Tara Ross

On this day in 1862, Confederate General Robert E. Lee decides to make a stand! His decision would lead to the bloody Battle of Antietam.
Federal forces were then reeling from their defeat at the Second Battle of Bull Run. (See August 30 history post.) That battle had left Union General John Pope’s army retreating toward Washington, D.C. Abraham Lincoln soon merged Pope’s army into General George McClellan’s Army of the Potomac.
“[D]estroy the rebel army,” Lincoln ordered McClellan.
In the meantime, Lee had decided to invade Maryland. He divided his men, sending some towards Hagerstown and some towards Harper’s Ferry. His directive was written down in Special Order 191—which turned out to be a big problem!
Would you believe that some hapless Confederate soldier used a copy of Order 191 to wrap his cigars? And he dropped those cigars in a field where they were found by two Union soldiers! McClellan was ecstatic, reportedly remarking: “Here is a paper with which if I cannot whip ‘Bobbie Lee,’ I will be willing to go home.”
Hmm. Perhaps it wasn’t quite that easy. A Confederate sympathizer overheard the conversation and got word to Lee that his plans had been discovered.
Fortunately for Lee, the notoriously cautious General McClellan took 18 hours to get his troops moving once he learned of Lee’s order. Lee took the opportunity to block some mountain passes that McClellan would need. On September 14, a battle waged for control of these passes. The battle didn’t go too well for the Confederates, but it did at least delay McClellan’s movements a bit.
McClellan finally made his move on the morning of September 17. Union forces snuck through a cornfield and attacked Lee’s men. The battle quickly became intense. One participant, historian Paul Boyer writes, remembered that the cornfield “was so full of bodies that a man could have walked through it without stepping on the ground.”
A second phase of the fighting occurred on a road that would later become known as Bloody Lane. Confederates became trapped in a low-lying portion of the road. Thousands were killed or wounded.
As if that weren’t enough, a final phase of the battle occurred at Antietam Creek. The Union forces eventually outlasted the Confederates simply because of their overwhelming numbers. They might even have won, except Confederate reinforcements from Harper’s Ferry arrived on the scene at just the right moment. As night fell, the battle was effectively at a stalemate.
The casualties were staggering. According to historian James M. McPherson, the casualties during that single day at Antietam were twice the casualties of the War of 1812, the Mexican War, and the Spanish-American war COMBINED.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, then, Lee retreated back over the Potomac the next day, leaving Union forces in possession of the field. It was a costly (and bare) Union victory, but one that Abraham Lincoln was determined to utilize. Five days later, he issued a proclamation. The Confederate states had until January 1, 1863, to return to the Union. If they did, they could keep their slaves. Any state that refused would be subject to Lincoln’s planned Emancipation Proclamation.
Not one state returned to the fold. Instead, Lincoln would issue his Emancipation Proclamation, a document that freed slaves in the Confederate states, but not the northern states. (Yes, there were some.)
What if the Confederate states had taken Lincoln up on his offer? Would we still say that the Civil War was fought over the issue of slavery?
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The Republicans who declared war on the South didn't give a rats rearend about the slaves, but they did use them as an excuse to wage war on the South. If one takes the time to actually study history, and not just cherry pick the parts out that suit them, they will quickly see that Lincoln as far more interested in preserving the Union, and therefore keeping the South under the control of the North, than he was with freeing any slaves.

"The Confederate states had until January 1, 1863, to return to the Union. If they did, they could keep their slaves."

These words prove that the Civil War was about slavery. It was fought over the right for any state to deny any Constitutional protections to any of its people.

How-in-the-Hell does preserving the Union put the South under the North? Pure Neo-Confederate propaganda.

Why did Lincoln not free the slaves held in the North under the Proclamation?

"The Proclamation was based on the president's constitutional authority as commander in chief of the armed forces; it was not a law passed by Congress."

I would say that slavery was just one of several agent causes of the war and that secession was the end cause.

You can throw in taxation and probably more as agent causes. Few things happen in a vacuum.

Proves nothing. Lincoln explicitly stated BEFORE the Confederacy attacked Union troops and ships that he was even willing to support a new Constitutional Amendment making slavery permanent if that's what it took to prevent a war.

