The Civil War: Everything You Wanted to Know but Were too Afraid to Ask!

[Mr. Mercanto]

We're hot, folks!  

[GeneralPITA]

Hotter than the new v0.75 patch thread, but with fewer contributors  

[Wandering1]

Clearly it's time to start the Mercanto Talk Show, if people are looking, but not responding.

[Mr. Mercanto]

5 minutes ago, Wandering1 said:

Clearly it's time to start the Mercanto Talk Show, if people are looking, but not responding.

This is the best comment on the thread

[Aetius]

1 hour ago, Mr. Mercanto said:

Stauffer's article is interesting but highly problematic. Kevin Levine, a leading historian in the field of the Black Confederate myth, responds in this brief essay. http://cwmemory.com/2015/01/20/john-stauffer-goes-looking-for-black-confederates-and-comes-up-empty-again/

And Levine is overly pedantic, focusing too narrowly on official Confederate records and ignoring other evidence. For example:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2006.05.0375%3Aarticle%3D21

An example of a newspaper being a little loose with facts? Could be. There's no way for us to know today. And regardless of the the actual details, the historical record is clear that Union soldiers and civilians feared the use of blacks in combat by the South and believed it had occurred, and used that as an argument for allowing blacks to enlist and fight for the Union - which they did, in large numbers.

1 hour ago, Mr. Mercanto said:

Focusing on the collation of editorial views on secession, though interesting, is not really reflective of the question at hand, that being the legality of said action. As it happens, the people voted overwhelming for Lincoln, despite his declarations that secession was illegal as early as 1859.

And what possible evidence could we have besides written opinions, since secession had never come up in court (and probably couldn't, given its nature)? That's not the only evidence, either. William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, supported secession ... by the North.

The last part is a myth. Lincoln was a deeply unpopular candidate, and a deeply unpopular President throughout his time in office. He was elected with only 39.8% of the popular vote, using a strategy that leveraged the larger electoral vote counts of a few key Northern states and the disunity of his three significant opponents. He wasn't even on the ballot in many Southern states.

In fact, Lincoln was so unpopular that he had to be smuggled into Washington DC to give his inauguration speech. Larry Tagg, the author of The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, estimates that his approval rating in modern terms would have been around 25%. And even people who voted for him didn't necessarily agree that secession was illegal, nor did they necessarily support using force to keep the Union together.

Edited February 14, 2017 by Aetius

[GeneralPITA]

Aetius, how is it that Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in some southern states? 

I wouldn't rely on approval ratings data from 150 years ago. Gallup polls predicted a shattering Trump defeat and look where we are now...and that's with modern methods, the internet, etc. Polls are notoriously inaccurate. 

 

 

[Mr. Mercanto]

1 hour ago, Aetius said:

And Levine is overly pedantic, focusing too narrowly on official Confederate records and ignoring other evidence. For example:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2006.05.0375%3Aarticle%3D21

An example of a newspaper being a little loose with facts? Could be. There's no way for us to know today. And regardless of the the actual details, the historical record is clear that Union soldiers and civilians feared the use of blacks in combat by the South and believed it had occurred, and used that as an argument for allowing blacks to enlist and fight for the Union - which they did, in large numbers.

And what possible evidence could we have besides written opinions, since secession had never come up in court (and probably couldn't, given its nature)? That's not the only evidence, either. William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, supported secession ... by the North.

The last part is a myth. Lincoln was a deeply unpopular candidate, and a deeply unpopular President throughout his time in office. He was elected with only 39.8% of the popular vote, using a strategy that leveraged the larger electoral vote counts of a few key Northern states and the disunity of his three significant opponents. He wasn't even on the ballot in many Southern states.

In fact, Lincoln was so unpopular that he had to be smuggled into Washington DC to give his inauguration speech. Larry Tagg, the author of The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, estimates that his approval rating in modern terms would have been around 25%. And even people who voted for him didn't necessarily agree that secession was illegal, nor did they necessarily support using force to keep the Union together.

