And so here we are, at the brink of all-out civil war. Guns are trained at forts flying the Stars and Stripes, the lame-duck President is waffling, and jingoistic rhetoric and religion-based self-righteousness have usurped rational debate. The factions have reached the point of irreconcilability; by this stage, too many promises made in the spirit of compromise have been broken, too much ill will generated by hyperbolic arguments - the only question left is how amicable the breakup will be.
Join me, if you will, in the Cave of the Moonbat, where tonight the gloves come off and the cannonballs start flying. Nationalist pride will be met with Federalist will, abhorrence at the mistreatment of human beings will find expression in the muzzle of a gun - and generations of Americans will be given a model of what a President with the ability to rise to the challenges of his age actually looks like.
No, silly, your resident historiorantologist isn't trying his hand at a contemporary events diary: This here's the latest installment of a series that began around
1824, continued through the
Age of Poor Presidents (which is currently experiencing a renaissance of sorts, btw), visited
Bleeding Kansas, examined the
Second-Worst Presidency Ever, saw the historioranting juggernaut that is
aphra behn step in to take a look at
American Women's History, 1820-1860, and last week deposited us at the threshold of hostilities following the
Election of 1860.
Now we're standing at the precipice, one of those turning points in history upon which hinges all subsequent events across the breadth of national experience. These can be relatively long - like the lame-duck period of the Buchanan administration - or composed of a single, September 11th-type day, and they only come once every generation or so, but all share the unique trait of setting the stage for a great leader to emerge and guide the country through its darkest hours.
The fact that the stage is set, however, does not mean that an actor of sufficient talent or inspiration will automatically appear. At least as often as not, those who would aspire to seeing their name on the historical marquee fail to deliver a satisfactory performance, to say nothing of rising to the greatness demanded by playing a leading role in a critical Act of the human saga. So it is that Herbert Hoover flails around near the bottom of the list of bad Presidents, while monuments to his successor stand in the nation's capitol, and why Andrew Johnson's legacy languishes in the shadow of his predecessor, remembered more for being impeached and establishing a GOP precedent for bungling reconstructions than anything else. It's also the reason that George Bush will be doomed to historical ridicule, his claims to being a "war President" forever paling in comparison to men like Abraham Lincoln.
Birth of a Nation
Honest Abe hadn't even taken the reigns when people and states started giving up on him. South Carolina had begun the secession stampede by stuffing a lump of cotton in the President-Elect's Christmas stocking, and was quickly followed by a spate of drawled New Year's resolutions to not submit to Yankee bullying any more. Leaders from the southern states gathered in Montgomery, Alabama ("Heart of Dixie!"), to talk things over, and on February 4, 1861, they ratified the Confederate Constitution.
Many Southerners may have favored secession, but when it came to choosing delegates for the new nation's Constitutional Convention, the people of the several states shied away from sending fire-eaters to represent them. The relative moderates who ratified the Constitution drew heavily from the U.S. document of the same name, and though they did add a few tweaks of their own, their instrument of secession had none of the venom of, say, a Declaration of Independence. It protected slavery in its territories, of course, but expressly prohibited the importation of slaves via international trade (selling off a native-born child whose mother happened to be enslaved was still okay, natch). The document describes a Confederate government that would have a bicameral legislature, a President with a single, 6-year term of office (and armed with a line-item veto), and would see many of the principles that had been amendments to the U.S. Constitution enshrined in the body text of its own. Here are some excerpts:
SECTION 3.
1. Treason against the Confederate States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort. No person shall be convicted of treason unless on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act, or on confession in open court.
2. The Congress shall have power to declare the punishment of treason, but no attainder of treason shall work corruption of blood, or forfeiture, except during the life of the person attainted.
SECTION 9.
1. The importation of negroes of the African race, from any foreign country, other than the slaveholding States or Territories of the United States of America, is hereby forbidden; and Congress is required to pass such laws as shall effectually prevent the same.
