Circa1865

The American military of 1860 was one still restricted by the view that a standing army was a threat to peace and liberty. Sensing danger after the John Brown violence at Harpers Ferry, Americans in the South formed local militia units and Safety Committees reminiscent of those in 1776 days. Lincoln’s seizure of power after Fort Sumter was enabled by a recessed Congress which would not convene until July; the demonstrated threat of anyone opposing his will; and Republican governors who provided him with troops.

Indeed, the matters of national versus State powers WERE studied in law schools and universities and West Point – the federal agent was left intentionally weak by the Founders who feared a strong central authority which would threaten and overpower the States.

Lincoln had no “war powers” as commander in chief as Congress had not declared war as required by the US Constitution. Additionally, and as the latter stipulated in Article III, Section 3, treason was waging war against “Them,” the States. This was the Framers way of dealing with possible civil war in the future, and those responsible sharing the fate of John Brown.

The following excerpt ignores the hidden economic and political machinations for war against the American South in 1861, and naively claims that northern officials in 1861 were forced to meet the South’s departure with novel ideas. The answers were found in the Constitution.

Wartime Ways

“Almost totally civilian in habits and local orientation, American were simply unready for the spectacle of “national” soldiers – even hastily uniformed neighbors – performing police functions. From the days after [Fort] Sumter all through 1861, arrests of civilians by soldiers and suspension of the revered though little understood privilege of habeas corpus were the most visible evidence of war.

Unrestrained journalism, unfettered communications, and unsubdued opposition politics attended to the “arbitrary arrests” and the “prisoners of state,” and their incarcerations in “American Bastilles.” There, military commissions pronounced ferocious penalties under the unknown and therefore doubly worrisome tenets of martial law.

Debate shifted to the habeas corpus suspensions, to the scope of “war powers” and of the commander-in-chief functions, the basic question of whether what was going on was a war between nations or a civil war, to altering configurations of national-State relationships, to the applicability of the Bill of Rights to wartime ways, and to the role of the national and State’s judiciaries in supplying answers to war-born uncertainties.

A hundred years ago, these matters were unstudied in law schools, ignored in universities, and unknown in West Point’s curriculum. Among government officials, ignorance about them was all but complete. Legal literature on such themes was inadequate if not irrelevant. After Sumter, persons who sought guidance on internal security matters found themselves in an everyman’s-land of assumptions, conjectures and surmises. Precise questions did not exist, much less answers. It was all novel and startling.”

(A More Perfect Union: The Impact of the Civil War and Reconstruction on the Constitution. Harold M. Hyman. Houghton Mifflin Company. 1975, pp. 65-66)

Lincoln fully approved of Grant’s plan to simply deplete Southern forces through constant attacks, regardless of the cost in human lives. Generous enlistment bonuses, impressing immigrants and colored men – plus conscription could fill the ranks 1864-65 and hammer the South into submission. It was Grant who stopped prisoner exchanges and was responsible for the deaths of northern prisoners as the South was being starved and denied medical supplies.

Grant’s Plan of Depletion

“If Grant can effect, with every assault on our lines, not an equal but proportionate depletion of our ranks, then the satisfactory solution to the problem is, from his point of view, a mere question of arithmetic, a mere matter of time.

He would cooly throw away the lives of a hundred thousand of his men if, by that means, he could put fifty thousand of ours hors de combat. He believes that we are on our last legs . . . and once hamstrung, good night to the Southern Confederacy. So, Grant will not yield until he is fairly exhausted, and he means more than most Yankee generals do by their bravado, when he declares he will not re-cross the river while he has a man left.

But Grant is not the sole manager of the campaign [against Lee]. There is another question besides the subjugation or independence of the South – a question of far more importance to certain people in Washington and their partisans. What is to be the name of the first Prince-President, or Stadtholder, or Emperor of the United States? Is it to be biblical or classical? Is it to be Abraham or Ulysses? And this is a matter in which Lincoln is profoundly interested.

Now, Lincoln has shown, in the plainest way, that he will not scruple to use any device, to invent any falsehood, to shed any quantity of blood . . . if he can perpetuate his power. We think it tolerably evident that he is afraid of the tool which fortune has thrust into his hands, and no one would rejoice more sincerely than he if Grant were to expire in the arms of victory, or, that alternative failing, he was to perish politically, crushed under the odium of an utter defeat.

Grant has perspicuity enough to see through Lincoln’s benevolent intentions, and self-reliance enough to push on regardless of Lincoln’s designs. Lincoln’s plan is that Grant shall do all the fighting and [Benjamin] Butler shall get all the glory. Butler is Lincoln’s representative in the field; and they both hope that the capture of Richmond will repeat the capture of New Orleans . . . and Butler is to make a triumphant entry into our capital without having exposed his precious carcass to the bullets of the audacious rebels.

