Averting American civil war?

Sherman’s March, Camp Douglas, burning Columbia. Lots of things on the US side that would be considered evil in warfare today.
War is Hell was an accurate statement.
 
Sherman didn't make a point of murdering civilians during the March, though, and in fact picked up the slack of caring for Confederate civilians that had been dispossessed by Confederate soldiers
 

Bytor

Monthly Donor
Lincoln gets his Illinois senate seat and never runs for presidential nomination of the Republican Party in 1860. William Seward wins the nomination instead, as he almost did OTL. Seward was very passionate about abolition, so the South would have hated him just as much, but he was the dove to Lincoln's hawk so he would have probably continued turning over the US forts to the CSA as Davis had started doing during his final weeks as president. Seward would probably have also accepted the CSA's offer to pay for the federal properties and enter into a peace treaty.

You can see something similar as part of my my Balance of Power ATL. https://www.alternatehistory.com/forum/threads/balance-of-power.403582/#post-13623982
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Still, that's my point. They didn't even wait until he was in office.

To be fair: their position was always "if a Republican gets in, we get out". So the moment he was elected, they knew it was time to leave, and they knew he'd try to stop them. Given those facts, it only makes sense to set your plans in motion as soon as possible. Every day you gain is an extra day you can prepare for the inevitable.

If you're committed to seceding, waiting for the guy bent on preventing it from gaining actual power is just plain dumb. (Which is not to say they were actually very intelligent: given their actual core goal - preserving slavery - they should've just embraced the Corwin Amendment. Morality aside, it would've been the smart move for them.)


even ignoring the capital sin of slavery, the Confederates were still objectively evil for raiding Lawrence, Kansas, to rob banks, raze most of the town, (including forcing civilians back into buildings and then torching them) and murdering every man and boy they could on August 21 1863, planning to ship and sell clothing infected with yellow fever--e.g., bioterrorism--to Boston, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C., in December 1863, threatening to burn down Hagerstown, Maryland, as a means of extortion on July 6 1864, burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania, to the ground after failing to extort money from civilians, attempting to burn down St. Albans, Vermont, after shooting civilians and robbing banks, trying to burn down New York City by lighting fires in hotels in the middle of the night on November 24 1864, and the Confederate government's authorization to execute and enslave Union POWs. and then there's the fact that their successors, the Ku Klux Klan, became America's first major domestic terrorist organization and subverted our society so much that frickin' Superman literally had to be called in to stop them

There is a lot wrong with what you're claiming here. For starters, we're discussing an ATL scenario that involves a negotiated solution instead of the war in OTL. Which means that all events that happened in the war are butterlied and not relevant to this ATL scenario. It is completely illogical to argue "successful negotiations in 1860-61 are impossible in this ATL because the CSA did X in 1863(!) in OTL".

Even if you do seriously want to defend that kind of circular reasoning (which would cause me to end the discussion at once, on the grounds that nothing good can come from entertaining logical fallacies), I'll point out that there are still two major issues with your actual claims.

Number one. You describe excesses and horrific acts that happened during the war, but you ignore that such acts were perpretated by both sides. You also ignore that the acts you describe all happened after the North had, in fact, invaded the South. You make it seem as if the South perpetrated acts of aggression without the slightest provocation, instead of recognising the actual situation: that a war of (re)conquest had been launched against the CSA. By this, I do not mean to defend such acts at all, incidentally. But placing them altogether outside their context is a pretty dubious approach.

Would you like me to produce a list of actions committed by Union forces that would be qualified as war crimes nowadays? It wouldn't take much effort. I can refer to Union forces burning down entire counties to punish rebels allegedly hiding among the populace. I can refer to the slaughter of Native Americans who sided with the CSA without any form of trial, because the Union forces considered these 'savages' as unworthy of legal processing. I can point out that Camp Douglas is right there in the same category as Camp Sumter. I can provide soyrces and I can keep going at length, if needed. There were a lot of horrors to go around, and as I said: persons and parties on both sides engaged in truly heinous behaviour. That should surprise absolutely no-one, since that kind of behaviour was commonplace in every war. Our modern custom of specifically limiting what is allowed in war (for instance, via the Geneva Coventions) is an admirable but altogether unprecedented exception to the historical rule. Your attempt to single out the CSA as being uniquely guilty of this kind of thing is misplaced. It is of course easy to assign such blame, since you can just lump it in with slavery and say "See? Evil!" -- but it's not accurate to the historical reality, which saw both sides commit atrocities.

