The American Civil War, day by day - Page 3 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Those who do not remember the past are condemned to relive it. Note: nostalgia *is* allowed.
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#14964267
November 17, Saturday

President Buchanan asks Attorney General Jeremiah Sullivan Black a number of questions on the constitutionality of secession and the Federal response to it.
#14964366
One thing these early days is demonstrating is why Buchanan is widely considered in the running for “Worst President in History.” The immediate reactions to Lincoln’s election show everyone knew that secession was inevitable if Lincoln won, but only now Buchanan is polling his Cabinet on the proper response and asking his Attorney General about the constitutionality of secession and any federal response to it? He should have had those questions already answered and be ready to discuss the proper policy going forward with Lincoln if he won. Of course, this is the same president that risked losing an army with his Utah War fiasco.
One Degree wrote:Aren’t the arguments today based upon the existence of slavery? I think our problems today are because we try to make them the same when they aren’t. I also don’t know what you mean by “the sides are more mixed”.
A realistic view of this period would totally change the arguments today. As is, they are similar.
Even realizing it is easier for people without slaves to want to free them than it is for a person that has more invested in them than all his other property combined would add some realism today.
You can’t discuss race relations today reasonably when people are convinced slavery was all about hate and that hate remains.

I’m not sure what you mean about today’s arguments being based on slavery, but for what I meant about the two sides of the division being mixed, now it’s more of a rural/urban split. At the time of the Civil War, in spite of such exceptions as eastern Tennessee and western Virginia, the majority support for secession in the South and against it in the North was more evenly spread.
#14964599
November 18, Sunday

The legislature of Georgia votes a million dollars to arm the state.

A newspaper reporter says Mr. Lincoln seems undisturbed by the news from the South and still feels secession would not be attempted.
#14964604
So Georgia was arming itself right in front of Washington. I wonder what different would it have made if the military was sent at this point to Georgia to disband the state government. Would that have prevent the civil war or accelerated its start?
#14964660
Albert wrote:So Georgia was arming itself right in front of Washington. I wonder what different would it have made if the military was sent at this point to Georgia to disband the state government. Would that have prevent the civil war or accelerated its start?

Georgia has three states between it and Washington, DC, North and South Carolina and Virginia, so any military sent in would have to be by sea and I don't believe that the US Navy had the lift capacity at that time to ship in a large enough army to pull that off. And even if it did, the Army was both small and scattered, mostly at forts throughout the Far West and Texas. And if the Army was already concentrated Virginia would have to be willing to allow it to march or ship by train through the state (more likely aimed at South Carolina, which had called for volunteers eight days earlier, only four days after Lincoln won the election), something I find unlikely since when Lincoln called for volunteers to suppress the rebellion after Fort Sumter Virginia promptly seceded. And even if Virginia was willing to allow that army to march through its territory, you'd still have to have a president willing to order it and Buchanan's behavior clearly demonstrated that there would be no such president until after Lincoln's inauguration.
#14965116
November 20, Tuesday

President Buchanan, trying to find a course among the troubling storms, has been consulting his Cabinet frequently, conferring with Winfield Scott, and preparing his message to Congress. Attorney General Black submits his opinions on the questions asked by the President three days before. The Attorney General tells the President that the states are subject to the laws of the United States while in the Union; that the President can collect duties and protect public property despite resistance, and that it is his duty to do so. The President cannot take action with troops against elements which oppose the government only with talk, and law enforcement must be through the courts. The government can repel aggression but cannot wage an offensive war against a state; it can act only on the defensive.

The major subjects of the day in Washington and elsewhere are no longer slavery and its expansion, but the right of secession and the use of Federal coercion. The right of secession is denied, but the Federal government can do little in advance to stop it without recognizing secession, under Black’s opinion. The South believes in the right of secession and any Federal efforts to oppose it would be coercion. Some Northerners, at least, believe that any secession movement can legally be put down by force. Mr. Lincoln keeps trying to affirm quietly that the states would be left alone to control their own affairs, but few in the South believe it. There is discussion of constitutional points, law, arguments over technicalities, but little of substance is being done to halt the drift accelerating disunion.
#14965436
November 21, Wednesday

President-elect Lincoln journeys to Chicago to meet with the future Vice-President Hannibal Hamlin. They will discuss Cabinet posts during the next five days.
#14965943
November 23, Friday

Major General Robert Anderson, newly in command at Fort Moultrie on the edge of Charleston Harbor, reports that when the outworks are completed, the fort, appropriately garrisoned, would be capable of “making a very handsome defense.” But the present garrison is so weak as to invite attack, which is being “openly and publicly threatened.” If besieged, they can not hold out for long. Fort Sumter, ungarrisoned, on a shoal in the harbor, is incomplete but work is proceeding on mounting of guns and he says it “is the key to the entrance of this harbor.” He favors garrisoning Fort Sumter at once, as he does Castle Pinckney, which commands the city of Charleston. Anderson is trying to avoid a clash but says, “Nothing, however, will be better calculated to prevent bloodshed than our being found in such an attitude that it would be madness and folly to attack us.” Anderson reports a settled determination in Charleston to leave the Union. “The clouds are threatening, and the storm may break upon us at any moment.” He repeats his call for reinforcements. (He is to repeat this request often.)