2. Congress shall also have power to prohibit the introduction of slaves from any State not a member of, or Territory not belonging to, this Confederacy.
3. The privilege of the writ of habeas corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in cases of rebellion or invasion, the public safety may require it.
4. No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves, shall be passed.
5. No capitation or other direct tax shall be laid, unless in proportion to the census or enumeration hereinbefore directed to be taken.
6. No tax or duty shall be laid on articles exported from any State, except by a vote of two-thirds of both Houses.
11. No title of nobility shall be granted by the Confederate States; and no person holding any office of profit or trust under them, shall, without the consent of the Congress, accept of any present, emolument, office or title of any kind whatever from any king, prince or foreign State.
12. Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof, or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble and petition the government for a redress of grievances.
13. A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.
14. No soldier shall, in time of peace, be quartered in any house without the consent of the owner; nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
15. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers and effects against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated; and no warrants shall issue but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Transcription of the Confederate Constitution
Historiorant: When one realizes that a group of slave-owning secessionist rebels took Habeus Corpus more seriously than does our current crop of "elected" officials, the Torture Bill becomes even more of an affront to human dignity than it already was, don'tcha think?
The American Presidents
On February 11, Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis, who had been named provisional President of the Confederacy until elections could be held, left their respective homes in Illinois and Mississippi, bound for their respective capitols. Davis arrived at Montgomery before Lincoln got to Washington, and so delivered his Inaugural Address first:
Looking forward to the speedy establishment of a permanent government to take the place of this, and which by its greater moral and physical power will be better able to combat with the many difficulties which arise from the conflicting interests of separate nations, I enter upon the duties of the office to which I have been chosen with the hope that the beginning of our career as a Confederacy may not be obstructed by hostile opposition to our enjoyment of the separate existence and independence which we have asserted, and, with the blessing of Providence, intend to maintain. Our present condition, achieved in a manner unprecedented in the history of nations, illustrates the American idea that governments rest upon the consent of the governed, and that it is the right of the people to alter or abolish governments whenever they become destructive of the ends for which they were established.
The declared purpose of the compact of Union from which we have withdrawn was "to establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessing of liberty to ourselves and our posterity;" and when, in the judgment of the sovereign States now composing this Confederacy, it had been perverted from the purposes for which it was ordained, and had ceased to answer the ends for which it was established, a peaceful appeal to the ballot-box declared that so far as they were concerned, the government created by that compact should cease to exist. In this they merely asserted a right which the Declaration of Independence of 1776 had defined to be inalienable; of the time and occasion for its exercise, they, as sovereigns, were the final judges, each for itself. The impartial and enlightened verdict of mankind will vindicate the rectitude of our conduct, and He who knows the hearts of men will judge of the sincerity with which we labored to preserve the Government of our fathers in its spirit.
From The Papers of Jefferson Davis, Volume 7, pp. 45-51. Transcribed from the Congressional Journal, Volume 1, pp. 64-66, via rice.edu (emphasis mine - u.m.)
Lincoln took a circuitous route to Washington, giving speeches along the way. One of these stops was due to grace Baltimore, but it turned out that insurgent terrorists were planning to do him in with the 19th-century equivalent of an I.E.D. Here's one of a couple of stories related in the March 9, 1861 edition of Harper's Weekly:
"The exact mode in which the conspirators intended to consummate their designs has not yet transpired; but enough is known to be satisfactory that either an infernal machine was to be placed under the cars or railway, like the Orsini attempt upon Napoleon, or some obstruction placed upon the track whereby the train would be thrown down an embankment at some convenient spot; and that if these failed, then, on the arrival at Baltimore, during the rush and crush of the crowd, as at Buffalo, by knife or pistol, the assassination was to be effected.
"It has also been ascertained that two or three of the conspirators were in New York on Wednesday, the 20th inst., watching the course of events while the President-elect was there."
Via sonofthesouth.net (emphasis mine - u.m.)