The Confederacy knew such an Amendment would never pass, needing 75% of the states to ratify it and there was no way that 75% percent of the Union would go along with the evil that was slavery. So they broke off and started a war.

That's right. Lincoln didn't want to ban slavery (although that would have eventually happened anyway) but there wasn't any support in the North for expanding slavery to the West. Lincoln should have massed troops in Kansas and called it a day.

Davis did not give Lincoln that chance.

Tough to argue with this.




P

John Marszalek: Giles distinguished professor emeritus of history at Mississippi State University
"When Abraham Lincoln took his oath of office, the last thing on his mind was starting a civil war that would consume his entire presidency. He did, however, believe that he had a constitutional duty to prevent the breakup of the Union, which he and so many Americans viewed in mystic terms.
Preserving the Union meant doing what it took to prevent its dismemberment. Fort Sumter became the symbol of the ability or inability of the national government to maintain control over its territory, and the ability or inability of the Confederates to eject Federals from what they considered to be their land. Lincoln knew he had to hold on to that fort or admit the success of Confederate secession and the dissolution of the Union. Jefferson Davis and the Confederates believed just the opposite.
Ironically, both Lincoln and Davis hoped that the other side would go on the attack first and thus lose the moral high ground. Lincoln held fast, but the Confederacy blinked and Southern cannon opened fire on Fort Sumter.
Did Lincoln’s actions to preserve the Union maneuver the Confederates into going on the attack first? Historian Charles Ramsdell certainly thought so in his famous Journal of Southern History essay in 1937. This was hardly the case, however. Southerners were only too happy to attack the fort on their own. Whether Lincoln tried to resupply Sumter or not, it seems probable that the South would have attacked anyway. The Confederacy had gone too far already in its determination to be a separate nation to do anything less."

Was slavery legal when the war began?

Well, I'll give it a try anyway. The slaves, rightly or wrongly, were not "people", that is citizens, of the states in which they were held. They were property. Constitutional protections do not apply to property, except that it cannot be taken from a citizen without just compensation, which I have never heard of being offered to the slaveholders. The slaveholders thus were the ones being denied Constitutional protections. $.02

They weren't being denied anything, because there was no law or Constitutional Amendment to free the slaves prior to the South starting the war. An Amendment never would have passed, since the South had more than 25% of the states.

They were afraid of that happening, but it hadn't happened yet.

The war was fought over states rights, not slavery. Simply coming back into the union would have preserved slavery, thus no need for the war.

It could have been offered at any time. Was there ever an effort made to negotiate a buy-out for the slaveholders? I don't know. Fact remains, the slaves were not citizens of the states they were in and so they were not being denied any rights; they had no rights to be denied. Not saying it was right, but just that that's how it was.

Yup, the right to own other human beings.

Oh, and the Nazis didn't murder all those Jews; they died of typhus, or prickly heat, or toenail fungus.

If the north cared about the slaves, why did the 1st 13th amendment get passed? Who passed it? What did it say?

Not a fan of slavery, but not that big a fan of paying their ancestors not to work indefinitely, either.

If I had a choice I'd go with "wrongly" on this one.

And, as has been noticed, this is the same argument the Nazis used regarding the Jews.

"Not all of those who appear human are in fact so. Woe to him who forgets it!"






P

10-4 on that, regardless of ancestry. Overall, more whites are on the dole than blacks. Percentage-wise, I can't say. The poor sections of this country are full of welfare dynasties, SS cheats and drug addicts, often under the same roof. Many in this class are also professional thieves, preying on the working folks. They even steal the electrical panels off porches. My former mother-in-law couldn't keep a phone because thieves kept stealing the cable. One got killed trying to steal the power lines. This stuff doesn't make the news, except when they make a big drug bust somewhere.

Jobs are the answer, but there aren't any where this stuff goes on. Gotta get out.

