Just dying to get every last penny sooner rather than later? And what made them superior to their Northern counterparts?
Of course it was also a slap in the face to the efforts of the Confederates to be seen as a legitimate government. A government that cannot control it's own territory, isn't a real government.
In terms of pride, that was something that Confederates probably could have lived with. The idea that people wouldn't take their government seriously was more serious, but still, if you think in those terms you're only hurting yourself.
What I mean is, if you think that if you don't get everything that you want immediately then you are done for, then you've painted yourself into a corner unnecessarily. You've made the situation more dire for yourself than it has to be.
Today, we recognize that Spain could live without Gibraltar and China could live for long decades without Hong Kong, and that two forces could exist side by side in a stand-off or stalemate without either being existentially threatened.
I've read discussions among Lincoln's cabinet that one of the things they feared most is that the Southerners would do nothing at all, and they would have a fort full of men doing nothing, and it would become an embarrassment. In the meantime the South would establish European trade and continue to behave as an independent state, and if it went on too long, it would become irrevocable.
First, you can't keep saying things like that without citing sources. Otherwise people will just assume you are making things up. Second, I really doubt that was the case. Secessionists were seizing federal property all over the place. That they would do nothing was probably the least of Lincoln's worries. Third, so what? If the secessionists really did do nothing and this won them their independence peacefully, isn't that what you would want and what America could probably live with? That they didn't was nobody's fault but their own.
I was opposing Federal and Judicial overreach long before I ever thought of the civil war, and every time I looked at the roots of some horrible federal policy of judicial ruling, it kept tracing back to the 14th amendment and the Civil War.
You needed to have some way of guaranteeing that states couldn't deny their people basic liberties. Without that we'd still have separate water fountains and washrooms for different races. Is that what you want? Twentieth century jurisprudence turned the 14th Amendment into something it wasn't meant to be, but how would you keep states from denying large parts of their populations basic human rights?
x: "First, you can't keep saying things like that without citing sources.
Otherwise people will just assume you are making things up.
Second, I really doubt that was the case.
Secessionists were seizing federal property all over the place..."
It's one of DiogenesLamp's basic problems -- there is a canon of Lost Cause proof-texts much of which has been posted on FR CW threads at one time or another, so DiogenesLamp might well remember seeing something along those lines.
But many of those "proof-texts" are highly dubious to begin with -- of unknown or disputed provenance, quotes taken out of original context and reframed to mean something quite different, or just plain outright lies.
And DiogenesLamp does not know enough real history to even suspect which is legit and which not.
But even more important, DiogenesLamp has complained here that very often he can't even find those old quotes -- how can you search back years over thousands of posts?
So he is forced to respond from memory and naturally DiogenesLamp only remembers what he wishes to remember and remembers it in the way that he wishes it to have been.
In that sense, DiogenesLamp is a little like the recent accuser against the now Supreme Court justice.
Sure, he remembers something, but is not at all clear exactly what, and he only knows for sure that those evil Republicans were up to no good!
Bottom line goes back to my post #410 which lays out Jefferson Davis' reasons & motives for Fort Sumter, and they were neither trivial, stupid nor short-sighted.
Despite the Union's overwhelming numbers in men & materials, Confederates came within a hair's breadth of success and that hair's-breadth can be defined in two words: Kentucky & Missouri.
Lincoln believed that had Davis proved successful in flipping especially Kentucky, to solid Confederates, the Union was lost.
And that's what Fort Sumter was really all about.
It's not "follow the money," rather it's "follow the states".