 

This getting a smidge anti-intellectual and a bit pedantic. You are making some statements that are hard to support, such as claiming that people who voted for Lincoln didn't support him, without explaining how you could possibly know this. You also draw conclusions which aren't really supported by the evidence, such as assuming that threats to assassinate Lincoln somehow reflect his unpopularity. Speaking of evidence, anecdotal evidence really isn't helpful here.

 

Also, Levine is an excellent scholar with excellent research. His work shouldn't be simply dismissed.

Union soldiers occasionally feared black Rebs, but rarely. Many more feared that Jackson had captured Washington in 1862. In WW2 there were rumours that Hitler had flying tanks. Just because people are afraid of something doesn't mean it's real. Again, this kind of evidence is anecdotal and unhelpful. I think you need to be more selective. 

Lincoln enjoyed the plurality of support. In a four way election, a simple majority is nearly impossible. 39.8 is pretty impressive for a man not on 14 state ballots.  His popularity despite his lack of presence on those state ballots rather reinforces my point. The people knew he firmly believed in a perpetual Union and elected him. He enjoyed more votes then any other candidate. This alone should prove his ideas were not fringe. He also participated in a long history of 

Written evidence would be things like ballots cast in votes supporting Lincoln. His Union party in 1864 won the overwhelming  support, more so then in 1860. I feel like you are ignoring this. In lieu of this evidence, you really haven't provided much of substance.

Please avoid anecdotals. Garrison's views are extremely complicated and not really relevant here. Yes he wanted Northern Secession, he also opposed resisting Southern secession...until the EP, at which point he supported the war. Regardless, its a bit absurd to claim that Lincoln was part of a minority fringe movement when he was the president, and then act as if Garrison was representative of vasts swaths of people. By the Civil War, Garrison was an outcast even within the Abolitionist movement, which remained fringe until after the guns sounded on the coast of the Palmetto State.  Unlike Lincoln, he actually was a fringe leader. Even his biographers acknowledge that he had little impact. His relevance to your point is nebulous. 

I also would appreciate it if you worked from your evidence more concretely, and drew conclusions from them more carefully. Lincoln was smuggled into Washington. This was because there were threats to assassinate him. It is silly to then simply assume that this was because his ideas were universally unpopular. When Lincoln was actually assassinated, he was at the height of his political fame. You may also have heard of Kennedy and Reagan, two rather popular fellows who were also the targets of assassination. Assassination, by its very nature, is really only about one person's opinion of the target. 

 

Edited February 14, 2017 by Mr. Mercanto
Edited when I realised I had more to say...sorry.

[Mr. Mercanto]

1 hour ago, GeneralPITA said:

Aetius, how is it that Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in some southern states? 

I wouldn't rely on approval ratings data from 150 years ago. Gallup polls predicted a shattering Trump defeat and look where we are now...and that's with modern methods, the internet, etc. Polls are notoriously inaccurate. 

 

 

The states could determine who would be on the ballot. The Slave states (except Kentucky) would not allow their citizens to vote Lincoln. Despite this, Lincoln enjoyed the plurality of votes.

 

nothing wrong with using these numbers, I have as well. The issue I have is how he is using them, which is highly misleading. Lincoln had 39.8. The other three candidates split the remaining 60.2 Aetrius implied this was some kind of defeat. It's actually a contextual landslide. Not mentioning that it was a four way election is a problematic and misleading omission.

Edited February 14, 2017 by Mr. Mercanto
Edited because, after consulting several experts, I have determined that 100 - 39.8 = 60.2 Not 41.2

[GeneralPITA]

8 minutes ago, Mr. Mercanto said:

The states could determine who would be on the ballot. The Slave states (except Kentucky) would not allow their citizens to vote Lincoln. Despite this, Lincoln enjoyed the plurality of votes.

 

nothing wrong with using these numbers, I have as well. The issue I have is how he is using them, which is highly misleading. Lincoln had 39.8. The other three candidates split the remaining 41.2. Aetrius implied this was some kind of defeat. It's actually a contextual landslide. Not mentioning that it was a four way election is a problematic and misleading omission.

