I am a detail person. I love properly defined words. Governments and their historians twist words to favor their own agenda. This is why the secession of 7 and then 11 united States AND the resulting conflict for four horrible years is labeled a “civil” war.
What is hilarious is that Lincoln, knowing that secession was legal since he considered it during and even ten years after the Mexican-American War when he said:
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other’s consent. – Abraham Lincoln, Peoria, Ill., Oct. 16, 1854
So when seven states, each, like an abused spouse, decided to cancel the voluntary contract she had entered into and go her own way, Lincoln decided to call this an “insurrection”.
Evidence is to the contrary however, as people today compare what happened in 1860 after Lincoln’s election:
Yes, there is a civil war looming in the United States. But it will not look like the orderly pattern of descent which characterized the conflict of 1861-65. It will appear more like the Yugoslavia break-up, or the Russian and Chinese civil wars of the 20th Century. – By Gregory R. Copley – Aug 19, 2017
The secession of whole states via legal means was the American patriots of the time effort to make the whole thing “above board”, “by the book” and “in accordance with the laws of the land”. We now know that Lincoln at the outset was not going to let that happen without a fight. It took the first month that he was in office to whip up the worst fears of life for the remaining 27 united States without the Deep South states. Economically, it looked real bad as the Northern economy and Western (Midwest) farmers would potentially lose their closest customers who in FEB1861 voted to become a relative “free trade zone” compared to the US’s 20%+ average tariff rate by setting tariffs at approximately at 13% on average.
A close inspection of Lincoln’s inaugural address (04MAR1861), two days after the US Congress passed a tariff increase (which the Republicans wanted and was in their platform) shows that ..
1. – if you can believe Lincoln’s words, he was not going to do anything about slavery:
I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.
2. – Lincoln’s primary interest lay in collecting duties at all southern ports, as the US general government wanted and needed this revenue stream:
.. there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.
Lincoln contended that divorce was not an option. Of course he “saw” the nation as a singular, and that union was paramount. However, in history we have seen peaceful secession work many times. Lincoln, who once thought and said that governing requires consent of the governed, changed his mind.
Physically speaking, we can not separate. We can not remove our respective sections from each other nor build an impassable wall between them. A husband and wife may be divorced and go out of the presence and beyond the reach of each other, but the different parts of our country can not do this. They can not but remain face to face, and intercourse, either amicable or hostile, must continue between them.
Properly conceived, the United States in 1861 was actually like polygamy, in that 34 spouses were involved, and 7 wanted to leave this arrangement:
This was NOT the 7 spouses wanting to rule over the WHOLE harem! That would be the true definition of civil war, where the winner gets EVERYTHING!
So in hindsight, the American Revolution was in fact 13 spouses wanting to rule their own households, so basically 13 civil wars as in each colony there was a mix of Tory/Loyalist and Whig/Rebel tendencies plus those that didn’t really care and just wanted peace at all cost.
The American Civil War was not really a civil war as after Lincoln called up 75,000 volunteer troops from the remaining 27 states, 4 of those said no way (Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina and Virginia) as each of these had already voted once to stay in the union and now voted to leave.
This brings us to 2019. Are we facing a civil war? Again, I contend that most decent people want to be left alone. Most decent people don’t mind if the east coast from DC to MA and the west coast from CA to WA just leave (or stay and the rest of the states leave). Again, Gregory R. Copley shares:
It may, in other words, be short-lived simply because the uprising will probably not be based upon the decisions of constituent states (which, in the US Civil War, created a break-away confederacy), acting within their own perception of a legal process. It is more probable that the 21st Century event would contage as a gradual breakdown of law and order.
I tend to agree with this synopsis as the states are no longer entities with any autonomy, but are puppets of the federal government these days, a direct result of the union forcing the marriage covenant to be permanent.
Many will point to Trump or Brexit as the start of this so-called Civil War 2.0, but like most wars, their roots go back years if not generations:
It is significant that the gathering crisis in the United States was not precipitated by the November 7, 2016, election of Pres. Donald Trump, and neither was the growing polarization of the United Kingdom’s society caused by the Brexit vote of 2016. In both instances, the election of Mr Trump and the decision by UK voters for Britain to exit the European Union were late reactions — perhaps too late — by the regional populations of both countries to what they perceived as the destruction of their nation-states by “urban super-oligarchies”.
The last-ditch reactions by those who voted in the US for Donald Trump and those who voted in the UK for Brexit were against an urban-based globalism which has been building for some seven decades, with the deliberate or accidental intent of destroying nations and nationalism.
