Posted on 05/12/2015 3:00:03 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
We Sons of Confederate Veterans are charged with preserving the good name of the Confederate soldier. The world, for the most part, has acknowledged what Gen. R. E. Lee described in his farewell address as the “valour and devotion” and “unsurpassed courage and fortitude” of the Confederate soldier. The Stephen D. Lee Institute program is dedicated to that part of our duty that charges us not only to honour the Confederate soldier but “to vindicate the cause for which he fought.” We are here to make the case not only for the Confederate soldier but for his cause. It is useless to proclaim the courage, skill, and sacrifice of the Confederate soldier while permitting him to be guilty of a bad cause.
Although their cause was lost it was a good cause and still has a lot to teach the world today.
In this age of Political Correctness there has never been a greater need and greater opportunity to refresh our understanding of what happened in America in the years 1861–1865 and start defending our Southern forebears as strongly as they ought to be defended. There is plenty of true history available to us. It is our job to make it known.
All the institutions of American society, including nearly all Southern institutions and leaders, are now doing their best to separate the Confederacy off from the rest of American history and push it into one dark little corner labeled “ Slavery and Treason.” Being taught at every level of the educational system is the official party line that everything good that we or anyone believe about our Confederate ancestors is a myth, and by myth they mean a pack of lies that Southerners thought up to excuse their evil deeds and defeat.
(Excerpt) Read more at abbevilleinstitute.org ...
To my mind, a darn good argument. I've noticed that Democrats have a strong tendency to bend/break the law without breaking stride when attacking their enemies, then complacently assume all the protections of the law will be available to them.
The problem is that once you "appeal to arms," as the southerners were so fond of proclaiming before and in the early days of the war, sometimes the appeal goes against you.
Then they suddenly developed a fondness for legal and constitutional methods.
The Confederate war began as a war of conquest (Fort Sumter) and invasion (Mesilla).
The Union war began as a war of defense (resupplying Sumter, hardening DC) - the war in the East really got going when the Confederates tried to take DC (First Bull Run) and the war in the West started when the Confederates invaded Kentucky and took Columbus.
It is quite obvious that the Union's initial strategy was "hold until all this boils over" while the Confederates' strategy was "conquer the Capitol and choke off the Mississippi."
The Confederate strategy was far more productive in the first year of the war.
Then the Union changed its strategy to mirror the Confederates' and launched the failed Seven Days.
Your claims are passionate, but false.
I don't think that's accurate. While many recommended such a step, and there would have been little to stop VA troops from taking DC in the first few weeks, no such attempt was made.
First Bull Run was fought when Union forces advanced into VA, heading for Richmond, and Confederate forces resisted. It is notable that CSA forces did not pursue or attempt to capture DC after their victory, though that may have been because they were about as disorganized as the Union army was.
Once cut off, the goal was to either capture the Confederates (a tall order) or force them south of the Rappahannock, since the Union military's consensus was that this river would serve as a much more defensible line than the Potomac.
While a popular cry might have been "On to Richmond!" I don't think McDowell was either stupid enough or imaginative enough to think that this was what his encounter with the Confederates would accomplish.
The goal was to keep DC safe and to keep Confederates from linking up with sympathizers in MD to create a pincer.
Also, Beauregard publicly said after First Bull Run that his goal was to take DC. Beauregard said a lot of things, of course.
Yeah, he was a talker. Much like Fremont in that regard. Airily speaking of and planning continent-spanning offensives when he isn’t able to take out the enemy army facing him.
However, Beauregard was actually pretty competent, unlike Fremont.
“The Economic Causes of the War”
The excellent explanation of the economic causes of the War Between the States by Dr. Donald W. Miller, Jr. is added in its entirety. It was published in September 2001. Please pass this website along to family, friends and acquaintances to help them better understand American history, the reasons for the 1861-1865 conflict, and the unsurpassed valor of North Carolinians who fought for their independence. Read an excerpt below:
“Union means so many millions a year lost to the South; secession means the loss of the same millions to the North. The love of money is the root of this, as of many evils. The quarrel between the North and the South is, as it stands, solely a fiscal quarrel.” Charles Dickens
In the schoolbook account of the American Civil War, Abraham Lincoln rose to the presidency and took the steps needed to end slavery. He led the country in a great Civil War against the slaveholding States that seceded, restored these states to the Union, and ended slavery. Accordingly, historians rate Abraham Lincoln as one of our greatest presidents.
People in the South, like my great-great-grandfather Louis Thomas Hicks, had a different view of the war. Louis Hicks fought in the Battle of Gettysburg in the Army of Northern Virginia, commanding the 20th North Carolina Regiment (in Iverson’s Brigade of Rodes Division in Ewell’s Second Corps). He led his regiment into action on the first day of the battle and was forced to surrender after losing eighty percent of his men (238 out of 300) in two-and-a-half hours of fighting. In his personal account of the battle, he wrote, “[As a prisoner] I lied awake, thinking of my comrades and the great cause for which we were willing to shed our last drop of blood.”
