Civil War not about slavery?!?!

[editec]

Lincoln was at best inept and at worse intent on war. Seward told him repeatedly that if he did the things he ended up doing there would be war. He told him repeatedly how to avoid the war and Lincoln ignored him.

You mean that Lincoln is at fault for the southern states that seceded after he won the Presidency? You dimwits should be happy that Lincoln did not do what he had every right to do, have every Confederate officer that had been a Union officer before the war executed for treason.

As far as being inept, President Lincoln won that war while starting a trans-continental railway, and establishing the framework of the settlement of the western states. Today the United States is what it is as a result of the actions taken by President Lincoln. He is regarded by all but a few wingnuts as one of our greatest presidents.

Great leaders don't cause 600,000 of their citizens to be killed in war. Think of that olfraud, more people (Americans) died in the Civil War then in the two world wars, and there were fewer people back then and the technology was nowhere near as advanced so the effect was felt by every family.

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

You're guessing about this event in history and you're guessing wrong, WW.

Lincoln HAD been a lawyer for the Railroads before he went into politics.

He was intimately familiar with and a political ally of the transcontinental Rail road project, and the funding necessary to build the thing was supported through the federal government.

That project was not first and foremost on his mind, but he was definitely instrumenhtal in crafting the complex government/private industry collaboration that lead up to its funding and construction.

 

[paperview]

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

You do understand all the factors involved in a transcontinental railroad requires a lot of federal support, right?

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Sad but true.

Another lie. There were no black SOLDIERS in the South. They were used to build breast works and other manual labor. The South only even considered black soldiers in the last couple months of their existence and even then they voted no.

Yup.

Nope

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Once again, as I said before: Lincoln considered himself honorbound to comport himself within the constitution, therefore, because only a constitutional amendment could free the slaves. No act of congress or a president could change the constitution. In the mind and honor code of Lincoln, only a constitutional amendment could free the slaves.

That brings us to the Proclamation Emancipation:

The Proclamation Emancipation only applied where a state of war still existed between rebel forces and the forces of the union; The president's oath of office forbade him asserting law as his own moral conviction. But where a state of belligerence existed, he (Lincoln) had the power as Commander In Chief to declare the slaves free. And with it's enactment, it turned the Union Army into an army of liberation wherever it advanced.

As for slavery not being the cause of the war; Lincoln was elected president of the new Republican Party which was founded by Abolitionists, which explains why seven southern states seceded immediately after he was elected and before he could take office. And the violence and dispute about slavery in Missouri and subsequently Kansas/Nebraska were catalysts for abolition and secession, needing only the election of a Republican president as a tipping point to a split.

Without that secession of the seven southern states, which was first of all because of tensions over slavery, and their claiming federal property, there would have been no war. Slavery was the seminal issue.

Lincoln was at best inept and at worse intent on war. Seward told him repeatedly that if he did the things he ended up doing there would be war. He told him repeatedly how to avoid the war and Lincoln ignored him.

You mean that Lincoln is at fault for the southern states that seceded after he won the Presidency? You dimwits should be happy that Lincoln did not do what he had every right to do, have every Confederate officer that had been a Union officer before the war executed for treason.

As far as being inept, President Lincoln won that war while starting a trans-continental railway, and establishing the framework of the settlement of the western states. Today the United States is what it is as a result of the actions taken by President Lincoln. He is regarded by all but a few wingnuts as one of our greatest presidents.

As per the Constitution it was Lincoln that committed treason.

As for Lincoln's transcontinental railroad, you mean the corrupt government run transcontinental railroads that went bankrupt? James J. Hill should be heralded for his successful private transcontinental railroad for its efficiency and low prices.

If the U.S. is what it is today because of Lincoln, which I may be inclined to agree with, I don't see how anyone could regard him as one of the greatest Presidents.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

You mean that Lincoln is at fault for the southern states that seceded after he won the Presidency? You dimwits should be happy that Lincoln did not do what he had every right to do, have every Confederate officer that had been a Union officer before the war executed for treason.

As far as being inept, President Lincoln won that war while starting a trans-continental railway, and establishing the framework of the settlement of the western states. Today the United States is what it is as a result of the actions taken by President Lincoln. He is regarded by all but a few wingnuts as one of our greatest presidents.

Great leaders don't cause 600,000 of their citizens to be killed in war. Think of that olfraud, more people (Americans) died in the Civil War then in the two world wars, and there were fewer people back then and the technology was nowhere near as advanced so the effect was felt by every family.

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

Lincoln did not do anything to cause the Civil War. Other then be elected.

And maneuver the south into firing on Fort Sumter, of course, which he knew they would do.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

You mean that Lincoln is at fault for the southern states that seceded after he won the Presidency? You dimwits should be happy that Lincoln did not do what he had every right to do, have every Confederate officer that had been a Union officer before the war executed for treason.