(Teachers and Civil War buffs: This is an outstanding depository of 1861-63 Harper's in scanned, primary source form)
The incoming U.S. President arrived in Washington early in the morning of February 23rd, no doubt ready to see this most distressing month come to an end. At Virginia's prompting (Old Dominion, like several other border states, had not yet seceded), a Peace Convention had convened in Washington on the same day as the secessionist one in Montgomery, and for the next few weeks, delegates met at Willard's Dancing Hall in Washington to debate and eventually propose to Congress six amendments (one of which would have extended the Missouri Compromise line all the way to the Pacific). Headed by former Preznit John Tyler - who was 71 at the time - the attendees of the Crittenden Plan-based gathering were deemed "venerable" by their supporters, and "fossils" by detractors. When Congress finally voted on the measures, they first rejected, then barely passed the package - without the support of Virginia, which had had second thoughts and so made a McCainian choice to abandon its initial principled stand.
In the meantime, the South was seizing or otherwise compelling the abandonment of Union forts in its territory. Fort Sumter, in the harbor of Charleston, South Carolina, was by far the flash-pointiest of those few who didn't run down their colors - not only was it blocking the mouth of the South's most important Atlantic seaport, but the State of South Carolina (and the city of Charleston in particular) had been ranting about secession at least as far back as the Nullification debates of the Jackson administration. In his First Inaugural Address, President Lincoln tried to reassure the South that these things could be worked out:
Apprehension seems to exist among the people of the Southern States that by the accession of a Republican Administration their property and their peace and personal security are to be endangered. There has never been any reasonable cause for such apprehension. Indeed, the most ample evidence to the contrary has all the while existed and been open to their inspection. I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so...
Source: AmericanCivilWar.com, via rutgers.edu (emphasis mine - u.m.)
Upon assuming office, one of Lincoln found himself faced with business far more immediate than solving the Slavery Question. He needed to find a solution to the Sumter Problem.
Jacta Alea Est
The Federal garrison at Fort Sumter, which consisted of fewer than 100 men, had supplies to last through mid-April, at which point a battle-free surrender was inevitable. Lincoln knew that he could not capitulate without risking being tarred as a George 41-style wimp, but neither could he simply order the fort to begin bombarding the rebel city. If there was to be war, the South would have to fire the first shots - Abe realized that he did not yet have a critical mass of northern support willing to re-unionify the nation at the point of a bayonet.
Lincoln, after agonizing of what to do for a little too long, decided on a middle course. He would send Federal ships to provision the fort, but he would notify the South that he was doing so. Here's a Moonbatified extrapolation of the note Lincoln wrote, as it might have been interpreted by the two sides:
What Abraham Lincoln Thought He Was Writing
Dear South,
That's a Union fort out there in your harbor, and those are my men that are going to soon run out of food. I'm going to send them some supplies; surely you must understand that I have to. You must also understand that honor will demand a response to any hostile fire directed at Union forces. You should let the ships through, and you have my word that they won't carry any spare troops or ammunition - honest. I mean really, can't we all just get along?
Abe Lincoln
How the South Interpreted Lincoln's Message
Vile Rebels,
Go Cheney yourself. The imperialist fortress in your sovereign territory will remain in Northern hands forever, and there's nothing you can do about it. I am currently dispatching an armada to reinforce my stronghold, and if you interfere with its mission, I will send my numberless legions into your homes to grind your pathetic little upstart nation into dust. Resistance is futile - you must comply.
El Diablo
It fell to General P.G.T. Beauregard, commander of the Confederate artillery in Charleston, to do the dirty deed of starting the shooting. On April 12, 1861, his canon opened on the fort, prompting wild cheering and profuse handkerchief-waving in the streets of the city. They blasted away for over 34 hours without killing anyone, at which point the Union commander decided that discretion was the better part of valor, and surrendered.
Of Course You Know: This Means War...
