WI: Union does not declare blockade

TFSmith121

Banned
Come on, Rob, all I asked you to do was explain this statement:

- snip - Incidentally, Smith, I think you may have forgotten that with me having you on ignore, the only bits of your argument I can see are the ones that other posters consider worthy of response.

Come on, Rob, all I asked you to do was explain this statement:

This, in turn, has significant repercussions for their treatment of prisoners and the like, which is going to escalate both domestic and international hand-wringing about the ferocity of the conflict.

Are Lincoln et al going to start ordering rebels blown from the mouths of the guns? Mass executions? Concentration camps?

I, for one, am looking forward to being enlightened at exactly what you're getting at here.

Best,
 
I had a vague recollection of something relevant in my history of the New York Herald, so checked up on it. At the start of April 1861, the Herald was writing stuff like "Neither the government at Washington... nor the government at Montgomery ought to receive a dollar from any source unless they renounce their nefarious schemes of civil war, and agree to a peaceful solution of the questions at issue" and "the Lincoln administration will be compelled to succumb in disgrace amidst the execrations of the people and the curses of mankind". On 15 April 1861, a mob turned up outside the Herald offices. The next issues featured editorials accusing the South of having "wantonly and wickedly inaugurated hostilities in order to dissever and destroy the republic" and saying things like "President Lincoln is right in treating this grand conspiracy and its developments as a gigantic insurrection" and "Abolition will hang on the same tree with Rebellion". So, even allowing for the quality of the paper, there's at least some potential for war excitement to switch to the theme of "no quarter".

What the Herald example suggested to me was that a switch from early appeasement might lead to a stricter approach of treating the war as an insurrection and punishing the guilty accordingly. Seward had a particular scheme of abandoning Sumter but holding on to Pickens at all costs, which Lincoln naturally shot down. Had the administration rather humiliatingly abandoned Sumter to popular outcry, only for the Confederates to bombard and destroy Pickens, that might have created an atmosphere in which the administration showing weakness by allowing belligerent recognition was unacceptable. The problem is that I can't fault Lincoln's logic, as I suspect neither could Seward, though perhaps a change in the cabinet might help remove that obstacle.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
"No quarter" in 1861?

I had a vague recollection of something relevant in my history of the New York Herald, so checked up on it. At the start of April 1861, the Herald was writing stuff like "Neither the government at Washington... nor the government at Montgomery ought to receive a dollar from any source unless they renounce their nefarious schemes of civil war, and agree to a peaceful solution of the questions at issue" and "the Lincoln administration will be compelled to succumb in disgrace amidst the execrations of the people and the curses of mankind". On 15 April 1861, a mob turned up outside the Herald offices. The next issues featured editorials accusing the South of having "wantonly and wickedly inaugurated hostilities in order to dissever and destroy the republic" and saying things like "President Lincoln is right in treating this grand conspiracy and its developments as a gigantic insurrection" and "Abolition will hang on the same tree with Rebellion". So, even allowing for the quality of the paper, there's at least some potential for war excitement to switch to the theme of "no quarter".

What the Herald example suggested to me was that a switch from early appeasement might lead to a stricter approach of treating the war as an insurrection and punishing the guilty accordingly. Seward had a particular scheme of abandoning Sumter but holding on to Pickens at all costs, which Lincoln naturally shot down. Had the administration rather humiliatingly abandoned Sumter to popular outcry, only for the Confederates to bombard and destroy Pickens, that might have created an atmosphere in which the administration showing weakness by allowing belligerent recognition was unacceptable. The problem is that I can't fault Lincoln's logic, as I suspect neither could Seward, though perhaps a change in the cabinet might help remove that obstacle.

"No quarter" in 1861?

Cripes, the US didn't raise the black flag at the height of the "hard hand" period in 1863-65, and you think it could happen in 1861?

Okay...explains much.

Best,
 
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"No quarter" in 1861?

Cripes, the US didn't raise the black flag at the height of the "hard hand" period in 1863-65, and you think it could happen in 1861?

Okay...explains much.

Best,

Yeah no quarter seems... unlikely to say the least at any point during the civil war. In fact only way I can see the Union ever doing something like this is if the Confederates did it themselves regularly.
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Yeah; the point, as Lincoln said repeatedly,

Yeah no quarter seems... unlikely to say the least at any point during the civil war. In fact only way I can see the Union ever doing something like this is if the Confederates did it themselves regularly.