Tried to trick us with statistics foolery you say? 

Interesting.

 

[Mr. Mercanto]

2 minutes ago, GeneralPITA said:

Tried to trick us with statistics foolery you say? 

Interesting.

 

Yeah :p. When people reference the popular support Lincoln enjoyed in 1860 it's usually meant to be a bit misleading . 39.8 seems pretty bad until you realize there were three other parties lol

[Mr. Mercanto]

1 hour ago, Aetius said:

And Levine is overly pedantic, focusing too narrowly on official Confederate records and ignoring other evidence. For example:

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A2006.05.0375%3Aarticle%3D21

An example of a newspaper being a little loose with facts? Could be. There's no way for us to know today. And regardless of the the actual details, the historical record is clear that Union soldiers and civilians feared the use of blacks in combat by the South and believed it had occurred, and used that as an argument for allowing blacks to enlist and fight for the Union - which they did, in large numbers.

And what possible evidence could we have besides written opinions, since secession had never come up in court (and probably couldn't, given its nature)? That's not the only evidence, either. William Lloyd Garrison, the abolitionist, supported secession ... by the North.

The last part is a myth. Lincoln was a deeply unpopular candidate, and a deeply unpopular President throughout his time in office. He was elected with only 39.8% of the popular vote, using a strategy that leveraged the larger electoral vote counts of a few key Northern states and the disunity of his three significant opponents. He wasn't even on the ballot in many Southern states.

In fact, Lincoln was so unpopular that he had to be smuggled into Washington DC to give his inauguration speech. Larry Tagg, the author of The Unpopular Mr. Lincoln, estimates that his approval rating in modern terms would have been around 25%. And even people who voted for him didn't necessarily agree that secession was illegal, nor did they necessarily support using force to keep the Union together.

I wanted to add this last part in a second post, because this is important.

If we must debate, and honestly, I don't want to, you would not believe how boring it gets to disprove the same old arguments. I must insist on a few things. Try to keep your evidence strictly relevant to the questions at hand, and please avoid anecdotal evidence. Evidence ought to be from scholarly sources. Most of all, connect your evidence and be selective with it. Your allusion to Garrison makes no sense, and is also really problematic, since he was really quite fringe. I'm trying to hold this thread to a graduate level academic standard. I don't want this to become like the "War for Abolition Thread," so if your next response isn't a bit more intellectually rigorous, I may respectfully ask you to refrain. I want to facilitate and contribute to a shared learning discussion about the war. This means we all need to hold ourselves to a high intellectual standard. There's nothing wrong with not knowing something. All I ask is that when you claim to know something, make sure you've really investigated it! The evidence you've produced here...doesn't quite reflect that.


(I do not know who Larry Tagg is so I'm giving him a quick look. The publisher is not a University Press...though in the states a good deal of scholastic literature is published by popular publishers, so it might still be good. Most books critical of Lincoln fail to stand to academic scrutiny, but a few, such as Bill Marvel's work, make muster)

To be really, really blunt (and I haaaattee doing this because I want this thread to be super friendly and inviting), its kind of clear your not quite posted in the delicate art of historical research. There are a good deal of blunders here which remind me of the undergraduate papers I have graded in the past. I'm not sure it would be productive to proceed with a debate. We'll both get frustrated and I'll spend more time explaining the problems in your case then actually discussing the war with everyone else here.
Most of all, it will suck for everyone else, and at the end you may end up being known as the 2ndVermont :P. (You actually make better arguments then him, but I couldn't resist lol)



Anyway, let's just not. 

[Mr. Mercanto]

Ok so I've got a question! 

As many of us know, Federal soldiers often private purchased repeater firearms in the late war period (the Spencer and Henry spring to mind). So my question is, does anyone know where they procured their ammunition?? The brass cartridges were expensive, and a repeater required several times more then a muzzleloader! Surely they couldn't have been expected to furnish the funds for the rifle and the ammunition? 