Before the firing on Sumter, even the 75-year old commander of the Union Army, the venerable Winfield "Fuss n' Feathers" Scott, subscribed to the common Northern view of southern secession, the one that said, "Wayward sisters, depart in peace." That all changed as shouts of "Save the Union!" and "Remember Fort Sumter!" reverberated across an indignant North. Like the Alamo, the Maine, Pearl Harbor, and 9/11, the loss of Fort Sumter became a rallying cry, a wrong to be avenged.
President Lincoln quickly capitalized on the tactical defeat. On April 15, he issued a call for 75,000 volunteers to form an army that would bring their "wayward sisters" to heel once and for all. So many men showed up that recruiters turned some away, while at sea, the Union Navy set up what turned out to be a pretty porous blockade of Southern ports. His proclamation said, in part:
I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union, and the perpetuity of popular government; and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.
I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to re-possess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event, the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of, or interference with, property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.
angelfire.com
Historiorant: By the time the war had dragged on a couple of years, recruiters, um, relaxed their standards in ways that would be instantly recognizable to Rummy's Pentagon. Then again, everybody always thinks at the start of a war that the boys'll be home by Christmas.
Lincoln's actions were perceived in the South as overtly aggressive, challenges that must be risen to. The United States had always maintained a tiny standing military force when the country was at peace - at the outset of the 1846 war with Mexico, the Army numbered around 7000 officers and men - and the first step in going to war was the raising of an army. As the C.S.A. was viewed as a collection of rebel provinces and not a recognized, rival government, Lincoln didn't need a declaration of war from Congress, but to Southerners, the call for volunteers to form up an army was tantamount to it.
Lincoln's response?
Whereas an insurrection against the Government of the United States has broken out in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas, and the laws of the United States for the collection of the revenue cannot be effectually executed therein comformably to that provision of the Constitution which requires duties to be uniform throughout the United States:
And whereas a combination of persons engaged in such insurrection, have threatened to grant pretended letters of marque to authorize the bearers thereof to commit assaults on the lives, vessels, and property of good citizens of the country lawfully engaged in commerce on the high seas, and in waters of the United States: And whereas an Executive Proclamation has been already issued, requiring the persons engaged in these disorderly proceedings to desist therefrom, calling out a militia force for the purpose of repressing the same, and convening Congress in extraordinary session, to deliberate and determine thereon...
(he goes on to announce the blockade, then finishes with a bang)
And I hereby proclaim and declare that if any person, under the pretended authority of the said States, or under any other pretense, shall molest a vessel of the United States, or the persons or cargo on board of her, such person will be held amenable to the laws of the United States for the prevention and punishment of piracy.
angelfire.com
"I hope to have God on my side, but I have to have Kentucky" - A.L., attributed
It was time for side-choosing in those states that weren't far enough north or south to have already done so. Had the South not been the one to fire the first shots, likely all of them would have cast their lot with the Gray, but the "Save the Union" message gained a lot of credence in border states in the wake of the Fort Sumter's surrender. Still, the calling-up-the-troops thing was too much for Virginia to bear, and she bolted on April 17. As a reward for being the 8th state to secede, the Confederate capitol was moved to Richmond.
As things turned out, not all of Virginia was enamored of rebellion. In the state's northwestern counties, the "mountain whites" seceded from the seceded and found themselves on the fast track to statehood by mid-1861 (admitted as a state in 1863. Nearby, in the "Butternut Region" of southern Ohio, sentiment ran high against an antislavery war - these were folks who had moved up from the South and had seen all their prejudices survive the transplantation intact. The area would wind up becoming a hotbed of antiwar, pro-Dixie sentiment.
Missouri was another such region, as it had been settled by both slaveowners and freesoilers since back in the days when everyone had thought popular sovereignty would work. Here, a civil war was fought within the Civil War, and Lincoln was obliged to prop up with troops the inept administration of Missouri's wartime governors (like that of former presidential candidate John C. Fremont) throughout the conflict. He also frequently moved troops around - and declared martial law within - Maryland over the course of the war, since secession there would envelop Washington inside enemy territory.
