The bloodiest four years in American history begin when Confederate shore batteries under General P.G.T. Beauregard open fire on Union-held Fort Sumter in South Carolina’s Charleston Bay. During the next 34 hours, 50 Confederate guns and mortars launched more than 4,000 rounds at the poorly supplied fort. On April 13, U.S. Major Robert Anderson surrendered the fort. Two days later, U.S. President Abraham Lincoln issued a proclamation calling for 75,000 volunteer soldiers to quell the Southern “insurrection.”
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As early as 1858, the ongoing conflict between North and South over the issue of slavery had led Southern leadership to discuss a unified separation from the United States. By 1860, the majority of the slave states were publicly threatening secession if the Republicans, the anti-slavery party, won the presidency. Following Republican Abraham Lincoln’s victory over the divided Democratic Party in November 1860, South Carolina immediately initiated secession proceedings. On December 20, the South Carolina legislature passed the “Ordinance of Secession,” which declared that “the Union now subsisting between South Carolina and other states, under the name of the United States of America, is hereby dissolved.” After the declaration, South Carolina set about seizing forts, arsenals, and other strategic locations within the state. Within six weeks, five more Southern states–Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, and Louisiana–had followed South Carolina’s lead.
In February 1861, delegates from those states convened to establish a unified government. Jefferson Davis of Mississippi was subsequently elected the first president of the Confederate States of America. When Abraham Lincoln was inaugurated on March 4, 1861, a total of seven states (Texas had joined the pack) had seceded from the Union, and federal troops held only Fort Sumter in South Carolina, Fort Pickens off the Florida coast, and a handful of minor outposts in the South. Four years after the Confederate attack on Fort Sumter, the Confederacy was defeated at the total cost of 620,000 Union and Confederate soldiers dead.
Had Lincoln simply sought a diplomatic solution to what the South considered a fully justified action the Civil War would not have happened.
It would have been easy enough to do but would have required him temporarily conceding to the rightful claim that South Carolina had on Fort Sumpter first so he chose war instead.
Lincoln sent word to Ft. Sumpter, that they were to provoke an attack. Lincoln’s goal was to enslave every citizen and he did so. By making the central government autonomous he destroyed the compact.
“The premises upon which the North fought, was the idea that men could be forced to support a government which they did not want, and that resistance on their part made them criminals and traitors.” Lysander Spooner
It warr Der Jooos, Arschloch Fotze
Using critical thinking on the so-called Civil War (it wasn’t) taught me that all wars are about political power. Nothing more. Forget all the bullshit shibboleths like “The war to end all wars” and “To make the world safe for democracy” and ‘To end tyranny in our time”. That’s just to get the dumber ones among us to happily donate their money and the lives of their children to the latest Glorious Cause. Lincoln, who didn’t give a shit about slaves was solely motivated to slaughter to “preserve the Union”. What does that really mean once you get past the rhetorical grandiloquence? Was Lincoln worried that the Confederate states land mass was going to break away from the North American continent and float out into the Gulf of Mexico? He meant that there was to be one political power in the United States (America was dead at that point) and it was going to be the one in DC, not because that was right and proper but because he had more resources and men plus an unbounded propensity for slaughter. This country has failed it’s promise until Lincoln is seen as the maniacal, calculating despot he was, albeit one with a terrific gift of gab.
You are correct CCRider. and the so-called “radical” Republicans were pushing all of this.
But the author says, “The bloodiest four years in American history begins.” My, god, have you not heard of Reconstruction? Reconstruction was a whole war in itself on the South.
We’ve got government schools because of the defeat of the south, and the purpose of “educating the blacks” and “re-educating the white Southerners to create the idea of a “New America,” thanks to the Union League.”
During Reconstruction, the Freedman’s Bureau and the Union League initiated black militias to become the private armies of the new carpet-bagger governors in Southern States, who stole more than 2 million farms, with prime farm land, to give to their carpet-bagger friends, while the Southerns were turned out of their own land, and who had to put up with black militias getting away with murder and more (which is the initial concept of the Klu Klux Clan, in U.S. Congress records, being started by the North’s Union League, aligned with the Union Army — and Ku Klux, meaning to hide their identify by a costume) Which caused the White Southerns to form their own KKK to defend themselves and retaliate.
Oh, god, don’t get me started!
