Posted on 12/15/2008 9:10:08 AM PST by mft112345
This video of the National Portrait Gallery U.S. Civil War exhibit features: Lincoln, Seward, Stanton, Beauregard, Butler, McClellan, Lee, Davis, Sherman, Jackson, Pickett, Mosby, Grant, Frederick Douglas, Hariet Beecher Stowe and the Fugitive's story.
After watching, please name your favorite Civil War era person and explain why. Thanks.
(Excerpt) Read more at eudaimonia4u.blogspot.com ...
Some even believe that he's buried here in Huntsville, Al in the old Sivley/Hunt Cemetery. It's one of the oldest in the State. The Hunts have always claimed that he was buried with his Mother and Father in the family plot.
Who knows if it's true or not, it sure makes for a good story.
Long live the South!
Lee earned his standing before Fort Sumter, but became another form of being after that. And yet another after Appomattox. One has to regard Forrest as the revolutionary, and Jackson as master tactician.
Among Federals, Grant certainly, and Sherman (cussword) but correct. What would have happened to Hancock, I wonder, if he had a bigger command.
A win at Gettysburg would not have saved the CSA, over the long-term. At most, Lee would have had a succesful campaign in Maryland and Pennsylvania before returning to Virginia.
The war was won out West, when the CSA was cut in half. The Eastern part of the Confederacy just took a little bit longer to die.
That may be true in some instances. Heaven knows, however, there were many instances of burning, looting, etc., by Sherman's troops. Let's consult the Official Records about what Sherman and his commanders said during the war [Link]:
General Sherman to General Schofield, August 1, 1864: "You may fire from ten to fifteen shots from every gun you have in position into Atlanta that will reach any of its house. ... Thomas and Howard will do the same."
General Sherman to General Watkins, Calhoun, Ga., October 29, 1864: "Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn about ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Reseca to Kingston?
General Sherman to General George H. Thomas, November 11. 1864: "… Last night we burned Rome, and in two or more days will burn Atlanta ..."
General William D. Whipple to General D. S. Stanley, November 13, 1864: "General Sherman left Kingston yesterday morning; camped at Allatoona last night; will probably reach Atlanta to-morrow, whence he starts on his trip south. He has already burnt Rome, and says he is going to burn Atlanta and other towns south."
General Howard (Union), Field Orders No. 175, November 22, 1864: "The crime of robbery and arson have become frequent throughout this army."
Col. Acker, 9th Michigan Cavalry, Dec 19, 1864: "During that day we marched thirty-nine miles and took six prisoners. 20th, Companies B, C, and D, being detached for a scout to Griswold Station [Georgia] in charge of Captain Ladd, meeting the enemy, but keeping them at bay, burned the town, destroying the railroad, cutting the telegraph wire, burned a train of cars."
General Howard (Union) to General Sherman, Dec. 28, 1864: "I regret to say that quite a number of private dwellings which the inhabitants have left, have been destroyed by fire, but without official sanction; also, many instances of the most inexcusable and wanton acts, such as the breaking open of trunks, taking of silver plate, &c."
Brevet Major General Williams (Union) to the Twentieth Corps, Robertsville, SC, Jan. 31, 1865: "The indiscriminate pillage of houses is disgraceful and demoralizing to this Army. The houses in this vicinity, of free negroes even, have been stripped of the necessary bedclothes and of family apparel. Brigade commanders will at once take measures to put a stop to these infamous practices. ... The brevet Major-general commanding the corps expects the hearty co-operation of all officers to put a stop to practices disgraceful to our arms and shocking to humanity."
General Sherman to General Wheeler (Confederate), Feb 8, 1865: "Vacant houses being of no use to anybody, I care little about, as the owners have thought them of no use to themselves. I don't want them destroyed, but do not take much care to preserve them."
Gen. Howard (Union), Feb. 9, 1865, General Field Orders No. 9, issued near Binnaker's Bridge, SC: "The attention of the general commanding has been called by officers of our own army to the wanton and indiscriminate destruction of private property, burning of dwelling houses, plundering and pillaging the houses of the few poor people who have remained at home ..."
General Howard (Union), Brightsville, SC, to General Logan (Union), Mar. 7, 1865: "General Blair reports that every house in his line of march to-day was pillaged, trunks broken open, jewelry, silver, &c., taken."
General Logan (Union) to General Howard (Union), January 7 - March 31, 1865 report: "In accordance with your Field Order, Numbers 29, I moved the corps from McPhersonville to Hickory Hill, breaking camp at 7 a.m. Before the rear of my column passed through McPhersonville I regret to inform you that the village was in flames. This was doubtlessly induced by the desertion of their houses by the entire population, for on our entrance into the village not a human being was to be found."
Sherman's admission, August 4, 1863. "The amount of burning, stealing, and plundering done by our army makes me ashamed of it. I would quit the service if I could, because I fear that we are drifting to the worst sort of vandalism. I have endeavored to repress this class of crime, but you know how difficult it is to fix the guilt among the great mass of an army. In this case I caught the man in the act. He is acquitted because his superior officer ordered. it. The superior officer is acquitted because, I suppose, he had not set the fire with his own hands, and thus you and I and every commander must go through the war justly chargeable with crimes at which we blush."
