Questions about the Confederacy

Was the C.S.A. an official country? if so when?

Did the CSA threaten the USA?

What justification did the USA use to initially attack the CSA?

A country is only official when a given nation recognizes it as so. For instance, it took a while for America to recognize China after the revolution, but most other countries did.

Came very close once (or twice, arguably).

I only remember fuzziness from my American history regarding this issue, but there was some debate about whether a state had a right to remove itself from the Union. Obviously, the northern states did not believe they did, or some such. I believe they enacted some mechanism for it that doesn’t involve bloody civil war a bit after the fact. Someone please correct me.

Let me suggest that you look up and read Lincoln’s first inaugural address. It will answer your second and third questions.

I’m not sure what constitutes an “official government.” Britain and France recognized a “state of belligerency” but to my knowledge never extended the Southern Rebels (a loaded term that ought to stir up some action) diplomatic recognition.

What do you mean by “official?”

It was never official in the sense that it was ever recognized as a sovereign nation by any other country.

Yes, they attacked Fort Sumter.

The CSA attacked a US Fort.

No, there is no constitutional mechanism for deciding the issue even today. A territory possession could be granted independence by Congress – the Philippines was – but a state is a state forever.

Prior to the Civil War, there were people, believable people, who thought that states could voluntarily secede.

Some of the New England states had even toyed with this idea around the time of the War of 1812 with the star-crossed Hartford Convention.

The Confederacy truly believed that they could legally back out of the Constitution.

Essentially, four years of civil war and hundreds of thousands killed settled that issue.

Hm, this seems like a poor state of affairs to me. We won’t last forever…

IANAL, but the case of Texas v. White (74 US 700) is the Supreme Court case that most scholars point to as ruling the concept of secession unconstitutional.
Text of case

Well, in Harry Turtledoves epic alternative history of the Civil War and beyond (the latest book just shipped not too long ago in fact) it took Britian and France to recognize the Confederacy…and of course victory on the battlefield and forcing the North to acknowledge them. Of course this is fiction. In reality it was decided when the North finally crushed the Confederacy…and the fact that no other major power came to the Souths aid of course. Not sure what exactly the OP is getting at.

As to the other quests, they were answered…the South attacked the North. Lincoln basically put the issue on Jeff Davis when he decided not to attack the South or allow them to leave the union, but instead to resupply Fort Sumter. This put the responsibility for the bloodshed to come squarely on the South (at least thats the arguement…I tend to agree, but then I haven’t much sympathy for slave owners wanting to keep the good times going).

-XT

The CSA was counting on France and the UK’s dependence on Southern cotten to get them to recognize the CSA and possibly render aid. Europeans really hated slavery, however, and were loath to recognize, let alone help, a nation whose founding principles included the protection of the institution of slavery. For a while, the CSA could argue that the USA was not fighting against slavery. However, the 1862 Empancipation Proclamation (which came after a decisive Northern victory) made the war about slavery, and pretty much nailed the coffin shut on the possibly of European recognition or assistance.

If the CSA had managed to get the upper hand, France and the UK might have looked the other way on the slavery issue and helped them out, so that they could get on the new nation’s good side and gain their influence. Only a few decades earlier, they had recognized the Republic of Texas (which, of course, allowed slavery) for this very reason. (One of the reasons for the Texas Revolution (though it was far from the main reason) was that Mexico disallowed slavery everywhere but the province of Texas, and was considering doing away with it there too.)

And, to clarify, in a little more detail, the US government held property, mostly military forts and custom houses, in the states that had seceeded. When the states seceeded, they claimed that that property retroceded to the seceeding state. The US government disputed that, but the Buchanan administration wasn’t very aggressive in pursing that. Finally, the only major US installation left (other than Ft. Pickens in Pensacola) was Fort Sumter, which guarded the port of Charleston, and which was occupied by a small army garrison under the command of Major Robert Anderson. However, the garrison was low on supplies, so the Buchanan administration decided to reinforce and resupply the Sumter garrison. Originally, they decided to send the sloop “Brooklyn”, but Buchanan decided that sending a warship would be provocative. So, instead, the administration arranged for a steamship, the “Star of the West”, to secretly resupply Sumter.

Unfortunately for the garrison, Buchanan’s secretary of the interior, Jacob Thompson was a secessionist from Mississippi, and he leaked it to the press and sent a message to Charleston warning them that the ship was coming. So, by the time the Star of the West got to Charleston, the city was ready for it, firing on the ship and forcing it to retreat. Thompson resigned in disgrace. A standoff then ensued between South Carolina and the fort, neither side provoking the other.

