One of my grandfathers joined the Navy before Pearl Harbor (Wikipedia says the draft started in 1940, so in '40 or '41) to avoid getting drafted into the Army. Not sure why he thought boats were safer, but I guess he lived, so he was right. :-)
I can't easily find a nice and comprehensive comparison, but it seems like he was right even with Pearl Harbor included. From [1]:
> Total U.S. military deaths in battle and from other causes were 407,316. The breakout by service is as follows: Army 318,274 (234,874 battle, 83,400 nonbattle),[292] Navy 62,614,[292] Marine Corps 24,511,[292] and the Coast Guard 1,917.[570][320]
I don't know what the denominator looks like for those various forces, but 5x as many Army deaths as Navy seems to corroborate your grandfather's intuition.
My grandfather joined the Navy at 17 in 1943 and never spoke about it. I assumed when he was alive he didn't do much in the war but in researching his ship it was the complete opposite.
The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the biggest naval battle in history. If he was in the pacific I am sure he seen some crazy things.
My grandfather was also the Battle of Leyte Gulf. He was on the Kitkun Bay. He didn't start talking about it until maybe 2000 or so, then he opened up a little. He got sort of obsessed with reading history books about his own battles. There's still a lot we'll never know though.
Yeah most of the time it is. They made is so you get the opportunity to select what occupational specialty instead of getting tossed into infantry or whatever the needs of the time were.
He grew up in poverty after my grandfather died; the military was a way out. He became a helicopter pilot and rose to the rank of Major before being medically discharged.
>Historians have not only underestimated the sheer number of underage soldiers who fought for the Union.
As a historian by trade myself, that just makes me sad for the profession. The whole underage volunteerism to fight has been a long-standing tradition, (heck, my grandfather was 16 when he enlisted to fight in WWII). Whole article reeks of "think of the childrens" modern sensebilities recontextualizing of historical facts. But I suppose the US historians have their own issues grappling with the aftermath of their civil war.
> In April 1862 it adopted a policy of universal conscription, and in February 1864 it lowered the age of mandatory service from eighteen to seventeen. Additionally, some Confederate states enrolled boys as young as sixteen for service in state-controlled units.
In the UK in 2023 it is still possible to join the military when you're 16 years old, and you can start your application when 5 months before that. No other country in Europe recruits child soldiers, only the UK.
Why should EU adopt slavery and genocide facilitating constitution?
I mean, not that European or whatever history was nicer. But still ... current EU is not practicing either which says something good about it comparatively.
"Child soldiers" is dramatic. I don't see a problem with a 16 year old joining the military, with the support of their parents, esp. if they don't have an interest in college. They could learn some valuable skills, certainly more than you'd learn in public education.
There’s typically a fair bit of schooling a 16 year old goes through before college. Dropping out and joining the military may have benefits, but it’s hard not to see that as a failure by society.
I could see letting them join an academy early, but you can't send them to fight before 18 and you should give them a chance to back out when they actually turn 18.
I believe several nations have similar to Junior Reserve Officers' Training Corps (JROTC) like the USA has, which can start at middle school or around 4th 5th grade or 12 to 13 years olds.
Yeah we even have military schools that start at kindergarten too, but JROTC and military schools aren't really actually being in the military by a large margin and have no type of commitment. The overwhelming majority of kids involved in those programs don't join the military.
Really? I see a problem with people joining the military regardless of their age, but especially if they're too young to be sufficiently critical of whatever they were told by the recruiter.
Pick an age of majority. It should be the same age for joining the military, voting, drinking, owning a gun, driving a car, consent, etc. You don’t get to call a 16 year old a child only when it’s convenient for you.
It's not quite so simple. Although the age of majority is 18 according to the Family Law Reform Act 1969, that is primarily relevant to financial contracts (debt), criminal sentencing, and tobacco. Drinking, you can drink in private from sixteen, although you can only purchase once at eighteen. You can start a company at sixteen. You bear primary authority over your medical records from sixteen, and your caregivers cannot access them without your consent. You can vote in some elections from sixteen. But you can't adopt until 21.
The TLDR is that in the UK, age limits are quite case-by-case, and tend to range from 16 to 21, although in more niche cases can range from 11 (the age you can open a bank account) to 30 (the age of suffrage for women in the 1918 Representation of the people act).
Wanted to mention that 16 year olds could buy cigarettes until 2007, went to check the year, found that more interestingly:
You can smoke cigarettes at any age, but you are not allowed to buy them until you are 18.
If you are caught smoking by a uniformed police officer or park keeper in a public place when under 16, he or she can take away your tobacco and cigarette papers.
There is zero reason to demand that drinking age is same as joining army age or voting age or owning gun age. It is absurd to demand same age for all these.
No it isn’t. You don’t get to cherry pick the scenarios that someone will be considered an adult for. Either you’re an adult or you aren’t, and “you’re an adult when it’s politically favourable to me” is not an acceptable compromise. I get the impression that you’d be the same type of person to defend the patriot act if it was made about tax evasion instead of terrorism.
> You don’t get to cherry pick the scenarios that someone will be considered an adult for.
But we do get to pick and choose which privileges we extend to minors, and when. A 16 year old has no legal right to consume alcohol, but that only means that we can ban them from doing so, not that we have to.
> You don’t get to cherry pick the scenarios that someone will be considered an adult for.
That is absurd claim. We in fact do get to chery pick scenarios in which someone is mature enough for X and not yet mature enough for Y. That isbjust simple logic, it is irrational to demand that different situations are treated the same.
Patriot act, taxes and terroris have literally zero to do with anything.
Systemically, conscription can be "better" if it is randomized and includes everyone. "Volunteer" Armies just means that rich parents can decide to start wars without worrying that their kids might be sent to fight.
It also gives everyone the same incentive to not start shit (even though few ppl are in position to instigate a war) because it could be you and your family that’s sent to fight it.
However, when you’re actually fighting, you want to trust the person fighting next to you. And if that person was conscripted and didn’t want to ever be there, that’d cause a lot of issues.
