Top US general says Confederate leaders committed 'treason' and signals support for renaming bases

Washington(CNN) America's top general launched an outspoken attack on the Confederacy and signaled his support for the military renaming bases named for Confederate leaders on Wednesday, in his latest public comments that seem to put him at odds with President Donald Trump.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Gen. Mark Milley did not hold back in an appearance before the House Armed Service Committee, stating that "those officers turned their back on their oath," referring to the names on the bases. "It was an act of treason, at the time, against the Union, against the Stars and Stripes, against the US Constitution

“So I take the odd capitalization of “United Colonies” to signal us that Founders did not consider it to be of anything other than stylistic importance. However, by the time of the July 1776 Articles of Confederation, they were very clear on the subject: “The stile of this confederacy shall be ‘The United States of America.’” Capitalized.

You can argue that style in not important, as you did in the first sentence.

Or you can argue that style (stile) is very important, as you did in the second sentence.

You should not juxtapose your conflicting thoughts in consecutive sentences. It undermines your point. If you had a point.

jeffersondem: "These facts were discretely pointed out in my post 396.
There is really no need for you to pile on.
I’m sure Brother OIF feels badly enough already about his gaffe."

Well... post #396 was OIFVeteran's original quote showing "United States of America" as capitalized.
Woodpusher responded in #419 showing that "United States of America" was capitalized in a document dated July 19, 1776.
Then you, jeffersondem, responded in #427 pointing out, there were many revisions & copies made at the time, and some may have said "United States" while others said "united States.

So I'm not "piling on", just trying to make a different point, namely that the DOI's odd capitalization of "United Colonies" vs "united States" suggests it was strictly a clerical matter.

But I am also noting that the Articles of Confederation were begun at about the same time, in July, 1776, and they could not be clearer, that our country's name is, the United States of America -- capitalized.

So there is no reason whatever to suppose that those who wrote the Declaration had anything different in mind than those who, at nearly the same time, wrote the Articles of Confederation.

So I don't think it's OIFVeteran who needs to "feel badly... about his gaff", FRiend.

Bubba Ho-Tep: "Trying to interpret any meaning in the nearly random capitalization of the Declaration will lead to madness."

Right, I wasn't suggesting "madness", only random clerical practices.
I also noted, as also pointed out by woodpusher & OIFVeteran, that within a few days of the Declaration's signing date, our name was formalized as "United States of America", capitalized.

So there's no reason to think that the Declaration's writers intended anything different with their term "united States" than those same people a few days later meant by the term "United States".

ought-six: "Finally, presenting an alternative or contrasting view should not arbitrarily be labeled propaganda, as propaganda — at its core — is meant to mislead."

By definition, propaganda is a mixture of highly selected facts, use of complimentary or disparaging terms based on one's viewpoints and even some outright lies.
Indeed, even when somewhat factual, propaganda by definition is in support of one or more Big Lies.
And I find all of that in Lost Cause narratives.

So, what you call, "alternative or contrasting view" I call a pack of Democrat lies intended to distort & rewrite history, consigning the real events & reasons to a well-guarded memory hole.

The Lost Cause is just Democrats doing what Democrats by their natures do -- lie.

ought-six: "The Founders were brilliant guys, and they knew that over time definitions and meanings can and do change; hence, they believed that the Constitution should be read for its intent AS written, WHEN written."

Right, but you have steadfastly missed my point, so I will try again:

No Founder understood their new Constitution better than James Madison, who became President in 1809.
In 1787 Madison was a strong Federalists who wanted a new Constitution and stronger powers for general government.
Madison then supported other Federalists like George Washington and Alexander Hamilton, and proposed at the convention such Federal powers as a National Bank and what we today call Infrastructure projects.
But even with Madison's support, those proposals were defeated at the convention.

After ratification, at Washington's request, Madison ran as a Federalist for the US Senate, but was defeated by anti-Federalists supported by Patrick Henry.
Then Madison ran again as a Federalist, for Congressman, and looked to be defeated again by Henry's anti-Federalist allies.
So Madison made a political deal -- he flipped sides from Federalist to anti-Federalist and agreed to sponsor the Bill of Rights amendments.
He also then opposed the very ideas he had, along with Washington & Hamilton, proposed at the Convention: a National Bank and Federal infrastructure projects.

Hence the name: "strict construction".
Along with Jefferson & others, the anti-Administration faction weaponized that term to help demonize Madison's former Federalist allies.
And it worked -- Jeffersonian Democrats came to power in 1801 and held it almost continuously until secession in 1861.
The old Federalists were dumped into the dustbin of history.

But here is the point of this whole rehearsal: once themselves in political power, Jeffersonian Democrats did everything "unconstitutional" they had accused Federalists of, and more besides.
Thus they proved that Democrats were never sincere about "strict construction", and indeed, their behavior from 1801 through 1861 gave Federalists-Whigs-Republicans endless opportunities to themselves run as "strict constructionists" against the corrupt and lawless Democrats.

