Posted on 06/22/2018 11:46:12 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
That was according to my 8th grade history teacher-retired military. The only one who came close was MacArthur. That brings up the politics of the left. If it is true that Lee was a great General isn't it at least worth acknowledging? This tearing down of statues should stop. Educated persons should acknowledge the truth. It's the left that's the intelligent ones as they would have us believe. I see no conservatives standing up for this truth. The Senate GOP candidate in Virginia should start an 'intellectual' conversation on Lee and let the left react. Don't wait for a baiting reporter to to knee-jerk him into a quick response that they can interpret their own way.
Beauregard was acting at the behest of that terrorist jeff davis.
Oh please. C’mon. Do better then that. Lincoln sent Federal troops to guard and secure Federal property the South was intending to confiscate and occupy.
Having started the war only the Confederacy controlled where it would be fought. They have nobody to blame but themselves.
The misnamed 'Civil War' was not much different!
Well, yeah it was. But I agree on the "misnamed" part. For the first 60 or so years after the conflict it was officially referred to as "The War of Rebellion" or "The War of Southern Rebellion". I think we should go back to that.
I can't vouch for how much of a gentleman he was, but here's one who did:
He was Lincoln’s first choice to lead the Union army.
Sorry, but that's a misreading of history.
Germany's problem after the First World War was, they didn't feeeeeeel defeated, had never been invaded and were offered by Southerner US President Wilson "peace without victory'.
And "peace without victory" was perfect for Germans, just what they needed -- a twenty year break from war, then next time they'd show those verdammt Allies how to do it!
And plenty of Allied officials understood just what Germans intended in 1918, including our Army commander, Gen. Pershing, who wanted to march across Germany into Berlin to show the Germans who really won their war.
Another who understood was a young Under-Secretary of the Navy, in charge of naval codes & communications, a handsome fellow named... ah, yes, Franklin Roosevelt.
But Wilson's "peace without victory" prevailed until the Allies at Versailles began demanding reparations from Germany, and Wilson was too weak to stand his ground.
So yes, Germans felt "betrayed" & "stabbed in the back", but only because Wilson had promised them better and then, like any Democrat failed to deliver.
In fact, Germany in 1919 was treated certainly no worse than Germans treated countries they defeated, notably Belgium and Russia.
So the Allies in the Second World War intended not to repeat the mistakes of the First and instead could look back to the US Civil War where Union imposed costs on civilians (i.e., Sherman's march upgraded to 2.0 version became allied bombing) demanded Unconditional Surrender, militarily occupied the country for years afterwards, rooted out the root causes of the war -- slavery in one case, Nazism in the other -- and then welcomed the defeated people back into the family of states/nations.
But for those who just can't let go of hysterical historical hyperbole, let's also point out that Second World War Germany was, in fact, treated orders of magnitude more severely than were Confederates.
CondoleezzaProtege: "The Nazis lost WWII. And to this day there are Neo-Nazis who wave or tatoo Confederate flags on themselves in the South and around the world."
No pro-Confederate on these threads accepts any comparison of Confederates to Nazis -- das ist verboten!!
So I am here only comparing Union Civil War actions to those of World War Allies.
The First World War taught us how not to do it, the Civil War taught Allies basics in how to do it.
I would never compare Confederates to Nazis. That’s silly and insulting to America.
And so with DiogenesLamp, the nonsense never ends...
Civil War blockade runners used small fast ships to transport their most valuable cargoes, i.e., guns and luxury items for Southern elites.
So most of them made it through, most of the time.
But cotton normally shipped on large slow & easily captured ships, many Northern owned and so withheld from 1861 on.
It didn't matter though, because Confederates adopted a "cotton diplomacy" policy hoping to win support from European countries.
Then Confederates also shifted from growing cash crops to supplying food for their armies.
The net results were: 1) unshipped cotton bales piled up, and eventually 2) were replaced by Confederate food production.
As for General Scott's Anaconda Plan, it was likely first developed when Jefferson Davis was US Secretary of War and so cannot have come as a surprise to him.
Indeed, the Brits had blockaded enemy ports for centuries, including ours in the Revolutionary War and War of 1812.
So it had to be expected.
More nonsense, since no Brits evacuated their US forts just because of the Declaration.
Indeed, many Brit forts in US territory were not abandoned until decades after the 1776 Declaration.
So nothing about the 1776 Declaration or 1861 secessions automatically turned over Federal forts, ships, arsenals or mints to Confederates.
But you have no valid arguments, it's all total nonsense.
Which you never seem to tire of giving us opportunities to point out.
So thanks!
Sure, but the important point about the 19th century is not that it started off with legal slavery, just as had centuries for time immemorial, but rather that one whole category of slavery was abolished by century's end.
outofsalt: " (If history teaches us anything, it's that history rarely teaches us anything.) "
History has much to teach, but we are very slow learners, easily distracted by bright-shiny objects in the news.
Blockades have been a usual feature of warfare for many centuries.
It had to be expected, but blockade was not what stopped cotton shipments to Europe -- that was Confederates' "cotton diplomacy" they hoped would win friends & influence people in Europe.
It failed.
It’s one thing to say we will love fight or be exterminated and entirely another to say the men of the South deserved to be exterminated because the fought against lincoln’s invasion. Anyone who takes that position is not a conservative nor sane. Because if you do then our founding fathers are tarred with the same brush- no liberty loving individual could say such a thing- there are a lot of trolls and instigators on FR and it’s obvious at times.
The official US War records call it the war of the rebellion which to me is the most accurate term. They were rebelling against the duly elected government of the United States of America.
The actual record shows that "brilliant" Lee lost more men in battle than "butcher" Grant, especially when Lee was on offense.
Yes, the nature of 19th century warfare dictated entrenched defense had a huge advantage over mobile units on offense, and Lee took advantage of that by war's end.
But in the beginning, when Lee was on offense at, say, Antietam or Gettysburg, his losses in losing those battles were greater than Grant's in winning his.
During the war, Lee had three commands -- first in West Virginia, then North Carolina and finally Virginia.
In all three Lee failed.
Grant also had three commands -- first at Forts Henry & Donelson, then Vicksburg and finally Virginia.
In all three Grant won "unconditional surrender" from his opponents.
Grant's performance made him hugely popular with Union voters who elected him President, twice, at their first opportunity.
So "Grant the butcher" is propaganda which people of his time knew to be untrue and people today can soon learn with a little effort.
Wrong. Lincoln recognized that it was up to Congress to resolve the slavery issue.
Funny, right?
No.
In fact, both Lee and Jefferson Davis were committed to offensive military actions because they believed, correctly, that often the best defense is an aggressive offense.
That's why Lee marched on Maryland in 1862 and Pennsylvania in 1863 -- offense would make the Union sit up & take notice like no defensive strategy could.
So,from the beginning Confederates sent armies into Union states & territories -- Maryland, Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Kentucky, Missouri, Kansas, Oklahoma & New Mexico.
There was nothing "defensive" about those.
Confederates also claimed Union states & territories as their own.
So the whole idea that Confederates just wanted to be "let alone" is pure propaganda.
Sure, they wanted to be "let alone" -- to consume & destroy as much of the USA as possible.
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