Posted on 05/20/2014 8:57:04 AM PDT by Sioux-san
Not much media coverage, not much fanfare, not much reflection. A war that carved over 600,000 lives from the nation when the nation’s population was just 31 million. To compare, that would equate to a loss of life in today’s population statistics, not to mention limb and injury, of circa 6 million.
We are in the month of May, when 150 years ago Grant crossed the Rapidan to engage Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia. Lee stood atop Clark’s Mountain and watched this unknown (to the eastern theatre) entity lead a massive army into Lee’s home state. Soon there would be the Wilderness, where forest and brushfires would consume the wounded and dying. Days later, the battle of Spotsylvania ensued, in which hand-to-hand combat would last nearly 12 hours. Trading casualties one for one and rejecting previous prisoner exchange and parole procedures, Grant pushed on, to the left flank. The Battle of the North Anna, then the crossing of the James, and thus into the siege of Petersburg. This was 1864 in the eastern theatre.
Today there is hardly a whisper of the anniversary of these deeds, sacrifices, and destruction. Why?
One can suppose that the weak treatment of history at the alleged higher levels of education in this country contributes to the lack of attention. “It was about slavery; now on to WWI.” The War between the States was so much more complicated than the ABC treatment that academia presents. And as the old saying goes, the more complicated the situation, the more the bloodshed...
(Excerpt) Read more at americanthinker.com ...
What is a Lincolnolater?
Apparently it’s what passes for a “well sourced argument” LOL
In historical fact, Confederate revisionism began even before the Civil War had been fully lost, and it began at the top, with Jefferson Davis & others who hoped to lie their way out of full responsibility for the greatest tragedy in US history.
And the fact that you chose to believe all their propaganda nonsense does not make even a word of it really true, FRiend.
“Revisionism” is a very interesting concept. It implies, at least, that there is an absolute historical truth that an attempt is being made to revise, generally for political gain.
As Bro points out, attempts to revise the actual history started even before the end of the war and continued after it. The most obvious example is the attempt to claim that secession wasn’t really about slavery, which of course flies in the face of all the actual evidence from 1860 and 1861. The genesis of the Lost Cause movement, attempts to make the southern cause more acceptable in a time when defense of slavery just no longer was acceptable.
Meanwhile, on the victors’ side there was a general consensus that the War had been an attempt by evil men to destroy the United States. By the later 19th century this started to fall apart, and up through the 1950s I think it is reasonable to claim that these was a basic consensus on the War:
The War was caused by secession, which was at root caused by a desire to protect and eventually expand slavery, though many other factors were also involved. Southerners fought honorably and bravely for their freedom but were nevertheless defeated. No harm, no foul.
Since the 60s I think there have been two main strands of revisionist history.
Strand 1: Lost Cause stuff revived. Secession and war had nothing at all to do with slavery. Secession was about States’ Rights (specific rights of the States being violated somehow never specified) and tariffs. Union war aims were ignoble and mercenary, while those of the CSA were the defense of freedom. Ahem.
Proponents tend to be conservatives, though I could debate their right to that honorable title.
Strand 2: Secession was ONLY about slavery. Slaves largely freed themselves. The CSA was mostly not defeated by Union armies, it fell apart internally due to the resistance of slaves and others. They agree with Strand 1 that Union war aims were mercenary and ignoble.
Proponents tend to be liberals or socialists, which is why they can find nothing honorable or noble in the actions of either side. Except of course for the supposed passive resistance of the slaves.
Personally, I think the early 20th century consensus was reasonably close to the truth. Though both of the revisionist strands have important truths to add to our understanding of the period.
Just my take.
Revisionism is meaningless except with reference to what it is revising.
“And the fact that you chose to believe all their propaganda nonsense does not make even a word of it really true, FRiend.”
Then why are you in such a twist about it? :-)
At least, that's a reasonably consistent, defensible position, equating roughly to the views of ANTI-Federalists like, say, Patrick Henry.
And, such ideas evolved, over time, to those of 1860s secessionists and today's lost causers.
It says that you didn't like the new Constitution in 1788, you didn't like it in 1860, and you don't like it today.
Fine, I “get” that.
What you want is something more like the original Articles of Confederation, or, say, the Confederate Constitution... oh, wait... wasn't the Confederate Constitution just a reprint of the original, except for that little matter, really a trifle, of a certain peculiar domestic institution?
Hmmmmm...
Of course, being anti-Constitution means, by definition, you're not conservative, but hey, who cares about that?
Except, well, except on a conservative site... Free Republic?
</sarc>
What about the states that agreed to let them in? Don't they have a say in the matter?
And they remained, for a hundred years, in The South.