I contend that the roots of this go much further back than seven decades, but back to the very end of Amerexit, when the thirteen colonies each received acknowledgement in the 1783 Treaty of Paris that the British Empire would let them go in peace, finally. In the post war era, those former patriots would once again turn on the people to assemble a central government that would “protect” them, at a cost when in fact it was a guerilla war that actually freed the colonies from the British grip.
The myth abounded that formal confederation was necessary to win the war, although the war would be virtually won by the time confederation was finally achieved. The war was fought and won by the states informally but effectively united in a Continental Congress; fundamental decisions, such as independence, had to be ratified by every state. There was no particular need for the formal trappings and permanent investing of a centralized government, even for victory in war. Ironically, the radicals were reluctantly pulled into an arrangement which they believed would wither away at the end of the war, and thereby helped to forge an instrument which would be riveted upon the people only in time of peace, an instrument that proved to be a halfway house to that archenemy of the radical cause, the Constitution of the United States. – Murray Rothbard in ‘Conceived in Liberty Vol IV p.243
It is both sick and sad that even radical patriots turned back to central government as the safe way forward. Allowing the smaller states to work in a loose confederation would have provided a true “land of the free” much more than our tyrannical US Empire has allowed us domestically.
As the fictional Benjamin Martin said at the close of the movie The Patriot (2000)
“With the war ending .. I take measure of what we have lost. And what we have won.”
What was won was colonial-centric liberty and freedom from British Empire oppression, what was soon lost was that very same thing. Squandered, politics has a way of doing that every time.
While Thomas Jefferson got so many things right, as a human, we all have our blind-spots. Maybe at times he was just hopeful that things would work out, that the pendulum would come back from the extremes and allow the people the natural rights and freedoms that their Creator had intended for them in the best of times.
A key point of reflection is discussed in this latest blog post by Brion McClanahan, where Jefferson is challenged in his thought processes by Jon Taylor of Caroline.
It seems that in June of 1798, at the peak of the Federalist’s power move that launched atrocities like the Alien and Sedition Act that made it a crime to be critical of the government (only 20 years after all the American Colonies publicly were critical of the British government), John Taylor wrote that the union seemed to be on the verge of dissolving. It was most obvious by this point that party power had already prompted the rush to use general government for the good of one region of the united States so young in its journey.
Thomas Jefferson quickly penned back a response that admitted that the New England states were seeing the South as something that could be tapped:
… that they ride us very hard, cruelly insulting our feelings as well as exhausting our strength and substance. their natural friends, the three other Eastern states, join them from a sort of family pride, and they have the art to divide certain other parts of the Union, so as to make use of them to govern the whole.
However, Jefferson claimed this would soon be corrected by voting.
Brion explains:
They would only suffer so long under the heel of these petty tyrants, and he insisted that a “scission” of the Union would do little to arrest the problems of political division, what Jefferson considered to be a natural occurrence in a “deliberating” society. If New England were removed from the Union, Jefferson argued that a division between Virginia and Pennsylvania would soon rise and that would be met by another round of division until the entire Union would be torn asunder for even the Southern States would feel the sting of partisanship and division.
Jefferson continued:
I had rather keep our New-England associates for that purpose, than to see our bickerings transferred to others. they are circumscribed within such narrow limits, & their population so full, that their numbers will ever be the minority ..
Well, at this point, history has proven that John Taylor’s viewpoint was correct, and he articulated it in a rather long letter back to Jefferson. In summary Brion shares:
Taylor considered the partisanship of New England to be a byproduct of both geography and “interest,” and unlike Jefferson he did not think that party divisions were natural occurrences. He cited Connecticut as an example of a fairly unanimous electorate and thought that the rigid—almost religious—belief in “checks and balances” failed to fully arrest the sword of despotism in the United States. In other words, the Constitution was doomed from the beginning .. liberty had to be the direct end of government and if the Union failed to protect liberty, then it was a worthless bond of oppression.
John Taylor did not believe that party politics could fix the “unequally yoked” union between regions that had very different interests and principles. He also pinpointed the key part of the Constitution that resulted in a nationalist central government that is prone to pillaging:
Taxes are the subsistence of party. As the miasma of marshes contaminate the human body, those of taxes corrupt and putrify the body politic. Taxation transfers wealth from a mass to a selection. It destroys the political Equality, which alone can save liberty; and yet no constitution, whilst devising checks upon power, has devised checks sufficiently strong upon the means which create it. Government, endowed with a right to transfer, bestow, and monopolise wealth in perpetuity is in fact, unlimited. It soon becomes a feudal lord over a nation in villenage.