Read “The Yankee Problem” by Clive N. Wilson, and many other books he recommends and gives a forward to, such as “Washington’s KKK, The Union League,” by John Chodes, who happens to be a Northerner who researched the War of Aggression, and wrote the book on the Union League and it’s evil.
A “civil war” is one in which two subgroups are competing for control of the central power structure. The war in the 1860s was nothing of the sort. It was a war waged by the “united” states government against the Confederate States of America who correctly believed that the Constitution clearly gave them the power and authority to end their voluntary relationship with the other state and the federal government. It was a war to prevent legal secession. Lincoln desperately needed the tax and tariff revenues from the south so he could continue to line the pockets of his northern manufacturing and railroad “friends.” Crony capitalism has ALWAYS been the hallmark of the republican party. Abolishing slavery was just another political tool used to buy votes and support….much in the same way pronouncements in favor of free markets, freedom, liberty, smaller government, and other libertarian values serve to appeal to the gullible GOP supporters today. Slavery was ended in EVERY western nation without a drop of blood being shed. It could have happened in the US as well, but that was NEVER Lincoln’s goal. He was America’s first emperor and his destruction of the Constitution, state sovereignty and superiority over federal authority, etc. was the beginning of the end of Freedom and Liberty in America.
“Southern Heritage” by Chuck Baldwin is a fine follow-up to your post.
Agreed. Brazil ended slavery the coolest, smartest way possible. They just ended fugitive slave laws. Henceforth if a slave took off from his plantation the cost of tracking him/her down would be borne by the slave holders. Adding that cost to slave ownership caused slavery to just go away. No Antietam’s, no blockades, no Sherman’s marches.
I think Brazil was the last nation of the Americas to end slavery; circa 1888.
You are absolutely right, Mr. Liberty.
My family ( as I’ve stated here before) has been in the Carolina’s since 1710 . We have a very grim view of Lincoln .
Lincoln was a follow of Henry Clay who espoused a strong central gooberment and a gooberment funded infrastructure of roads etc. Lincoln needed cash to build these roads etc in the North. The South was his cash cow.
My only wish is that the South had won so that “Dis-Honest Abe ” would have had a neck stretching session… with Sherman right next to him .
The “American System” towit; Mercantilism
Mercantilism = the American System = Crony Capitalism = Pretty much all America has EVER had (with small pockets of free markets mixed in only until government found out about them and crushed them).
Buckhed,
I’m in South Carolina as well, in North Augusta. We have the same attitude.
The unCivil War, War of Northern Agression, the War between the States, Lincoln’s war was one hundred and fifty odd years ago…get over it… the slavers, states righters, plantation owners, poor farmers lost. The central government, bankers, industrialists, robber barons, won. USA, USA, USA lost and we are still lost. Go find yourself and quit waving the fucking bloody shirt.
Oh shit, I forgot to blame the joos.
Yes, and in fact, the “Reconstruction” period, and the years leading up at least to World War I, of holding the south down and robbing it of its riches, was perfected after the “War of Aggression,” and now it’s being used against the rest of the country. Get over it? I think not.
Remember, the South is in this country against its will. The rest of the country is waking up to what the majority of the South knows.
No thank you Sister Bluebelly; Union tyranny still thrives but the hunger for freedom is still very much alive; and not just in the South. If that is a bloody shirt, then I proudly wear it (of course it has got a big blue Scottish Cross on it). Another thing tender buttercup, Reconstruction 1 didn’t end until 1877 (only 140 years ago) and Reconstruction 2 is still tearing the South and West to pieces. Lastly as a proud son of the Revolution and the Confederacy, please read the Bill of Rights especially number 10.
No bluebelly here, other than work visits, have not lived anywhere but the South. Realistically the 10th has been ignored since at least 1850…wish it were not so, wish the 17th wasn’t, the real 13th in effect, and the Bill of Right was adhered to. But the fact remains that Lincoln and the Civil War changed everything…and I say again–Get over it, and get on with it. I keep my garden green, my guns oiled, and my powder dry. Come on down to my Blue Ridge mountains and test me.
RHS, I am a Southerner and the proud descendant of Judge and Col. James Mayson, a Scot who came to America in 1760, during England’s tyrannical Cromwell reign, and served during the Revolutionary War. He was captured and then released during the battle at Ninety-Six in South Carolina. Pleased to meet you.
Unfortunately, most of the land of his descendants, who fought for the Confederacy, was confiscated after the War of Aggression.
I agree completely with our assessment.