Many do not seem to understand that the opposition for the western expansion of slavery was not very much at all about the opposition to negro slavery, but for the opposition to cheap labor competition. That and political power. There was a tremendous amount of political power struggles in that time period, as much and possibly more so than seen today. Northern politicians that had gained political control consistently passed huge taxes on exported products mostly produced in the southern states, such as cotton and tobacco. This amounted to somewhere between 70 to 80% of the entire federal revenue sources. To make matters worse, very little federal money was spent to the benefit of any of the south, the vast majority being spent on projects to the specific benefit of northern interests by northern controlled politicians. Incidentally, few may realize that in the original constitution of the State of Oregon it was specifically forbidden for any negro or mulatto to settle there. This was also the law in none other than Abraham Lincoln's home state of Illinois. Doesn't quite sound like these states were so so welcoming to negroes. Yes, there was an abolitionist movement in both the north and some actually in the south. However, the war was NOT a great crusade by the north to free the poor oppressed negroes from the evil southern slaveholders. Slavery was a problem for the south and was certainly going to have to be dealt with somehow. There were a number of radical abolitionist groups, such as those that supported John Brown and the earlier Nat Turner rebellion, that openly advocated and promoted the actual murder of all white southerners, actual slave owners or not. These were the anarchists of that time. How would you feel about that if you were a white non slave owning southerner who was under the real threat of anarchists that were inciting slaves to brutally murder your family simply because they were white and lived in the south? That is exactly what such "heros" as John Brown did. Brown himself and his followers hacked to death with axes Kansas citizens in front of their children and sometimes their children first in front of them before killing them as well because they would not support them. I'll bet that few know that the first person that the great John Brown killed on his raid on the U.S. Arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia was a free black man that refused to join with him. I am not making excuses for slavery, nor am I going to buy into the great and glorious Union bull$hit either. This after war bull$hit put forth by the northern states to justify their treatment of the south before and after the war is just that. Bull$hit. I am an avid student of history of this time period and while I do readily admit a southern affection, I try to look at things objectively. Yes, there certainly was blame on both sides as is usual with these things. However, if all of the facts are examined, the south was pushed into this great tragedy.

No,it was over egregious and obvious spelling errors.

For the record, I'd go with "wrongly" as well. But this is now and that was then.

I can't imagine the physical, mental, and spiritual strength it took for those slaves to endure what they did. It had to have been awful. But it was the best thing that ever happened as far as their descendants are concerned.

You mention western expansion, and that was one of the great fears of the South. As new states were formed to the west, most were destined to be anti-slavery either from the start or would become so fairly quickly and the South would lose even more power in Congress leading to anti-slavery laws. Eventually the South would almost surely drop below the 25% necessary to stop an Amendment to free slaves.

The South could keep slavery intact long term only if they split off to form a country consisting of purely slave holding states. This is what the top Democrat politicians and rich landowners attempted to do - all while trumpeting in the press that they were splitting off because of various things like states rights and discriminatory taxes. Just as the Democrats of today say they are fighting in the streets against fascism - when they are really fighting freedom of speech. Democrat political machines lie, now and always.

Was the Civil War fought over slavery?

Look, I'll take Alexander Stephen at his word. In his Cornerstone Speech in 1861 he states:


Did the South secede over Slavery? I think so.

Did the North fight to free the slaves? I think not. The major motivation for the North was the preservation of the Union. To Southerners, it might have looked like that meant that a bunch of Yankee meddlers wanted to screw with the South's "Peculiar Institutions" and subjugate the south once and forever, but try and look at it from a Northern perspective.

1) Since the time of the Revolution, the South had been running itself as a throwback to the Middle Ages. Serfs had been replaced by Negro slaves, but the idea was you were only as important as the number of humans you owned. John C. Calhoun said it best in his speech to the Senate in 1837:


2) The North and the South were forever at odds on the subject of the sovereignty of states. The kind of system envisaged by the Kentucky and Virginia Resolutions just were not going to make for a long term workable solution. The United States of America, if it was going to survive in the world needed a strong Federal government. A system whereby the states could nullify federal law just was not going to fly. Oh sure, all the best and brilliant Southerners believed in it, but they were also sending their kids to Europe to be schooled. The Brits loved telling Americans how goofy and backward we were. Of course they're going to come home with ideas that were contrary to American ideals. My belief is that the US would have been picked apart in the 20th Century and divvied up by the world powers if we had not fought the Civil War to the conclusion it had.