Number two. The fact that you are implying that the politicians in 1860-61 (which, again, is what we're talking about) are responsible for everything the KKK did later (in most cases, much later) is simply absurd. The only way to justify that kind of position is to assume collective guilt of some sort. I contend that such collective guilt does not exist: every single person is responsible for his own actions. If you want to uphold some myth of collective guilt, that's your choice, but I will reject all such claims out of hand.


This allows us to return to the actual premise of the OP. We are looking at the period between Lincoln's election and the actual commencement of hostilities. No shots have yet been fired, no war crimes committed. Whatever the future may hold, we cannot judge todasy by an ephemeral tomorrow. We stand here, in these turbulent months, and we ask: is a negotiated solution possible? If not, why not?

Your contention was that the CSA was inherently criminal and hostile -- with the implication that it was uniquely so -- and that this is what prevented a negotiated solution. Those charges raised my objection, and continue to do so, because they simply are not true. Mind you, this is no defence of the CSA. I think the CSA is evil, because slavery is evil. But again: slavery exists in the USA as well, at that point. If the USA abolishes it, and then starts a just war on humanitarian grounds to free the slaves in the CSA, that's awesome and morally good. But the contention that in 1860-1861 the CSA is uniquely immoral doesn't hold water. The USA is a slave power itself, launching a war not to free slaves, but to forcibly bring states that have seceded (and had a Constitutional right to do so) back into its control. I wouldn't call that a just war.

Also note that 'criminal' is not the same as 'immoral', and no matter how evil slavery is, it was still legal-- on both sides of the border. Secession was also legal. As I already pointed out, in the time-frame we're looking at here, the CSA was aiming to 'go its own way', whereas the USA was pushing for 'restoring the Union by force'. That makes the USA the more hostile party. I've already pointed out that the acts you have cited as proof that the CSA was uniquely criminal and hostile are not unique to the CSA at all, and moreover, they have not yet occurred at the moment in time we are looking at. Was the CSA immoral and evil? Yes. But that wasn't what made negotiations almost impossible and the war so inevitable. It's what made secession inevitable. What made the war inevitable is that the North was unwilling to accept that secession-- even though it was legal. To such an extent that Lincoln himself was willing to go with the Corwin proposal to undo the secession.

I therefore maintain my position, which is that it would be extremely difficult for both sides to find a compromise they would both be willing to accept, but that the cause of the difficulty is not that the CSA is a specifically aggressive country hell-bent on war(-crimes). The true cause of the difficulty is that the two sides has at this point reached two divergent and almost certainly irreconcilable views of what was 'good' and 'proper'.
 
Pick some POD
No public call for troops and less sabre rattling in general.
Arkansas, Tennessee, North Carolina, and Virginia vote to stay in Union with some variation of the Crittenden Compromise
Supreme Court upholds Secession as legal under Constitution.
After ten years the Confederate economy completely tanks and reunification talks begin.
There might be a rebellion pickup in western South Carolina, and northern Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia.
I'm not sure Texas would stick with the others.
 
Independent State of Dade perhaps?
It would be difficult to be a dirt farmer on the border and see the dirt farmers on the other side getting better prices for their crops, seed, hardware, etc.
 
Was the CSA immoral and evil? Yes. But that wasn't what made negotiations almost impossible and the war so inevitable. It's what made secession inevitable. What made the war inevitable is that the North was unwilling to accept that secession-- even though it was legal. To such an extent that Lincoln himself was willing to go with the Corwin proposal to undo the secession.

Suppose we take as given (which I do not) that secession was legal. That was not what the North was unwilling to accept. Consider the multitude of proposals floating around for a "Central Confederacy" of states from New York to Arkansas and everything in between (and other proposals for an independent NYC), among other things. Things were very peaceable during the first months of 1861.

What the North was unwilling to accept was secession by the sword, at Fort Sumter. As secession had never happened in the US before, and the Constitution / DoI had no explicit provision for how to handle secession, then even assuming it was potentially legal, there was no set mechanism for how to do it. In particular, there was no provision for how to handle Federal property and locations within the seceding State. As such, the North could (and did) hold the position that the fort and its supplies was Federal property, and did not secede with the rest of South Carolina (as indeed with Fort Pickens at Florida). Given that South Carolina and the nascent CSA disputed this view, they could have negotiated for its turn-over. Many views in the North, in Lincoln's cabinet, and from General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, believed that ultimately the fort would and arguably should be given to South Carolina.

Here Lincoln was very canny, and sent a supply ship to the fort with food, but not with arms or reinforcements. As food was the bare necessity for the fort's inhabitants (defenders) to live, this action would preserve the status quo while allowing for diplomatic talks to go forward. It could not be reasonably considered an aggressive action. And ironically it would prove futile, because Robert Anderson judged that he would run out of food and have to surrender before the ship could arrive. But all of this was not good enough for the CSA.

