ROBERT E. LEE: OUR GREATEST GENERAL?

[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.

[DiogenesLamp]

Indeed. The South suffered dearly for Lincoln’s untimely demise.

The South suffered dearly because of Lincoln's untimely ascension to the throne.

Seward would have likely been more acceptable to all parties, but Lincoln manipulated the nominating process to steal the nomination from Seward.

Astroturf and brownshirts at the WigWam is how Lincoln became President. Crooked Illinois has been crooked for a long time.

[DiogenesLamp]

You can split hairs, but the bottom line is it further protected the institution of slavery, and Lincoln was urging it’s adoption.

[DiogenesLamp]

Tell me stupid. Where in The Constitution is the clause allowing slavery?

I have to tell everything to you "stupid", because telling you "smart" goes over your head.

Article IV, section 2. It not only allows it, it compels all lawful authority to aid in the return of slaves to their masters.

Liberal northern states just ignored that part of the US Constitution because they didn't like it.

[DiogenesLamp]

I’m sick to death of listening to you Confederate morons go on about a treasonous bunch of bastards who split the country in two so a bunch of Southern plutocrats could preserve an economy based on the use of slave labor.

Yes, i'm sure you were much happier with the previous arrangement in which a bunch of Northern New York plutocrats could preserve their economy of European Trade based on the use of slave labor.

You don't get it. It was slave labor fueling the engines of both New York and Washington. Everyone was okay so long as that continued. They got upset when they saw it was going to stop.

[DiogenesLamp]

I both bash and praise Lincoln. I have said several times that were I in his shoes and knowing what I know now, I would probably have done what he did, though I'm not sure I could have been so bold.

An independent South was a very strong economic and political threat to the Union. It would have eventually absorbed other Union states because of the economics being beneficial to them for joining the Confederacy. It would have certainly absorbed the border states.

I believe the territories would also have eventually gone Confederate due to the economic benefits of doing so.

The Confederacy would have continued to grow, and it would have grown at the expense of the Union. That is the threat I see now, and I have little doubt it was the threat that Lincoln and his Northeaster backers saw then.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Revolutionary War accomplished it's goal.

The "Revolution" is actually a misnomer. The people in power in the Colonies before the "revolution" were the same people in power in the Colonies after the "revolution."

I learned years ago that the most accurate description for that event is "The American War for Independence. "

The Southern Rebellion did not accomplish it's goal.

Neither would have the Colonists had George III been as determined as Lincoln. He had the power to crush them. He chose not to do so.

[DiogenesLamp]

I don't hate Lincoln. I grew up admiring him and i've read quite a lot of his history and writing. I have just realized in the last few years that he was the wrong man at the wrong place in history. He had stirred up too much anger and concern through his rhetoric.

Had he not tricked the nomination away from Seward, a President Seward likely wouldn't have triggered either a secession or a civil war.

Lincoln was like an intelligent Bernie Sanders of his day; Too far out liberal to win acceptance by people who saw him as a potential threat to their status quo. Seward would have likely been tolerable by the South, especially if he expressed interest in their concerns and tamped down the rhetoric that they were evil people.

[Bulwyf]

It’s actually a simple job. At least it seems to me. The framework is already done. There’s no wheel to reinvent. All a guy has to do is follow it. It doesn’t get much better than that.

[DiogenesLamp]

If you think that’s what I am doing, then I think you may have some sort of systemic issue.

[central_va]

McClellan should have won the election of 1864.

[morphing libertarian]

having no spine is not a strong point for a presidential run.

[DiogenesLamp]

Arguing with some of you folk could drive a man to drinking. :)

[DiogenesLamp]

They never became independent though

Well it depends on whatever argument the Union authorities needed to put forth at any given time. When they needed to be treated like "rebel states", they were treated as though they had never left. When they needed to be treated as a "foreign state" they treated them as if they had actually become a foreign state.

As I've said numerous times, the condition of their independence exists in a state of quantum super postion being both "in" and "out" of the Union at the same time, depending upon the legal argument needed by the Federal authorities at any given time.

For example. The Constitution required the federal authority to return slaves to people for whom their labor was due according to the laws of any state.

Lincoln suspended that, which he had no authority to do if they were still states of the Union. Therefore for the purpose of doing that, they were "out" of the Union.

To justify sending an army to invade them, they were "in" the Union.

So like I said, whether they were in or out depends on what Washington DC needed to claim at any given time.