Yes, and I seem to recall that Texas, as a condition to join
The Union, required a clause giving them the specific right
to withdraw from The Union if they determined that it was within their best interests.
Here's the Treaty of Annexation. I don't see the clause you're referring to. Can you point me to the document that contains it?
Yes, I think you are correct. Their agreement to join the Union was not just an agreement but a treaty.
There are many lawyers here who could tell us about that agreement versus the agreement on the part of the earlier states and commonwealths.
In fact, Sherman Logan understated our Founders' rough treatment of Loyalists to Britain during the Revolutionary War.
By comparison, Lincoln's treatment of Confederates & Copperheads was relatively mild & legalistic.
"Bound by certain rules" -- in fact, the Constitution is clear in expecting & authorizing military & legal responses to "invasion", "rebellion", "insurrection", "domestic violence" and "treason" -- specifically defined as:
So: far from preventing Lincoln from defeating the military force which started & declared war on the United States, our Constitution expects & requires it.
The life, liberty and pursuit of happiness the Founders denied the (to them) traitorous Tories were claimed (again by the Founders) to not be rights created by a legal document such as the Constitution.
They were supposedly innate and inalienable. That the Founders nevertheless chose to treat the Tories so harshly is an indication of how thoroughly they recognized the danger of internal dissension in time of war.
I wonder how those who today denounce Lincoln would react to similar circumstances today. Such as an internal Communist revolution supported by about 1/4 of the people, with secret supporters embedded in the army, civil service, etc.
I’m sure in such circumstances they would support leaving strongly suspected subversives strictly alone unless and until they could prove their guilt beyond reasonable doubt in a civil court of law.
To my mind the Founders recognized that in time of war any and all civil rights were if necessary up for potential temporary abridgement. That’s what happens in war. What makes the abridgement constitutional is its necessity.
Unlike some today, they recognized that if the government established by the Constitution were overthrown, perhaps due partially to an overly punctilious insistence on “rights,” ALL those rights would be permanently destroyed.
Temporary limitation of civil rights, when necessary to protect the Constitution, allows at minimum for their eventual restoration.
BTW, to some extent the CSA fell apart because too many of its politicians refused to recognize this. They insisted on states’ rights and such even in the face of an existential threat which did indeed eventually destroy their government.
Where were their states’ rights then?
All the "silliness" here is coming from you and fellow pro-Confederates.
The rest of us only respond with facts & reason -- all of which you studiously ignore.
achilles2000: "You and others have a fifth grade emotional attachment to certain figures you treat as demigods."
Rubbish, and prime example of your "silliness".
In fact nobody on this thread, or any other, has expressed such sentiments.
We have merely responded to your historical-revisionist propaganda with facts & reason.
achilles2000: "Federalists clearly didn’t like the compromise they were forced into in the Constitution and set about trying to get the powers they wanted by going around the Constitution."
More than once I've provided you with proof positive (11th & 12th Amendments) that our Founders themselves well understood which government actions required Constitutional Amendments and which could be passed as laws by Congress, signed by the President.
The fact that you disagree with our Founders on this just tells us that you hate both them and their Constitution.
achilles2000: "Hamilton was very aggressive in this and was supported by mercantilist interests."
He was also supported by Southerners, who agreed to charter his First Bank of the United States, in exchange for locating Washington DC in the South.
That sounds to me like total "politics as usual", not some Constitutional-crisis requiring correction now 200+ years later.
achilles2000: "Go ahead and claim that the Alien & Sedition Act was Constitutional..."
Part of the Alien Act is still US law today, and was never ruled unconstitutional.
The remainder -- which expired naturally around 1802 -- our Founders considered at the time war-time emergency acts, which were only perceived as unconstitutional after the emergency passed.
In that sense, it was equivalent to today's "Patriot Act", which also grows increasingly unpopular as the public perceives terrorist threats receding.
achilles2000: "or that the “necessary and proper” clause allows the government to do anything it deems “necessary and proper” (in which case we can dispense with the rest of the Constitution)"
Of course, I don't agree with that, nor has anybody else here posted such an opinion.
achilles2000: "that the power to “coin money” means printing up fiat money,"
"Fiat money" was common in those days, issued by both state governments and by the Continental Congress under the Articles of Confederation -- hence the expression, "not worth a Continental".
Our Founders did not consider "fiat money" to be a matter requiring Constitutional Amendment, and neither do I.
achilles2000: "or that Article 1, Section 9, Clause 4 means the federal government can levy an income tax directly on citizens, or any other nonsense you like."
No, the Courts ruled that a permanent peace-time income tax requires Constitutional Amendment, hence the 16th Amendment, ratified just 100 years ago, launching the great explosion of Federal Power.
