Posted on 01/17/2016 1:26:17 PM PST by soakncider
That is why, within just a few months of the Proclamation, a number of commanders in the field...felt sanctioned to unleash the equivalent of what in the 20th century came to be called "total war"-a war upon civilians and their property in the South, with attendant looting, murder, arson, and rape, and neither women, children, the old and infirm, or oftentimes even blacks, were spared. As General-in-Chief Halleck noted in a letter to Ulysses Grant on March 31, 1863: The character of the war has very much changed..There is now no possible hope of reconciliation with the rebels..There can be no peace but that which is forced by the sword. We must conquer the rebels. A few days later Grant concurred: Rebellion has assumed that shape now that it can only terminate by the complete subjugation of the South..It is our duty to weaken the enemy, by destroying their means of subsistence, withdrawing their means of cultivating their fields, and in every other way possible. Thus it was that in his campaign in the West against Vicksburg, Mississippi, in the Spring and Summer of 1863, Grant had no compunction in attacking civilians and destroying feed mills: "Civilians were suffering from unceasing bombardment and the shortage of food"..In the aftermath, Grant ordered General William Sherman east to Jackson, the capital of Mississippi, which he conquered on July 17 after five days of incessant bombardment without Confederate resistance and proceeded to unleash the troops on a three-day rampage that, according to a Northern reporter, "left the entire business section in ruins, burned most of the better residences..and looted homes, churches, and the state library,"..."such complete ruin and devastation never followed the footsteps of any army before." Sherman boasted to Grant, "The land is devastated for 30 miles around."
(Excerpt) Read more at abbevilleinstitute.org ...
Winning is all that matters. Ask the Germans in April 1945, ask the Japanese in August 1945. Ask the Confederates in April 1965. Ask these people if winning matters. There is no conciliation prize for defeat in war.
Winning was all that mattered to the slavers as well. I thank God they didn’t achieve it.
Edit: Ask the Confederates in April 1865.
No. Winning is not all that matters. If you have to kill civilians, even some of those you purport to be ‘defending’, then you do not have a legitimate victory, even though you may have a temporal one. It is short sighted to ‘win at all costs’.
I, too, am glad that slavery was abolished, but i fear that much damage was done by Lincoln’s usurpation. That is the gist of my arguments.
Please don’t try to shut me down by throwing epithets such as ‘slaver’. We can have a discourse without invective. The excerpts i have posted contain properly sourced and attributed information. There is nothing fabricated. They do, however contain some editorial, but nowhere have i, nor any of the authors, supported slavery or tyranny.
That's not what I said. I said that winning inning was all that mattered to the slavers. You don't think they killed civilians as well?
Was our victory in WWII legitimate? Was it short sighted to use every means available to defeat German or Japan. Maybe we should have used the rules of engagement in effect for Vietnam, or Afghanistan, you know, no bomb zone, safe havens, no collateral at any cost . Reread the previous posts, I was not the one to use the term slaver, nor employ any invectives.
I’m sure they killed civilians, but it was not a matter of policy like it was with sherman, grant, and lincoln.
An American military force killing a foreign military force is a proper application of the total war doctrine. But, civilian casualties should not be the goal of any military action.
But, an American military force waging total war on American civilians is not a proper application of the total war doctrine.
I know you didn’t use the term slaver, nor use any invective. I was replying to both you and rockrr.
The ROE should be liberal enough for our side to win, period, and our guys should be allowed to kill any enemy combatant or suspected enemy combatant without fear of prosecution and reprisals from our politicians. But they do live with that fear. Furthermore, our soldiers who beat pedophile muzzies in Afghanistan should be awarded medals and promotions, not dishonorable discharges, but that is what our traitorous government is doing to our soldiers.
My point is this: since Lincoln abolished the right of secession, he has made it all but impossible for any future lovers of liberty to secede, no matter how just the cause may be. I dare say that secession and rebellion against tyranny is a basic human right and responsibility. To have it abolished by force of arms is a tragedy, not a victory.
Lincoln never abolished the right of secession.
Andersonville.
“When the War ended, Captain Henry Wirz, the prison’s commandant, was arrested and charged with conspiring with high Confederate officials to “impair and injure the health and destroy the lives…of Federal prisoners†and “murder in violation of the laws of war.†Such a conspiracy never existed, but public anger and indignation throughout the North over the conditions at Andersonville demanded appeasement. Tried and found guilty by a military tribunal, Wirz was hanged in Washington, D.C., on November 10, 1865. Wirz was the only person executed for war crimes during the Civil War.”
The right to secede was lost when the South lost the war.
Had they won the war then the right of secession would have been confirmed. Hence the statement that winning in war is all that counts. If war is the choice, it is all or nothing. .
If Lincoln had acknowledged the right to secede, the war might not have happened at all.
The fact that none of the atrocities committed by the yankees were punished, is a travesty indeed.
The South had little ability to feed itself and the POWs in Anderson, thanks to yankee total war doctrine of sherman, grant, and lincoln.
If Jefferson Davis had not ordered Fort Sumter to be fired on the war might not have happened at all.
“No. Winning is not all that matters. If you have to kill civilians, even some of those you purport to be ‘defending’, then you do not have a legitimate victory, ...”
There may indeed be more stuff that matters, beyond winning. Some of the other significant factors: who we happen to be fighting, and what’s at stake.
It might be said that the sequence of things matters too: if we don’t win, nothing else matters.
The imperative is plain: worry about winning first, then worry about morality. If we lose, all talk of morality stops.
I dare say that those in charge of the South, i.e., Southern Slave Power were not "lovers of liberty". They were the opposite. Stop kidding yourself that this was a situation of "secession and rebellion against tyranny". That is pure and unadulterated self delusion. This was a separation by the southern slave states, and only the southern slave states in order to maintain their tyranny over their slaves.
I posit ye this: would the Confedacy have allowed a non-slave State into their Confederacy? Would they have accepted a Northern State? I'll make it easy for you, the answer to both questions is, "no". The founding principle of the Confederacy was that the white man was superior to the black man. Their plan was take their Empire based on Slavery and spread it west, then south through Central America, then across the top of South America and thence onward to Cuba.
There is and never has been a “right to secede”. It is mentioned nowhere in the United States Constitution. Lincoln could never abolish what never existed. The nearest any of the Founding Fathers got to enumerating any such process (why should they waste time on destroying the union they fought so hard to create?) was the suggest that leaving be conducted in the same method as states entered: consent of the states.
The war might never have happened had the southern states stuck to the spirit, if not the letter of the constitution.
That is also true.
“Andersonville”
Emaciated, sick, delirious yanks were shot for reaching through a fence for a handful of muddy water. Shouldn’t you Rebs have rather saved your ammo for yanks who could shoot back? Cry me a river, Reb.
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