John Taylor, over 200 years ago predicted our situation as it stands today:
But since government is getting [sic] into the habit of peeping into private letters, and is manufacturing a law, which may even make it criminal to pray to God for better times, I shall be careful not to repeat so dangerous a liberty.—I hope it may not be criminal to add a supplication [sic] for an individual—not—for I will be cautious—as a republican, but as a man.
Edward Snowden revealed that this aspect of a dysfunctional government that is only interested in perpetuating itself at all costs makes us neither free or brave!
Voting better is something politicians and public education imprints into our brains, for they know it is week and ineffective so that their agenda as a massive tax collecting parasite can continue.
Once the states were stripped of their power to nullify and secede, nothing stood in the way of total central control by the moneyed elites in this land.
Tucked in the Virginia farmland only 30 miles west of Washington DC was the Spring Hill Farm (today called Henry Hill), a generally neglected land containing an orchard and a small garden, that was home to Judith Henry.
Judith was 84 years old and bedridden, on this farm that had been in the Henry family since before the American Revolution. Along with Judith was her daughter Ellen and a hired teenage slave Lucy Griffith. It was common practice for owners of large tracts of lands with many slaves to hire out some of their slaves to others in the vicinity.
The context can be summed up as a spurned spouse turned abuser on the former partner who desired to leave the marriage that both had entered voluntary into back in 1781 and again in 1787. There were official reasons (should the courts be considered) and unofficial reasons for the separation with the intention of divorce.
It was just a few months before in the spring of 1861 that Virginia and North Carolina had voted to stay in the Union. If the Republicans had opted for a peaceful negotiations with the seven states that had seceded, this battle would not have been necessary.
A further enlightenment is necessary to understand that Lincoln was not patient when it came to the seven states that had seceded, as pointed out by John V. Denson in a 2006 article:
… on April 4, 1861, before the start of the war on April 12, the Secession Convention in Virginia, which had convened in February of 1861, sent a delegate to visit President Lincoln in the White House to discuss the results of the action recently taken in Virginia. When the State of Virginia originally voted on its ratification ordinance approving the U.S. Constitution, it contained a specific clause protecting their right to secede in the future. The delegate was Colonel John B. Baldwin, who was a strong opponent of secession by Virginia, although he recognized the right. His message communicated privately to the president on April 4, was that the convention had voted not to secede if President Lincoln would issue a written pledge to refrain from the use of force in order to get the seceded states back into the Union. President Lincoln told Colonel Baldwin that it was four days too late now to take that action. Unknown to all except a few insiders of the administration, meaning that members of the Congress did not know, the president had already issued secret orders on April 1, to send a fleet of ships to Fort Sumter in order to provoke the South into firing the first shot in order to start the war.
President Lincoln had been in office less than a month before aggressively deciding to opt for the “nuclear” option. This is the same man that had said the following in the late 1840s:
“…Any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better ..”
In addition to this, President Lincoln indicated that his primary concern was for the “Union” to be preserved, like a forever marriage.
This dovetails into what Lincoln said during the 04APR1861 visit:
Lincoln stated that he could not wait until the seceded states decided what to do and added:
“But what am I to do in the meantime with those men at Montgomery? Am I to let them go on?”
Baldwin replied:
“Yes sir, until they can be peaceably brought back.”
Lincoln then replied:
“And open Charleston, etc., as ports of entry, with their ten percent tariff . . .” (as opposed to the much higher forty percent Federal tariff). “What then would become of my tariff?”
So with a naval forces on its way to Charleston (Fort Sumter) and Pensacola (Fort Pickens) to instigate a first shot, Lincoln basically said “his way or the highway”.
The less known story of Fort Pickens included a Lieutenant Slemmer, like Major Anderson, who felt his position on the mainland, as well as that at nearby Fort McRee and the Pensacola Navy Yard, would be difficult to defend in the event of a full-scale attack, and he moved his troops and thirty sailors from the Navy Yard to the stronger, and then unoccupied, Fort Pickens on Santa Rosa Island in Pensacola Bay.
You may recall that Major Anderson also moved his troops from Fort Moultrie (on the mainland) to an uncompleted and unoccupied Fort Sumter under the cover of night just after Christmas 1860. This was AFTER a gentleman’s agreement had been made that indicated that all forces in Charleston Harbor, both Union and Confederate, would honor the status quo to allow peace negotiations to take place instead of hostilities.
On 15JAN1861, Colonel Chase went to Fort Pickens, a facility he had helped design and build while a captain in the U. S. Army Corps of Engineers, and made an unsuccessful demand for the fort’s surrender. A few days later, General Scott gave confidential orders that a contingent of Regular Army troops under the command of Captain Israel Vogdes of the First Artillery Regiment, a former professor of mathematics at West Point, be sent to Fort Pickens aboard the twenty-one gun sloop of war “U. S. S. Brooklyn”
On 04MAR1861 Lincoln was sworn into office and on 12MAR1861 secret orders were sent to Captain Vogdes by General Scott and Navy Secretary Gideon Wells that his troops were to be immediately put ashore at Fort Pickens. This action was actually carried out on 11APR1861 the day BEFORE Fort Sumter was fired upon by the Confederates.