The forts have been left in a state of general stagnation. Sand dunes have piled up around Fort Moultrie so that cows could walk right in. Fort Sumter, begun in 1829, remains incomplete. Castle Pinckney is small and near the city, occupied by just an ordnance sergeant and his family. After all, the whole Federal Army numbers a little over sixteen thousand men, mostly on the western frontier.
#14966765
November 26, Monday

Mr. and Mrs. Lincoln leave Chicago for Springfield. Many visitors await them at home in the Illinois capital: politicians, office seekers, committees representing the “folks back home,” the simply curious with time on their hands, that have flooded Springfield since the election. Some are lodged in railway cars on sidings, and boarding houses are feeding double shifts.
#14968440
December 1, Saturday

Florida’s legislature is specially convened to consider the issues of the hour.
#14969024
December 3, Monday

The second session of the Thirty-sixth Congress of the United States convenes in Washington. Although a lame-duck affair, it will show surprising life, at least in how much it talks about the crisis of the day.
#14969056
How much longer is this gonna take....? :eh:

*someone bends down and whispers something in Potemkin's ear*

It's going to take how long...??!! :eek: :eek:
#14969071
Potemkin wrote:How much longer is this gonna take....? :eh:

*someone bends down and whispers something in Potemkin's ear*

It's going to take how long...??!! :eek: :eek:

:D I’ll bet that whisper was for Lee’s surrender at Appomattox. The official date is awhile later.
#14969108
Potemkin wrote:How much longer is this gonna take....? :eh:

4 years, 3 months and 1 week?

Ah no that's the European Civil War classic edition, aka WWI, the Western Front. Knock off 9 weeks and you won't be far off.
#14969274
December 4, Tuesday

President James Buchanan sends his message on the State of the Union to Congress. He finds the “state” not too good. Regarding abolition, “The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects.” He says that the slave states should be let alone. The states are sovereign and their rights cannot be interfered with. At the same time he tells the South, “the election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union.” Secession in this instance is unjustifiable. No overt or dangerous act has been committed by the President-elect. “The day of evil may never come unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves. Secession is neither more nor less than revolution.” Calling for calmness and deliberation, the President says he believes slavery is on the way out. As to the forts in South Carolina, President Buchanan believes that aside from execution of the laws the Executive has no authority to decide relations of the Federal government and South Carolina, but if there is an attempt to take the forts by force they will be defended. He proposes a constitutional amendment recognizing the right of property in slaves where it exists and protecting this right in the territories until they should be admitted with or without slavery as their constitutions might prescribe. Fugitive slaves should be returned. Here the President is suggesting remedies no one can live with. Both sides are disappointed by the message: the North because the President opposes secession but proposes no way to meet it; the South because he condemns secession.

The same day the House of Representatives names a special Committee of Thirty-three, one member from each state, to study the condition of the country.
#14969281
Doug64 wrote:December 4, Tuesday

President James Buchanan sends his message on the State of the Union to Congress. He finds the “state” not too good. Regarding abolition, “The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects.” He says that the slave states should be let alone. The states are sovereign and their rights cannot be interfered with. At the same time he tells the South, “the election of any one of our fellow-citizens to the office of President does not of itself afford just cause for dissolving the Union.” Secession in this instance is unjustifiable. No overt or dangerous act has been committed by the President-elect. “The day of evil may never come unless we shall rashly bring it upon ourselves. Secession is neither more nor less than revolution.” Calling for calmness and deliberation, the President says he believes slavery is on the way out. As to the forts in South Carolina, President Buchanan believes that aside from execution of the laws the Executive has no authority to decide relations of the Federal government and South Carolina, but if there is an attempt to take the forts by force they will be defended. He proposes a constitutional amendment recognizing the right of property in slaves where it exists and protecting this right in the territories until they should be admitted with or without slavery as their constitutions might prescribe. Fugitive slaves should be returned. Here the President is suggesting remedies no one can live with. Both sides are disappointed by the message: the North because the President opposes secession but proposes no way to meet it; the South because he condemns secession.


The same day the House of Representatives names a special Committee of Thirty-three, one member from each state, to study the condition of the country.


I thought this might need repeated for those who insist ‘state’s rights’ had nothing to do with the Civil War and it was all about racist Southerners. :)
#14969488
December 5, Wednesday

In Springfield, Illinois, President-elect Lincoln reads a summary of the President’s message to Congress and expresses displeasure that Buchanan places responsibility for secession on the free states.
#14969533
Pants-of-dog wrote:You should keep a running tally of how many slaves died in the south, so that we know how many lives were uselessly lost to racism.

Lmao. That would tell you very little about the lives lost to racism during this period. Your belief only Blacks died from racism is weird. You do know they were racists too? Hispanics were racists. Native Americans were racists. Even many of the abolitionists were racists by current standards.
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