Posted on 11/15/2017 6:05:25 AM PST by Bull Snipe
Major General William T. Sherman and four Corps of the Union Army departed the city of Atlanta and began what is known as the March to the Sea. General Shermans objective in few words was to make Georgia howl. To this end he was very successful. During the march across Georgia, Shermans army inflicted 100 million dollars worth of damage on the Confederate State. This included destruction of 300 miles of rail road, miles of telegraph wire, numerous bridges & trestles. His forces confiscated or destroyed 5,000 horses, 4,000 mules, 13,000 cattle, 9.5 million pounds of corn and 10.5 million pounds of fodder. One Union soldier, in his memoires of the march, said that it was the only time he ever gained weigh on a campaign. In a letter dated 24 Dec 1865 to Secretary of War Stanton; Sherman states We are not only fighting armies, but a hostile people, and must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war, as well as their organized armies. I know that this recent movement of mine through Georgia has had a wonderful effect in this respect. Thousands who had been deceived by their lying papers into the belief that we were being whipped all the time, realized the truth, and have no appetite for a repetition of the same experience.
Remind me to never pick a historical fight with you on US history...
Very nicely argued.
Understood, but the Patriot army also offered freedom in exchange for military service, and the net result was many more African-Americans served the Patriots than the Brits.
"...As a response to expressions of fear posed by armed blacks, in December 1775, Washington wrote a letter to Colonel Henry Lee III, stating that success in the war would come to whatever side could arm the blacks the fastest.[17]
Washington issued orders to the recruiters to reenlist the free blacks who had already served in the army; he worried that some of these soldiers might cross over to the British side....
"...Congress in 1776 agreed with Washington and authorized re-enlistment of free blacks who had already served....
"On February 14, 1778, the Rhode Island Assembly voted to allow the enlistment of "every able-bodied negro, mulatto, or Indian man slave" who chose to do so, and that "every slave so enlisting shall, upon his passing muster before Colonel Christopher Greene, be immediately discharged from the service of his master or mistress, and be absolutely free...."[19]
The owners of slaves who enlisted were to be compensated by the Assembly in an amount equal to the market value of the slave."
So George Washington understood in 1775 what Confederate leaders never did figure out until it was far too late.
Says the big time lie seller himself.
Even the tiniest amount of research and reading would establish that Southern Democrats were the "Washington DC establishment" of their day.
Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin, and all of the Rhetts and Barnwells and Butlers and Wigfalls and Chestnuts weren't a bunch of guys sitting around in a garage drinking beers and talking about football and hunting.
They were a very wealthy and established oligarchy. They were the Washington Establishment of the era. Certainly far more than a hick one-term Congressman from the Middle West.
But Diogenes won't acknowledge any of that. He just goes on spouting the same discredited nonsense over and over again.
Consider the contradiction in his whole nonsensical thesis: he says Southern planters produced the lion's share of US exports, but he treats them as though they were poor, oppressed, and continually put upon by the government or by those New Yorkers they did business with. But even a fool ought to be able to recognize that that "lion's share" translated into great wealth and political power, rather than just to impoverishment and embitterment.
Washington, as they used to say down to a generation or two back, was a Southern city. That was even more true before the Civil War. White Southerners, particularly cotton planters and Democrats, wielded power out of proportion to their numbers, as Southerners had from the earliest days of the republic.
If you want someone to throw out a blizzard of irrelevant facts that do not prove the point in question, he's your guy. He puffs up like a rooster when you get him started, and he fights like one too.
All noise and spinning, but not much real damage.
And then he crows a lot.
I've gotten so I mostly ignore him.
Jefferson Davis, Alexander Stephens, Judah Benjamin, and all of the Rhetts and Barnwells and Butlers and Wigfalls and Chestnuts weren't a bunch of guys sitting around in a garage drinking beers and talking about football and hunting.
They were a very wealthy and established oligarchy. They were the Washington Establishment of the era. Certainly far more than a hick one-term Congressman from the Middle West.
Your claim does not even pass a cursory scrutiny. If *THEY* were the power in Washington, why on earth would they want to leave? They would be demanding that New York send them money, instead of the other way around.
The Coalition between New York and Washington DC runs things today, and it ran things back in 1860. The "establishment" was created in the runup to the Civil War, and it has maintained it's power ever since.
You recognize that this is true now, but you can't bring yourself to believe that your side has *always* been the bad guys.
But you would have us believe they hired "the Baltic" which could transport a thousand men or more, and who brought some quantity of riflemen, (200 I think) was never intended to offload those soldiers into the fort?
Who is going to believe that you would bring these men and all those ships, just to send them back? Your claim does not even stand on it's own. It is in fact contradicted by the evidence of Lincoln sending those riflemen.