[miss marmelstein]

The use of “reb” and “slavers” and calling modern people “confederate” gives the game away. That war is over and we should all get over it and admire people on both sides. There is much to admire. I do believe southerners feel their heritage is being erased by idiots who know nothing of American history (that’s you, Nikki Haley). In that, I have deep sympathy. I hope people here have family who fought on the Union side. I suspect that some of them don’t and actually have very little connection to that time. My family, typically, were unusual, being Copperheads from NYC. But as tenuous as it is, I feel a strong connection to that war and the Union side of the argument.

Always nice to talk to you.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yes, my sentence is correct. That’s how you are supposed to do it. Phrasing it the way you did made no sense at all, because the “guests” who wouldn’t leave were in someone else’s house.

[miss marmelstein]

Oh, and I love people who accuse those who admire RE Lee of not knowing the Army of Northern Virginia lost Gettysburg!

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Wilson was President of Princeton. Some sort of Liberal idiocy from the Northeast apparently rubbed off on him to turn him into a stark raving lunatic Liberal fool."

Wilson was Staunton, Virginia born, central_va's country.
His Dad was a Confederate Army chaplain and young Woodrow's first memory was learning of Lincoln's election, and there would be war.

"The young future President lived through the four years of the war in Augusta, watching as troops marched in streets and wounded Confederate soldiers were brought in by train for treatment in the local hospitals.
Like other local boys he undoubtedly marveled as the massive Confederate Powder Works was built and put into operation on the Augusta Canal.
He also probably listened with both fear and excitement as stories spread of Sherman's March to the Sea and watched as Confederate soldiers erected earthworks to defend the city, even loopholing the wall of nearby Magnolia Cemetery.

In 1865, as the war ended, young Woodrow Wilson saw an American President for the first time.
The leader was Confederate President Jefferson Davis, who was brought to Augusta following his capture by Federal troops at Irwinton, Georgia.

Rev. Dr. Wilson [Woodrow's father] and his family still lived in the Manse in 1870 when he took his thirteen year old son to see General Robert E. Lee, who was visiting Augusta on his final Southern tour.
It was a striking moment for the young future president."

Young Wilson was Southern bred & born, a child of the Confederacy whose early heroes were Davis & Lee.
And he was a Democrat, which then as now did not necessarily imply "conservative".

[JusPasenThru]

Wait, what?

[DoodleDawg]

For someone who has said on more than one occasion he’s sick and tired of going around and around with me you sure do ping me a lot.

[DiogenesLamp]

The motivation for the war being about slavery wa sin the south. It was part of their economic survival.

The south had fought to keep slavery since the declaration of independence and the articles of confederation and then the constitution. Since the 1820s they worried that more free states would be admitted than slave and after the Louisiana purchase that became very likely.

Why? Because the "free states" were also "free" in a different manner. The South was paying for their share of the Government because the South was paying about 80% of all the taxes for the entire nation.

The South recognized it was getting outvoted in Congress, and laws and taxes were being imposed on it against it's will, and the only means of stopping it was to get more representation in congress.

A characteristic of the time was that "free" states would vote as a coalition, and "slave" states would vote as a coalition with the South. Therefore, the only way the South could protect itself against unfair laws and taxes was to get more representation in Congress.

How to do that? Get more slave states to join it's coalition. The only way to do that is to create new states as "slave" states, even though slavery was completely impractical in any place other than the Southern states where it already existed.

"Bloody Kansas" was more about control of congress than it was about any concern over slavery. The north had gotten itself into a fine situation in taxing the South and regulating it's commerce so that they could intercept it's income stream for their own benefit.

The South wanted laws that would steer more of that income stream back to them, and they couldn't get them so long as the Northern coalition was numerically superior.

For you to say the south didn’t want to keep slavery and that wasn’t a part of their motivation ignores their actions to protect slavery for over 75 years.

I didn't say the south didn't want to keep slavery. Of course the South wanted to keep slavery. It was the economic engine producing all the money coming from Europe.

When the president and congress went to war,

The President went to war, and he waited till congress was safely out of session so that he could launch the war. Had congress been in session, they would have likely attempted to stop him from sending that fleet of Warships to attack the Confederates at Charleston.

Congress just meekly accepted Lincoln's fait accompli after the fact.

By fighting the slave sates they were in fact fighting against slavery.

This would be true if there was an effort to free the slaves at the very beginning. The truth is they had no intention of doing this until it became clear to them that they wouldn't be able to control that stream of money produced by the slaves, so they no longer had any interest in tolerating slavery. There was nothing in it for them, and the South would use that economic power to get vengeance on them for attacking them.

Better to break the South economically so it could no more threaten the money people in the North East, and *THAT* is why they decided to abolish slavery a year and a half into the war.

But initially there was no intentions to get rid of slavery at all. In fact, in an effort to keep the Southern states in the Union, Lincoln urged passage of the Corwin amendment, which would have further protected slavery.