Blah blah blah ---hate on Lincoln....make up stuff...blah blah blah.
You wish.
The above are documented facts, attested to by such respected historians as James McPherson, David Donald, Shelby Foote, and Webb Garrison, among others. Additionally, I pulled directly from the government's own
Official Records of the War of the Rebellion. Even the historians who side with Lincoln admit these things, they just make excuses for him because...well, Lincoln is their god.
Nowhere in the above "negotiations" was anything mentioned that would have kept the union together.
Lincoln did have opportunities to reach a peaceful resolution to the secession crisis, even apart from dealing with the Confederate commissioners, but he chose not to avail himself of them.
There was a large "peaceable secession" movement underway in the North prior to the events at Sumter. Some influential people, from Chief Justice Taney to the radical abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison, thought that the Southern states should be permitted to leave the Union in peace. Lincoln might have appealed to this element, but he chose not to. He could also have put the question of secession to the American people for a vote, as I suggested earlier, but, again, he chose not to. The reason was because he had his own agenda and he was under pressure from his party to give no quarter.
Robert Johannsen, author of
Stephen Douglas, illustrates one such instance for us in describing Lincoln’s refusal to help Douglas, his old political foe from Illinois and supporter during the war, to salvage the Virginia Peace Conference in February, 1861. “The task of the Peace Conference was not only formidable,” says Johannsen, “it was hopeless: The selection of delegates in some northern states was so manipulated by Republican governors and legislatures as to prevent an adjustment, and some delegates were instructed to resist compromise…Douglas appealed to Lincoln to intervene with the Republicans in order to save the conference, but his gesture was not successful."
David Donald agrees with Johannsen’s assessment of the potential for peace in 1861. He states that Lincoln might have intervened in negotiations and brought about some type of reconciliation were it not for the fact that Lincoln “considered these compromise schemes bribes to the secessionists”. The Louisville
Journal condemned Republican leaders for what it called their “unconciliatory and defiant course,” and claimed that it was, “beyond dispute the principle cause of the fearful distrust of the North which now possesses and inflames the Southern breast.”
With the ascension of Lincoln, for the first time in the history of the sectional conflict, the party representing Northern interests absolutely refused to bargain. For that reason, Southerners opted to secede rather than to remain part of a government where there could be no compromise. So don't accuse Southerners of making no attempt to keep the Union together. Many people tried, except for Lincoln and his mainline Republican friends.
Saying "Pull your troops out of Ft. Sumpter or we'll open fire" isn't negotiation. It's an ultimatum. The main point was non negotiable.
That was not what the Confederates said. They did not make so much as a move toward Sumter, and, as I illustrated, were perfectly willing to let Anderson and his men pull out. Anderson himself admitted that he would have left Sumter when his supplies ran out, and the Confederate government understood that. They were prepared to wait except for the fact that Lincoln's fleet was on its way and they had no idea what his intentions really were. That sort of thing happens you treat people the way Lincoln did.
I'm not saying that there was no blame on the part of the South. They were too quick to act. Sumter remaining in Union hands would not have harmed them to any great extent, and it would have given time for the peaceful secession movement to continue to grow in the North. My point is that there were alternatives to fighting, that Lincoln ignored them, and that the Confederates did not attack Sumter out of simple aggression. It was Lincoln who issued the ultimatum in his first inaugural, to the effect of: "Do as I say or else there will be war and it will be your fault."
Lincoln wanted to restrict the expansion of slavery into the new territories. The south was against that because they knew that would weaken their position to the point of being non-existent. It's really that simple.
If giving up the territories would have made them non-existent, then why did they secede from the U.S.? Withdrawing from the Union immediately invalidated any claim they might have to the territories (although they might have tried to negotiate for a portion of them).
And the "negotiation" that Andrew Jackson did was "Shut the hell up John Calhoun or I'll have you hung." Maybe Lincoln should have tried that?
If that's your idea of negotiation, you're in the wrong political movement. Check out John McCain and Rudy Giuliani. Their militancy might be more to your liking.
For those more interested in helping Ron Paul win in 2008 than in re-fighting the civil war on a web forum, all you need to know is that Lincoln tried (and failed) to do the same "compensated emancipation" that Ron Paul proposed on Meet The Press. Everything else is just filler.
Hardly. So much of the way this government operates is based upon Lincoln's example, that it is important for us to understand who and what he was.