Does anyone happen to know?  

[Col_Kelly]

7 hours ago, Aetius said:

I think an article by John Stauffer does a decent job of covering the history. The short answer is no, but blacks did support and fight for the South, usually unwillingly but not always.

Who needs articles ? I found some very good youtube scholarship on the subject

[Mr. Mercanto]

1 minute ago, Col_Kelly said:

Who needs articles ? I found some very good youtube scholarship on the subject

There actually is some good stuff on YouTube...but always be careful . 

[Kloothommel]

This scientific historical approach makes my historian heart beat faster

[dsfgsdfgsdfgdsfgsdf3q4]

On 2/13/2017 at 3:18 PM, fox2run said:

USA was founded by illegal terrorists obsessed by avoiding taxes for the relatively cheap British military. 

 

[MikeK]

On 2/13/2017 at 5:49 AM, Acika011 said:

From a legal point of view, did states have a right to peacefully leave the Union in that time period?

Yes, the inalienabiity of natural rights means they cannot be taken, contracted, or given away except whilst one chooses to serve, whether by or to individuals nor by or to a state, and even more certainly not on any hereditary basis of servitude. If there be power to join, there be power to leave. So the same fundamental legal principle precludes both chattel slavery and a war to preserve the union by infringing the right to secede, This carries to its logical conclusions.

A war to free slaves would be a just war indeed if limited to that purpose.  

 

[Keepbro]

I have a question - how many snakes did the Anaconda plan necessitate for its implementation? 

I'm guessing that, what with the entire South being on the coast and all and the number of rivers, ports and coastal villages that it must have needed a serious shit ton of snakes to blockade the South?

Also why didn't the rebels develop some form of anti-snake ship? Or were the anacondas really that big?

Finally - what happened to all the snakes after the war? Were they all male snakes so as to prevent an ecological catastrophe or were they hunted for food or did they just slink into the Everglades?

Edited February 16, 2017 by Keepbro
Typo

[Fred Sanford]

Just one really big snake

Edited February 16, 2017 by Fred Sanford

[Aetius]

On 2/13/2017 at 9:57 PM, GeneralPITA said:

Aetius, how is it that Lincoln wasn't even on the ballot in some southern states? 

I wouldn't rely on approval ratings data from 150 years ago. Gallup polls predicted a shattering Trump defeat and look where we are now...and that's with modern methods, the internet, etc. Polls are notoriously inaccurate.

The Republicans did not have any party apparatus in the South, for pretty obvious reasons, and thus were unable to get on the ballot. Evidence suggest that even if they had, it wouldn't have mattered - for example, Lincoln was on the ballot in Virginia, and only received 1.1% of the votes. Ballot access was a problem for the Democrats as well - they did not make the ballot in New York and New Jersey. Not going to say that - further research indicates I'm ... really confused about what happened in New York and New Jersey.

On 2/13/2017 at 11:15 PM, Mr. Mercanto said:

Anyway, let's just not. 

Agreed. If you won't accept primary sources and books that aren't research papers, it's an impossible standard to meet - I don't have access to research journals. You should definitely read Tagg though.

Edited February 16, 2017 by Aetius

[Mr. Mercanto]

52 minutes ago, Aetius said:

The Republicans did not have any party apparatus in the South, for pretty obvious reasons, and thus were unable to get on the ballot. Evidence suggest that even if they had, it wouldn't have mattered - for example, Lincoln was on the ballot in Virginia, and only received 1.1% of the votes. Ballot access was a problem for the Democrats as well - they did not make the ballot in New York and New Jersey. Not going to say that - further research indicates I'm ... really confused about what happened in New York and New Jersey.

Agreed. If you won't accept primary sources and books that aren't research papers, it's an impossible standard to meet - I don't have access to research journals. You should definitely read Tagg though.

I have to reject that assertion, its not an impossible standard at all. Plenty of academic work is available for free or very little. One doesn't have to subscribe to periodicals. 

David Blight and Gary Galagher both have lecture series on YouTube, Blight can also be found on iTunes University (also free). 