Yeah; the point, as Lincoln said repeatedly, was to restore and strengthen the Union, not simply conquer the rebel states.

It's an unique interpretation of US policy during the war, and of Lincoln as a wartime leader in a democracy, especially; I'll give him that...;)

Best,
 
Yeah no quarter seems... unlikely to say the least at any point during the civil war.
As an official government policy, of course. Which is why I suggested it in the context of popular excitement, not of government policy:

So, even allowing for the quality of the paper, there's at least some potential for war excitement to switch to the theme of "no quarter".

However, in turn, the environment in which government decisions are made will affect the outcome of those decisions. A fairly uncontroversial proposal, as far as I can see:

Secondly, you might have a different context in which the decision is made- e.g. a significant outcry to deny the Confederates the honours of war- which also comes to a different result. My point was that the different decision may be a symptom of wider structural factors which imply the adoption of a different and potentially harsher way of waging war.

Take, for instance, the case of the Confederate privateers. The administration proposed to treat them as pirates and hang them, while the British pointed out that this was inconsistent with their previous statements on belligerency, blockade and the Treaty of Paris. Four of the crew of the Jefferson Davis were sentenced to death; the trial of the Savannah in New York resulted in deadlock; the administration abandoned the prosecutions as a result; and the privateer crews were treated as prisoners of war. It seems fairly obvious that had the government set out to treat this as an insurrection, and had popular enthusiasm for punishing rebels been greater, this sequence of events would have gone differently. So the government hangs the privateers; the Confederacy hangs Union prisoners in response; and we have the makings of a spiral of revenge.

Again, it seems equally obvious that the British would have viewed this kind of escalation with concern. The peace movement in the country only really started in the 1850s: more importantly, it also has some significant overlap with pro-Union support, which suggests that if the Union takes a distinctly harder-line stance they're going to start alienating supporters. What might be particularly interesting is whether this leads to an earlier internationalist peace movement and support for supranational institutions to facilitate pressure to follow broadly-defined rules of war.

Incidentally, I assume we still get emancipation as a war measure even if the constitutionality of it is a little more ropy.
 
As an official government policy, of course. Which is why I suggested it in the context of popular excitement

Except there's no way Lincoln, the man who flat out stated numerous times that he wanted to heal the nation and not divided it further would ever allow no quarter UNLESS the Confederates did it regularly first. Remember this is the man who said in his second inaugural address when it was obvious the CSA was done for and people wanted to hang the traitors that we should have Malice toward none, with charity for all. Does that sound like a man who in any situation would allow the Union army to give no quarter unless the CSA regularly gave it themselves?(which would never happen so long as Lee's in charge)
 

Saphroneth

Banned
Except there's no way Lincoln, the man who flat out stated numerous times that he wanted to heal the nation and not divided it further would ever allow no quarter UNLESS the Confederates did it regularly first. Remember this is the man who said in his second inaugural address when it was obvious the CSA was done for and people wanted to hang the traitors that we should have Malice toward none, with charity for all. Does that sound like a man who in any situation would allow the Union army to give no quarter unless the CSA regularly gave it themselves?(which would never happen so long as Lee's in charge)
The crew of the Savannah were originally tried for piracy:



The first trial for piracy was of the 13 men, including Captain Thomas H. Baker, captured on privateer Savannah. The trial was held in the United States Circuit Court for the Southern District of New York. It began on 23 October 1861,[24] and from the start attracted wide public notice. The mere fact of the trial drew outrage in the Confederacy, where the government threatened retaliation, life for life. To increase pressure on Washington, the prisoners of war who would have been executed in retaliation were selected and their names made known. The trial went to the jury on the seventh day, but the next day the jury announced that it was deadlocked.[25] The prisoners were sent back to prison to await a second trial. The United States government, however, had decided that it would no longer press the charges. The thirteen men would not be regarded as pirates, but as prisoners of war. They later were exchanged. The decision in effect meant that Washington was conceding the rights of belligerency to those who took up arms against it at sea.[26]


It is not beyond the bounds of possibility that the jury decides to declare them guilty of piracy - note that the administration changed their minds after the jury deadlock - and that the result is an execution or several.
 