Meh. Lets not pretend like a 16 year old signing papers to join the army was too dumb to understand it meant they were joining the army. 16 is hardly fingers-in-the-wall-socket level of understanding the world.
No. Pretty obviously they are not as mature as 18 years old which is why they should not make these decisions. They are more naive easier to manipulate and more of kids the adults.
10 years old understand joining army means joining army. And still don't get to make those decisions.
Some kids should probably have been allowed to vote since they were 12. Some adults probably shouldn't be trusted with glue. Yet for some reason its taboo to say, some kids really do know what they're doing when they signed up for the army and should be allowed to do it, and some adults really have no damn clue what they're doing when they vote and should maybe not be allowed to.
Age cutoffs are an arbitrary and shitty substitute for a test of competency, prone to both high false negative and high false positive rates.
On what basis do you think 25-30 years old is a more capable fighting demographic? Are you basing this assertion on literally anything? Have you looked up any information about demographics and fighting effectiveness before sharing your opinion? Do you have literally anything other than the small window on the world of your immediate general area and personal life experience / gut feeling?
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say by sheer coincidence you're in that 25-30 year old male demographic, and in about 5 years you'll be of the opinion that actually its 30-35 year olds who are clearly the strongest, toughest, most mature and capable fighting force and all them 25-30s are a bunch of idiots that don't value life and think with their dick.
muscle strength peaks at 25, this is a well known fact. Likelihood of crashing a car or doing something stupid with a car drops sharply as you mature to 30. This is common knowledge and is easilly verified.
Nobody claims that 40 yeat old men are peal of physical perfection.
You say muscle strength peaks at 25 as if it supports your point about the 25-30 year old fighting condition, when the same fact could equally well support the case for the fighting condition of the 20-25 year old demographic.
Car accident rates have an obvious confounding factor. Of course the people with +5 years experience driving have a lower accident rate than the people who just got their license. Skill comes from practice. If you pushed the legal age for a drivers license to 25, the 25-30 year old demographic would probably suck at it and get into accidents in their first ever years on the road. There's no way around the fact that driving judgement has to be learned at some point, and is not just bestowed by the maturity fairy when you hit the big three ooh.
Muscle strength is far from the most valuable military skill in most roles these days, and arguably hasn't really been since the 19th century when most combat became firearms oriented. Yes, it still plays a role, and for some jobs, it is among the most important, but they're a minority.
Ability and willingness to follow orders is probably paramount, along with reflexes, and some common sense and logical abilities. And then of course, proficiency in your role.
18 year olds are typically right out of school, so learning new roles comes easy. They've also typically come right out of a situation in life where the expectation of following commands is pretty fresh, even if they perhaps weren't the best at following through (the military has ways to fix that).
And perhaps most importantly, for folks that are staying in for the career, or at least longer than the minimum level of service, joining at 18 means that you've had time to get training and experience so when you DO hit that "prime muscle strength" time of life, you're a well honed killing machine. Waiting til you've hit that point means you'll be going in cold, and get suboptimal results.
Honestly, probably not. Even in WW2, the closest there got to 16-year-olds fighting (at least without lying about it) was in the Home Guard (sometimes called the Dad's Army because of its use of retired soldiers), and them fighting would mean the enemy landed on Great Britain itself. It's not impossible, but I imagine something similar would happen in almost any other country under active occupation. Which doesn't mean I think it's good (or bad), I just think the UK doesn't stand out.
Canada also allows 17 year olds to be enlisted (16 for the reserves). They cannot be deployed in combat per international convention.
As I understand it, it's basically a legal historical quirk at this point; it almost never happens -- they're not qualified otherwise. Essentially all roles require secondary education and many want a college degree these days.
I joined the reserves at 17 in 1994, and did ql 2/3 (Canadian basic) between my grade 11 and 12 year. They woke us up on the first morning, gave us 15 minutes to shit, shower and shave, but I had never shaved before. It was just wisps of peachfuzz on my face, and my hurried, improvised hack shaving job had the sergeants shaking their heads.
The North experienced massive social change in the first half of the 19th century when industrial revolution really ramped up. Cities were still trying to figure out the transition from agrarian support to industrial center and the general quality of life in cities during that time was horrible from pollution and overcrowding. City dwellers didn't see much benefit for all their effort until the labor movement got its feet in the late 19th and early 20th century.
It's no surprise that there were lots of older boys in the Union army because the lack of prospects in the cities were obvious even then.
My grandfather supposedly did the "Yes, I am over 18" (stepping a piece of paper with 18 on it) trick after Pearl Harbor. I guess it was probably pretty common for kids who were borderline old enough to serve.
My grandpa did the same; joined at 13 years old. From his story it sounded like there wasn't a single person who thought it was even questionable - on the contrary - it was highly encouraged by everyone
The explanation I got was my grandfather did the same. In his service records it seems he stops getting older for a few years at some point, probably because after WWII they were trying to get all the remaining enlisted men's records correct.
I've read so many biographical sketches of various individuals that begin the description of their stint in the WWI or WWII military with statements like, "when he was 16/17 he signed up for the war, lying about his age…" It seems pretty commonplace.
One thing I don't see mentioned in this is during that time period secondary/high school wasn't really a thing yet, meaning it wasn't that unusual for a 15 year old to be considered both fully educated and part of the workforce. It really wasn't until after WWI that we pushed the working adult age out to 18 for more education.
A bit of an aside, but it seems like the South would've had a lot fewer able-bodied, young men to fight the war especially since they weren't inclined to arm black soldiers. Given that the south was primarily agrarian with fewer urban areas to draw from - the population was more sparse. How did the confederacy think they could win given that difference?
I don't know if they truly thought they could win as much as they had to fight. With the Westward expansion of the U.S., more and more states would be admitted to the union that would never be as slave dependent as the South. In that scenario, the political power of the slavers gets diluted and chattel slavery ends with the stroke of a pen. They simply couldn't stick around for that situation to take place.