From one of the newspapers that survived, the Augusta [Ga] Chronicle:
In their route they [Sherman's troops] destroyed, as far as possible, all mills, cribs, and carried off all stock, provisions, and negroes, and when their horses gave out they shot them. At Canton they killed over 100. ... All along their route the road was strewn with dead horses, Farmers having devoted a large share of their attention to syrup making, there is a large quantity of cotton ungathered in the field, which was left by Federals, but there is not a horse or ox in the country, hence the saving of corn will be a difficult matter. At Madison, they broke open Oglesby's office and carried off all his medicines. ...
On going to McCradle's place he [a Georgia legislator] found his fine house and ginhouse burned, every horse and mule gone, and in his lot 100 dead horses, that looked like good stock, that were evidently killed to deprive the planters of them.
...No farm on the road to the place, and as far as we hear from toward Atlanta, escaped their brutal ravages.
They ravaged the country below there to the Oconee River. The roads were strewn with the debris of their progress. Dead horses, cows, sheep, hogs, chicken, corn, wheat, cotton, books, paper, broken vessels, coffee mills, and fragments of nearly every species of property strewed the wayside.
...They gutted every store, and plundered more or less of everything. ... Many families have not a pound of meat or peck of meal or flour.
There is a long list of ravages by Union troops in Winnsboro, SC, in a South Carolina paper reported in The Daily Dispatch of Richmond, Va, March 30, 1865. Here is an excerpt: [Link]
"Leaving our town, the enemy took their line of march on the State road, leading to Blackstock's, South Carolina. On the route, their road can be easily distinguished by tall chimneys, standing solitary and alone, and blackened embers, as it were, laying at their feet. --Every fine residence, all corn cribs, smoke-houses, cotton-gins — all that could give comfort to man — were committed to the flames; dead animals — horses, mules, cows, calves and hogs — slain by the enemy, are scattered along the road to Blackstock's.
"In one place we counted fourteen fine milch cows, with their young, lying in the space of a half-acre field, having been shot. To show with what brutality they even treated dumb creatures, we discovered two calves hung with telegraph wire, and left in that position to die of utter starvation. Others again had wire ingeniously wound around the leg and neck in such a position that, in walking, the jagged end of the wire would penetrate the throat; and so they died by slow torture.
From Sherman’s March Through Georgia by Burke Davis:
On the roads in Sherman’s immediate front, where foragers plundered their victims, some incidents revealed the brutalizing effects of war and lack of discipline. Some Federal soldiers took delight in torturing and bedeviling civilians in their path, confident that their crimes would never become known.
Then there is this from Sherman's March to the Sea by General Jacob D. Cox, one of Sherman's generals [ page 40, paperback version]:
"Discipline in armies, however, is apt to be uneven, and among sixty thousand men there are men enough who are willing to become robbers, and officers enough who are willing to wink at irregularities or to share the loot, to make such a march a terrible scourge to any country. A bad eminence in this respect was generally accorded to Kilpatrick, whose notorious immoralities and rapacity set so demoralizing an example to his troops that the best disciplinarians among his subordinates could only mitigate its influence."
My own favorite of the war is Lee, and the worst IMO was Lincoln.
Except that you keep adding ‘democracy’ in there.
Hard-fought wars always involve a temporary loss of liberty. That's true of WWII (WWI for that matter), and for today's War on Terror. That loss wasn't any less in the rebel South than in the North.
And be honest, was there more of a "schism" than there would have been if the South had become a separate country? There's a fantasy that we'd all come back together spontaneously and peacefully if "Lincoln had let the South go." But it would have been on one side's terms and those would have been unacceptable to people on the other.
You honor Lincoln for subverting the Constitution? (Every FReeper should know that America was set up as a Republic, not a Democracy.
First choice would have to be Stonewall. Second would probably be Forrest.
State's right to do what?
Ask Lincoln.
I'm asking you. What state's right did Lincoln trample?
Article X of the Constitution itself sys: The powers not delegated to the United States By The Constitution. nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively or to the people.”
And? Answer the question. What state's right did Lincoln trample?
Sounds like you're talking about Jefferson Davis. Civil wars are rough.
add stonewall and longstreet onto that
sorry but I just cannot put the two together Lincoln and democracy.
He actually took rights away, brought in laws like the draft.
Hey, possible cousin. During the war, my Kentucky Morgan ancestor claimed kinship to him. We don't know how and if she was really related.
As far as I know, Davis only suspended habeas corpus during the specific time periods authorized by his congress. If you know otherwise, please give me some specifics, thanks.
Historically, habeas corpus was a restriction on the power of the executive or king to hold people in prison without warrant or justification. It was a protection against despotism.
Lincoln suspended habeas corpus in 1861 on his own without congressional approval and defied a court order (the famous Ex parte Merryman) by the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court. If Lincoln really had the power to suspend habeas corpus on his own, why did Congress later authorize him (1862 or 1863?) to do it in the future?
IIRC Davis asked three times for the suspension of habeas corpus. Congress approved twice and denied once. Lincoln disregarded Congress in pursuit of his own agenda.
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.