Had they chosen to secede, any one of these states would have significantly increased the chances of southern success; taken together, they would have tilted the odds to nearly overwhelming. Combined, the Border States contained a white population more than half that of the entire Confederacy, had half as many horses, and would have doubled southern industrial capacity. Yet of them all, Kentucky was the most strategically important - or more specifically, Kentucky's rivers were. Securing both banks of the Ohio was a goal in and of itself, but holding the headwaters of both the Cumberland and the Tennessee Rivers would prove invaluable when the time came to start invading the South.
The heady mix of ideas and rhetoric that hung in the American air in 1861 made for some pretty tough choices when they were applied to actions by individuals. The "mountain whites" would provide around 50,000 men to the Union cause over the course of the war, and in all, slave states that remained in the Union - Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware - sent around 300,000 men fight under the Stars and Stripes. Of course, tens of thousands of their brothers (literally) saw their cause in the Stars and Bars, and went South. Senator "Compromise" Crittenden's two sons were both generals in the respective armies, and Abraham Lincoln's four brothers-in-law opted to raise arms against sister Mary's hubby.
Out in Indian Territory (a/k/a Oklahoma), the Five Civilized Tribes (Cherokee, Creek, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Seminole) more or less went with the Confederacy. Since some Cherokee owned slaves, and since the tribes had southern roots that far predated the earliest European encroachments, as well as economic ties going back to Jamestown, they were invited to send delegates to the Confederate Congress - and when the Confederate government began making payments to the tribes, the most of the Five Civilized tribes sent troops in return. A faction of Cherokees banded with many of the Plains Indians in support of the Union - a good deed that would not go unpunished by the very army whose western flank they now protected.
Death of a Salesman or
Habeus Corpus in Suspension
The rapidly-spiraling events of the time prompted even Lincoln's great sparring partner from back in the Senate Race of '58, Steven A. Douglas, to bury the hatchets the two had thrown at one another during the Presidential campaign of the previous year. On April 25, he gave his all in a "Preserve the Flag" speech to the Illinois legislature, urging national unity over partisan or sectional politics in the face of the greatest threat the country had ever faced. He contracted typhoid fever shortly thereafter, and died on June 3rd, a month before the fighting started in earnest at Bull Run.
The Writ of Habeus Corpus was among the earlier casualties of the Civil War. Lincoln suspended the right to due process in Maryland, parts of the Midwest (especially southern Indiana), and along military supply lines on April 27, 1861. He also declared martial law and restored order at the point of a gun - but then again, Lincoln was facing rioting in the streets, pro-southern militia actions inside Union territory, enemy troop formations within 50 miles of Washington, and the legitimate threat of his enemy physically encircling the capitol.
Historiorant: It is unknown what Lincoln might have done had he been facing a threat like the one faced by George Bush. Some Republicans theorize that Lincoln would have urged mass suicides and a scorched-earth retreat toward Canada if he had known that several thousand people in Iraq and Afghanistan wanted to do great harm to the United States.
Military tribunals were set up to try the cases of "Copperheads," vehemence-filled southern sympathizers who demanded immediate peace with the Confederacy, despite the the US District Court for Maryland finding in Ex Parte Merryman that Lincoln's actions were wholly unconstitutional. Surely the fact that the judge who issued the ruling was Roger Taney - he of Dred Scott bombshell fame - had nothing to do with the fact that Lincoln saw fit to ignore the ruling outright. In the South, Jefferson Davis also rescinded the right to fair trial, but here it was done as much to spur industrial growth as it was to maintain order.
Historiorant:
A great deal has been written about Habeus Corpus and the recent demise thereof; if you have any links to Lincoln-and-the-Writ themed sites, please post them in the comments. I'd love to look at Lincoln's take on the situation in a bit more detail, but I'm already more than an hour late in posting this, and, let's face it - it's already plenty long.