Several books are also highly affordable, often costing little ore then $20-$30. Battle Cry of Freedom is an excellent and highly accessible book to start with. I'm happy to provide more . These books are no more expensive then the poorly researched ones. They are less popular and more intellectually demanding however.

Its all available, what you need to do is learn to discern good sources, and have the intellectual rigour to digest them. You seem to be a very intelligent person, so I hardly think this is impossible standard. It is, however, a much higher one then is often applied in forum discussions. Indeed, that was the purpose of this forum, to apply a much, much higher standard.

As for secondary sources, at no point did I refuse to accept them, I explained why they didn't work the way you were employing them. A good historian will either explain how they do indeed work, or seek out better sources.

History is one hell of a tough subject. You've got to love it and challenge yourself if you wish to grasp it. 

I'll take a look at Tagg if he seems profitable and appears to be using his sources well. I'm very selective but there are so many excellent Civil War scholars hiding throughout the literary world that one should be always open. However, I hate wasting time and money on poorly researched works. 
 

[A. P. Hill]

Actually there is one source I prefer over others.   Official Records of the War of the Rebellion

 

[Mr. Mercanto]

6 hours ago, Keepbro said:

I have a question - how many snakes did the Anaconda plan necessitate for its implementation? 

I'm guessing that, what with the entire South being on the coast and all and the number of rivers, ports and coastal villages that it must have needed a serious shit ton of snakes to blockade the South?

Also why didn't the rebels develop some form of anti-snake ship? Or were the anacondas really that big?

Finally - what happened to all the snakes after the war? Were they all male snakes so as to prevent an ecological catastrophe or were they hunted for food or did they just slink into the Everglades?

These are all critical and excellent questions. 

The United States government originally needed 2 345 698 snakes. However, when the President realised that Snakes could be fed a steady diet of Bostonian Crab and mule meat, he was able to fatten the snakes up and only 1 875 376 were needed. 

Stephen Mallory, Confederate Secretary of the Navy, and James Bulloch, the head Confederate naval contractor, realized that the only way to beat a snake was to be a snake. As a result, they commissioned the construction of an Emperor Snake-clad, known as the C-Hiss-Hiss Mississippi. This mighty iron and scale ship was sailed to the snake-enclave in 1862 off the coast of Virginia, the crew having been taught the ways of the snake. The crew and ship were soon so successful, that the C-Hiss-Hiss Mississippi was accepted in to Snake culture by the other snakes. However, as the crew of the C-Hiss-Hiss became a friend of the snakes, they soon came to believe that they too were snakes. Soon, the C-Hiss-Hiss was subsumed in snake culture, and the ship, nor its crew, ever seen again. 

After the war, the some snakes returned to their native homes. Others were hunted  by coastal fisherman, and sold to the Irish of New York as affordable snake-meat. 
 

[Mr. Mercanto]

1 minute ago, A. P. Hill said:

Actually there is one source I prefer over others.   Official Records of the War of the Rebellion

 

The War of the Rebellion is super cool....but, believe it or not, like all other sources, its nor perfect. Case in point, it records the overall dead of the war at 628 000, when new studies show it was actually closer to 750 000

That's the tricky thing abut history...history is all the complexity of the modern times, plus myth and forgetfullness . The more you study it, the messier it all gets, believe me. 

[A. P. Hill]

2 hours ago, Mr. Mercanto said:

The War of the Rebellion is super cool....but, believe it or not, like all other sources, its nor perfect. Case in point, it records the overall dead of the war at 628 000, when new studies show it was actually closer to 750 000

That's the tricky thing abut history...history is all the complexity of the modern times, plus myth and forgetfullness . The more you study it, the messier it all gets, believe me. 

Well yes of course there are errors, as there are in just about everything or anything you can find on the ACW.  The point being, I said it was one of my preferred sources, not my only one.

And if anyone knows about the trickiness of studying this over an extended time, I'd be one of those.  So I'll believe myself ... then I'll believe you.