So Democrats were never sincerely the party of "strict construction", except when, out of power, they could weaponize the words to demonize their political opponents.
Once in power, they did whatever they wanted.

ought-six: "The Order stated no such specific thing.
As for chamber pots, it was BECAUSE of the Order that some of the women took to putting Butler’s picture at the bottom of their chamber pots. "

I don't think I mischaracterized it.
Here is the usual historical description.

"Major General Benjamin F. Butler occupied the city of New Orleans on May 1, 1862.
The residents of New Orleans, especially the women, did not take Butler's appointment as military general very well.
Butler's troops faced "all manner of verbal and physically symbolic insults" from women, including obvious physical avoidance such as crossing the street or leaving a streetcar to avoid a Union soldier, being spat upon, and having chamber pots being dumped upon them.[12]
The Union troops were offended by the treatment, and after two weeks of occupation, Butler had had enough.
He issued his General Order No. 28, which instructed Union soldiers to treat any woman who offended a soldier "as a woman of the town plying her avocation...."

General Order No. 28: "...was in response to various and widespread acts of overt verbal and physical abuse from the women of New Orleans, including cursing at and spitting on Union soldiers and pouring out chamber pots on their heads from upstairs windows when they passed in the street (with Admiral David Farragut being perhaps the most notable victim of a chamberpot attack)."

So, cause & effect: Chamberpots were the cause, Order #28 was the effect.

And today we can see quite similar behavior of Democrats towards law-enforcement, though at least so far, no government official has responded with an order similar to "the Beast's"!

woodpusher: "The freed slave was neither a citizen nor an alien.
Freed slaves uniquely held no municipal status as citizens or aliens, and were ineligible for naturalization under the terms of federal law."

DoodleDawg: "Nonsense.
If a slave was born in the U.S. and was later emancipated then citizenship is assumed with his newly freed status.
Nothing in the Constitution supports the concept of a free person being neither citizen or alien and ineligible for citizenship."

Right, by all laws & practice of the time -- when indentured servants complete their term of indenture, they became full citizens in every respect.
Even prisoners became citizens again on completion of their sentences.

Nothing in the US Constitution suggests freed-slaves should be treated different and indeed in the early years states like Massachusetts, Maine, Vermont, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut & Maryland allowed freed-men to vote.
Some later specifically outlawed black-suffrage, but nothing in the US Constitution suggests such a thing.

Finally, we should notice that woodpusher is now the second Lunatic Lost Causer on these threads to argue that Crazy Roger Taney was correct in his Dred Scott opinions.
The first I know of is, of course, DiogenesLamp.
I would not have thought it possible for there to be not one but two people insane enough to defend Taney on this.

woodpusher: "But to assume that a war was fought to end slavery, when military victory would not end slavery, is nonsense."

In, say, May 1861, nearly everyone underestimated what Civil War would take in time, resources & lives.
But very soon after that, Union officials, and more important, Congress, began to realize that one necessity for victory was use of "Contraband of War" laws to free runaway Confederate slaves.

So, in the beginning Civil War was not fought to free the slaves, but freeing the slaves was instead a Union strategy in winning the Civil War.

It was also a British strategy in the Revolutionary War, but then George Washington was able to effectively counter it by promising freedom to slaves who served the Continental Army.

But no such genius as George Washington existed in the Confederacy of 1861.
And indeed, nearly all Confederates understood that offering slaves freedom for Army service would defeat the whole purpose of secession & Confederacy.

woodpusher: "I'm not a Democrat, do not push propaganda, nor am I devoted to the fake history of public school education."

Of course you are all of those things!
You are a throw-back to the Southern Democrat public school "education" of, say, the 1950s.

woodpusher: "I link, cite and quote original sources which are, in and of themselves, parts of real history. "

I agree and I've noted before having found no evidence of any fake quotes from you, woodpusher.
So your quotes are always good historical information, even if we don't always agree with the purposes for which you employ them.

woodpusher: "If it gives the vapors to some because it contradicts the mush that filled their heads in school from liberal textbooks, it is not my fault if they refuse to accept real history when it hits them in the face. "

Here's the real truth: nothing in any of your quotes I've seen supports the fake history of Lost Cause narratives.
I've said it before: what you're trying to do is pound square-data pegs into the round-narrative holes of Lost Cause "history" -- and they'll never, ever fit, because the Lost Cause is, by definition, a pack of pro-Confederate lies.

So I'm not "piling on", just trying to make a different point, namely that the DOI's odd capitalization of "United Colonies" vs "united States" suggests it was strictly a clerical matter.

And a grammatical matter. The declaration begins, "In Congress, July 4, 1776. The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, ..." The term "thirteen United States" doesn't make grammatical sense, or did we actually create thirteen United Stateses on July 4.

After the DOI, some people, even the Second Continental Congress, started referring to us as the "United States". But we were still a collection of independent and sovereign states until the Articles of Confederation was finally executed by all states in 1781.