As far as being inept, President Lincoln won that war while starting a trans-continental railway, and establishing the framework of the settlement of the western states. Today the United States is what it is as a result of the actions taken by President Lincoln. He is regarded by all but a few wingnuts as one of our greatest presidents.

Great leaders don't cause 600,000 of their citizens to be killed in war. Think of that olfraud, more people (Americans) died in the Civil War then in the two world wars, and there were fewer people back then and the technology was nowhere near as advanced so the effect was felt by every family.

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

You're guessing about this event in history and you're guessing wrong, WW.

Lincoln HAD been a lawyer for the Railroads before he went into politics.

He was intimately familiar with and a political ally of the transcontinental Rail road project, and the funding necessary to build the thing was supported through the federal government.

That project was not first and foremost on his mind, but he was definitely instrumenhtal in crafting the complex government/private industry collaboration that lead up to its funding and construction.

This is correct. Lincoln had a huge stake in the government run transcontinental railroads, and it was all a part of his larger "American System" that he got from Henry Clay.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

You do understand all the factors involved in a transcontinental railroad requires a lot of federal support, right?

Tell that to James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad.

 

[paperview]

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

You do understand all the factors involved in a transcontinental railroad requires a lot of federal support, right?

Tell that to James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad.

During the time of Lincoln, which was what I was referring to, that simply wasn't happening, and one did need to be built.

We can argue the details, the monopolies, the robber barons and the colusion between the railroadmen and congressmen & senators...which did happen, and showed government usually fucks up a good idea, but that's another matter altogether.

With the Great West out there and the country's growing need for expansion and faster routes, that first transcontinental was the necessary catalyst.

BTW, if it wasn't for the South leaving the Union, it might not have happened by the end of the late 1860's. (quite a feat in 7 years!) It was not long after the rebs up 'n left, congress voted for the Pacific Railway Acts. So you can thank your secesh bros for that. lol.

 

[Kevin_Kennedy]

You do understand all the factors involved in a transcontinental railroad requires a lot of federal support, right?

Tell that to James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad.

During the time of Lincoln, which was what I was referring to, that simply wasn't happening, and one did need to be built.

We can argue the details, the monopolies, the robber barons and the colusion between the railroadmen and congressmen & senators...which did happen, and showed government usually fucks up a good idea, but that's another matter altogether.

With the Great West out there and the country's growing need for expansion and faster routes, that first transcontinental was the necessary catalyst.

BTW, if it wasn't for the South leaving the Union, it might not have happened by the end of the late 1860's. (quite a feat in 7 years!) It was not long after the rebs up 'n left, congress voted for the Pacific Railway Acts. So you can thank your secesh bros for that. lol.

I should thank the Confederacy for the Union passing a bill that led to corrupt transcontinental railroads being built? Doesn't seem logical. Regardless, all that shows is that it made no sense for Lincoln to want to force the south back in the Union, because without them the Republican Party could get all of its little pet projects passed. Unless of course they couldn't pay for all of their pet projects without plundering the south.

 

[American Horse]

Also gthe las time I checked he wasn't working on the railroad, that was being done by railroad magnates and the hard labor of a bunch of Irish and Chinese workers. And they did it for money, imagine that.

You do understand all the factors involved in a transcontinental railroad requires a lot of federal support, right?

Tell that to James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad.

James J. Hill entered into the railroad business as a result of the panic of 1873. His role was in expanding the transcontinental railroad.

The Pacific Railroad Act subsidized by loans and financial grants the transcontinental railroad. Also there were grants of public lands for rights-of-way given and coordinated with state and local authorities to implement the Act. Up to the time of Lincoln's involvement the history of the transcontinental railroad had been one of fits and starts. It was one of those huge projects that needed major federal government involvement for coordination and injection of capital.

"The idea of a transcontinental railroad linking the east and the west coast of North American was suggested as early as the 1830s, but the real planning for the construction did not begin until the 1850s. Theodore Judah, a railroad surveyor form Connecticut, pushed Congress for the construction of the railroad. With the financial support of entrepreneurs Collis P. Hunnington, Mark Hopkins, Leland Stanford, and Charles Crocker, Judah was able to secure passage of the Pacific Railway Act of 1862. This bill, signed by President and railroad enthusiast Abraham Lincoln, provided for the construction of a transcontinental railroad by two companies, each being granted ownership of the land they used in their construction. The Union Pacific would start form the east, while the Central Pacific would begin building in the west. Both companies would meet somewhere between Omaha and California, approximately 1,700 miles apart."
The Transcontinental Railroad

"While sectional issues and disagreements were debated in the late 1850s, no decision was forthcoming from Congress on the Pacific railroad question. The prospect of tapping the wealth of the Nevada mining towns and forthcoming legislation for federal aid to railroads stimulated them to incorporate the Central Pacific Railroad Company of California. This line later merged with the Southern Pacific. It was through Judah's efforts and the support of Abraham Lincoln, who saw military benefits in the lines as well as the bonding of the Pacific Coast to the Union, that the Pacific Railroad finally became a reality. The Railroad Act of 1862 put government support behind the transcontinental railroad and helped create the Union Pacific Railroad, which subsequently joined with the Central Pacific at Promontory, Utah, on May 10, 1869, and signaled the linking of the continent."