Like many shrewd men, Lincoln a touch of superstition and it is evident that he believed in Butler’s star. [If] Richmond is to pass into Butler’s hands, Lincoln has nothing to fear from any glory which he may acquire . . . [and] the north would hardly be willing to hail him as their official chief. [B]orn satrap that he is, Butler would be satisfied with the position of Viceroy of the Southern provinces under His Majesty Abraham the First, by the Device of the Devil, Emperor of all the Yankees.”

(Soldier and Scholar: Basil Lanneau Gildersleeve and the Civil War. Ward W. Brigg, Jr. University Press of Virginia. 1998; pp. 315-316)

Along with his family, Jefferson Davis was captured by northern troops in the Georgia pines on May 10, 1865, while enroute to join Southern forces in the trans-Mississippi. The military odds were now ten to one, and northern troops were armed with Spencer-magazine repeaters against the Southern muzzle loaders. This was turning the war into mass murder. Author Russell Quynn writes:

“During the four years of war the northern armies had been replenished with more than 720,000 immigrant males from Europe, who were promised bounties and pension that the South afterwards largely had to pay. (See Union Department of War Records). The armies of the South at peak strength never exceeded 700,000 men. Imported “Hessians” were thus used by Lincoln to crush Americans of the South whose fathers had served in the armies of Washington, Andrew Jackson and Zachary Taylor, to make a nation, to found its renown!”

It was Lincoln Who “Made War”

Jefferson Davis chastised his accusers:

“. . . by reiteration of such inappropriate terms as “rebellion,” treason” and the asseveration of that the South was levying war against the United States, those ignorant of the nature of the Union and the reserved powers of the States, have been led to believe that the Confederate States [of America] were in the condition of revolted provinces, and that the United States were forced to resort to arms for the preservation of its existence . . .

The Union was formed for specific enumerated purposes, and the States had never surrendered their sovereignty . . . It was a palpable absurdity to apply to them, or to their citizens when obeying their mandates, the terms “rebellion” and “treason”; and, further, the Confederate States, so far from making war or seeking to destroy the United States, as soon as they had an official organ, strove earnestly by peaceful recognition to equitably adjust all questions growing out of the separation from their late associates.

It was Lincoln who “made war.” Still another perversion, Davis thought:

“Was the attempted arraignment of the men who participated in forming the Confederate States and bore arms in its defense, as “instigators of a controversy leading to disunion.” Of course, it was a palpable absurdity, but part of the unholy vengeance, which did not cease at the grave.”

(The Constitutions of Abraham Lincoln & Jefferson Davis: A Historical and Biographical Study in Contrasts. Russell Hoover Quynn. Exposition Press, 1959, pp. 126-127)

Vallandigham (below) had the support of many in the north’s Democratic party such as editor Thomas Beer of Ohio’s Crawford County Forum of 30 January 1863. He wrote: “every dollar spent for the prosecution of this infamous war is uselessly wasted – and every life lost in it is an abominable sacrifice, a murder, the responsibility of which will rest upon Abraham Lincoln and his advisors. Support of this war and hostility to it, show the dividing line between the enemies and friends of the Union. He who supports the war is against the Union.”

Washington the Arch-Rebel

“Ohio Congressman Clement Vallandigham excoriated Lincoln and his followers on January 14, 1863, in the US House of Representatives by stating: “Yet after nearly two years of more vigorous prosecution of war than ever recorded in history . . . you have utterly, signally, disastrously failed to subjugate ten millions of “rebels”, whom you had taught the people of the North and . . . West not only to hate, but to despise.

Rebels did I say?  Yes, your fathers were rebels, or your grandfathers.  He [Washington] who now before me on canvas looks down so sadly upon us, the false, degenerate and imbecile guardians of the great Republic which he founded, was a rebel.  And yet we, cradled ourselves in rebellion and who have fostered and fraternized with every insurrection in the nineteenth century everywhere throughout the globe, would now . . . make the word “rebel” a reproach.”

(The Limits of Dissent: Clement L. Vallandigham & the Civil War. Frank L. Klement. Fordham University Press, 1998, pg 136)

In 1863 Republican Senator John Sherman recalled that it was William H. Seward rather than Lincoln who ordered the seizure of Maryland’s legislators in 1861, that “the high-handed proceeding was the work of Mr. Seward, of his own mere motion, without the knowledge of Lincoln.” Seward later told a British official that the arrests had been made to influence coming Maryland elections as well. Frederick (below) was Seward’s son.

Lincoln & Seward’s Military Coup

“The Lincoln administration believed, according to Frederick Seward, that “a disunion majority” in the Maryland State house would pass an ordinance to withdraw from the Union in September 1861. Lincoln had resolved to keep that from happening. Seward recalled: “[The military was] instructed to carefully watch the movements of members of the [Maryland] Legislature . . . Loyal Union members would not be interfered with . . . but “disunion” members would be turned back toward their homes and would not reach Frederick City at all. The views of each member were well-known . . . so there would be little difficulty, as Mr. Lincoln remarked, in “separating the sheep from the goats.”