Also, the economic and industrial might of the North, and the lack of industrialization in the South (slavery didn't help) meant that the disparities between military and economic might between the North and South were bound to get larger, much larger, so many in the South must have felt that 1861 was the last time they might be able to secede successfully.
At first glance one might suspect that South's disinclination to arm black soldiers would harm their ability to field a large proportion of their population, but that wasn't the case. The ready availability of slave labor enabled free men, who would have otherwise been required at home to work the fields or bring in the crops, to go off and fight instead. IIRC, around 80% of able-bodied free men in the South fought in the war.
> How did the confederacy think they could win given that difference?
When your country gets invaded, you don't grab your abacas, you grab your gun.
On the night of December 26, Major Anderson's men were ordered to turn their overcoats to hide the military buttons and to take off their caps, so as to be taken for the civilian laborers who passed daily between Forts Sumter and Moultrie. The ruse was successful, a turncoat matter one might say. The act of soldiers posing as civilians in war historically has been viewed as an act of perfidy. With the ruse, Union troops took Fort Sumter without a shot fired. They had spiked the guns at Fort Moultrie and set fire to their carriages. Some at the time and later considered this clandestine move to Fort Sumter an act of war, the first in the coming conflict. US Secretary of War at the time, John B. Floyd, could not believe Major Anderson had made such a move, because there was no order for such an act. He asked the major to explain his action.
...
Finally, Lincoln acted. On March 29, he had sent a note to his secretary of war: “I desire than an expedition, to move by sea, be got ready to sail as early as the 6th of April next.” Despite many rumors of evacuation, Fort Sumter apparently was to be reinforced, a move expressly forbidden by Southern authorities after months of patient and unsatisfying negotiations regarding the evacuation of the fort. US Naval Captain Gustavus Fox, commanding the reinforcement expedition, was instructed to enter Charleston Harbor and send a boatload of provisions to Fort Sumter and to do no more, unless he was stopped or fired upon. In either of those cases, he was to try to force a passage, with the help of US Navy ships beyond the harbor, and supply the fort not only with provisions but also with troops.
Even with your extremely selective quoting, (including the exclusion of what that ruse was required and the food shortage that necessitated resupply) there is still nothing there that qualifies as a invasion.
If you read the article I linked, Anderson took the fort on his own accord. Did you want me to paste the entire article in here or something? What's extremely selective about it? I linked the article.
>including the exclusion of what that ruse was required
Got any references or anything to explain what you mean?
>food shortage that necessitated resupply
Anderson took the fort and held it for three months. I'm certain he needed resupply. Did you think the CSA was gonna give him food after he took their fort?
It wasn't their fort. It was the property of the US army and was taken by a commander who that article describes as very sympathetic to the southern cause, but honorably loyal to the army. There is no indication that Anderson had any desire to "invade" the south, but rather the opposite.
The CSA fired at the Star of the West to prevent resupply of Anderson. The CSA also chose to fire at the fort even though they knew that Anderson would surrender due to lack of food within days.
The CSA repeatedly chose violence to take a fort that a they couldn't get through negotiation and thus started a very bloody war. Perhaps that war was inevitable and it clearly stemmed from hostile choices on both sides, but the decision to officially start that war by the CSA was preemptive and absolutely not a response to any invasion.
From the CSA's point of view, it was their fort on their land that the Union not only took but were reinforcing. It was a defensive fort at the mouth of one of their most important eastern seaboard harbors. A fort that if taken would prevent the CSA from getting anything shipped through there, in or out. It was considered an act of war and the CSA retaliated by shelling it for 3 days after they refused to leave, amazingly with no casualties. Interestingly, the CSA commander was a protege of Anderson (who took the fort).
You can't just hand wave that away because the CSA were "the bad guys," you have to be able to view both sides of it to fully understand the war, the causes and the affects, not play favorites, and especially not view it through modern eyes. There were no laws banning secession and it was deemed illegal by the SCOTUS ex-post facto.
Do you think if the Southern states thought they wouldn't be able to leave the Union when they joined in 1788 they ever would have joined in the first place? Doubtful.
>There is no indication that Anderson had any desire to "invade" the south, but rather the opposite.
Sure, but that act has obvious consequences. The first battle of the Civil War was Bull Run/Manassas. It was fought in Virginia because the Union troops crossed into the CSA territory to take the capitol. That's an invasion, an invasion that was the consequence of firing on Sumter, which was a consequence of Anderson taking it and Lincoln reinforcing it. Had cooler heads prevailed, we might not have had to lose 700k+ people.
Although the Civil War officially began when Confederate troops shelled Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the fighting didn’t commence in earnest until the Battle of Bull Run, fought months later in Virginia, just 25 miles from Washington D.C. Under public pressure to end the war in 90 days, President Lincoln had pushed the cautious Gen. McDowell to embark on a campaign to capture the Confederate capital in Richmond, but McDowell’s troops were stopped at Bull Run by Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s Rebel forces. The Federals retreated to Washington, where the Lincoln administration retooled for a war that would be waged at great human and financial cost
> From the CSA's point of view, it was their fort on their land that the Union not only took but were reinforcing
The union didn't take it, they already possessed it. This is also besides the point because it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't have be similar concerns about Anderson remaining in Moultrie or that there wouldn't have been issues with the numerous other coastal forts in the south that were posses the by the US army.
> It was considered an act of war and the CSA retaliated by shelling it for 3 days after they refused to leave
That is inaccurate. Anderson refused to leave multiple times without the refusal being taken as an "act of war". The last (4th?) time Anderson actually didn't refuse to leave, but laid out the conditions under which he would leave. Those conditions were found unacceptable so the CSA started a war.
> The first battle of the Civil War was Bull Run/Manassas. It was fought in Virginia because the Union troops crossed into the CSA territory to take the capitol.
While that could be considered the first battle (depending on your definition of "battle"), there were a number of escalating skirmishes leading up to Bull Run.
