Posted on 05/04/2018 6:42:25 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
Leading elements of Union Major General George G. Meade's Army of the Potomac cross the Rapidan River. With a few hours they would clash with General Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia in the Battle of the Wilderness. Lieutenant General Grant's Overland Campaign had begun.
I’m only nominally familiar with demojeff’s leftspeak...
I saw that, don't know what to make of it.
"In-group", "out-group" what do those even mean?
How can you even have a "group" when you're typing at a computer hundreds or thousands of miles away from the others?
We're all Free Republic "in-group" and all "out-group" from other less conservative sites.
I've seen nothing from jeffersondem, DiogenesLamp or any other Lost Causer that I'd necessarily disagree with in terms of today's politics, so this all qualifies as intramural squabbling, over the question of how much respect should our Civil War era ancestors be shown?
My answer is, all the respect in the world, especially for those young soldiers who owned no slaves but did fight to protect their homes & families.
For Confederate leaders, not so much.
And respect should never go to the point of accepting their lies as if true.
By 1865 Republicans were the party of emancipation & abolition who won virtually 100% of freed-black votes.
By 1965 Democrats grabbed that mantle (rightly or wrongly) and Southern whites began voting Republican.
But they cannot have been super-happy voting for the party which myth told them was the root-cause of all their misery.
So today, two generations beyond 1965, we're still arguing out the truth or falsehood of various historical accounts.
Interesting to note that DiogenesLamp claims to have no Southern roots and spends inordinate efforts to feed us a diet of European Marxist dialectics -- economics & class warfare uber alles.
I'm not certain if that's the best defense of 1861 Fire Eaters.
Jeffersondem does claim to be Southern, but uses terms and forms of argument which strike me as... ah, oddly alien.
Who in your experience says "chivvy", "tally book" and "on the prod"?
I've never heard those elsewhere, had to look them up.
I'm guessing they're colloquial to some specific region, but can't even guess which.
Of course, I never read much by William Faulkner or Margaret Mitchell, and if they used such terms, well...
As for jeffersondem's forms of argument -- heavy on pointed, humorous questions, light on actual data, well... they do provoke some thought.
Lost Causers' great advantage in being unconstrained by actual facts they are free to argue one way today and a different way tomorrow, sometimes even in the same post.
Our great advantage is the whole wealth of actual history to support whatever the truth of it happens to be.
Stick to the truth and we'll always be consistent, even while DiogenesLamp & others complain about "doctrine" or "repetitive".
Pickett’s Charge
“For every Southern boy fourteen years old, not once but whenever he wants it, there is the instant when it’s still not yet two o’clock on that July afternoon in 1863, the brigades are in position behind the rail fence, the guns are laid and ready in the woods and the furled flags are already loosened to break out and Pickett himself with his long oiled ringlets and his hat in one hand probably and his sword in the other looking up the hill waiting for Longstreet to give the word and it’s all in the balance, it hasn’t happened yet, it hasn’t even begun yet, it not only hasn’t begun yet but there is still time for it not to begin against that position and those circumstances which made more men than Garnett and Kemper and Armistead and Wilcox look grave yet it’s going to begin, we all know that, we have come too far with too much at stake and that moment doesn’t need even a fourteen-year-old boy to think This time. Maybe this time with all this much to lose than all this much to gain: Pennsylvania, Maryland, the world, the golden dome of Washington itself to crown with desperate and unbelievable victory the desperate gamble, the cast made two years ago.” - William Faulkner, novelist
You are still citing NFL thugocracy as your social reference lodestar.
For the sake of the red, white, and blue you ought to turn that mess and gom off.
I have made over 3,000 posts and you cite three things that cause you concern.
I used the word chivvy.
I used the words tally book
I used the phrase “on the prod.”
You make it sound like you and I are closer than we imagined. That's bad.
“My answer is, all the respect in the world, especially for those young soldiers who owned no slaves but did fight to protect their homes & families.”
Sounds like the outline of an argument to remove the statue of George Washington. Older guy. Slave owner. Rebel leader.
“There’s no evidence I know of that Lincoln, in your words, did “plan to ‘fight a war to free the slaves,’ the key word being “plan”.”
My sentence included the words “if true.”
Regardless, according to your version of events, we can forever dismiss the notion that Lincoln fought the war to “free the slaves.”