An interesting side note is the fact that if Lincoln hadn't deliberately sent the Powhatan to Pensacola, disguised and under secret orders unknown to the Navy Department, All those ships would be sunk, and most of the men killed. It would have been impossible for them to have fullfilled their mission with the forces they brought.
It would have been literally suicide had the Powhatan showed up and they had proceeded to execute their orders. The Confederates had only employed some of their cannon batteries to attack the fort. The rest were intended to deal with the warships they knew were coming.
It would have been a blood bath for the Union had they attempted to do what those orders said. People would have been furious with Lincoln for sending those men into that killing field.
Even Lincoln's military advisers said it would require a force of 20,000 to take and hold Fort Sumter.
Lincoln never intended for those orders to be carried out. He wasn't a stupid man, and he knew that trying to execute those orders would get his ships sunk and his men killed. This is why he intentionally made the Powhatan the command ship, then sent it off to Florida so there was no possibility his forces would engage that cannon fire arrayed to receive them.
rockrr: "In the same way that Lee was a traitor... "
BroJoeK "Very good! Word definition games are so annoying, it's nice to see when they can be turned on the accuser."
Except for the fact that one of them is objectively true, and the other is not. Even New Hampshire and Ohio Native Samuel P. Chase knew better than to accuse Jeff Davis of "treason."
If you bring these [Confederate] leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one.
Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1867
> The only lies are your efforts to obfuscate the fact that Jefferson Davis intended to take Fort Sumter, by military force if necessary.
Which state did Fort Sumter belong to? Was it a Union State or a confederate state?
The land for Fort Sumter was deeded by South Carolina to the Federal Government which built the Fort.
South Carolina had no legitimate claim to it.
The equivalent situation today is the US base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba which we occupy, resupply & reinforce at will.
Regardless of what the Communist Cubans claim, Gitmo is ours by treaty and if the Commies attack it, that is war they will have started.
DiogenesLamp: "Except for the fact that one of them is objectively true, and the other is not."
Objectively, Lee met the Constitution's definition of treason:
Objectively, there's no definition of "war criminal" which Sherman might meet that was not also met by many Confederates.
But the truth is, compared to other wars both sides were models of good behavior leaving very few of kinds of civilian deaths we saw in, for examples, the 20th century World Wars.
As for Lee's or Davis' treason -- you could argue with Chase that since declaring secession such leaders were no longer citizens of the United States and therefore could not, by definition, commit treason.
I would respond that their declarations of secession were not Constitutionally valid so provided no protection against charges of treason.
And since the issue was never adjudicated, one opinion here is as good as another.
However, there were many pro-Confederates in Union states who did "adhere" while providing aid & comfort to the enemy.
They were all, in effect, pardoned by President Andrew Johnson (Democrat-Tennessee).
Pardoned does not mean no crime was committed.
But Southerners did not leave prior to 1861 precisely because they ran the show in Washington, DC.
And they certainly did demand money from New York to pay for Federal government -- New York was the biggest collector of tariff revenues in the country.
DiogenesLamp: "The Coalition between New York and Washington DC runs things today, and it ran things back in 1860.
The "establishment" was created in the runup to the Civil War, and it has maintained it's power ever since."
No the "Coalition between New York and Washington" began with Washington, DC, around 1800.
That's when the word "Washington" meant: ruled by the Southern Slave power.
And that power ruled in Washington until early 1861 when it had been defeated in the 1860 elections and resigned from Congress.
But the Southern Slave Power did not wait for the 1861 Washington change in power, they began declaring secession while they themselves were still in power, and that is secession at pleasure4.
DiogenesLamp: "You recognize that this is true now, but you can't bring yourself to believe that your side has *always* been the bad guys."
Total lie.
In fact, your alleged "bad guys" before 1861 were the alliance of Southern Slave Power Democrats with Northeastern Big City Democrats which ruled Washington DC for the previous 60 years.
Republicans were never part of that coalition.
Instead, Republicans were and are the party of smaller town & rural American.
Yes, during the Civil War those Big City Democrats did ally with Republicans to defeat their erstwhile Southern partners, but as soon as war was over they flipped again to support white Southern Democrats against "black Republicans".
The final flip did not happen until Democrat President Lyndon Johnson in the 1960s realigned the parties to their current configurations: Northeastern Progressive Democrats allied with black Southern Democrats.
All of which you well know but refuse to acknowledge because it doesn't fit your pro-Confederate narrative.
My facts are only "irrelevant" to the degree DiogenesLamp refuses to acknowledge them.
If he did, they would prove totally relevant in defeating every one of his ludicrous claims.