> That's an invasion, an invasion that was the consequence of firing on Sumter, which was a consequence of Anderson taking it and Lincoln reinforcing it. Had cooler heads prevailed, we might not have had to lose 700k+ people.
That's an invasion that happened AFTER the CSA started the war. Thus you simply can't say that the choice to start the war was because of that invasion.
There is an argument that the CSA started the war because they feared blockades, but again, that fear lead to preemptive action by the CSA, not responsive action.
> There were no laws banning secession and it was deemed illegal by the SCOTUS ex-post facto.
It was not "ex-post facto" as no new law was enacted. The SCOTUS interpreted the Consitution and decided that the states had agreed to a "perpetual" union
As the case Texas Vs White makes clear:
> "It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form, and character, and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?"
> Do you think if the Southern states thought they wouldn't be able to leave the Union when they joined in 1788 they ever would have joined in the first place?
That is not at all clear, because they did clearly agree to join a "perpetual union" when they signed the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. My understanding is that the supreme court decided it is legal for states to leave the union, but they cannot do it unilaterally.
You may, of course, disagree with this decision by the Supreme Court and with its interpretation of constitutional law. That does not mean that any new "ex-post facto" law was passed.
The "perpetual union" text was in the Articles of Confederation, not the Constitution, which of course replaced the AoC.
When the United States Constitution replaced the Articles, nothing in it expressly stated that the Union is perpetual. Even after the Civil War, which had been fought by the U.S. to prevent eleven of the southern slave states from leaving the Union, some still questioned whether any such inviolability survived after the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles. This uncertainty also stems from the fact that the Constitution was not ratified unanimously before going into effect, as required by the Articles (two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island, had not ratified when George Washington was sworn in as the first U.S. president). The United States Supreme Court ruled on the issue in the 1869 Texas v. White case.[3] In that case, the court ruled that the drafters intended the perpetuity of the Union to survive
The constitution wasn't explicit and the SCOTUS hadn't ruled on it yet. It wasn't certain and could be argued either way, particularly for North Carolina. The fact that the union was perpetual was confirmed in 1869 by the SCOTUS, after secession and the war, thus ex-post-facto.
Great discussion, I want to respond to your other points later.
> The "perpetual union" text was in the Articles of Confederation, not the Constitution, which of course replaced the AoC.
The constitution explicitly says that it's aim is to perfect the (perpetual) union that was established in the articles. The SCOTUS viewed that as clear evidence that the framers intended the union to be indissoluble.
> after secession and the war, thus ex-post-facto.
Ex-post-facto means a law that makes an act illegal that was previously legal.
In this case, that is not what happened. The legality of unilateral succession wasn't fully clear until the supreme court ruled. There was no new law created, just an official confirmation that Lincoln's position was indeed what the framers had intended and what the law had been all along.
You are trying to change the meaning of "ex-post-facto" to one that would apply to pretty much every SCOTUS decision ever and render the term meaningless.
The confederate states could have taken a case to the supreme court to challenge Lincoln's position. Perhaps the precedent would have been different if they had.
The confederate states could also have waited for Lincoln to invade or even blockade before resorting to violence.
Trying to paint the confederate states as a victim is simply inaccurate. They chose the path of violence and the entire country paid the price for their desire to maintain slavery. An institution that was not only highly immoral, but also one that was doomed and that would have put them at odds with the rest of the world within half a century.
>The constitution explicitly says that it's aim is to perfect the (perpetual) union that was established in the articles. The SCOTUS viewed that as clear evidence that the framers intended the union to be indissoluble.
You put parenthesis around perpetual because it wasn't explicit. The SCOTUS confirm that in 1868, after the fact. At the time it could have been easily argued that it was omitted from the constitution for a reason, one being that the southern states wouldn't have signed it.
>Ex-post-facto means a law that makes an act illegal that was previously legal.
>In this case, that is not what happened. The legality of unilateral succession wasn't fully clear until the supreme court ruled. There was no new law created, just an official confirmation that Lincoln's position was indeed what the framers had intended and what the law had been all along.
But it was. Lincoln deemed secession was illegal and sent troops to capture Richmond as a police/military act in response to secession. The legality of secession at the time was not clear, as in not confirmed by the SCOTUS, therefore not explicitly illegal. In the US, actions are default legal unless explicitly deemed otherwise by law and there was no law or ruling, particularly an explicit one, outside the AoC which weren't the law of the land. The SCOTUS confirmed it was illegal to secede after the fact, justifying Lincoln's prior police/military actions, which would have themselves been illegal had secession been confirmed as legal.
Ask yourself this, why were no CSA politicians or military personnel ever brought up on charges of treason?
>Trying to paint the confederate states as a victim is simply inaccurate.
I'm not trying to paint the CSA as a victim, I'm just discussing history, establishing cause and effect, chain of events, and most importantly trying to answer the "why?" Again you are looking at history through modern eyes and trying to apply modern sensibilities to it. Victim is such an overused word today. We were having a good discussion, why would you throw that angle in it?
>They chose the path of violence and the entire country paid the price for their desire to maintain slavery.
Slavery was legal in the southern states and many of the northern states at the time of secession. Of course had they been allowed to secede, which wasn't confirmed to be illegal at the time, no one would have died.
>An institution that was not only highly immoral
It was certainly immoral and it was the US' "original sin," that we are still paying for. Of course the British are the ones who introduced it to the colonies, so we inherited that sin when we rebelled and 700K+ people died trying to atone for that sin.
>but also one that was doomed and that would have put them at odds with the rest of the world within half a century.
I'm not so confident in that, though I would want it to be true. There are still major countries where slavery exists today. I think has the CSA successfully seceded, they would either be a third rate country, or would have been invaded by now. They certainly would have missed the Industrial Revolution.
> At the time it could have been easily argued that it was omitted from the constitution for a reason, one being that the southern states wouldn't have signed it.