[Seward continued]: “When the time arrived . . . it was found that not only was no secession ordinance likely to be adopted, but that there seemed to be no Secessionists to present one. The two generals had carried out their instructions faithfully, and with tact and discretion . . . No ordinance was adopted, Baltimore remained quiet, and Maryland stayed in the Union.”

Many arrests of northerners at that time involved freedom of speech and freedom of the press with Seward’s State Department records citing “treasonable language, “Southern sympathizer,” secessionist” and “disloyalty” as standard reasons for arrest and confinement. Additionally, even more serious-sounding arrest reasons were vague and sometimes denoted offensive words rather than deeds: “aiding and abetting the enemy,” threatening Unionists,” or “inducing desertion,” for example. A man in Cincinnati was arrested for selling envelopes and stationery with Confederate mottoes printed on them.

When an old associate of Seward came to Washington to plead for the release of a political prisoner from Kentucky held in Fort Lafayette, the secretary of state readily admitted that no charges were on file against the prisoner. When asked whether he intended to keep citizens imprisoned against whom no charge had been made, Seward apparently answered: “I don’t care a d—n whether they are guilty or innocent. I saved Maryland by similar arrests, and so I mean to hold Kentucky.”

(The Fate of Liberty: Abraham Lincoln and Civil Liberties. Mark E. Neely, Jr. Oxford University Press. 1991, pp. 15-16; 27-30)

Many European observers saw Lincoln’s early proclamation of September 1862 as simply imitating the actions of Virginia’s Royal Governor Lord Dunmore eighty-six years earlier. In the face of “insurrection,” Dunmore demanded loyalty oaths from colonists while proclaiming African slaves “free.” A desperate Lincoln did the same.

Lincoln’s Dark Days

“The war had indeed approached a crisis in late July [1861]. There had been little encouraging news from the Western theater since April, when the victory at Shiloh had been followed by the occupation of New Orleans. These victories were disappointing in that they seemed to be leading nowhere. The high hopes accompanying McClellan’s advance up the peninsula below Richmond had been cruelly dashed.

Waiting for victories, [Lincoln’s] Cabinet received news in late August of the most humiliating defeat of the entire war. General John Pope allowed his army to be trapped at Manassas, Virginia, practically on the doorstep of the Capitol, between the armies of Longstreet and Jackson; it was hurled back toward Washington in a retreat that was actually a rout.

When the full impact of this latest disaster was at last known in the North, a real desperation gripped the public. “That we are in serious danger of being whipped cannot be denied” wrote Edward Atkinson, “and there is scarce a man now in Boston, who would not thank God to hear of a serious insurrection among the slaves, such a change has this disaster wrought.”

Dr. Milton Hawks, perhaps the most fanatical missionary at Port Royal [South Carolina], repeated his belief that, unless emancipation were the goal of the war, the South would establish her independence. “The greatest kindness that a man could do this government today,” he wrote furiously, “would be to assassinate Pres. Lincoln – He stands directly in the way.”

Lincoln’s course was mysterious to the general public [but after the dubious victory at Antietam], the President seized the slim occasion for his [preliminary emancipation] Proclamation . . .”

(Rehearsal for Reconstruction: The Port Royal Experiment. Willie Lee Rose. Oxford University Press, 1964, pp. 184-185)

Lincoln’s War to Establish Government Superiority

“Abraham Lincoln, we are taught, fought the Civil War to free the Negro slaves. The truth is that the war was fought primarily because the Southern States, whom the Northern States had continually burdened with stifling tariffs and levies, wanted to secede from the Union.

What Lincoln accomplished was to reestablish government’s superiority over the individual, i.e., that men had to “belong to the country whether they wanted to or not.” After the North’s victory, the issue of the federal government’s authority over all people within “its” borders was never again seriously challenged.

In a letter to Horace Greeley in 1862, Lincoln wrote “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the union and it is not either to save or destroy slavery. And in a [prewar] debate with Stephen Douglas, Lincoln stated: “I am not nor ever have been in favor of bringing about in any way the social or political equality of white and black races . . . there must be the position of the superior and inferior, and as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”

(Restoring the American Dream, Robert J. Ringer. Fawcett Crest Books, 1979, pp. 294-295)

The Conspiracy Which Brought on the War

The article in this number on the “Sudden Change in Northern Sentiment as to Coercion in 1861,” by Dr. James H. McNeilly of Nashville, shows that there was evidently a deeply laid plan to force the South into making the first hostile demonstration in order to arouse that sentiment which would respond to the call for troops necessary to invade this section. It is well-known that the general sentiment in the North was against making war on the seceding Southern States, but there was a powerful political element which really wanted war and could see the value of forcing the South into making an offensive move. Forcibly illustrating this spirit is the following quotation from a thoughtful writer of the South:

“On February 2, 1861, Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, in a letter published in the Memphis Appeal, wrote of the Republican leaders as follows:

‘They are bold, determined men. They are striving to break up the Union under the pretense of serving it. They are struggling to overthrow the Constitution while professing undying attachment to it and a willingness to make any sacrifice to maintain it. They are trying to plunge the country into a cruel war as the surest way of destroying the Union upon the plea of enforcing the laws and protecting public property.’