Even then, they could have chosen to send a ship to intercept the Union supply ship. It would give warning to turn back and not deliver the supplies, and threaten to open fire on the supply ship only if the supply ship did not turn back. Given the warning, even this may have been defensible as a non-provocative action.

Instead, we got the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

That was what the North could not accept.

---

As it pertains to your larger point, yes the war was basically inevitable by this point, and yes it was indeed a product of two mutually irreconcilable views, but the CSA was the clear aggressor.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Suppose we take as given (which I do not) that secession was legal.

It's basically the core point of my position regarding the whole matter that secession was legal. While I'm glad you're willing to - even hypothetically - entertain the notion that this is indeed the case, I remain curious as to why you won't actually accept it.

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I mean, that was - and remains - the law of the land. If the Constitution doesn't delegate it to the federal government or prohibit it to the states, it remains within the scope of the states' sovereign authority (and if a state doesn't legislate on the matter, then it's for every person to decide what's right). This is the principle of subsidiarity, clear and simple. A more clear-cut case of it has rarely existed. As I always charge anyone who claims secession wasn't (or isn't) legal under the Constitution: please, do point out exactly where it delegates the power to regulate that matter to the Federal government. Spoiler: it doesn't.


That was not what the North was unwilling to accept. Consider the multitude of proposals floating around for a "Central Confederacy" of states from New York to Arkansas and everything in between (and other proposals for an independent NYC), among other things. Things were very peaceable during the first months of 1861.

What the North was unwilling to accept was secession by the sword, at Fort Sumter. As secession had never happened in the US before, and the Constitution / DoI had no explicit provision for how to handle secession, then even assuming it was potentially legal, there was no set mechanism for how to do it. In particular, there was no provision for how to handle Federal property and locations within the seceding State. As such, the North could (and did) hold the position that the fort and its supplies was Federal property, and did not secede with the rest of South Carolina (as indeed with Fort Pickens at Florida). Given that South Carolina and the nascent CSA disputed this view, they could have negotiated for its turn-over. Many views in the North, in Lincoln's cabinet, and from General-in-Chief Winfield Scott, believed that ultimately the fort would and arguably should be given to South Carolina.

You ignore a few facts here. For instance, the fact that the Federal garrisson was actually on the mainland. In the dead of night, that garrisson secretly fled to the unfinished insular fort Sumter-- and not before having sabotaged the equipment on the mainland. That's not exactly setting the stage for polite negotiations, is it? No. What it was, however, was a direct violation of (the still quite valid and operative) instructions of the demissionary but still-in-office president Buchanan. Now, we can say Buchanan was a bag of dicks, but ignoring binding instructions to not act provocatively or change the status quo in any way by doing literally the opposite of that... well, that's not exactly solid behaviour.

At that point, we get to this:

Here Lincoln was very canny, and sent a supply ship to the fort with food, but not with arms or reinforcements. As food was the bare necessity for the fort's inhabitants (defenders) to live, this action would preserve the status quo while allowing for diplomatic talks to go forward. It could not be reasonably considered an aggressive action. And ironically it would prove futile, because Robert Anderson judged that he would run out of food and have to surrender before the ship could arrive. But all of this was not good enough for the CSA.

Even then, they could have chosen to send a ship to intercept the Union supply ship. It would give warning to turn back and not deliver the supplies, and threaten to open fire on the supply ship only if the supply ship did not turn back. Given the warning, even this may have been defensible as a non-provocative action.

Instead, we got the bombardment of Fort Sumter.

That was what the North could not accept.

It was very canny of Lincoln, indeed. Worked out for him, too. Of course, the status quo - as I pointed out - had already been upset by those very men in fort Sumter.

While the South Carolinians would certainly have done well to act far more cautiously, the idea that they had no right to demand the surrender of a military force in their sovereign territory is rather strange. It must hinge on the (incorrect) assumption that the secession was illegal and therefore void. But that's a false premise. South Carolina had chosen to become a sovereign country-- and was therefore under no obligation to tolerate foreign military forces within its borders. Certainly, it was obligated to guarantee them safe passage to the border if they surrendered. But by occupying fort Sumter in the dead of night, against presidential orders, those Union forces had already proven to be hostile. They'd had months to vacate the fort. They should have done so. Afterwards, had the separation between North and South proven irreparable, the CSA should have coughed up adequate monetary compensation for all Federal property (namely, forts and other such installations) of which it had inevitably assumed control by seceding.