That does not appear to be the case. Federalists were pretty clear that there would be no right to secession under the constitution. This is why anti-federalists in New York pushed to add language to New York's ratification that stipulated it's right to withdraw. James Madison argued that "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever" and New York ended up ratifying the constitution without that language.
So your argument here hinges on the assertion that despite their clear statements to the contrary, the federalists left ambiguity about secession in the constitution to win over anti-federalists. I don't see any evidence to back this up.
Indeed, if the Southern states though they had the right to unilaterally secede under the constitution, they would have taken a case to the supreme court. They did not and when a case did make it to the supreme court afterwards, it was confirmed.
> In the US, actions are default legal unless explicitly deemed otherwise by law and there was no law or ruling, particularly an explicit one
That isn't how it works. There are general laws that cover a wide range of acts. When a court rules that a specific act falls under a law, the defendant doesn't get off because they committed the act before the ruling.
> Ask yourself this, why were no CSA politicians or military personnel ever brought up on charges of treason?
Because Andrew Johnson pardoned them to promote reconciliation and healing. Perhaps we would have been better of if they had been prosecuted for treason and we had traded short term animosity for justice and long term clarity.
> Again you are looking at history through modern eyes and trying to apply modern sensibilities to it.
How so? There was widespread condemnation of slavery at the time. What "modern" views am I imposing?
> Victim is such an overused word today. We were having a good discussion, why would you throw that angle in it?
That is precisly the angle that the effort to frame the civil war as a "war of nothern aggression" takes. You are repeating many of those talking points and factual mistakes so it seems highly relevant.
> There are still major countries where slavery exists today.
The "modern slavery" described in that article is substantially different from what was practiced in the South and there has been significant, if insufficient, international pressure put on those countries to change.
> Of course had they been allowed to secede, which wasn't confirmed to be illegal at the time, no one would have died.
What ifs are hard. There was far more to resolve about the secession than the possession of fort Sumter. Since the South had already demonstrated their willingness to use violence to get their way when they weren't satisfied with negotiations, it is hard to see how a path to peace could have existed.
If the southern states hadn't resorted to violence, would Lincoln have had the support to prosecute the war? If the southern states had tried to establish the legality of that secession they could have won and Lincoln would have had even less support.
The southern states seceded premptively without a legal basis because they lost an election and then chose to premptively start the violence and initiate a war.
The southern leaders who made those choices deserve full responsibility for that path.
The north had few choices. Secession movements were not limited to the South and establishing the precent of allowing them would have lead to the dissolution of the nation. This view of secession was shared by numerous presidents before Lincoln, including James Buchanan, who was a supporter of states rights regarding slavery.
> In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere ...
They seceded from the Union. The war was started when the Union under Lincoln asserted that this was unacceptable. Which, in fairness, there had been no prior precedent for.
This is why many southerners know it as "The War of Northern Aggression."
> This is why many southerners know it as "The War of Northern Aggression."
That's called spin/branding.
The initial acts of violence and aggression were taken by the southern states. The southern states could have chosen a legal or political solution. Instead the CSA decided to unilaterally succeed and then used violence to take a fort that they were unsuccessful in negotiating for.
The will to fight is also a finite resource in war. There was also no material way that North Vietnam or the Taliban could prevail in a straight up fight; the strategy in all these cases was to inflict enough death and destruction that the United States would give up and sue for peace.
Isn't that fairly contemporary theory though? Is there any historical record of confederate leadership using that language or applying those concepts? I'm sure someone over there had read clausewitz but I've never heard of this stuff being applied by any american military before like maaaybe ww1, a little bit.
I am using more contemporary theoretical terminology, but I think the basic idea of “make the Yankees bleed until they leave us alone” was within the grasp of the rebels. A lot of warfighting theory is an attempt to formalize strategic thinking that has always been with us, sort of like how stories have followed the Hero’s Journey pattern for centuries before Campbell formalized it.
* They had more military experience and a stronger military tradition
* They were more motivated
* There were a not-insignificant number of Northerners who weren't particularly in favor of fighting a war against slavery (which, despite the "states' rights" commentators, was the real cause of the war)
* They expected recognition from the British government due to their supposed dependence of southern cotton
I just finished the book _Battle Cry of Freedom_ a couple of weeks ago. It's a fantastic and very readable single-volume history of the war and the ~20 years leading up to it, and I think every American should read it for a clear understanding of why exactly the US Civil War happened
AFAIK after pro-union candidates swept elections the Confederacy invaded the officially neutral state of Kentucky. They even admitted Kentucky under a shadow government.
They had help from (and were egged on by) Britain and they didn't count on the help the Union was going to get from Russia. Also, war on home turf gives a "home field advantage." Also, in the end, the war lasted over 4 years -- they were hardly a pushover.
A minor point that may have some relevance here. When I was doing genealogical research on my great grandfather who served in the US Civil War, I read that at the time, your legal age was considered to be the age you would attain by the end of the calendar year, so everyone officially aged up on January 1. By this convention, many 17 year-olds who enlisted would have been legally 18 and did not actually lie about their age.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 169 ms ] thread> Total U.S. military deaths in battle and from other causes were 407,316. The breakout by service is as follows: Army 318,274 (234,874 battle, 83,400 nonbattle),[292] Navy 62,614,[292] Marine Corps 24,511,[292] and the Coast Guard 1,917.[570][320]
I don't know what the denominator looks like for those various forces, but 5x as many Army deaths as Navy seems to corroborate your grandfather's intuition.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#endnot...
Edit: From [2] it seems the Army was a bit over 2x the size of the Navy, so still about 2x the rate of deaths.
[2] https://warfarehistorynetwork.com/us-involvement-in-wwii-how...
The Battle of Leyte Gulf was the biggest naval battle in history. If he was in the pacific I am sure he seen some crazy things.
In the UK in 2023 it is still possible to join the military when you're 16 years old, and you can start your application when 5 months before that. No other country in Europe recruits child soldiers, only the UK.
That's what I was alluding to but thanks for the lecture I suppose.
I mean, not that European or whatever history was nicer. But still ... current EU is not practicing either which says something good about it comparatively.