President Lincoln in no way entertained anything but a war answer to the legal secession of seven states. His actions after Fort Sumter, where no deaths occurred during the bombardment, mandated a continued war footing.
While two men were killed manning the cannon during the 14APR1861 ceremony (see below), many, many more would follow, almost 750,000!
The terms of surrender allowed Anderson to perform a 100-gunsalute before he and his men evacuated the fort the next day. The salute began at 2:00 P.M. on April 14, but was cut short to 50guns after an accidental explosion killed one of the gunners, Pvt. Daniel Hough, and mortally wounded another.
On 15APR1861, President Lincoln called up 75,000 volunteers from the remaining states for 90-day service. This knee-jerk reaction caused a re-vote for secession in four more states including Virginia on 17APR1861 where Judith Henry lived.
The president of the United States asking the Virginia commonwealth to provide 2,340 troops to potentially march on South Carolina? Virginia says NO, South Carolinians are their ‘brothers’. Virginia will not take up arms against South Carolina, and Virginia knew South Carolina would not invade Virginia!
President Lincoln refused to call Congress into secession until 04JUL1861 to allow the military ramp-up to continue unimpeded so that Congress had little to decide but to back Lincoln’s war on the south-land.
Union forces numbering over 35,000 under Union General McDowell proceeded to invade Virginia from the area around Washington DC. Also joining the event were spectators who came out the 30 miles to watch these armies battle each other while having a picnic.
Confederate forces of 20,000 under General P.G.T. Beauregard from Richmond, VA combined with 12,000 under General Joseph E. Johnston who withdrew from the Shenandoah Valley unnoticed, boarded trains and arrived near Bull Run on 21JUL1861:
Union artillery assumed that the Spring Hill farmhouse was vacant and fired on that structure in an effort to disperse Confederate sharpshooters:
The 84 year old Judith Henry is the first (and definitely not the last) civilian casualty of this war. She is buried out in front of her house.
The peak of the battle occurred at 3pm as the Confederate reserves helped turn the tide sending the Union forces and civilian onlookers scurrying back to Washington DC.
Bull Run Battle App – First Manassas – July 21, 1861
General Bernard Bee (CSA) made an observation of how General Thomas Jackson’s troops were doing in the field and gave Jackson his new nickname, “Stonewall”:
If you ever have the opportunity to visit this battlefield 30 miles west of Washington DC, technology can guide you as you walk the grounds, even showing you where you are while on the battlefield in real time. This app is available in both the Apple and Google Play stores.
I highly recommend taking the time to explore this first major large scale military engagement in the Union’s War Against Southern Independence.
Sometimes only a nugget of truth can cause one’s mind and heart to seek out the deeper meanings of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.
From Clyde Wilson comes this gem:
“there has not been a real opposition party in U.S. politics since Mr. Jefferson sent Colonel Hamilton and His Excellency John Adams heading back north.”
Source: “Annals of the Stupid Party: Republicans Before Trump” by Clyde Wilson
Think about it for a minute. I am sure going back ten or fifteen years almost everyone will lament (maybe only privately) that no matter what party or what president is elected after promising the moon, one always seems to get the same “nothing-burger”.
Well, let’s just say the further you go back in the history of the United States of America, the more you see the two or three parties bringing more of the same to this country, sometime the red team is more “progressive”, sometimes the blue team is, but at the end of the day, the politicians will just politic this nation to its eventual death. There is no major difference in the political parties of 2019, same has been the case since the early 1800s. The two parties are the wings of the same bird!
Another quote I came across that had me thinking:
“A civil war, by denotative or connotative definition, occurs when a faction wishes to overthrow or control an existing government in order to impose its own ideology upon the governed. The Southern states that seceded from the Union had neither the desire nor the plans to take command of the country. They simply wanted to withdraw from it, and arguably, according to even some modern constitutionalists and historians, had a right to do so, based upon the nation’s origins. Virginia, New York and Rhode Island demanded that the right of secession be reserved before they would even agree to the Constitution, thereby implying that secession was indeed a right reserved by individual states.”
Source: “Slavery and The Civil War: What Your History Teacher Didn’t Tell You” by Garry Bowers
It is true, and yet 99% of all Americans think, really do think, that the 1861-1865 conflict was a “civil” war. It is a myth, plain and simple.