DiogenesLamp: "I've gotten so I mostly ignore him."
That much is true, because acknowledging actual historical facts would reduce DiogenesLamp's claims to rubbish.
Bullfeathers. The truth is that it is you who is the blowhard who is mostly ignored by the rest of us. You can't resist sparring with him even though each contest leaves you battered and bloody.
I must confess that it is a guilty pleasure of mine to watch him tie you up in knots.
This is an interesting post that speaks to a political alignment that may be recognized by southern partisans but (in my experience) never acknowledged by any.
IMO the “bad guys” weren’t the southerners or the northerners but the Democrats of both region. It is they who put their selfish self-interests first before honor or country. Much like the Democrats of today, they don’t care that they are actively strangling the neck of the golden goose - they want what they want and are indifferent to the consequences of their actions.
Southern leadership (all Democrats) sought to protect their gravy train because it was making them fabulously rich. Northern leadership (mostly Democrats) were initially OK with southerners breaking away - as long as they could continue to do business, but changed their tune once they recognized the threat to the security of the continent the rebels posed.
Then as now Democrats threaten the survival of our republic.
“also proves five million people should not start war with 20 million people.”
lol. Very true.
“The war was about slavery.”
Which is why...
* The Union had abolished slavery (it didn’t)
* The Union had removed the Jim Crow laws that started in New York (it didn’t remove them)
* Union citizens signed up in huge numbers to fight for the abolishment of slavery (they didn’t)
* The Union declared war against the Confederacy to abolish slavery (it didn’t)
* President Lincoln declared in his state of the union address his mission was to abolish slavery (he didn’t. He stated he didn’t like it but he had no quarrel with it)
* President Lincoln declared all slaves free in the Union in his emancipation proclamation speech (he didn’t)
Gee, it doesnt seem like the Union was all that concerned about slavery and went to war to stop it.
The fact is slavery was an issue since before the founding of the nation, but it is a false statement to say the union went to war to free the slaves.
Fact is, Lincoln was the premier railroad attorney at the time. He entered the presidential race late and was put up by his railroad clients to be president. They needed the north and south together to keep their railroad empire growing. They faced bankruptcy if the union split or if there became a war.
The war wasnt about slavery or the union. It was about money; railroad money.
It certainly was.
"Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it." - Lawrence Keitt
"The South had always been solid for slavery and when the quarrel about it resulted in a conflict of arms, those who had approved the policy of disunion took the pro-slavery side. It was perfectly logical to fight for slavery, if it was right to own slaves." - John S. Mosby
'We have dissolved the Union chiefly because of the negro quarrel. Now, is there any man who wished to reproduce that strife among ourselves? And yet does not he, who wished the slave trade left for the action of Congress, see that he proposed to open a Pandora's box among us and to cause our political arena again to resound with this discussion. Had we left the question unsettled, we should, in my opinion, have sown broadcast the seeds of discord and death in our Constitution. I congratulate the country that the strife has been put to rest forever, and that American slavery is to stand before the world as it is, and on its own merits. We have now placed our domestic institution, and secured its rights unmistakably, in the Constitution; we have sought by no euphony to hide its name - we have called our negroes "slaves," and we have recognized and protected them as persons and our rights to them as property." - Alabama Congressman Robert H. Smith
As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession
SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana
This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession
What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention
Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?
Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention
This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.
If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi
But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas
History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention
And jeff davis is there shining his boots.
"Establishment" doesn't mean "in power at exactly this moment."
If it did that would make Donald Trump "the Establishment."
Rather what it means is, the permanent government, the usual people who usually end up running things, the people who are used to having high office in Washington and think it the natural order of things that they do.
By 1860 those people had largely been been Democrats and Southerners for a very long time.
The Coalition between New York and Washington DC runs things today, and it ran things back in 1860. The "establishment" was created in the runup to the Civil War, and it has maintained it's power ever since.
In the 1850s, those people had largely been Democrats, and Southern cotton planters and politicians were very much part of that commercial-financial-political complex.
They were the Establishment. They were the ones who held power in the country. And, secessionist agitators aside, there wasn't a real conflict of interest between wealthy New York bankers and Southern cotton planters.
You might wish that the plantation owners could squeeze a few more dollars out of the merchants, shippers, and banks who provided services to them, but those New York businessmen were a pretty obliging lot and would have gone some distance to keep the slavers' business.
You recognize that this is true now, but you can't bring yourself to believe that your side has *always* been the bad guys.
So you think the slavers were the "good guys"?
Nice to see you finally come clean about that.
The North went to war to preserve the Union and won. The South went to war to preserve slavery and lost everything. Tell me something dude, if the South had won the war would it have ended slavery?
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