Also, it's kind of condescending to point out the obvious.
That'll show the French!
Also environment for brainwashing
(edit: spelling)
We don't let those people drink alcohol for a reason.
The TLDR is that in the UK, age limits are quite case-by-case, and tend to range from 16 to 21, although in more niche cases can range from 11 (the age you can open a bank account) to 30 (the age of suffrage for women in the 1918 Representation of the people act).
You can smoke cigarettes at any age, but you are not allowed to buy them until you are 18.
If you are caught smoking by a uniformed police officer or park keeper in a public place when under 16, he or she can take away your tobacco and cigarette papers.
s.7 Children and Young Persons Act 1933
https://lawstuff.org.uk/at-what-age-can-i/buy-and-consume/
But we do get to pick and choose which privileges we extend to minors, and when. A 16 year old has no legal right to consume alcohol, but that only means that we can ban them from doing so, not that we have to.
That is absurd claim. We in fact do get to chery pick scenarios in which someone is mature enough for X and not yet mature enough for Y. That isbjust simple logic, it is irrational to demand that different situations are treated the same.
Patriot act, taxes and terroris have literally zero to do with anything.
"Drinks like a soldier" doesn't have the same ring to it.
Are these 16 year old actually fighting? Or are they placed in support roles, i.e. it's basically a job, but under the structure of the military?
But once they turn 18 they can be ordered into combat based on a decision they made when they were still a child.
Recruits can leave up to the end of their first six months of service. After that they are committed until they are 22.
That is an uncomfortable situation, but it's not worse than countries that conscript 18-year-olds, who don't even get to make a decision at all.
It also gives everyone the same incentive to not start shit (even though few ppl are in position to instigate a war) because it could be you and your family that’s sent to fight it.
However, when you’re actually fighting, you want to trust the person fighting next to you. And if that person was conscripted and didn’t want to ever be there, that’d cause a lot of issues.
10 years old understand joining army means joining army. And still don't get to make those decisions.
Age cutoffs are an arbitrary and shitty substitute for a test of competency, prone to both high false negative and high false positive rates.
Because teenagers are easy to manipulate and control, don’t value their life, and think with their dick.
I'm going to take a stab in the dark and say by sheer coincidence you're in that 25-30 year old male demographic, and in about 5 years you'll be of the opinion that actually its 30-35 year olds who are clearly the strongest, toughest, most mature and capable fighting force and all them 25-30s are a bunch of idiots that don't value life and think with their dick.
Nobody claims that 40 yeat old men are peal of physical perfection.
Car accident rates have an obvious confounding factor. Of course the people with +5 years experience driving have a lower accident rate than the people who just got their license. Skill comes from practice. If you pushed the legal age for a drivers license to 25, the 25-30 year old demographic would probably suck at it and get into accidents in their first ever years on the road. There's no way around the fact that driving judgement has to be learned at some point, and is not just bestowed by the maturity fairy when you hit the big three ooh.
Ability and willingness to follow orders is probably paramount, along with reflexes, and some common sense and logical abilities. And then of course, proficiency in your role.
18 year olds are typically right out of school, so learning new roles comes easy. They've also typically come right out of a situation in life where the expectation of following commands is pretty fresh, even if they perhaps weren't the best at following through (the military has ways to fix that).
And perhaps most importantly, for folks that are staying in for the career, or at least longer than the minimum level of service, joining at 18 means that you've had time to get training and experience so when you DO hit that "prime muscle strength" time of life, you're a well honed killing machine. Waiting til you've hit that point means you'll be going in cold, and get suboptimal results.
As I understand it, it's basically a legal historical quirk at this point; it almost never happens -- they're not qualified otherwise. Essentially all roles require secondary education and many want a college degree these days.
It's no surprise that there were lots of older boys in the Union army because the lack of prospects in the cities were obvious even then.
1. The Confederates planned to fight on the defensive. They weren't invading the Union.
2. They were more prepared for military service and had better leadership. Which wasn't wrong at the start.
3. They would win simply because of the strength of their belief. If they never surrendered, they would win because the Union didn't the same resolve.
4. Cotton exports would cause European countries to side with them against the Union.
5. They didn't really expect the Union to wage total war.
> How did the confederacy think they could win given that difference?
When your country gets invaded, you don't grab your abacas, you grab your gun.
The confederacy was not being invaded when they chose to start the war.
...
Finally, Lincoln acted. On March 29, he had sent a note to his secretary of war: “I desire than an expedition, to move by sea, be got ready to sail as early as the 6th of April next.” Despite many rumors of evacuation, Fort Sumter apparently was to be reinforced, a move expressly forbidden by Southern authorities after months of patient and unsatisfying negotiations regarding the evacuation of the fort. US Naval Captain Gustavus Fox, commanding the reinforcement expedition, was instructed to enter Charleston Harbor and send a boatload of provisions to Fort Sumter and to do no more, unless he was stopped or fired upon. In either of those cases, he was to try to force a passage, with the help of US Navy ships beyond the harbor, and supply the fort not only with provisions but also with troops.
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4112687/
If you read the article I linked, Anderson took the fort on his own accord. Did you want me to paste the entire article in here or something? What's extremely selective about it? I linked the article.
>including the exclusion of what that ruse was required
Got any references or anything to explain what you mean?
>food shortage that necessitated resupply
Anderson took the fort and held it for three months. I'm certain he needed resupply. Did you think the CSA was gonna give him food after he took their fort?
The CSA fired at the Star of the West to prevent resupply of Anderson. The CSA also chose to fire at the fort even though they knew that Anderson would surrender due to lack of food within days.
The CSA repeatedly chose violence to take a fort that a they couldn't get through negotiation and thus started a very bloody war. Perhaps that war was inevitable and it clearly stemmed from hostile choices on both sides, but the decision to officially start that war by the CSA was preemptive and absolutely not a response to any invasion.
