Comments by "Digital Nomad" (@digitalnomad9985) on "The History Chap"
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The Emancipation Proclamation freed every slave Lincoln had the authority to free. To free the rest required a Constitutional amendment. The Confederate statesmen and journalists of the time made it clear that the war was over slavery as far as they were concerned. The tariff was signed by Lincolns Democrat presidential predecessor and would have failed the congressional vote had not several states already seceded. Ironically, fearing the end of slavery the south brought it about and as a secondary issue (by their own lights) brought about the new tariff as well.
I grant you that Lincoln would not have started a war over slavery or a tariff either one. But he didn't start the war. The Confederacy started the war over slavery, and their own words insist on the fact. In the end Lincoln and the nation largely embraced emancipation as the meaning of the war as if the South had talked them into it "who, in the midst of peace and prosperity, have plunged a nation into war, dark and cruel war; who dared and badgered us to battle, insulted our flag, seized our arsenals and forts that were left in the honorable custody of peaceful ordnance sergeants; seized and made 'prisoners of war' the very garrisons sent to protect your people against negroes and Indians long before any overt act was committed by the, to you, hated Lincoln Government….[You] turned loose your privateers to plunder unarmed ships; expelled Union families by the thousands; burned their houses and declared by an act of your Congress the confiscation of all debts due Northern men for goods had and received." (Quoting a letter from Sherman) "The Battle Hymn of the Republic" is clear enough, and it was written during the war and sung by the Union troops, thus not a historical revision after the fact, notwithstanding that Lincoln seems to have had a religious conversion from agnosticism to Christianity during the war.
It could be argued that the presence of federal troops on federal land claimed by the Confederacy was an act of war. But an act of war isn't war, it's a legalized justification for war. The act and policy of pursuing national goals by the battery of deadly force is war. Beauregard started the war, with the approval of the planter oligarchs who were driving the events all along. The same folks who engineered the Dred Scott ruling, which "evinces a design" to make every state a slave state. Having themselves appealed to that penultimate court, they must abide the verdict.
The pre-Lincoln Democrat secretary of war diverted supplies to southern garrisons which were seized by the rebels. The Confederacy, out of all its vast territory and many cities, chose Richmond for its capitol, in order to have an excuse to amass an army at the border of the District of Columbia, more than ten times closer to Washington than to Richmond. To this point, Lincoln had still held out hope of a peaceful resolution to the dispute, but leaving a hostile army camped by your jugular vein is not a stable or survivable situation. In response to the threat, Lincoln called for volunteers. It was always the plan of the oligarchs to dictate terms to the Union at the point of a sword. They thought that they could do this because they thought the martial qualities of their "Norman" blood and the greater horsemanship of the southern cavaliers would defeat the "Saxon" shopkeepers of the North. We know they thought this last part because they said it in southern newspapers. It was true enough that Southerners as a group had more skill with guns and blades and horses. The south was more rural with more hunting, fewer and inferior roads and railroads, and a cultural penchant for settling disputes with violence. This contrast of lifestyle was particularly true comparing with the northeast. The northwest was about as rural and undeveloped, if not quite as violent. The south had already been warming to the notion of settling the slavery question by force with pre-war events in Missouri and Kansas. To use Lincoln's phrase "an appeal from ballots to bullets".
In the northeast, with a larger middle class and better infrastructure, much of the population was accustomed to getting around in wagons, steamboats, or trains. In fact, the Union had a hard time mustering cavalry. It wasn't until about Gettysburg that the Army of the Potomac had about as many cavalry troopers as the Army of Northern Virginia. Cavalry did not at this time have its traditional "shock" value in attack as many were slow to realize (except in some small engagements). Cavalry's remaining role was in raiding, pursuit of routed troops, and, above all, tactical reconnaissance. One of the reasons JEB Stuart was having such a field day at the start of the war was that his cavalry outnumbered his enemies'. Until about Gettysburg, the Union army was getting much of its recon from Pinkerton spies, who typically reported Confederate numbers as twice as great as fact. That was also the reason Stuart failed at Gettysburg. He was in enemy territory facing experienced cavalry in equal numbers. But I digress.
Don't get me wrong, I do not subscribe to the radical blanket contempt some leftists adopt to the south, or even the wartime south. I have some respect and sympathy for the Confederate soldier, particularly the rank-and-file, often ignorant and easily manipulated by their educated, influential and powerful politicians and the South's much more stratified social and economic structure. For the officers, my opinion varies on an individual basis. Longstreet deserves respect, if only for his tireless efforts at reconciliation after the war. Nathan B. Forrest ought to have been hung for the Centralia massacre, and is culpable for his part in the formation and operation of the KKK after the war. Most of the rest of the officers fall somewhere between these extremes in the moral scale. Stonewall Jackson was a bit of a kook, but a pious one. For the politicians and power brokers in the south who destroyed their own states and thousands of lives unjustly and irrationally in an ineptly and unjustly conceived attempt to defend their wealth and corruption, notably but not exclusively Jefferson Davis and Beauregard, there is room for nothing but contempt, and any southerner with perspective and self respect shares that contempt. The "Knights of the Cause" were a mixed and colorful bag with many good qualities distributed among them, but the "cause" itself was execrable.
Ultimately, and charm notwithstanding, the best Confederate was a dupe of evil and calculating men. One of the exhausted and half-starved soldiers of the Army of Northern Virginia after the surrender at Appomattox was heard to say "I'll never love a country again." It makes you want to weep, humanity steamrollered once again by human nature and the human condition exacerbated by the machinations and deceits of the great Enemy. "Even so, come quickly, Lord Jesus."
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