So what was it? Well, to be honest, if someone files for divorce, is that ever a reason to be an aggressor on individual as in doing personal harm to him or her? Only psychos will “take out” the other person so “no one else can have him/her”.
To break it down properly, you have to know that EACH state acted independently to weigh the pros and cons of secession. Some state representatives said that exiting the federation was too early, others said it was past time. In the end, from December 1860 until early February 1861, seven sovereign states left the federation and others like North Carolina and Virginia decided to stay in the federation of states.
The very act of leaving verses trying to force seven state’s priorities, beliefs and convictions on the remaining 20+ states, means that they were ready to live and let live. There was zero aggression on the part of the exiting states. Even when these states came together in Montgomery, AL in February 1861, there was never the thought of pushing their agenda on the more northern states or the “union” as a whole.
This was not a civil war. People need to know that. It will become important someday, soon I hope.
Another quote from the same source as above might help convince you of a truth, as you consider whether or not to accept it as such:
“In U.S. official government records, it is known as “The War of the Rebellion.” This title, too, is incorrect. In 1867, none other than U.S. Supreme Court Justice Salmon P. Chase noted, in his declaration that Jefferson Davis (or any other Confederate) could not be tried for treason, that “Secession is not rebellion.”
There you have it. The action in 1860/1861 was the same thing as in 1775, when a year later, in 1776 it was stated:
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.
Please notice that the word “united” is not capitalized. Words and capitalization matters. These were thirteen sovereign states that decided to separate and divorce the British Empire.
Please notice too that the dissolution of the political bands is something that happens in this broken world, and that separate and equal can be better than together and miserable and abused!
This discussion is needed today, in the USA!
If the USSR can do it (break apart into smaller republics), one would think the US, which was born of secession, could do the same. Right?
Just think about it. Research it. Consider it. You don’t have to accept it as truth you know.
I find it very sad, that the United States of America (formerly known as the ‘united States of America’), had to eventually devote an entire day, or weekend, once a year to honor all our war dead. Who would have thought, in the early days of this republic, that the military deaths of 1.3 million men would one day be the sum total of over 240 years of war and strife.
It would have been one thing IF a majority of these deaths had been due to other nations attacking us, UNPROVOKED, but this is not the case. The United States has NEVER been attacked unprovoked for these major conflicts and wars. Not the War of 1812, not the Mexican-American War, not the so-called Civil War when seven states exited the “union”, not the Spanish-American War, not WWI, not WWII (if you have any doubts, read “Day of Deceit: The Truth About FDR and Pearl Harbor“), not the Korean War, Vietnam War, Gulf War I or even Gulf War II against Iraq and Afghanistan (no, the 9/11 attacks were NOT directed from these two countries, do your research!).
I have become convinced that the creation and adoption of the US Constitution led us to become a warfare state, that even with Thomas Jefferson (who was away during the Philadelphia exercise that removed the Articles of Confederation and replaced it with the Constitution we have today in 1787) as president, even he could not keep this republic, this federation of states from war.
From this 2010 Mises Institute article where H.A. Scott Trask shares excerpts from Chapter 3 of Reassessing the Presidency, edited by John V. Denson, it is clear that Jefferson’s view would have led to many fewer wars, and less of a need for a national holiday to honor all who died, not fighting for our freedom, as that has been our natural right from the begining, but fighting wars that enrich the monied class (protectionist and mercantile segment that looks to find a partner in government and the state and its power) of people in the United States, now known as the Military-Industrial Complex.
Here is Jefferson’s dream:
… the happiness of his countrymen would be promoted best by a policy of “peace, commerce, and friendship with all nations, entangling alliances with none.” He envisioned his country as a peaceful, agrarian-commercial federal republic of self-sufficient farmers and mechanics slowly spreading across space to fill in the beautiful and bountiful land vouchsafed them by Providence. Possessing “a wide and fruitful land,” “with room enough for our descendants to the thousandth and thousandth generation,” and “kindly separated by nature and a wide ocean from the exterminating havoc of one quarter of the globe.” America, Jefferson believed, had the blessed opportunity to keep itself free from the incessant rivalries, jealousies, and conflicts of the Old World. For Jefferson, the wise and patriotic statesman would take advantage of his country’s fortunate geography and situation by defending a policy of national independence, neutrality, and noninvolvement in European affairs.
So what did Jefferson attempt to do to keep these United States from the typical knee-jerk reaction to try to fix problems in other countries and somehow believe in American Exceptionalism? He reduced the standing army substantially (from well over 6000 men to around 3000 men) and relying on the major factor that actually allowed the thirteen colonies to wear down the British Empire, state militias. Not perfect, the fact that every state had a ready force in its own citizens that had armed themselves with state of the art muskets and rifles, would be more than enough to allow a DEFENSE of these states should a foreign power attempt an invasion.
