Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Understanding The Civil War More Clearly

Ike understood that very well as his force build-up got rolling.

Yes, and for a while we slipped a fungus in the hold so that when the cargo ship reached its destination, the hold was full of useless goo. They caught us at it, sued, the case was heard in secret, and they won.

Virginia had no choice, West Virginia, largely separated as it was by mountains from Virginia proper, was occupied early on by Union troops and Confederate attempts to retake it were unsuccessful....

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/West_Virginia_in_the_American_Civil_War

As for the Constitutionality of the move, an interesting paradox. The US Constitution required that Virginia consent, but Virginia had already seceded, so a provisional government was formed from Unionist residents to give consent.

I seriously doubt that Virginia ever formally recognised the loss of West Virginia under the Confederacy.

Birdwatcher

Interesting thing about Jackson, he was otherwise as anti-Federalist as anyone. If money is really the root of politics and power, Jackson actually took apart and terminated the centralized government Bank of the US and handed the funds, hence control, over to the States.

Part of where Jackson screwed up is insisting on a return to silver and gold for real estate transactions, creating economic chaos for which his successor in office Van Buren took the fall.

Quite apart from politics, an interesting thing about Jefferson is that he took up with his mixed-blood slave mistress only after his wife's death when he was in his forties, the girl was fourteen at the time.

Very possibly she loved him, and he her. Being his mistress was probably the very best deal she could get in life in that time and place. Reportedly he had promised at the outset to free her and their children, which he eventually did.

The surreal thing is that some of their children were named according to the wishes of Jefferson's friends, which seems to indicate the relationship was not entirely hidden from Jefferson's social circle.

After being freed at least two of the Jefferson children moved north to Ohio, where one was able to live as a White and even IIRC marry a White woman.

Whatever his feeling on the issue, Jefferson never did free many of his 100+ slaves, he couldn't afford the catastrophic loss of capital that would represent. After his death some 130 slaves (??IIRC) were sold off to pay accmulated debts owed against his estate.

All corrections accepted.

Birdwatcher

Several of those counties were drug into West Virginia without their consent. Many were sending troops to the South.

You are determined to get the last word on this subject and even if you succeed you will still be wrong.

As were more than a few Southern counties, at least by ballot.



No actually, Jackson was termed here as a dictatorialist tyrant and it was said that Virginia voluntarily let West Virginia secede.

Ironically in his day Jackson was seen very much as the President of the common man and in terms of finances anyway did more to advance the power of states relative to the Federal Government than almost anyone.

Despite being a wealthy member of the Southern Plantation class he was almost religiously pro-Union, perhaps in part because he had fought in both prior wars FOR the United States. He was also a great expansionist, had invaded Spanish Florida on our behalf and was actively involved in actively supporting (to the extent of sending troops) the independence of Texas.

Such was his prominence in his day that, twenty-five years after his death, pro-Union men from both North and South were avidly citing Jackson as their inspiration.

Birdwatcher

Birdwatcher

Some might find this interesting:

A Digest of the Military and Naval Laws
of the Confederate States,
From the Commencement of the Provisional Congress
to the End of the First Congress
Under the Permanent Constitution:
Electronic Edition.
Confederate States of America.

http://docsouth.unc.edu/imls/digest/digest.html

This is some really GOOD stuff.

I had cause to be up in Missouri this past week, and stopped in at the Wilson's Creek Battlefield Park.

I found this quote of Lincoln's from 1855 to be interesting...



Actually I dunno that anyone has documented purposeful slave breeding per se, tho several have looked. Might be a woman, able to bear but one child a year but fertile all year round, had enough chances of conceiving already without needing to bring guys in to make it so.

Sorta related, noted Southern diarist Mary Boykin Chestnut on the topic, a highly intelligent woman who moved in the highest Confederate circles....

http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Mary_Boykin_Chesnut

Like the patriarchs of our old men live all in one house with their wives and their concubines, and the mulattoes one sees in every family exactly resemble the white children—and every lady tells you who is the father of all the mulatto children in everybody's household, but those in her own she seems to think drop from the clouds, or pretends so to think.

...and entirely unrelated, but a quote of Mrs. Chestnut's worthy of a sig line....

...it is the habit of all men to fancy that in some inscrutable way their wives are the cause of all evil in their lives."

Back to Lincoln, here he is explaining himself in 1855, the letter from which the above quote was drawn....

http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/speed.htm

You inquire where I now stand. That is a disputed point -- I think I am a whig; but others say there are no whigs, and that I am an abolitionist.

When I was in Washington I voted for the Wilmot Proviso as good as forty times, and I never heard of any one attempting to unwhig me for that. I now do no more than oppose the extension of slavery.

I am not a Know-Nothing. That is certain. How could I be? How can any one who abhors the oppression of negroes, be in favor or degrading classes of white people? Our progress in degeneracy appears to me to be pretty rapid.

As a nation, we began by declaring that "all men are created equal." We now practically read it "all men are created equal, except negroes" When the Know-Nothings get control, it will read "all men are created equal, except negroes, and foreigners, and Catholics."

When it comes to this I should prefer emigrating to some country where they make no pretence of loving liberty -- to Russia, for instance, where despotism can be taken pure, and without the base alloy of hypocracy.

FYI the Whigs were a major political party in the 1830's to 1850's favoring a US bank, tariffs and protectionism, formed in opposition to that OTHER staunch Unionist, the otherwise States-rights guy Andrew Jackson. The party ended over the question of allowing slavery into the territories.

Birdwatcher

I just read that quoted in "Albions Seed" last night, as recommended by Joe Bob.

Sycamore

Well Uncle Abe, if you don't like the 24 hr campfire, don't log on!

Sycamore

I'm thinking Mary Chestnut's wartime journals are a must-read, so vividly does that woman's personality spring off of the pages

Meanwhile, specific to Missouri, it was claimed around here that Missouri at first asserted a sort of armed neutrality, and later tipped her hand when invaded by Lincoln's armies.

Some truth in that, except that even before that the Governor's Missouri State Guard was early on drilling in preparation of joining the Confederacy, even having Jeff Davis covertly send a couple of 12 pounders to batter down the walls of the state armory to access the rifles therein. The Unionist Wide Awakes, who occupied the armory, then launching a pre-emptive strike to arrest 'em.

The real problem for the Confederates later on being that Missouri was on the whole a Union-majority state.

I got a lot of photos of the surprisingly pretty Wilson's Creek Battlefield, and I'll post 'em later. August 1861 General Nathaniel Lyon siezed the initiative and stole a march on even so august (in Texas) a luminary as General Ben McCulloch and surprised 12,000 Confederates with less than half that number of men.

Why a classic pincer movement failed, tho perfectly executed against the Confederates as it was, had much to do with the fact that the Iowa troops present were wearing grey, causing fatal confusion to the Union side at a critical turn in the battle.

Lyon, already wounded twice, died early-on while leading his men. That both sides kept at it for five hours on a hundred degree August Missouri day, is testimony to both.

Technical Confederate victory but a strategic loss, the hammer blow stalled out their momentum on this first year of the war,and they were unable to follow up against the retreating Federals.



Birdwatcher