You can't just hand wave that away because the CSA were "the bad guys," you have to be able to view both sides of it to fully understand the war, the causes and the affects, not play favorites, and especially not view it through modern eyes. There were no laws banning secession and it was deemed illegal by the SCOTUS ex-post facto.
Do you think if the Southern states thought they wouldn't be able to leave the Union when they joined in 1788 they ever would have joined in the first place? Doubtful.
>There is no indication that Anderson had any desire to "invade" the south, but rather the opposite.
Sure, but that act has obvious consequences. The first battle of the Civil War was Bull Run/Manassas. It was fought in Virginia because the Union troops crossed into the CSA territory to take the capitol. That's an invasion, an invasion that was the consequence of firing on Sumter, which was a consequence of Anderson taking it and Lincoln reinforcing it. Had cooler heads prevailed, we might not have had to lose 700k+ people.
Although the Civil War officially began when Confederate troops shelled Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, the fighting didn’t commence in earnest until the Battle of Bull Run, fought months later in Virginia, just 25 miles from Washington D.C. Under public pressure to end the war in 90 days, President Lincoln had pushed the cautious Gen. McDowell to embark on a campaign to capture the Confederate capital in Richmond, but McDowell’s troops were stopped at Bull Run by Brig. Gen. P.G.T. Beauregard’s Rebel forces. The Federals retreated to Washington, where the Lincoln administration retooled for a war that would be waged at great human and financial cost
https://www.battlefields.org/learn/civil-war/battles/bull-ru...
The union didn't take it, they already possessed it. This is also besides the point because it's hard to imagine that there wouldn't have be similar concerns about Anderson remaining in Moultrie or that there wouldn't have been issues with the numerous other coastal forts in the south that were posses the by the US army.
> It was considered an act of war and the CSA retaliated by shelling it for 3 days after they refused to leave
That is inaccurate. Anderson refused to leave multiple times without the refusal being taken as an "act of war". The last (4th?) time Anderson actually didn't refuse to leave, but laid out the conditions under which he would leave. Those conditions were found unacceptable so the CSA started a war.
> The first battle of the Civil War was Bull Run/Manassas. It was fought in Virginia because the Union troops crossed into the CSA territory to take the capitol.
While that could be considered the first battle (depending on your definition of "battle"), there were a number of escalating skirmishes leading up to Bull Run.
> That's an invasion, an invasion that was the consequence of firing on Sumter, which was a consequence of Anderson taking it and Lincoln reinforcing it. Had cooler heads prevailed, we might not have had to lose 700k+ people.
That's an invasion that happened AFTER the CSA started the war. Thus you simply can't say that the choice to start the war was because of that invasion.
There is an argument that the CSA started the war because they feared blockades, but again, that fear lead to preemptive action by the CSA, not responsive action.
> There were no laws banning secession and it was deemed illegal by the SCOTUS ex-post facto.
It was not "ex-post facto" as no new law was enacted. The SCOTUS interpreted the Consitution and decided that the states had agreed to a "perpetual" union
As the case Texas Vs White makes clear:
> "It was confirmed and strengthened by the necessities of war, and received definite form, and character, and sanction from the Articles of Confederation. By these the Union was solemnly declared to "be perpetual." And when these Articles were found to be inadequate to the exigencies of the country, the Constitution was ordained "to form a more perfect Union." It is difficult to convey the idea of indissoluble unity more clearly than by these words. What can be indissoluble if a perpetual Union, made more perfect, is not?"
> Do you think if the Southern states thought they wouldn't be able to leave the Union when they joined in 1788 they ever would have joined in the first place?
That is not at all clear, because they did clearly agree to join a "perpetual union" when they signed the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. My understanding is that the supreme court decided it is legal for states to leave the union, but they cannot do it unilaterally.
You may, of course, disagree with this decision by the Supreme Court and with its interpretation of constitutional law. That does not mean that any new "ex-post facto" law was passed.
When the United States Constitution replaced the Articles, nothing in it expressly stated that the Union is perpetual. Even after the Civil War, which had been fought by the U.S. to prevent eleven of the southern slave states from leaving the Union, some still questioned whether any such inviolability survived after the U.S. Constitution replaced the Articles. This uncertainty also stems from the fact that the Constitution was not ratified unanimously before going into effect, as required by the Articles (two states, North Carolina and Rhode Island, had not ratified when George Washington was sworn in as the first U.S. president). The United States Supreme Court ruled on the issue in the 1869 Texas v. White case.[3] In that case, the court ruled that the drafters intended the perpetuity of the Union to survive
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perpetual_Union
The constitution wasn't explicit and the SCOTUS hadn't ruled on it yet. It wasn't certain and could be argued either way, particularly for North Carolina. The fact that the union was perpetual was confirmed in 1869 by the SCOTUS, after secession and the war, thus ex-post-facto.
Great discussion, I want to respond to your other points later.
The constitution explicitly says that it's aim is to perfect the (perpetual) union that was established in the articles. The SCOTUS viewed that as clear evidence that the framers intended the union to be indissoluble.
> after secession and the war, thus ex-post-facto.
Ex-post-facto means a law that makes an act illegal that was previously legal.
In this case, that is not what happened. The legality of unilateral succession wasn't fully clear until the supreme court ruled. There was no new law created, just an official confirmation that Lincoln's position was indeed what the framers had intended and what the law had been all along.
You are trying to change the meaning of "ex-post-facto" to one that would apply to pretty much every SCOTUS decision ever and render the term meaningless.
The confederate states could have taken a case to the supreme court to challenge Lincoln's position. Perhaps the precedent would have been different if they had.
The confederate states could also have waited for Lincoln to invade or even blockade before resorting to violence.
Trying to paint the confederate states as a victim is simply inaccurate. They chose the path of violence and the entire country paid the price for their desire to maintain slavery. An institution that was not only highly immoral, but also one that was doomed and that would have put them at odds with the rest of the world within half a century.
You put parenthesis around perpetual because it wasn't explicit. The SCOTUS confirm that in 1868, after the fact. At the time it could have been easily argued that it was omitted from the constitution for a reason, one being that the southern states wouldn't have signed it.