Jefferson’s defense policy was to maintain a peacetime military establishment composed of a small standing army (about 3,000 men) to defend the frontier against hostile Indians and possible Spanish incursions from the Floridas, and a small naval squadron to protect American commerce from the depredations of third-rate powers, such as the Barbary states of North Africa. Jefferson possessed a classical republican aversion to large military and naval establishments both for their expense (which required either taxes or debt to maintain) and their potential threat to the liberties of the people.
Far from being idealistic or Utopian, Jefferson’s vision and policies were based on a realistic understanding of America’s geopolitical situation in the Atlantic world. He believed that it would be pure folly and extravagance to build a large oceangoing fleet, composed of hundreds of frigates and ships-of-the-line. He rightly surmised that building such a fleet would alarm the British and encourage a preemptive strike by their navy in the event of hostilities. Thus, building a fleet could actually increase the possibility of war with England.
Jefferson rejected the Federalist axiom that in order to have peace one must prepare for war — the theory being that the more powerful a country was in armaments the less likely it was to be attacked. Jefferson doubted both the wisdom of this theory and Federalist sincerity in invoking it. He believed that history demonstrated that the more a country prepared for war, the more likely it was to go to war. First, having a powerful military force offered a temptation to rulers to engage in wars for conquest and glory.14 And second, far from deterring aggression, a powerful navy and army often frightened other nations into building up their own forces and forming hostile alliances, tempting them to instigate hostilities for the purpose of gaining a strategic advantage or weakening their rival.
Let us look then to how Jefferson handled and reacted to the tribute the Barbary Coast pirates were demanding of American commercial shipping attempting trade in the world on the free and open seas:
Early in his first term, Jefferson was faced with the question of whether he should use the naval force inherited from the Federalists to protect American trade in the Mediterranean. The pasha of Tripoli, the leader of one of the four Barbary powers on the northern coast of Africa (the others being Morocco, Algiers, and Tunis), demanded additional tribute from the United States as the price for allowing American shipping to trade in the Mediterranean free of piratical raids by his navy.
This was a true test of how “limited” this republic might be when faced with a threat, in this case, half the way around the world.
It does have to be noted that at this point, President Jefferson had at hand a naval force and would not have to rely on Congress to utilize another tool called:
… to vest sovereign authority to use force against enemy nations and their subjects with private parties only. Exercising that power, Congress could authorize so-called privateers to engage in military hostilities, with neither government funding nor oversight (other than after-the-fact judicial determinations of prizes by the prize courts).
Yes, engaging privateers to carry out a mission.
Jefferson actually had a significant navy (more than what he would have desired) that had been enhanced during his predecessor’s (John Adams) term BUT was NOT initiated by President Adams or Congress.
This rabbit trail is especially interesting to this former US Navy sailor that demonstrates that society itself can indeed direct the private initiative to provide port security as well as international trade security means. From this very informative article called “Privately Funded and Built U.S. Warships in the Quasi-War of 1797-1801”:
In 1798, the United States faced an undeclared naval war with France. The existing tax-funded vessels of the U.S. Navy consisted principally of three large frigates–not the ideal weapons for coping with the French threat on the seas. Therefore, a number of self-interested citizens undertook to provide nine additional fighting ships. These privately funded frigates and sloops-of-war served with distinction. Most of them were considered outstanding examples of naval architecture. Some saw action only against France. Others lasted through the Barbary Wars and even the War of 1812.
The lesson to be drawn from this little-known episode in U.S. history seems clear. Effective naval fighting forces can be financed and constructed largely if not entirely by means of voluntary contributions. National governments need not direct the process, and taxes need not be used to fund the projects.
I contend that this method would be much more effective and efficient than the MIC (Military Industrial Complex) method which is to start wars and intervene in other countries around the world (i.e. Syria, Venezuela, etc) to drive the demand for over-priced and poor-quality weapons (i.e. F-35, Littoral Class, Super Carriers, etc):
Back to the main focus of this post, how did Jefferson do when faced with this treat? He indeed did send the frigates USS Philadelphia, USS President, and the USS Essex, along with the schooner USS Enterprise to the Barbary Coast via Gibraltar (at the entrance to the Mediterranean Sea) which constituted America’s first navy to cross the Atlantic. These frigates brought the following speed and power:
They carried 24-60 guns, were up to 175 feet long, displaced up to 1,600 tons, .. had crews of 200-450 men, and were comparable to the cruisers of World War II. With rare exceptions, no frigate could survive one-on-one combat with a ship-of-the-line. However, because frigates were faster than ships-of-the-line, they could usually escape from those more powerful vessels. Owing to their combination of speed and significant firepower, frigates often served as scouts for the battle fleet, as escorts for convoys of merchant ships, or as commerce raiders acting independently. In 1800, the most powerful warships of the U.S. Navy were the 44-gun frigates United States, Constitution, and President.