Shortly after Douglas wrote this letter Senator Zach Chandler of Michigan, wrote to Gov. Austin Blair which proves the conspiracy of the men determined on war. Virginia had solicited a conference of States to see if some plan could not be devised and agreed upon to prevent war and save the Union. Chandler wrote Governor Blair that he opposed the conference and that no Republican State should send a delegate. He implored the governor to send stiff-necked [anti-compromise] delegates or none, as the whole idea of compromise was against his judgement. Chandler added to his letter these sinister words: ‘Some of the manufacturing States think that a war would be awful; without a little bloodletting this Union will not be worth a curse.’”

(The Conspiracy Which Brought on the War. Confederate Veteran, Vol. XXIV, No. 10, October 1916. pg. 436)

After his military’s defeat at Second Manassas in August 1862, Lincoln thought that threatening to free black laborers at the South might help his prospects in his war against the South. Despite those who thought it a barbarity to incite insurrections, he replied: “Nor do I urge objections of a moral nature in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South.”

In New York City, a French-language newspaper opined: “Does the Government at Washington mean to say on January 1^st, 1863, it will call for a servile war to aid in his conquest of the South? And after the blacks have killed the white people of the South, they themselves must be drowned in their own blood?”

Inciting Insurrection

“In the Senate, Stephen A. Douglas, pursuant to the Constitution, introduced a bill to punish those people who seek to incite slave insurrections. “Abraham Lincoln, in his speech at New York, declared it was a seditious speech” – “His press and party hooted it.” “It received their jeers and jibes.” (pg. 663, Stephen’s Pictorial History).

Then came the election of President. The party of [black] insurrection swept the Northern States. The people of the South had realized the possible results. With the people of the North making a saint of [John Brown] who planned and started to murder the slaveholders . . . and the Northern States all going in favor of the Republican party which protected those engaged in such plans.  Naturally there were in every Southern State those who thought it best to guard against such massacres by separating from those States where John Brown was deified.

When news came that Abraham Lincoln was elected, the South Carolina Legislature, being in session, called a State Convention. When the Convention met it withdrew ratification of the US Constitution and declared South Carolina an independent State.

In its declaration it said: “Those States have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who have remained have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection. For twenty-five years this agitation has been steadily increasing until it has now secured to its aid the power of the general government. “

So, to escape insurrections and ensure public safety, South Carolina separated itself from the United States government to free itself from a government led by a man who was not opposed to the massacre of the Southern people.”

(A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861-1865. Capt. S. A. Ashe, Raleigh, North Carolina, pp. 46-47)

The US Constitution clearly states that only Congress may declare war against a foreign enemy, and Article III, Section 3 of the same document clearly defines the definition of treason committed against the United States.

‘Such Was the Spirit of Those Who Made the War’

“And so, without any authorization from Congress, Lincoln began a war on the Southern States which had formed themselves into a more perfect union. A few months after he began the war, he had the United States Congress to meet and the first thing offered was a resolution confirming and legalizing his acts, as if they had been authorized.

This particular resolution was before the Senate fifteen times between July 6 and August 6 and never passed. Then, after twenty months of warfare, the Supreme Court of the United States (67 US Reports, pg. 668) said Congress had no power delegated to it to make war upon a State, and that the President held no authority to make war – only Congress could do so.

That ‘the Civil War between the Northern and Southern States arose because the citizens of the States owed a supreme allegiance to the United States which the Southern States sought to absolve themselves from, by State secession, and the right of a State to do what was now being decided by wager of battle.’

There was no reason or ground stated to justify the above claim that “the citizens of each State owed supreme allegiance to the United States.” It was a war by the Northern States to hold the Southern States in union with them; a conquest of free, sovereign and independent States to be held under the domination of the more numerous States.

As Senator Baker, of Oregon, declared in the Senate that he favored ‘reducing the population of the Southern States to abject to the sway of the federal government.’ ‘We may reduce the Southern States to the condition of territories and send to them from Massachusetts or from Illinois, loyal governors to control them. I would do that.’ (Cong. Globe LW, pg. 48). Such was the spirit of those who made the war.”

(A Southern View of the Invasion of the Southern States and War of 1861-1865. Capt. S. A. Ashe, Raleigh, North Carolina. Pg. 53)