Posted on 03/17/2015 8:14:26 AM PDT by iowamark
By March 1865, it was obvious to all but the most die-hard Confederates that the South was going to lose the war. Whether that loss was inevitable is an unanswerable question, but considering various “what if” scenarios has long been a popular exercise among historians, novelists and Civil War buffs...
Perhaps the most common scenario centers on the actions of Gen. Robert E. Lee...
What many fail to recognize is that Northerners were just as committed to winning as the Southerners. Some saw it as a war to free the slaves, while others fought to ensure that their republican form of government survived. Northerners believed that America was the world’s last great hope for democracy, and if the South destroyed the Union by force, that light of liberty might be extinguished forever. Lincoln once said the North must prove “that popular government is not an absurdity. We must settle this question now, whether in a free government the minority have the right to break up the government whenever they choose. If we fail it will go far to prove the incapability of the people to govern themselves.”
The South may have been fighting to preserve a way of life and to protect its perceived constitutional rights, but so was the North. If the Southern people kept fighting even after the devastating defeats at Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga, why should we not believe the North would have kept on fighting even if the Confederates had won Gettysburg, Vicksburg and Chattanooga? The fact is that both sides were equally brave and equally dedicated to their cause. Commitment and morale being the same, the stronger side prevailed.
(Excerpt) Read more at opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com ...
Much like the plantation system.
I think a bigger wild card is the population of the South losing its will. Privations were greater down south. The Union armies were down south. The political leadership was more fractuous and less competent down south. Absent an immediate collapse of U.S. morale, and there is no reason to think that yet another battlefield defeat would do that especially with the victory at Vicksburg, the U.S. would have continued and the Confederacy would have been defeated.
Have you ever read “Guns of the South” by Harry Turtledove. Fascinating read and the only book of his I REALLY like.
I've read a bunch of his stuff, but not that one. I'll have to look it up.
You missed an important point:
What "consent to govern" and "social contract" really means is that "I only govern with your granting consent for me to govern you, and if you don't consent I will murder you."And I'll pin medals on my gunthugs for murdering you.
About 6% of white southerners owned slaves. Sounds like most whites were NOT the equivalent of the Communist Party leaders.
Now, examining the working conditions of early factories in the North...
They would if it meant preventing the collapse of their domestic textile industry, whose plants were fed with Southern cotton. However, since they had developed alternative sources and an alliance with the Confederacy probably meant war with France (among others), they wisely thought they'd wait it out to see a winner emerge. When Meade stopped Lee at Gettysburg and Lincoln announced Emancipation, the decision was made for them. Now they could hide their commercial reluctance behind a moral mask and remain above the fray.
What was the alternative?
Lincoln could have negotiated with the Southern States to return to the Union and purchase every slave in the south for much less than human and economic cost of the American Civil War.
What it the South didn't want to sell their slaves? Which they didn't. And if they did, what would prevent them from buying more?
Don't forget to pay for your REQUIRED health insurance, peasant slave.
Or your property taxes. Otherwise, Massa will garnish your tax refunds/Social Security checks, and take back his property which he so magnanimously allows you to rent, maintain, and pay insurance on... LOL! :)
The most likely reason for any British alliance with the confeds would be so that they could stage their troops more conveniently for their next conquest.
The slaves also had a God-given right to overthrow their "masters", by force if necessary. No human being has a right to own another regardless of what any constitution may say and I hope that had I lived at that time I would have helped the slaves to revolt.
JUst another side to it all.
Most of his others annoyed me because they were stringing me along. That one is different. A bunch of German South African racists from the year 2013 (IIRC) supply Lee with 100,000 AK47’s - and training to use them - shortly after Gettysburg. The results and details are very interesting
“In WWII the Germans also had better generals”
I keep hearing that. Likely true in 39 or 40. By 1943, not even close to the ones we had.
Civil war battles often left the winning side just as beat-up and battered as the losing side. The fact is that often the winner couldn't pursue. Or if he did pursue, as Meade did do after Gettysburg, it was with only part of his force. Lee fought a very skillful rear guard campaign all the way back to Virginia. Meade didn't pursue as well as he could have, but he was putting his army back together.
If the South had used the tactics of total war and destroyed the means for the North to pursue war manufacturing and transportation, The South would have won.
And the forts and garrison of Washington, which was probably larger than his army at that point.
What is it that you think the word Republic implies?
The fort were empty, but the retreating troops of Meade's Army would have filled them.
I think he went too far with the Nazi parallels. Feathersone as Hitler. Blacks instead of Jews going to death camps. There was a lot he could have done without going down those roads.
There was no way the South could win the war. None.
Slavery would have died out eventually for economic as well as moral reasons.
The South saw nothing morally wrong with slavery. As for economic reasons, what would have replaced it? The fact is that slavery would have died out eventually, decades later. And that would have been pretty hard on the continuing generations of people in bondage, wouldn't it?
Oh well. Just half a million dead people. Who cares Mr. Lincoln?
Thank Jeff Davis. It was his war.
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