So was this a “shock-and-awe” moment? No. This action was deliberately annoying in the same way the militia was annoying to a larger force in the colonies backed by a much larger British Empire from 1775 to 1782. Off the coast of Africa, the US Navy harassed the larger forces that harassed our shipping by demanding tributes.
Upon reaching Gibraltar in the late summer, the naval squadron found two Tripolitan cruisers on blockade duty awaiting American vessels. The American squadron chased off the two cruisers; the schooner Enterprise engaged one of them in battle and captured it; and the squadron proceeded to Tripoli where it blockaded the harbor. Thus, for the second time in only four years, the United States found itself in an undeclared naval war.
Jefferson sent additional forces to the Mediterranean each year until, by the summer of 1805, almost the entire American navy was deployed off the shores of Tripoli.
In addition to escorting American merchant vessels and blockading Tripoli (in 1801 and 1803–1805), the American fleet bombarded Tripoli five times in August and September of 1804.
By the early summer of 1805, facing a renewed and even more destructive series of bombardments from the American navy, and hearing of the fall of the town of Derbe to a land force composed of Americans, Greeks, and Tripolitan exiles commanded by William Eaton (the former American consul at Tunis), the pasha sued for peace and signed a treaty ending the war. The June 1805 treaty abolished annual payments from the United States to Tripoli and provided for the payment of a $60,000 ransom for more than 200 American captives, mostly sailors from the U.S. frigate Philadelphia that had been captured after running aground off Tripoli in 1803.
In the end, a land effort by the Marines finally accomplished an end to free trade on the open seas. Up until this time, Europe itself paid these tributes while the American’s fought for the ability to use the oceans as free-trade zones.
How many US military deaths came from this limited engagement?
35 combat deaths
39 other deaths (disease, etc)
Total of 74 deaths of American sailors and Marines in four years.
Compared to the balance of wars that our government engaged in over the course of the following 220 years, this is impressive. I applaud you Thomas Jefferson for doing this honorable thing.
Subsequent larger wars, War of 1812 (15,000 US military deaths), Mexican-American War (14,000 US military deaths) and Civil War (750,000 US military deaths) were horrendous. It was actually at the conclusion of the War Against Southern Independence that the southern women first decided to honor ALL of the fallen soldiers (USA and CSA) of that horrific conflict, as mentioned in this article towards a “Decoration Day” which eventually became ‘Memorial Day’:
In January 1866, the Ladies’ Memorial Association in Columbus, Georgia, passed a motion agreeing that they would designate a day to throw flowers on the graves of fallen soldiers buried at the cemetery, Gardiner said.
However, the ladies didn’t want this to be an isolated event, so Mary Ann Williams, the group’s secretary, wrote a letter and sent it to newspapers all over the United States.
“You’ll find that letter in dozens of newspapers,” Gardiner said. “It got out, and it was republished everywhere in the country.”
In the letter, the ladies asked people to celebrate the war’s fallen soldiers on April 26 — the day the bulk of Confederate soldiers surrendered in North Carolina in 1865.
“That’s what many people in the South considered to be the end of the war,” Gardiner said. Even though Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered on April 9, “there were still 90,000 people ready to fight. And until those 90,000 surrendered on April 26, the war was effectively still going on,” Gardiner said.
At the end of the day, it was the illogical violent reaction, on the part of Abraham Lincoln, towards seven southern states (former American colonies) that had asked for a divorce from this voluntary federation of states established first by the Articles of Confederation (agreed to in Congress 15NOV1777 and ratified and in force 01MAR1781) and eventually by the US Constitution (Created 17SEP1787, Ratified 21JUN1788 and in force 04MAR1789) that ramped up US military deaths!
Why would seven states seek separation towards divorce? Why in 1861? In a 2017 Paul Craig Roberts article sharing the thoughts of Thomas DiLorenzo:
The rate of federal taxation was about to more than double (from 15% to 32.7%), as it did on March 2, 1861 when President James Buchanan, the Pennsylvania protectionist, signed the Morrill Tariff into law, a law that was relentlessly promoted by Abraham Lincoln and the Republican Party .. The South, like the Mid-West, was an agricultural society that was being plundered twice by protection tariffs: Once by paying higher prices for “protected” manufactured goods, and a second time by reduced exports after the high tariffs impoverished their European customers who were prohibited from selling in the U.S. by the high tariffs. Most of the South’s agricultural produce –as much as 75% or so in some years — was sold in Europe.