By the time Lincoln took office in March, the supply situation at Sumter was critical, and Anderson’s supplies were expected to run out by mid-April. Meanwhile, Confederate troops were building up around the fort, and it became clear to Lincoln that he would either have to surrender the fort or reinforce it.

Lincoln sent out a fleet to relieve Sumter at the beginning of April. When the Confederacy heard about this, they started an attack on the fort. One of the supply ships came into Sumter on the 12th, and the fort, under heavy shelling, was forced to surrender on the 13th.

Here’s a good site giving a timeline of the Sumter incident.

http://www.tulane.edu/~sumter/index.html

Erm, the Brits (not the government, but companies) sold guns to the Confederates. The main thing keeping them out of the war was the strong blockade and the vulnerability of Canada, which ultimately stopped their unofficial support. Additionally, if either France or Britain had made a move towards supporting the CSA, the other would have moved to support the Union. Also, while the Confederates took an initial advantage, by 1862 they were on the defensive, and it was pretty clear that the Union was going to win by sheer force. Supporting the Confederates would only guarantee war with the USA afterwards. Finally, France was busy making its fateful move to grab Mexico, which would have normally provoked war with the United States under the Monroe Doctrine (keeping in mind that most of the American military leaders had first shed blood in the Mexican-American War). Nothing like the aspect of facing an army of fully mobilized, hardened war veterans to make you hesitate.

While the Europeans no longer supported slavery (though some European nations still engaged in slave trading with the Americas), it wasn’t resent towards the institution that stayed their hands. It was largely more practical matters.

In the 1860’s Britain and France were on one of the upcycles of their love-hate relationship. France told Britain they would recognize the Confederacy if Britain did so also but weren’t going to do so alone. Russia, which was currently on the outs with these two countries, favored the United States.

Britain had nothing to fear from the American blockade. The Royal Navy would have broken the blockade and driven the American fleet from the seas with little problem. But land operations would have been more problematic. Britain concentrated its military efforts into seapower; in a land conflict it would have had a hard time defending Canada, much less intervening on the Confederate behalf.

The loss of American trade would have also hurt Britain and France. American merchant ships carried about 30% of the world’s trade. And Britain imported a lot of American grain. The results would have been severe increases on basic food prices in Britain and France.

There were also volatile domestic politics involved. The British and French governments were still relatively closed. But there were increasing demands for a wider franchise with the United States being held up as an example of how a Democratic government should be set up. The governments, which thought things were fine the way they were as governments in power usually do, said that popular governments led to demagogery, mob rule, and civil unrest. They were holding up the Civil War as an example of why too much Democracy led to national calamity. Combine this political divide with potential high battlefield casualties and food riots and London and Paris decided the best course was to cheer the South on from the sidelines. And grab Mexico.

Umm, no. Later in th ewar, after we had launched a navy of sea-going Monitors, we would have kicked Britains ass…and hard. If they had come over here, that is- our Monitors weren’t long range sea-worthy craft.

The Brits did have a couple of iron clads- but with inadequate guns fired in a broadside and armour which our large guns would have gone right through. They were also build as sailing ships with auxilarry engines.

True, this was in the last year or so, but for a moment, the USA had the worlds most powerful Army & navy.

Monitors could probably have beaten any but the latest/best British ships, but such shallow draft low freeboard craft were ill suited to operations in the open seas. The bulk of the Union’s fleets were wooden ships (though not all pure sail). The Royal Navy would have been able to deal with such ships with their comparable fleets (should the RN come in to shore for some reason then the Monitors could give them trouble). Union privateers would have probably had more of an effect on the outcome of the war (in terms of merchants howling about lost ships outdoing merchants howling about lost cotton).

I’m not sure the Hartford Convention or the earlier discussion by disgruntled northern Federalists about leaving the Union does indicate a belief that secession was constitutional. The only individual opinion from a northern secessionist that I am aware of is that of Gouverneur Morris. He didn’t claim a constitutional right but relied on a revolutionary right to secede. That is, New England could form its own union no matter what the Constitution said… so long as they had the desire and power to do so.

The revolutionary right of a people to alter their government to suit themselves has a long tradition in these United States. It forms the basis for both the Declaration of Independence and, indeed, the Constitution itself. Without it these documents would be mere fantasy.

What about Article V?

The Civil War and Texas v. White show that unilateral secession by a state is not constitutional, but that doesn’t necessarily mean that a state can’t leave the Union by constitutional means.

Why couldn’t a state petition Congress for a constitutional amendment to leave the Union, which if passed by three-fourths of the states, would then take effect?

Perhaps this is a matter to be settled after the war is over.

With the upheavals of 1848-49 still a fairly recent memory, European governments weren’t in any mood to risk the possible repercussions of food shortages.

I know this may come as a surprise to you, but you lost. Pretty badly, in fact.