Here is an extract of the November 17, 1777 letter that was sent out from the Continental Congress to the states asking them to ratify the Articles:

In Congress, York Town, 17 November, 1777
Congress having agreed upon a plan of confederacy for securing the freedom, sovereignty, and independence of the United States, authentic copies are now transmitted for the consideration of the respective legislatures.
. . .
Permit us, then, earnestly to recommend these articles to the immediate and dispassionate attention of the legislatures of the respective states. Let them be candidly reviewed under a sense of the difficulty of combining in one general system the various sentiments and interests of a continent divided into so many sovereign and independent communities, under a conviction of the absolute necessity of uniting all our councils and all our strength, to maintain and defend our common liberties: let them be examined with a liberality becoming brethren and fellow-citizens surrounded by the same imminent dangers, contending for the same illustrious prize, and deeply interested in being forever bound and connected together by ties the most intimate and indissoluble; and finally, let them be adjusted with the temper and magnanimity of wise and patriotic legislators, who, while they are concerned for the prosperity of their own more immediate circle, are capable of rising superior to local attachments, when they may be incompatible with the safety, happiness, and glory of the general Confederacy.

Once the Articles of Confederation were ratified by the individual states, we officially became "The United States of America", as the first section of the Articles declared "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be ..."

“So I don't think it's OIFVeteran who needs to “feel badly... about his gaff”, FRiend.”

Speaking of gaff, although you seem to have been asking for one I hope the moderator does not oblige.

https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search?p=image+of+fish+gaff&fr=yhs-symantec-

For one thing, the weight of your arguments is unlikely to break anyone’s thought line.

And the meat on the bones of your arguments does not justify smellin’-up a pan full of cooking oil.

Importantly, I'm just a bighearted sportsman that prefers catch-and-release.

woodpusher: "To clarify, that would be the conservative Democrat-Republican Party against the big government, liberal Federalist Party."

Sure, I understand your argument, have seen it many times, and it is pure Democrat propaganda, so let's begin to unpack it here:

The original anti-Federalists were only "conservative" in wanting to conserve the old Articles of Confederation against the new 1787 Constitution.
They lost that vote in 1788, the new Constitution was ratified and so our nascent Democrats retrenched under the flag of "strict construction" hoping to radically transform the Constitution from the Federalists' original intentions of a stronger central government, back to their own anti-Federalist, Articles of Confederation, ideals.

So, after the 1788 ratification, Federalists were the real conservatives defending their Constitution, while opposition Democrats were radicals wanting to transform it into something else.
The most radical transformation Democrats wished to impose was a doctrine called "Nullification", which lead them in a direct line to secession and civil war against the United States.

But for anybody who insists that Jeffersonian Democrats were sincere in their conservative "strict construction", I need only mention one name (among many): Virginia Congressman John Randolph, leader of the anti-Jefferson "Old-Republicans" aka "Tertium Quids".
Unlike most Jeffersonian Democrats, Randolph's Old Republicans did not reject nullification, or opposition to federal infrastructure projects, or eventually abolishing the National Bank, just because they were now the party in power.
Randolph even opposed Jefferson's attempted annexation of Florida -- now that's "strict construction".

But most Democrats, including those who became President, were never sincere about "strict construction", it was only a weapon they used to demonize their political opponents.
Once in power Democrats did everything (& more) "unconstitutional" they'd previously accused Federalists of.

Indeed, after 1801 the old Federalists and Randolph's Old Republicans sometimes joined forces to defeat Jeffersonian Democrats' big government programs.
But more often that not, Democrats won those battles, as in the case of Jefferson's attempted annexation of Florida.

Bottom line: it's pure Democrat propaganda to call Jeffersonian Democrats "conservatives" or "strict constructionists" -- they were neither except when that suited them politically before 1800 and almost never afterwards.

“Are you arguing that the founders didn’t create a new Nation, called the United States of America, on July 4th 1776?”

A proper understanding of what the founders did requires reading what they wrote:

“We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these United Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do.”

The DOI made the Colonies Free and Independent States. Thirteen of them.

Not one. Thirteen.

rustbucket quoting: "...under a conviction of the absolute necessity of uniting all our councils and all our strength, to maintain and defend our common liberties:
let them be examined with a liberality becoming brethren and fellow-citizens surrounded by the same imminent dangers, contending for the same illustrious prize, and deeply interested in being forever bound and connected together by ties the most intimate and indissoluble; and finally, let them be adjusted with the temper and magnanimity of wise and patriotic legislators, who, while they are concerned for the prosperity of their own more immediate circle, are capable of rising superior to local attachments, when they may be incompatible with the safety, happiness, and glory of the general Confederacy."

So: "...bound together by ties the most intimate & indissoluble"

Just like a good marriage in which neither party is entirely "sovereign and independent".

Our Founders were not fools, they did not believe in quickie divorces at pleasure.

jeffersondem: "The DOI made the Colonies Free and Independent States.
Thirteen of them.
Not one. Thirteen."

Obviously, you think our Founders were idiots.
They weren't, as you know, the Declaration begins:

"The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America, When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people..."

13 united States... one people.
Nothing ambiguous about it.
Within just a few days they capitalized the United States of America, and that has been our official name ever since.

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.