Had the CSA refused to grant such compensation, that would have been grounds for war. (War against a foreign country, mind you.) But to say that a sovereign state expelling armed squatters from within its borders is somehow a crime? No. It's not. The USA was at fault for not recognising the secession and for not withdrawing its forces. The simple fact that the USA refused to even recognise that the secession was legal in principle was fundamentally a problem. You write that the Federal position was that the fort did not secede along with SC. The truth is that the Federal position was that the secession was null and void. It was never "we will allow secession if we work out the proper details first". It was always "this is an illegal uprising, and we'd rather come to a peaceful resolution, but if not, we'll preserve the Union by force if we have to".

The sequence of negotiations should have been:

1. The USA recognises the CSA, because no matter the details, secession itself is legal.

2. The CSA and the USA exchange ambassadors, so they can actually start negotiating.

3. The USA attempts to convince the CSA to re-join the Union. If successful, end of negotiations: the CSA re-joins the Union after a brief stint as a sovereign country. If unsuccessful, we go to 4.

4. The USA demands that the CSA offers compensation for Federal property in the South.

5. The CSA agrees to further negotiations on proper handling of such affairs, provided the USA first evacuates all its forces from CSA territory forthwith (which is not an unreasonably demand).

6. These further negotiations actually commence (and probably drag on for ages).


The actual sequence of negotiations was:

1. The USA refuses to recognise the CSA and also dismisses all resolutions that do not somehow end in the return of the South into the Union.

2. Unless both sides find it within themselves to find a compromise that retro-actively undoes the secession (Corwin, Crittenden, an ATL alternative), there is no space for further negotiations, because the USA has ruled those out by refusing to recognise the secession. So: end of negotiations. War.


The claim that the USA would totally not have waged war if the CSA had just refrained from firing on fort Sumter is, by the way, a joke. It's akin to claiming that the secession of the CSA was really about tarriffs, rather than slavery. Smoke-screen justifications for the real motives. The CSA wanted to preserve slavery, and all else was window-dressing. And the USA wanted to bring the CSA back into the Union no matter what. In the words of Abraham Lincoln himself:

I would save the Union. I would save it the shortest way under the Constitution. The sooner the national authority can be restored; the nearer the Union will be "the Union as it was." If there be those who would not save the Union, unless they could at the same time save slavery, I do not agree with them. If there be those who would not save the Union unless they could at the same time destroy slavery, I do not agree with them. My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause.

By which I certainly do not mean to imply that Lincoln was secretly a racist, as some revisionists use this quote to "denmonstrate". He ends this same letter by expressing his personal hatred of slavery-- but he makes it very clear that he'll set that aside for the sake of his paramount goal: to restore the Union. To undo the secession. As much as the war was about the preservation of slavery for the South, for the North it was about unmaking the secession. The claim that it was all an exercise to avenge fort Sumter is laughable. Lincoln was indeed canny! He wanted the South to attack fort Sumter. He wanted an excuse. And he'd have found one, no matter what.

So let's not pretend that if the South hadn't fired on fort Sumter and had in fact behaved politely on all fronts, the North would suddenly have decided to let the South go in peace. That would never have happened. The South wanted independence from the North, the North didn't want to grant it. Now, as to the outcome: I'm rather fne with it, except that it has created the unfortunate misconception that secession itself is a bad thing. The fact that the CSA got crushed? As they say: "Awwww, it couldn't have happened to nicer people."

But there is also such a thing as historical truth. The fact that they set up their own country just to safeguard their ability to own other people is clear enough when it comes to identifying the bastards. Adding false charges ("Secession was illegal! The North would totally have let them go if it hadn't been for fort Sumter!") just tarnishes the truth. If we have to turn our conceptions of history into cartoon-like portrayals where the bad guys are cardboard villains who are wrong about everything, then we do ourselves a disservice. In real life, even the morally wrong side can be right about certain things. And the good side can do bad things for a good reason. Hell, they can even do bad things that then produce a good outcome! (Say, an illegal war of reconquest setting the stage for the abolition of slavery...?)
 
While the South Carolinians would certainly have done well to act far more cautiously, the idea that they had no right to demand the surrender of a military force in their sovereign territory is rather strange. It must hinge on the (incorrect) assumption that the secession was illegal and therefore

The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to legislate for places acquired by the US for construction of forts etc. So SC had no aauthority over either Ft Moultrie or Ft Sumter. So even if her Ordinance of Secession were valid, it would not apply to either place.
 

Skallagrim

Banned
The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to legislate for places acquired by the US for construction of forts etc. So SC had no aauthority over either Ft Moultrie or Ft Sumter. So even if her Ordinance of Secession were valid, it would not apply to either place.

