Posted on 07/26/2021 4:33:01 PM PDT by ammodotcom
The Battle of Appomattox Courthouse is considered by many historians the end of the Civil War and the start of post-Civil War America. The events of General Robert E. Lee’s surrender to General and future President Ulysses S. Grant at a small town courthouse in Central Virginia put into effect much of what was to follow.
The surrender at Appomattox Courthouse was about reconciliation, healing, and restoring the Union. While the Radical Republicans had their mercifully brief time in the sun rubbing defeated Dixie’s nose in it, they represented the bleeding edge of Northern radicalism that wanted to punish the South, not reintegrate it into the Union as an equal partner.
The sentiment of actual Civil War veterans is far removed from the attitude of the far left in America today. Modern day “woke-Americans” clamor for the removal of Confederate statues in the South, the lion’s share of which were erected while Civil War veterans were still alive. There was little objection to these statues at the time because it was considered an important part of the national reconciliation to allow the defeated South to honor its wartime dead and because there is a longstanding tradition of memorializing defeated foes in honor cultures.
(Excerpt) Read more at ammo.com ...
Those 11 states lost the argument.
British wags & wit notwithstanding, that was the US law -- absent a Constitutional amendment Lincoln had no authority to abolish slavery in Union states.
But Congress could & did abolish slavery in Washington DC, and in western territories.
It could also declare slaves in Confederate states as "Contraband of war", which it did.
Union states could also abolish slavery on their own, which all but two did.
That left only Delaware and Kentucky with slavery still lawful, but they had very few slaves to begin with and by 1865 most of them had been freed by their "masters" or had run off.
The 13th Amendment just made Constitutional & permanent what had already happened, long before.
Roflol.
Try again .
Perhaps that is because that is where the county court house was located ?
Wrong.
You start with the faulty assumption that Republican President Lincoln did not start the war.
The war was started by the dastardly democrats - the ‘fire eaters’ - and more specifically, by extremely sore loser Vice President democrat John C Breckinridge.
First, Breckinridge split the democrats into two parties.
The rump party was led by Douglas, Lincoln’s chief opponent for Senate, he finished badly in electoral votes.
Breckinridge took his seceded democrats into second place in the electoral college. Then he led them ALL out of the Union.
Breckinridge was not quite done. He then was appointed to a Senate seat. Where he fortunately lost the battle to get that state to secede also.
The US Senate eventually evicted him as a traitor about six months later. Because Breckinridge ha shouted the democrats as a General.
Fortunately he was not very good and lost the battery for Baton Rouge.
Eventually he was named Secretary of War.
And then he failed again helping the Cabinet to escape. While he and a small group managed to slip away into exile.
The ultimate sore loser - John Breckinridge.
Again, why are you blaming President Lincoln’ - yes, the father fo the Republican Party is a good name for him - for the actions of the fire-eater democrats - like John Breckinridge. The democrats incited and started the war.
“Lincoln is erroneously referred to as the Father of the Republican Party. …When Lincoln won and was sworn in in March (April?) 1861 this lit the fuse to the Civil War and there was nothing either side could do.”
Wrong, child, completely wrong!
“Before Lincoln was elected, the Southern States took offense to a plethora of laws Congress was passing from the 1830s to the War in 1861. States claimed that the Federal Government was grabbing power from the States that was not present in the Constitution.”
First of all, the democrats had CONTROL of the country. Until the election of 1860. So no, the US was not passing a bunch of laws.
You allude to the ‘Missouri compromise’ with your vague reference to 1830. That was a chief complaint and basis for formation of the democrat party. The guaranteeing that the territories of Kansas and Nebraska would not be slave.
That was why democrat Douglas proposed and passed the Kansas-Nebraska act of 1854. That ‘allowed’ the territories to vote to be free or slave.
It triggered ten years of pre-civil war war in Bloody Kansas.
And also triggered the formation of the Republican Party in 1854.
The democrats refused to coexist with the Republican Party, they chose to start a war !
Own slaves.
The South wanted to expand slavery to the territories, the North didn't.
If Southern Democrats believed so much in 'states rights' they wouldn't have pushed the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act through Congress.
The northeast industrialist had gained the upper-hand in congress and were choking the south with their tariffs and import-export regulations, passed to protect northern manufacture at the expense of southern agricultural exports. They did not need slaves, they forced their “free” workers to long hours with low wages, and used immigrants as indentured servants. The industrialist then persuaded the many northern immigrants to fight in their place, once war begun.
Slavery was about to die, as it did throughout most of the world; because the onset of the industrial age made it unprofitable. Slave countries, like Brazil, ended slavery in the late 1800s without a civil war. The same would have likely happened in the US and CSA. if the war either had been stopped or prevented.
The moral issues of slavery were also growing in the south as well. Also, southern states had outlawed the import of slaves from Africa for some time before the civil war. But not Boston, who profited on the African slave trade.
“Southern states had outlawed the import of slaves from Africa for some time before the civil war.”
The Congress of the United States outlawed the importation of slaves into this country in 1808. This action was permitted by the Constitution of the United States. The last slaves brought into this country came in to Mobile Bay in Alabama in 1860.
If a Southerner owned 20 or more slaves, he could enjoy the Civil War from the comfort of his veranda. Safe in the knowledge that his countrymen, that did not own that may slaves, were fighting and dying in places like “the Corn Field, Cemetery Ridge or the Mule Shoe to secure his right to his “property”.
My ancestors were not traitors. They were loyal to their families, communities, and states. I don’t know what oath they swore in 1861, but you were a Tennessean, Virginian, Georgian first and a US citizen second.
PS NO ONE was ever charged with treason after the War of Northern Aggression.
Indeed. The rebels initiated hostilities against the United States even before Lincoln assumed office.
A credit to Lincoln and his peacemaker policy to “let ’em up easy.”
The oath they take is to defend The Constitution of the United States. Big difference. Lee, et al, were most definitely not traitors.
And they dismiss everything else.
bfl
Try acting on that in the Mexican War 14 short years before and you could have gotten yourself hanged.
Much of the reason for secession was over tariffs, which affected everyone there, not slavery.
The South exported their cotton to England, and wanted British manufactured goods in return.
Fort Sumter was fired upon, because its main purpose was enforcement of tariff collection on ships entering Charleston harbor.
https://mises.org/library/lincolns-tariff-war
That doesn’t make a lot of sense.
I’ve personally given slack to REL on the the issue of treachery against the US because I recognize that he was caught in a dilemma - honor his oath to defend the United States Constitution even though it meant that he could be opposing his immediate friends and family (while paradoxically defending people who were openly hostile to him) or throw in with the locals - and walk away from his oath.
Admittedly hard choices, he chose to reject the Constitution.
No one was charge because of simple expediency in that Lincoln felt it would only make matters worse for a nation sick of the bloodiest war in our nations history. A war by the way the SOUTH provoked and started!
Lee and Davis should have considered themselves lucky indeed they weren’t hung.
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