Does that sound like a man who in any situation would allow the Union army to give no quarter
Congratulations, you've proved something I never claimed. Let me ask you a few questions: do you dispute that sections of Northern public opinion might respond to certain Confederate actions by calling for no quarter? Do you dispute that a popularly elected government like Lincoln's might feel pressured to respond to that demand by a more stringent prosecution of the war falling short of "no quarter" itself? Do you dispute that this might lead to a tit-for-tat process in which both the Union and Confederacy might engage in increasingly severe actions? Do you dispute that similar kinds of escalation threatened to take place during the war- for instance, the Confederate threat to hang Union officers if the Union hung Confederate privateers, or the Union threat to hang Confederate officers and impose hard labour on soldiers if the Confederacy did the same for black Union regiments?

Do you deny that European powers were sufficiently concerned by the severity of the actions taken by both North and South as to contemplate the almost unprecedented step of offering mediation to end the war? Do you deny that there was at least a degree of similar concern about the bloodshed within the North? Do you deny that this concern might increase, both domestically and internationally if the kind of escalations I've suggested above took place? Do you agree that it might not be necessary for the Lincoln administration to go so far as shooting every Confederate prisoner they took for the level of concern to increase?

Incidentally, there are pitfalls inherent in projecting Lincoln's sentiment from a single quotation. You might reach a different conclusion if you were to pick a single example from other things that he said, like "they cannot experiment for ten years trying to destroy the government, and if they fail still come back into the Union unhurt"; "The blow must fall first and foremost on... the rebels... having made war on the Government, they [are] subject to the incidents and calamities of war"; "Even a mutineer is to go untouched lest these sacred passengers receive an accidental wound"; "Often a limb must be amputated to save a life"; "My oath to preserve the constitution imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government- that nation- of which the constitution was the organic law"; "it may as well be understood, once and for all, that I shall not surrender this game leaving any available card unplayed"; "must I shoot a simple-minded soldier boy who deserts, while I must not touch a hair of a wily agitator who induces him to desert?"

In reality, it would be better to take a more nuanced view of Lincoln's stance than either of these positions suggest. While he did seek to reconcile North and South, he's speaking from a position of strength in 1864. His views changed throughout the war, in accordance with the position the Union found itself in: he was not so staunchly wedded to the idea of ultimate reconciliation that he was unable to appoint Pope, Sherman, Butler and Grant, or, as I've already pointed out, to propose hanging Confederate privateers at the end of 1861. As the man himself said:
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." ... My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union... What I do... 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.

There's also no reason to believe the administration wouldn't still change its mind afterwards as well.
Except, you know, the fact they held the trials in the first place. Unless you've got a quote from officials showing it was all a big ruse and anybody who got a death sentence was going to have it commuted anyway, perhaps we should take this one on face value.
 
Have you been ignoring my statements on the subject? I've flat out said the only way I can see the Union giving no quarter is if the Confederates did so regularly themselves. As for the threats that's all they are until someone goes through with one of them and Lincoln would never let the Union go through first.


As for the fact they held the trials in the first place the very fact that they changed their minds when it deadlocked instead of continuing to push for the piracy charges shows that they weren't 100% committed them in the first place.
 
Have you been ignoring my statements on the subject?
I might well ask the same thing. I told you that though popular opinion might advocate no quarter, "more stringent measures on the part of the government" did not necessarily mean refusing quarter. You responded by reiterating that the government wouldn't refuse quarter. While probably true, that's neither disagreeing with me nor engaging with any of the points of my proposal. I thought laying it out in question form might help you follow through and work out whether we part company at any point- for instance, if you think OTL represents the Northern public at their blood-thirstiest, or if either the Confederacy or the Union would choose to opt-out of the spiral of escalation at some stage, or if any more bloodshed and strife would have caused international opinion to suffer from compassion fatigue.

As for the fact they held the trials in the first place the very fact that they changed their minds when it deadlocked instead of continuing to push for the piracy charges shows that they weren't 100% committed them in the first place.
Or because condemning one crew and freeing another failed to send the decisive message that "privateering will not be tolerated" that the administration hoped for when they launched the prosecutions, and there wasn't much point having Union officers hanged for so little gain. Or that they changed their approach because popular opinion (as expressed through the jury) suggested there was insufficient support for the idea of hanging the sailors. In the set of circumstances proposed here, it's implicit that that the administration is more committed to the idea of denying the Confederacy the honours of war (as shown by their decision to go for port closure over blockade) and the public are in turn more motivated to treat the Confederates as rebels rather than belligerents. So if the government is more committed to the trials, and the juries now hand down whacking great verdicts of condemnation rather than deadlocks, is it safe to conclude that you concur that some people are probably going to swing?
 
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