3) The North was booming with Industrialization, Immigration, and technological advancement. The Southern way of life discouraged Industry. It was an unpopular place to immigrate, relative to the North, and a lot of the new technologies coming into common practice in the North were rare in the South.

You only have to look at the wartime experience of the North and the South to see where this was all going. In the North, folks hardly noticed the war was going on in day-to-day experience. In the South, there was privation, starvation, food riots, and mass confiscation of personal property. Those who got the South going down the road of secession and war were not thinking about the general welfare of its citizens and least of all its African non-citizens. This was a bunch of elites who wanted to take their nation to ruin over the issue of whether or not you could own another human. They were blind to everything else.

One other thing, before I start hearing about this "War of Northern Aggression" being about Southerners defending their homes: In his memoir, U.S. Grant states that after Vicksburg and Gettysburg in July 1863, he was using a strategic estimate of 1 regiment/day loss to the Confederate ranks due to desertion. That means a thousand men were quietly laying down their arms and going home and no one at home was particularly upset at their defection. Yes, 85% of the eligible males went to war, but they didn't stay at it, despite this being a defense of their homeland. Something important brought them home and ended up being far more compelling than Jeff Davis and the Confederacy. Don't get me wrong. I'm saying they were cowards. I'm just saying a lot of those that took up arms against the Union were not all that happy with how it went.


And another thing, on a personal note, I really did not have all that much of an opinion on this when I joined the Campfire back in 2002. My Dad's family came from Germany in 1923. What should I care? Since then I've done a lot of reading and investigation of family history, and a lot of it was driven by what I read here. If nothing else, I have only to look at Lewis Davisdon Williams my great great grandfather. I don't have all the details yet on his service. However, I do know he was born in Wales and had come to the US less than 8 years before the outbreak of hostilities. He volunteered for service shortly after Virginia seceeded and stayed in until 1865. He was an artilleryman. He probably served at Shiloh. You got to ask yourself, why did this guy, with a pregnant wife and a new farmstead in NE Ohio, drop everything and run off to war?

No, it wasn't to free the slaves.
No, it was not to subjugate the South, defile their women and loot their farms.

He did it, because in Wales he was a harness maker. His dad had been a harness maker. His son would be a harness maker. When Lewis came here, it was to be something new and different. My great grandfather, Elmer Ellsworth Williams, was able to grow up in a country that did not dictate your life based on what your father did. Lewis came here to be free of all that. He was an educated man and a devout Methodist. He chose to go to war to preserve-- okay we call it The Union, but to Lewis it was a way of life that was far different than what he'd faced under British Rule. It was also certainly going to be different from what he'd face in the South. It was an ideal of self-determination. Guys like Lewis did not want to be judged by how many other men they owned as a value of their wealth, their standing in the community, or the estimation of their peers.

Not to mention spacing issues.





P

There sure are a lot of speeches by both northerners and southerners given about slavery in an attempt to prove that the Civil War wasn't about slavery. 😁

People back then sure spent a lot of time and effort talking about something that had nothing to do with their reasons for war.

Whatever the war was or was not about, it should have never happened. It should have never had to come to secession, and when it did it shouldn't have then came to war. I know /i wouldn't have been signing up to invade the South if I were alive then.

Henryseale, thank you for what I believe to be the best post ever written on this subject. I agree with your sentiments entirely. I have argued in the past that most Southerners did not fight so they could keep slaves, and northerners fought to union rather than end slavery.

That said I want to ask the same basic question in this simple way. If there was no slavery would there have been a civil war? The answer: NO, ergo.........

I really don't see any other way it could have gone. Too much money invested in slaves for the power players running the southern states to give up slavery willingly, and eventually it had to go away. Even if the South had successfully split off peachefully, there would have been insurrection after insurrection, border disputes with southerners chasing their fleeing slaves into the North, and probably a later war with the North over accusations of northern instigators starting slave riots. Which would have happened.

The only peaceful resolution would have been for the people of the south - the vast majority that were non-slave holders - to massively override their neighbors who owned slaves and vote to free or to return the slaves to their homeland. But that was a loooong way away for many of the states.

