Post by JP Cusick on Jun 25, 2011 8:35:19 GMT -5
General W. T. Sherman wrote in his memoir 1875, as follows:
Charleston was then a proud, aristocratic city, and assumed a leadership in the public opinion of the South far out of proportion to her population, wealth, or commerce. On more than one occasion previously, the inhabitants had almost inaugurated civil war, by their assertion and professed belief that each State had, in the original compact of government, reserved to itself the right to withdraw from the Union at its own option, whenever the people supposed they had sufficient cause. We used to discuss these things at our own mess-tables, vehemently and sometimes quite angrily; but I am sure that I never feared it would go further than it had already gone in the winter of 1832-'33, when the attempt at "nullification" was promptly suppressed by President Jackson's famous declaration, "The Union must and shall be preserved!" and by the judicious management of General Scott.
Still, civil war was to be; and, now that it has come and gone, we can rest secure in the knowledge that as the chief cause, slavery, has been eradicated forever, it is not likely to come again.
Link here = General Sherman memoir, see bottom of that page / last paragraph.
What this tells us is that the south knew that succession (nullification) was not permitted and that the US Precedent would be expected to send in federal troops to enforce the law.
This memoir also demonstrates that the civil war participants knew that the war was fought over the issue of slavery.
Charleston was then a proud, aristocratic city, and assumed a leadership in the public opinion of the South far out of proportion to her population, wealth, or commerce. On more than one occasion previously, the inhabitants had almost inaugurated civil war, by their assertion and professed belief that each State had, in the original compact of government, reserved to itself the right to withdraw from the Union at its own option, whenever the people supposed they had sufficient cause. We used to discuss these things at our own mess-tables, vehemently and sometimes quite angrily; but I am sure that I never feared it would go further than it had already gone in the winter of 1832-'33, when the attempt at "nullification" was promptly suppressed by President Jackson's famous declaration, "The Union must and shall be preserved!" and by the judicious management of General Scott.
Still, civil war was to be; and, now that it has come and gone, we can rest secure in the knowledge that as the chief cause, slavery, has been eradicated forever, it is not likely to come again.
Link here = General Sherman memoir, see bottom of that page / last paragraph.
What this tells us is that the south knew that succession (nullification) was not permitted and that the US Precedent would be expected to send in federal troops to enforce the law.
This memoir also demonstrates that the civil war participants knew that the war was fought over the issue of slavery.