>Ex-post-facto means a law that makes an act illegal that was previously legal.
>In this case, that is not what happened. The legality of unilateral succession wasn't fully clear until the supreme court ruled. There was no new law created, just an official confirmation that Lincoln's position was indeed what the framers had intended and what the law had been all along.
But it was. Lincoln deemed secession was illegal and sent troops to capture Richmond as a police/military act in response to secession. The legality of secession at the time was not clear, as in not confirmed by the SCOTUS, therefore not explicitly illegal. In the US, actions are default legal unless explicitly deemed otherwise by law and there was no law or ruling, particularly an explicit one, outside the AoC which weren't the law of the land. The SCOTUS confirmed it was illegal to secede after the fact, justifying Lincoln's prior police/military actions, which would have themselves been illegal had secession been confirmed as legal.
Ask yourself this, why were no CSA politicians or military personnel ever brought up on charges of treason?
>Trying to paint the confederate states as a victim is simply inaccurate.
I'm not trying to paint the CSA as a victim, I'm just discussing history, establishing cause and effect, chain of events, and most importantly trying to answer the "why?" Again you are looking at history through modern eyes and trying to apply modern sensibilities to it. Victim is such an overused word today. We were having a good discussion, why would you throw that angle in it?
>They chose the path of violence and the entire country paid the price for their desire to maintain slavery.
Slavery was legal in the southern states and many of the northern states at the time of secession. Of course had they been allowed to secede, which wasn't confirmed to be illegal at the time, no one would have died.
>An institution that was not only highly immoral
It was certainly immoral and it was the US' "original sin," that we are still paying for. Of course the British are the ones who introduced it to the colonies, so we inherited that sin when we rebelled and 700K+ people died trying to atone for that sin.
>but also one that was doomed and that would have put them at odds with the rest of the world within half a century.
I'm not so confident in that, though I would want it to be true. There are still major countries where slavery exists today. I think has the CSA successfully seceded, they would either be a third rate country, or would have been invaded by now. They certainly would have missed the Industrial Revolution.
https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...
Ok, the text is getting narrow indicating this is getting to be a long thread. Thanks for the discussion, I'll let you have the last word.
That does not appear to be the case. Federalists were pretty clear that there would be no right to secession under the constitution. This is why anti-federalists in New York pushed to add language to New York's ratification that stipulated it's right to withdraw. James Madison argued that "the Constitution requires an adoption in toto, and for ever" and New York ended up ratifying the constitution without that language.
So your argument here hinges on the assertion that despite their clear statements to the contrary, the federalists left ambiguity about secession in the constitution to win over anti-federalists. I don't see any evidence to back this up.
Indeed, if the Southern states though they had the right to unilaterally secede under the constitution, they would have taken a case to the supreme court. They did not and when a case did make it to the supreme court afterwards, it was confirmed.
> In the US, actions are default legal unless explicitly deemed otherwise by law and there was no law or ruling, particularly an explicit one
That isn't how it works. There are general laws that cover a wide range of acts. When a court rules that a specific act falls under a law, the defendant doesn't get off because they committed the act before the ruling.
> Ask yourself this, why were no CSA politicians or military personnel ever brought up on charges of treason?
Because Andrew Johnson pardoned them to promote reconciliation and healing. Perhaps we would have been better of if they had been prosecuted for treason and we had traded short term animosity for justice and long term clarity.
> Again you are looking at history through modern eyes and trying to apply modern sensibilities to it.
How so? There was widespread condemnation of slavery at the time. What "modern" views am I imposing?
> Victim is such an overused word today. We were having a good discussion, why would you throw that angle in it?
That is precisly the angle that the effort to frame the civil war as a "war of nothern aggression" takes. You are repeating many of those talking points and factual mistakes so it seems highly relevant.
> There are still major countries where slavery exists today.
The "modern slavery" described in that article is substantially different from what was practiced in the South and there has been significant, if insufficient, international pressure put on those countries to change.
> Of course had they been allowed to secede, which wasn't confirmed to be illegal at the time, no one would have died.
What ifs are hard. There was far more to resolve about the secession than the possession of fort Sumter. Since the South had already demonstrated their willingness to use violence to get their way when they weren't satisfied with negotiations, it is hard to see how a path to peace could have existed.
If the southern states hadn't resorted to violence, would Lincoln have had the support to prosecute the war? If the southern states had tried to establish the legality of that secession they could have won and Lincoln would have had even less support.
The southern states seceded premptively without a legal basis because they lost an election and then chose to premptively start the violence and initiate a war.
The southern leaders who made those choices deserve full responsibility for that path.
The north had few choices. Secession movements were not limited to the South and establishing the precent of allowing them would have lead to the dissolution of the nation. This view of secession was shared by numerous presidents before Lincoln, including James Buchanan, who was a supporter of states rights regarding slavery.
> In order to justify secession as a constitutional remedy, it must be on the principle that the Federal Government is a mere ...
Marching into a country and killing hundreds of thousands of men isn't an invasion? What do you call it where you're from?
This is why many southerners know it as "The War of Northern Aggression."
That's called spin/branding.
The initial acts of violence and aggression were taken by the southern states. The southern states could have chosen a legal or political solution. Instead the CSA decided to unilaterally succeed and then used violence to take a fort that they were unsuccessful in negotiating for.
The slaves were seen as a threat that could start the rebellion of some kind.
* They had more military experience and a stronger military tradition
* They were more motivated
* There were a not-insignificant number of Northerners who weren't particularly in favor of fighting a war against slavery (which, despite the "states' rights" commentators, was the real cause of the war)
* They expected recognition from the British government due to their supposed dependence of southern cotton
I just finished the book _Battle Cry of Freedom_ a couple of weeks ago. It's a fantastic and very readable single-volume history of the war and the ~20 years leading up to it, and I think every American should read it for a clear understanding of why exactly the US Civil War happened