So much for freeing the slaves.

The war is over. Maybe the slaves won? Their descendants won't give up their EBT cards after review of this conversation. Lincoln was a shyster first, a dick second, and lastly a short range target. Their was little honor to be found in the Union camp, maybe a small part in that of the South. 150 years have passed.....let us contemplate something more joyful. Mushrooms sprouting in the Mideast for example, or Hillary's suicide? Or P.O. Ackley's line of cartridges.

The war was over secession.
The secession was over, among other things, slavery.

The North should have evacuated Ft. Sumter and allowed the South the human right of freedom of association.

Which is what the North wanted of the south but the south refused that "freedom" to others. 😉

Atlanta lost.

And THAT is the bottom line as to what the War came down to. At great cost it was decided for all time that they were people not property. All men created equal...

Try selling that to the "colored folks."

Regardless of the reason for the US Civil War, all North America is still paying for slavery.

African slavery as practiced in the US was the worst mistake in the history of the human race.

Geez! The entire war was fought over who had to retain custodianship over the former slaves. Nobody wanted it! Ergo, Fort Sumpter!

Bury it!


Now!

Bob, if only we could.

With things going on, like in St Louis Now...

and what went on in Baltimore, Ferguson etc...

one has to stop and wonder, what this nation would be like
if we had never allowed slavery on our shores.. and we didn't
have all of these black folks brought here....

the ones here would be living in Mudhuts, burning and killing each other in Africa
instead of here...

actually kinda of a nice thought....

Detroit wouldn't look like it does now...

Well my friend, Im going to have some more whiskey and eat a ham steak,,,, or two.

Enjoy the moment. Woody/Bob.

I don't this is historically correct.

Doc

Among other things that was to garner support in the north. We do the same chit today. Remember Saddam when he went into Kuait? We couldn't say we were going in to protect investments or the petrol-dollar so we put up this "He's killing babies" bullshit. then when we went in the second time, weapons of mass destruction, he's killing his people, brutal dictator raping women at will.

Big issue in the civil war was the fact that the bulk of tax revenue came from southern ports. Now since the house is done by population and the north had a larger one that money flowed north.


War is about money and money is about power. Ain't got a dang thing to do with liberty, national security in most cases or anything else. Money and power, that's it.

Lincoln's Second Inaugural speech

SATURDAY, MARCH 4, 1865

Fellow-Countrymen:

At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first. Then a statement somewhat in detail of a course to be pursued seemed fitting and proper. Now, at the expiration of four years, during which public declarations have been constantly called forth on every point and phase of the great contest which still absorbs the attention and engrosses the energies of the nation, little that is new could be presented. The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself, and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

On the occasion corresponding to this four years ago all thoughts were anxiously directed to an impending civil war. All dreaded it, all sought to avert it. While the inaugural address was being delivered from this place, devoted altogether to saving the Union without war, insurgent agents were in the city seeking to destroy it without war--seeking to dissolve the Union and divide effects by negotiation. Both parties deprecated war, but one of them would make war rather than let the nation survive, and the other would accept war rather than let it perish, and the war came.

One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease. Each looked for an easier triumph, and a result less fundamental and astounding. Both read the same Bible and pray to the same God, and each invokes His aid against the other. It may seem strange that any men should dare to ask a just God's assistance in wringing their bread from the sweat of other men's faces, but let us judge not, that we be not judged. The prayers of both could not be answered. That of neither has been answered fully. The Almighty has His own purposes. "Woe unto the world because of offenses; for it must needs be that offenses come, but woe to that man by whom the offense cometh." If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."

With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.

I'll tell you one thing that's for certain -- We'd all live in a lot better America if them Southerners woulda just picked their own damned cotton. I'll bet we've spent a million bucks for every dime they saved on labor. Too bad we can't still deport the criminals of their descendants back to Africa.

Robert E LEE: So far from engaging in a war to perpetuate slavery, I am rejoiced that Slavery is abolished. I believe it will be greatly for the interest of the South. So fully am I satisfied of this that I would have cheerfully lost all that I have lost by the war, and have suffered all that I have suffered to have this object attained.