 

[percysunshine]

The civil war was about a battle between an agrarian culture, and an industrial culture. The industrialists won.

 

[bigrebnc1775]

Tell that to James J. Hill and his Great Northern Railroad.

During the time of Lincoln, which was what I was referring to, that simply wasn't happening, and one did need to be built.

We can argue the details, the monopolies, the robber barons and the colusion between the railroadmen and congressmen & senators...which did happen, and showed government usually fucks up a good idea, but that's another matter altogether.

With the Great West out there and the country's growing need for expansion and faster routes, that first transcontinental was the necessary catalyst.

BTW, if it wasn't for the South leaving the Union, it might not have happened by the end of the late 1860's. (quite a feat in 7 years!) It was not long after the rebs up 'n left, congress voted for the Pacific Railway Acts. So you can thank your secesh bros for that. lol.

I should thank the Confederacy for the Union passing a bill that led to corrupt transcontinental railroads being built? Doesn't seem logical. Regardless, all that shows is that it made no sense for Lincoln to want to force the south back in the Union, because without them the Republican Party could get all of its little pet projects passed. Unless of course they couldn't pay for all of their pet projects without plundering the south.

Exactly

 

[American Horse]

Lincoln was at best inept and at worse intent on war. Seward told him repeatedly that if he did the things he ended up doing there would be war. He told him repeatedly how to avoid the war and Lincoln ignored him.

Let’s look at Seward’s proposals to Lincoln on the crisis between the North and South, examine the personalities of the two men (Lincoln and Seward). Also some specific proposals of Seward and the events surrounding those proposals:

While Lincoln had been out in Springfield coping with office-seekers and reporters and writing his [inaugural] speech, Seward had been in Washington, in the Senate, playing the central role in crafting the Republican Party response as the string of Deep South states claimed to take themselves out of the Union. Seward, once a prime spokesman for antislavery reformers now became a prime conciliator, writing letters to keep Lincoln informed. When Lincoln began appointing his cabinet, his first offer was to Seward, proposing to make him secretary of state, and after a brief consideration, Seward accepted. Secretaries of state had often been key figures in government, sometimes as important as their presidents. So it seemed to many – including Seward himself – that's how it would be now.

When Lincoln named the rest of his cabinet, it included one of his rivals for the nomination, Salmon P Chase. Seward let it be known he objected to Chase, and that he expected Lincoln to drop Chase. Just two days before the inauguration, Seward passed a note to Lincoln asking “leave to withdraw” from his acceptance as Secretary of State. While the inaugural procession was forming Lincoln handed Seward back a note asking him to withdraw his withdrawal “The public interest, I think demands that you should; and my personal feelings are deeply enlisted in the same direction.”

Seward, who had far more experience abroad and in world politics than most American politicians, had said at the outset of the Lincoln administration that because of “the utter absence of any acquaintance with the subject in the chief (executive), his [Seward’s] would be the guiding hand in Union diplomacy”

After the inauguration Seward had his own policy for the looming national crisis, and it seemed to him that Lincoln did not. We know that because he said so; On a busy day for the president, April 1st, 1861 Seward handed Lincoln a memo saying:

“We are at the end of a month’s administration and yet without a policy either foreign or domestic.”

He urged the president to change the issues "before the public from one upon slavery . . . . for a question upon Union or Disunion . . . from what would be regarded as a Party question to one of Patriotism or Union.” One way to do that was deliberately to get into a war with another nation, a suggestion that Lincoln in his response quietly ignored.

In that memorandum to Lincoln Seward said the way to bring peace the United States was to engage the country in a war which would unite North and South in a battle against a foreign power. Seward thought that the shared nationalism, would override the ideologies separating the North and South; South Carolina would join Massachusetts in the war against – somebody.

One did not have to have long years of experience in the highest levels of diplomacy to recognize that that was not a good idea. In Lincoln’s mind the likelier scenario in early April 1861 was not that South Carolina firebrands would wheel around and join Massachusetts abolitionists in fighting an American war against another country – Great Britain? Russia? France?* -- but that some of these nations would give diplomatic recognition and aid to the Confederacy instead. For Washington to provoke a war with any one of them, thinking that the South would join with the North in that war, would be “folly of the highest order.”

