When the Confederate states began to secede, why was this such a problem for the North that they risked so much, just to keep the Union together? Why didn’t they just allow the secessions to occur? I realize that, at first, they had no idea how long the war would take, and the magnitude of the casualties. But would they have acted differently if they had known the ultimate cost of keeping the Union together?
This is more suited for GD but the short version is that it sets a bad precedent. Groups A secedes today, the tomorrow Group B wants out over some petty issue, the Group C. Next thing you know you’ve got a bunch o petty city-states and farmlands.
The Confederate States of America began a shooting war with the federal troops at Ft Sumter AND the federal troops fired back. Bullets were flying and people were dying. Rational thought went out the window. “THEY” attacked us. We will retaliate in kind.
People always seem to want to believe that wars won’t cost as much blood, treasure, and time as wars end up costing.
That has always puzzled me too.
The South obviously had to fight because they were invaded. Not much choice there.
Leaving aside Fort Sumter. We could argue all day long about whether the fort was part of the Union or on foreign soil after secession.
The actual fighting started when the North invaded.
Why did the Yankies fight so hard and so long for a dubious cause?
IIRC, under certain readings of the Constitution, seceding is illegal without consent from the federal government (Congress, the President, etc.)
And yeah, as far as going to war goes, worth highlighting that the Confederates shot first by attacking the Union forces at Fort Sumter.
Now I’m wondering how long this discussion stays a factual discussion of why the Union didn’t accept the secessions, before it spins out into a full-blown debate of the American Civil War and gets exiled to Great Debates.
They didn’t need to fight until they started firing upon Sumter. Up until then things were peaceful.
I’ve never heard a legitimate argument that it was considered anything other than Union property.
Also, it is kind of hard to ‘leave aside’ FT. Sumter. It is what started the war.
Not really much dubious about it. Secession is a disease.
A baffling statement. If they didn’t secede, nothing would have happened in the short term. Lincoln explicitly promised not to abolish slavery. The only thing that was going to change in the near future was that slavery wasn’t going to expand. The South wanted to expand slavery and fight for that. Cf. the Texas War of Independence.
This was a war caused solely due to the South. The blood is on their hands.
The real fighting started when the North invaded. Except for Lee’s short unsuccessful foray into the North, the war was fought in the South. Over and over again.
Had the North never invaded there couldn’t possibly have been a shooting war with 1/2 million dead. It was called “The War of Northern Aggression” in southern history books for good reason.
What was Fort Sumter? A paintball match that got out of hand? 
I think this is better suited to GD than GQ.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
More people were wounded and died in the shooting between Russia and Ukraine in the Crimea this year than were casualties at Ft Sumter. So yes, an analogy of a paintball match to the battle of Ft Sumter is not so far off.
Elmer Ellsworth is regarded as the first casualty of the Civil War. He died May 24, 1861. He was a Union soldier who died from wounds sustained while he was in Virginia the day after Virginia seceded. That was more than a month after Ft Sumter.
Ellsworth led a group of men into Alexandria and entered into an inn, apparently to take down a Confederate flag that had been flying. He was shot by the innkeeper. One of Ellsworth’s men stabbed the innkeeper to death.
Outside of the context of the Civil War we would normally consider the forced entry of a group of armed men into a place of lodging and stealing an item from therein as a criminal act. The innkeeper was not a member of any militia, but was a supporter of the secessionist cause.
Armed southern men shot at US soldiers. That’s what started the war.
They declared a secession, with a rather dubious popular legitimacy, and then they attacked US soldiers who had been stationed there since long before secession was declared.
To put it simply, when you shoot at US soldiers, you don’t get to complain when the US soldiers march and take the fight back to you 
Southerners being a bunch of whiny losers dedicated to a sadistic idea counts as a good reason, now?
Some southerners were in areas sympathetic to the Union but were not supportive after Union troops decimated their farms.
Even after Lee surrendered at Appomattox Sherman’s troops were still pillaging civilian farms in North Carolina.
Both sides committed atrocities. Don’t believe a watered down version of history about the Civil War. This was no war between guys in white hats and guys in black hats.
It’s certainly an awkward point – much like Guantanamo Bay, or even Hong Kong. The government that made the agreement is gone, but the successor government is stuck with the terms of the agreement.
One could argue that the donation of land to Ft. Sumter was only valid under the terms of a state to its federation, and once the state is no longer in the federation, the terms no longer apply.
(Certain property laws that applied in Old Mexico were violated, rather freely, when the U.S. took over California. The legitimacy of the old government didn’t carry forward after the land was seized.)
There really isn’t any way to rule on the formal legality of such things: there isn’t any overarching international law, or court, or legislature.
If you’re my neighbor, and we swap copies of the keys to each other’s house – if you get locked out, I’ve got the key to your front door – and you pass away and your house is sold at an estate sale to a complete stranger – does he get to keep the key? That’s how the South would have preferred to see it, and the answer should be no.
If I sell you a cuckoo clock, and you pass away and a stranger buys your house with all the furnishings, should he get to keep it? That’s how the North would have preferred to see it, and the answer should be yes.
It needs to be remembered that no one in any position of decision making knew what kind of war this was going to be. It was an era between Napoleon and WWI and it played out as such. From a modern viewpoint a truly bizarre example of this is the practice of prisoner exchange in a war of attrition (Dix-Hill Cartel if I recall correctly, iPad’s are shit for citing).
Because “Boy Did We Fuck Up” doesn’t sound as good.
I like how 7 out of 10 of the examples are Confederates, and one of the Union examples is Sherman’s March to the sea, one of the most mild examples of a hostile army moving through enemy territory. Overblown by the post-Confederate boo hoo pity party.
In those cases the governments that took over were recognized by at least some other nations. Not so for slaveland. Furthermore while Batista Cuba was destroyed, the Federal government still existed.