But he did fight the war for an important purpose: because he determined it was in the best economic and political interests of the 39 percent of the people that elected him president.
“When the former owners despoil the place by bombarding it into rubble with the current owners in it, you have to expect the current owners to be a bit miffed about it, don’t you?”
I’m not following your ownership claims but I understand President Lincoln and his backers were miffed. You don’t kill 600,000 people unless you are miffed.
I'm not sure how you could not follow the ownership claim. Fort Sumter was built by the federal government on landed deeded to them free and clear by the South Carolina legislature. So to use your analogy, the homeowner was in the home at the time. The former owner despoiled the place by bombarding it. So sure the current owner was miffed. Who wouldn't be?
But he did accept the nomination from a party that had as part of it’s platform stopping the spread of slavery and, eventually, getting rid of it. I’d post the platform but I don’t think you would read it. I will post a small excerpt though and I encourage you to read the whole thing.
Republican party Platform 1860 Section 8
8. That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom: That, as our Republican fathers, when they had abolished slavery in all our national territory, ordained that “no persons should be deprived of life, liberty or property without due process of law,” it becomes our duty, by legislation, whenever such legislation is necessary, to maintain this provision of the Constitution against all attempts to violate it; and we deny the authority of Congress, of a territorial legislature, or of any individuals, to give legal existence to slavery in any territory of the United States.
At the time of the Ft. Sumter incident the fort wasn't even in the United States.
Secession changes things. That is why the British no longer have garrisons at their previous Fort Augusta, Fort Barrancas, Fort George, Fort Mackinac, Forte Bute, Fort Prince George, Fort William and Mary, and so forth and so on.
You are opening the door just a crack to the notion Lincoln and the Republicans were committed to destroying their economic and political competitors in the South by hook or by crook.
History shows they did not have the votes to amend the constitution to abolish slavery peacefully. History also shows that 24 can beat 11.
Brojoe notwithstanding, there are some arguments to be made that Lincoln did have an early plan to use the U.S. military to overthrow pro-slavery provisions in the U.S. constitution. Perhaps not provable, but probable.
Assuming for the sake of argument that was true, so what? How does that change ownership?
Secession changes things.
In what way?
That is why the British no longer have garrisons at their previous Fort Augusta...
Ownership settled by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
...Fort Barrancas...
Purchased along with the rest of Florida in 1821.
...Fort George, Fort Mackinac, Forte Bute, Fort Prince George, Fort William and Mary, and so forth and so on.
Again, ownership settled by the Treaty of Paris in 1783.
What transferred ownership of Fort Sumter?
The only legal means of accomplishing this is to convince states to abolish it themselves. If you could get 3/4ths of the states to agree to abolish it, then you could amend the constitution to eliminate it throughout the US.
But that wasn't going to happen, and in the legal context of the time, it made as much sense as saying you were going to get rid of the second amendment. There was no way this could be done legally.
And they didn't do it legally. They did it by force and in direct violation of constitutional law.
They don’t give rebuttals. They just rant. I don’t have any interest in listening to more rants.
To be fair, Lincoln badly underestimated the will of the Southerners to be independent from his government. He assumed they were all talk, and he thought the war would be over quickly with little loss of life.
He gambled with people's lives, and he lost bigly. He has great laments during the war, and he is haunted by it's bloodshed. His wife went insane, and his son died during the war.
Doesn't sound like God was very pleased with him.
Ownership settled by the Declaration of Independence. Stop trying to have one standard for the 13 slave owning states, and a different standard for the 11 slave owning states.
And Tweedledum shows up.
How was ownership settled by the Declaration of Independence? Because of the rebellion? Are you saying the Southern Rebellion settled the matter in the same way? Or tried to at least?
The American secession occurred in 1765. That was before 1783.
King Georg's War started to wind down with Cornwallis’ surrender in 1781 followed by the British withdrawal from Charleston and Savannah in 1782.
As noted, the negotiated Treaty of Paris occurred in 1783.
Now, ask me how that relates to the price of property suitable for maintaining forts.
Ownership was not agreed to until 1783. You are aware there was a rebellion between those two periods, right?
Now, ask me how that relates to the price of property suitable for maintaining forts.
OK, I'll bite. How does that relate to the price of property suitable for maintaining forts?
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