*The following is part of the text of Steward’s April 1 “considerations” addressed to Lincoln:

“I would demand explanations from Spain and France, categorically, at once. I would seek explanations from Great Britain and Russia, and send agents into Canada, Mexico, and Central America, to rouse a vigorous continental spirit of independence on this continent against European intervention. And if satisfactory explanations are not received from Spain and France, would convene Congress and declare war against them”

But the primary way to shift the questions that lay between the North and South sections, according to Seward, was for the government to give up Fort Sumter [South Carolina] and make the reinforcement of Fort Pickens, [Florida] the symbol of Union resolve.

Seward had a personal stake in giving up Fort Sumter. After the election while Lincoln had been in Springfield, travelling, speaking, meeting people, otherwise preparing for his administration, Seward had been in Washington speaking and acting for and leading the Republicans. He had repeatedly informed the Confederate government; through informal communications (through 3-commissioners) that Fort Sumter would be evacuated.

Lincoln immediately wrote his own little paper responding to Seward’s “thoughts.”

He denied that the administration lacked a policy; it had the policy that he had stated in the inaugural address, with which Seward who had seen and conferred with Lincoln on his address had agreed:

“I said ‘The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy and possess the property and places belonging to the government, and to collect the duties, and imposts.’ This had you distinct approval at the time.”

And when that inaugural statement was combined with the order Lincoln gave the first day to the general in chief of the army, it represented precisely the policy in Seward’s present proposal – with just one exception:

“[The inaugural statement] taken in connection with the order I immediately gave General Scott, directing him to employ every means in his power to strengthen and hold the forts, comprises the exact domestic policy you now urge, with the single exception, that it does not propose to abandon Fort Sumpter.”

“I do not perceive how the re-enforcement of Fort Sumpter would be done on a slavery, or party issue [note the party connection with the slavery issue here mentioned by both Lincoln and Seward], while that of Fort Pickens would be on a more national, and patriotic one.”

Lincoln as opposed to Seward, saw reinforcing Sumter, with its particular geography (both Sumter and Pickens were forts on islands in harbors surrounded by Confederate installations) and history and symbolic meaning, as vastly more important; but Lincoln believed that both posts should be held, as he had said in his inaugural.

In a conflict of orders between Lincoln and Seward) regarding the two forts, ships carrying supplies and men were confused enroute (Powhattan affair), resulting in a failure of support reaching and reinforcing both Sumter and Pickens. Lincoln entirely took the blame for the failure of both missions.

Secretary of the Navy Wells, who had been left out of the operation, telling about it said:
“He [Lincoln] took upon himself the whole blame, said it was carelessness, heedlessness on his part, he ought to have been more careful and attentive.”

Wells wrote after the Lincoln presidency: President Lincoln never shunned any responsibility and often declared that he, and not his Cabinet, was in fault for errors imputed to them, when I sometimes thought otherwise.”

Another leader would have found Seward’s conduct in this affair hard to forgive. It was the last in a series of episodes that had occurred since Seward’s defeat by Lincoln in Chicago. But Lincoln, generous and clearheaded, realized that he needed Seward -- needed him for his following, for his reputation, and, despite what Lincoln might have concluded from this episode, for his experience and advice. Before many more weeks were out, Seward would be writing to his wife, Frances, about Lincoln’s executive skill.

 

[Gunny]

Would the Southern States had stayed in the union the noth offered to compensate the south for ending slavery?

I suspect that the average Southerner would have accepted that.

The aristos who really ran most of the South, perhaps not.

Look they really basically wanted a FEUDAL society with them filling in for the PEERS of the realm (that is why I constantly refer to them as ARISTOs btw)

Look at the way their society was structured.

It was FEUDALISM in the 19th century.

What they wanted was an anachronism society.

What they ended up with was a civilization in ruins.

History ran them over in the guise of bluecoats.

You just left out the other half of the argument. Prior to the US Civil War, states joined the Union freely and NO legislature said they could not leave just as freely as they joined. That was actually a decision by the US Supreme Court in 1868 in Marshal v Texas that determined states had no right to secede. Only a dimwit would refuse to see that as nothing more than the US covering its ass after an illegal war.

The Northern aristocrats/industrialists were as much to blame as any Southern planter/aristocrat. Both wanted control and power and neither were willing to compromise.

Meanwhile, the poor of this Nation on BOTH sides fought for their financial interests.

However, at the time the war began, ANY state had every right to secede as willfully as it joined.

Or would you like to join my gym? A contract for life that I will come come kick your ass for if you try to quit? Only the contract won't say so .....