Having separated, the seven states decided in Montgomery, Alabama to take almost an identical constitution and return toward 1775 economic principles that aligns with Thomas Jefferson’s:
The Confederate Constitution outlawed protectionist tariffs altogether, calling only for a modest “revenue tariff” of ten percent or so. This so horrified the “Party of Great Moral Causes” that Republican Party-affiliated newspapers in the North were calling for the bombardment of Southern ports before the war. With a Northern tariff in the 50% range (where it would be after Lincoln signed ten tariff-raising pieces of legislation, and remained in that range for the succeeding fifty years) compared to the Southern 10% average tariff rate, they understood that much of the trade of the world would go through Southern, not Northern, ports and to them, that was cause for war. “We now have the votes and we intend to plunder you mercilessly; if you resist we will invade, conquer, and subjugate you” is essentially what the North, with its election of lifelong protectionist Abraham Lincoln as a sectional president, was saying.
This action by a new federation of seven states threatened northern industry and businessmen. This was the source of fear that had Lincoln reinforce in his 1st inaugural address on 04MAR1861 to try to entice the southern seven states back into the union by declaring:
Lincoln then pledged to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act, which he in fact did during his administration, returning dozens of runaway slaves to their “owners.” Most importantly, seven paragraphs from the end of his speech he endorsed the Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which had already passed the House and Senate and was ratified by several states. This “first thirteenth amendment” would prohibit the federal government from ever interfering with Southern slavery. It would have enshrined slavery explicitly in the text of the Constitution. Lincoln stated in the same paragraph that he believed slavery was already constitutional, but that he had “no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.”
This may have sounded good to those in the southern states, but then the abuse they felt the previous 35 years rose up in their minds when they heard Lincoln’s following words:
“The power confided in me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government, and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using force against or among the people anywhere” (emphasis added).
The “duties and imposts” he referred to were the tariffs to be collected under the new Morrill Tariff law. If there was to be a war, he said, the cause of the war would in effect be the refusal of the Southern states to submit to being plundered by the newly-doubled federal tariff tax, a policy that the South had been periodically threatening nullification and secession over for the previous thirty-three years.
Once in power, Lincoln’s cabinet was not in favor of war at their first meeting. Since Lincoln wanted to ensure collection of Southern port tariffs, he wanted to hold on to the forts still in his possession at Fort Pickens (Pensacola) and Fort Jefferson (Key West) in Florida and Fort Sumter (Charleston) in South Carolina.
By the end of March 1861, influenced by the fears both northern and western (Midwest today) businessmen had about a free trade zone adjacent to the northern states and the thought of Mississippi River trade being more expensive, war seemed to be the only alternative thought of in the North. Lincoln, a lawyer, knew secession was legal under the Constitution, so he decided to call this a general insurrection that under a 1807 act was under the President’s purview:
Whenever there is an insurrections in any State against its government, the President may, upon the request of its legislature or of its governor if the legislature cannot be convened, call into Federal service such of the militia of the other States, in the number requested by that State, and use such of the armed forces, as he considers necessary to suppress the insurrection.
Lincoln then proceeded to resupply Fort Sumter, not just with food, but with troops forcing those guarding Charleston harbor to fire on the fort before the supply ships arrived. This accomplished Lincoln’s desire. The coastal defenses around Fort Sumter firing on a US held fort would inflame the hearts of all who remained in the union, or so Lincoln thought.
No one died in this bombardment, and if Lincoln had relented and finally agreed to peace negotiations that had been attempted all of March 1861, things would have been much different.
No need for “Memorial Day”. Thanks Abraham, thanks GOP! Not!
A President’s (Abraham Lincoln) unilateral decision (he failed to call Congress into session until well after war preparations were underway, not until 04JUL1861) to call up 75,000 volunteers on 15APR1861 sealed the deal towards a war. This notice extended to all the states that were in sympathy to the original seven states, and as a result, Virginia and other states would again vote on secession and four more would do so.
Lincoln’s subsequent actions like placing the Maryland legislators who favored southern independence in prison, placing cannon aimed at the Delaware statehouse, closing down hundreds of newspaper presses that called him out on his actions as well as his placing thousands of newspaper press on prison ships indicated the type of tyrant the office of president could produced. This was in my opinion, America at its darkest moment, so far, in its history. By the end of this conflict, ‘total war’ would be adopted as innocent civilians and their homes would be the target of this standing army followed by military occupation of all southern states.
War and military occupation are at the very root of the GOP DNA.