So, nothing I've posted here qualifies as "nonsense", but virtually everything you post does, FRiend.
achilles2000: "Even if Washington, Hamilton, Madison, and Jefferson swore on a stack of Bibles that those things are true, they would still be unconstitutional."
Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Finally, an honest confession from our pro-Confederates, that you oppose our Founders, and their Constitution.
I say, that's great -- of course I don't agree, but at least you're honest about it.
So now we can dispense with all debate over what is, or is not Constitutional, because we know right off the bat that achilles2000 considers our Founders' Constitution itself unconstitutional, at least as they understood & interpreted it.
achilles2000: "Your assumption that leaders engaging in acts of realpolitik actually tell us what the Constitution says is either nothing other than a modified version of the doctrine of the Royal Perogative, over which Charles I lost his head, or some mystic vision of Hamilton and others as oracles."
More silly rubbish.
The reason our Founders' original intent is used as the Gold Standard for what is, or is not, Constitutional, is that otherwise we have no solid basis on which to define the "compact" ratified in 1788.
If original intent is not a valid standard, then there is no standard, and we are forced to accept -- as valid interpretations -- ideas which can vary from, oh, say, Nancy Pelosi on the one end to, say, achilles2000 on the other -- depending on which can gin up the most voters.
If you declare our Founders' interpretations were "unconstitutional", then it means we never, ever had a validly functioning Constitution -- a claim which is ludicrous & beyond debate.
achilles2000: "The progressives own you, and you don’t even know it."
More silly rubbish, but lunatic anti-Constitution, anti-Americans do own you achilles2000, and you do know it, though are most reluctant to confess the truth.
Indeed, my opinion is that there's nothing truly "conservative" in you, achilles, because the word "conservative" means conserving the best of what is, or was.
But you wish not to "conserve", but to impose something which never was, and never can be: your personal interpretation of the US Constitution.
Note especially final conclusion at the end of #394.
In fact, achilles2000 has displayed great ignorance of, and confusion over, the 1798 Alien & Sedition Acts.
He does not comprehend that some for the four laws were non-controversial, and remain in the US code today.
And he refuses to acknowledge that all four laws were considered at the time to be war-time emergency measures, which our Founders believed entirely appropriate, based on their Revolutionary War experience, and which were intended from the beginning to expire when the emergency passed.
The problem -- or rather political opportunity -- from Jefferson's perspective was that "wartime emergency" passed long before the laws expired.
This made such laws unnecessary, and therefore unconstitutional, a fact which Jefferson's party exploited against John Adams' Federalists, but which however did not prevent President Jefferson himself from using the law against his own political enemies.
But none of the historical facts fit our FRiend achilles2000 propaganda points, and so, as always, he ignores them in favor of nonsense.
Tau Food is far from a "troll" (whatever that word might mean), but the historical fact is that protecting slavery was the one-and-only issue which drove Deep South Fire-Eaters to declare secession, beginning after the election of Lincoln's "Black Republicans" in November 1860.
Before that, their control over all three branches of Federal Government was nearly complete, and every "normal" issue (i.e., tariffs) was considered more-or-less "politics as usual" -- certainly not cause for secession.
But Lincoln's election was a "game-changer" in their minds, because Lincoln was the first openly-anti-slavery President ever elected.
Of course, Lincoln had promised not to change slavery in states where it already existed.
But the mere fact that Lincoln wished to exclude slavery from territories which voted against it, that was enough to drive the Slave-Power into paroxysms of secessionism.
Ever since the war, and up through achilles2000 today, pro-Confederates have attempted to redefine what it was all about -- to eliminate slavery as the issue, and to find some other cause which we today might consider more noble.
So they pretend, and pretend that it wasn't all about slavery, instead it was all about "Big Government" overstepping its constitutional bounds.
And such ideas might make sense, if there was even a tiny bit of historical fact behind them.
But there's not.
Instead, pro-Confederates' beliefs are all based on propaganda lies, many of them originating from the likes of Jefferson Davis, even before his war was fully lost.
I suspect that achilles may view himself more as a libertarian than a conservative and Confederate leaders were very fluent in the language of libertarianism. They talked a lot about the importance of personal liberty, especially the right to own people and the right to buy and sell them in a free market.
Obviously, championing the Confederate cause can be a bit awkward at times for a libertarian.
I don’t know the specific document, perhaps a viewer will
come up with it.
Where is the southern propaganda? All I have seen since
childhood is history as written by northern propagandists.
How can you deny that Sherman’s march to the sea was pillage? The South was utterly destroyed for 100 years.
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