His daughter, Mary Lyde Williams, echoed similar sentiments in her Presentation Address given at the Unveiling of the North Carolina Memorial on the Battlefield of Gettysburg on July 3, 1929. She began her address with the words, “They wrote a constitution in which each State should be free.” Four children, including her granddaughter, my mother, who was then 10 years old, removed the veil that covered the statue.
Today’s Standard View of the War
Today American children are taught in the nation’s schools, both in the North and South, that it was wrong for people to support the Confederacy and to fight and die for it.
Well-intentioned, “right thinking” people equate anyone today who thinks that the South did the right thing by seceding from the Union as secretly approving of slavery. Indeed, such thinking has now reached the point where groups from both sides of the political spectrum, notably the NAACP and Southern Poverty Law Center on the left and the Cato Institute on the right, want to have the Confederate Battle Flag eradicated from public spaces. These people argue that the Confederate flag is offensive to African-Americans because it commemorates slavery.
The war did enable Lincoln to “save” the Union, but only in a geographic sense. The country ceased being a Union, as it was originally conceived, of separate and sovereign States. Instead,
America became a “nation” with a powerful federal government. Although the war freed four million slaves into poverty, it did not bring about a new birth of freedom, as Lincoln and historians such as James McPherson and Henry Jaffa say. For the nation as a whole the war did just the opposite: It initiated a process of centralization of government that has substantially restricted liberty and freedom in America, as historians Charles Adams and Jeffrey Rogers Hummel have argued – Adams in his book, When in the Course of Human Events: Arguing the Case for Southern Secession (published in 2000); and Hummel in his book, Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men (1996).
Read more at: http://www.ncwbts150.com/EconomicCausesoftheWAr.php
"Given the serious financial difficulties the Union would face if the Southern States were a separate republic on its border engaging in duty-free trade with Britain, the Post urged the Union to hold on to its custom houses in the Southern ports and have them continue to collect duty.
Two questions. If the South was to conduct duty-free trade then how would they have financed their government? And what serious financial hardships would that have presented to the U.S.?
an excerpt from someone else’s work is not an answer, NKPV.
Uhm, that occurred with the ratification of the United States Constitution.
Should your home state be overrun with what amounted to foreign (Other States, and keep in mind the State was a sovereign entity, and those Militias were still State Armies) and Federal troops, what would your reaction be? Lay back and try to enjoy it, or resist?
Well, every state I’ve ever lived in had federal military installations, as indeed did Maryland, long before the war. You may have heard of the Star Spangled Banner, written about the defense of Ft. McHenry against the British.
As far as the revolutionary authorities bit goes, there are only two choices.
Either the MD state government and Baltimore city government were waging war on the United States in their official capacity, before they had made even a pretense of secession. In which case it was by any standard treason.
“Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort.”
Or there were extra-legal bodies in control of parts of Maryland, bypassing the state government. I think the army officer in command of Ft. McHenry took the polite approach of assuming private individuals rather than state officials were committing treason.
Marylanders either waged war on the United States, from which they had not seceded. Or they were giving aid and comfort to states that were waging war on them, or possibly to a foreign nation, the CSA, that was at war with the USA.
It must have been hundreds of times I’ve seen Army convoys heading from one post, presumably, to another. You know, it has never once crossed my mind to get some friends together and try to ambush them for the temerity of entering my state.
BTW, the state of Virginia committed constitutional treason by attacking US military and naval forces before they had even formally seceded. Nobody ever seems to want to talk about this.
Fort Sumter was a response to the Union’s attempt to recruit brigades with which to invade the South. Once the Union made its willingness to invade known, the Confederacy began trying to force Union forces out of its territory.
Your chronology is off. Lincoln did not issue a call for troops until after the CSA attacked Ft. Sumter.
Hmm. Seems to me that there was a rebellion by soldiers in the 2nd Maine who signed up for one year and had it extended without their consent.
The period between Lincoln’s inauguration and the attack on Sumter can be considered a giant poker game, with the remaining seven slave states as the stakes.
If the Union got all of them, the seceded states would probably come crawling back in a while, with some face-saving compromise.
If the CSA got them all, the task of coercing them, as Lincoln himself said publicly, would be too great for the Union.
As it was, of course, the CSA got four and the USA kept three, with one of the seceded states splitting to make four against four.
A key factor was to try to bluff the other side into taking the offensive and thus appearing as the aggressor.
Lincoln outplayed Davis in this regard. Lincoln was wildly misunderestimated for the first part of his presidency by both friends and enemies. Only after a year or so did they all realize that he was possibly the most gifted politician in American history.
Could be. Interested in a link.
I do know that the Union never passed a law across the board as the CSA did.
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