That section of Article One does distinguish between the future area ceded by one or more states (where the capital is to be placed), and areas "purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be" for forts etc. -- Those latter areas are not ceded, and remain part of the state(s) in question. As soon as such a state secedes, it stops being subject to the Constitution, and thus, all Federal legislation over such places becomes void. That land was of course paid for by the Federal government, which is why the CSA would absolutely have to grant full compensation in the end, but the actual Federal legislating authority over the locale ceases to exist as soon as the state secedes. The US government becomes, for all intents and purposes, the private owner of that piece of land within the CSA. The land is sovereign CS soil; it just happens to be privately owned by a foreign government. That does not mean that said foreign government is allowed to station troops there without the CS government's permission.

The lawyers could have had a field day with all this. Shame about the war, really. Looking at it in a purely abstract sense, disconnected from all historical implications, this could have been one of the most interesting legal cases in history.
 

Schnozzberry

Gone Fishin'
Donor
The Constitution gives Congress the exclusive power to legislate for places acquired by the US for construction of forts etc. So SC had no aauthority over either Ft Moultrie or Ft Sumter. So even if her Ordinance of Secession were valid, it would not apply to either place.

South Carolina was no longer bound by the Constitution though. They were now a piece of a separate sovereign entity, and those do have the authority over foreign military installations in their borders. The only thing which might make this sticky would be the value of the land/fort and whether or not South Carolina needed compensate the Union for it.

Edit: D'oh, Skallagrim, you got me beat.
 
That section of Article One does distinguish between the future area ceded by one or more states (where the capital is to be placed), and areas "purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be" for forts etc. -- Those latter areas are not ceded, and remain part of the state(s) in question. As soon as such a state secedes, it stops being subject to the Constitution, and thus, all Federal legislation over such places becomes void

Show me any law or court decision that says so.

Incidentally Article 1 gives Congress "a like jurisdiction" over forts and such places as it does over the Federal Capital. So it would seem to be a distinction without a difference.

South Carolina was no longer bound by the Constitution though. They were now a piece of a separate sovereign entity, and those do have the authority over foreign military installations in their borderst.

As Cuba has over Guantanamo?
 

Skallagrim

Banned
Show me any law or court decision that says so.

Incidentally Article 1 gives Congress "a like jurisdiction" over forts and such places as it does over the Federal Capital. So it would seem to be a distinction without a difference.

I've already quoted the Constitution itself (which is a law, and the highest of the land at that).

You may well refer to "like authority", but that phrase, "like authority", doesn't refer to the ceding of any land. It refers to the aformentioned authority to "exercise exclusive Legislation" which was said to pertain to "such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States". The difference is that word, Cession. The District in question is to be ceded by the state or states in question, thus becoming a distinct territorial entity, not existing within any of the other states anymore. But the "like authority" over "all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings" does not apply to ceded land. Those places are purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be. What does "same" refer to? It refers to neither "State", "Legislature" or "Consent". It refers to "Places". So we actually get "all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which [those Places] shall be". These places, unlike the Capital District, will remain in the pertaining states. The Constitution says so. Which yields a rather big distinction with a ceded area (namely DC) which explicitly does not remain within the ceding state(s).

It's a distinction that is irrelevant in practice, of course, for as long as the state in question remains within the Union. But as soon as the state exits the Union, the distinction suddenly becomes crucial-- as I have already outlined. Your apparent belief that the places purchased by the Federal government become separate territorial entities outside the states within they reside is completely misplaced. The Federal government gains the exclusive right to legislate there, but the areas remain parts of the states in question. If it were otherwise, the Constitution would not have had to distinguish between the ceded Capital District and the purchased lands for forts etc.

You may also want to note that the Supreme Court has repeatedly confirmed -- most in Evans v. Cornman (1970), which remains standing jurisprudence -- that residents of any Federally administrated locales within states are entitled to vote as residents of the surrounding state... because they are. Residents of the Capital District, on the other hand, are not allowed to vote as residents of either maryland or Virginia. (And that's your relevant court decision, right there. Just as I've quoted the highest law, I've also referred to a ruling by the highest court. I do believe my point is by now conclusively proven.)
 
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South Carolina was no longer bound by the Constitution though. They were now a piece of a separate sovereign entity, and those do have the authority over foreign military installations in their borders.

Only if the foreign power concerned recognises them as a "sovereign entity". If not, it obviously won't recognise their authority over the military installations, or indeed over anything else.

After all, neither Congress nor the US Courts - the only bodies whose authority Lincoln was under any obligation to heed - had instructed him either to recognise the CS or to surrender the forts.
 
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