Posted on 02/25/2007 7:43:34 AM PST by OrioleFan
Lee was an avid reader of Northern newspapers smuggled across the lines. From them he gleaned not only bits of military intelligence but also – and more important in this case – information about Northern politics and the growing disillusionment with the war among Democrats and despair among Republicans. One of Lee’s purposes in the Maryland invasion was to intensify this Northern demoralization in advance of the congressional elections in the fall of 1862. He hoped that Confederate military success would encourage antiwar candidates. If Democrats could gain control of the House, it might cripple the Lincoln administration’s ability to carry on the war. On September 8 Lee outlined his ideas on this matter in a letter to Davis. “The present posture of affairs,” Lee wrote, “places it in our power…to propose to the Union government…the recognition of our independence.” Such a proposal, coming when “it is in our power to inflict injury on our adversary…would enable the people of the United States to determine at their coming elections whether they will support those who favor a prolongation of the war, or those who wish to bring it to a termination.”
This desire to influence the Northern elections was one reason Lee gave serious thought to resuming the campaign in Maryland even after Antietam. That was not to be. Democrats did make significant gains in the 1862 congressional elections, although Republicans managed to retain control of Congress. But morale in the Army of the Potomac and among the Northern public plunged to rock bottom in the early months of 1863 ...
Antiwar Democrats in the North – self-described as Peace Democrats but branded by Republicans as treasonable Copperheads – became more outspoken and politically powerful than ever. Lee followed these developments closely.
Governor Joseph Brown of Georgia thought the Confederate government was unconstitutional itself. He also thought Jefferson Davis was a tyrant."
This was one of those 'inherent contradictions' of the confederacy that helped doom it. The burdens a central Govt places on its people in order to wage war (confederacy or union) were greater than the burdens the antebellum Federal Govt placed on the states.
That dilemma is why Lincoln asked in his Gettyburg address if "democracy can endure".
We face that challenge even now in fighting the war on terrorism.
Strategic redeployment to Tennessee. The Army of the Potomac was in no shape for offensive operations after Fredericksburg, the Mud March and Chancellorsville.
The strategic center of gravity was [and remained] the west. Grant was besieging Vicksburg. When he took it, the U.S controls the Mississippi, and cuts off the Trans Mississippi from the rest of the Confederacy. By moving west, Lee could have consolidated two thirds of his Army, with the Army of Tennessee. As senior, he would have superceded Braxton Bragg as CG. His strategic options included: marching against Grant's rear [forcing him to either fight, or withdraw], feinting toward, or invading Kentucky [drawing off Union forces from Grant], moving against Grant's supply lines, and either forcing battle, or forcing withdrawal or redeployment.
Lee had one of the finest operational level minds [to use the German concept of the term] of any Civil War or American general. His strategic grasp is not as good, however.
Harrisburg was lost due to Ewell's slow movements giving the militia time to burn the bridge over the Susquehanna. Ewell had plenty of time to get to Harrisburg, but moved slow due to the gathering of supplies.
Again, I would argue that Lee was not caught by surprise as popular and contemporary history and culture would lead us to believe.
If you read the correspondance between Davis and Lee, it is easy to see that Lee had an overall strategy for the war and was ignored by Davis who thought he was the great military mind of the South.
There was no doubt Lee understood that the war was being fought on two fronts (he tried desperately to make Davis see how a two front war would benefit the South) but he did not think he was the answer to the West since Virginia was just as important to the war effort.
I disagree strongly with you on Lee's strategic ability. I think it was very good. You have him doing a lot of things out west but he did not think that Grant would react as you have Grant reacting.
I like to discuss military strategy and learn much by having conversations here on Free Republic.
Anyway, you have a nice day!
Thanks for the comment. I read it two different books some time ago. Same thing happened during the Antietam campaign. The invading rebels grabbed everything they could -- cows, chickens, horses, people....
Despite Al Gore's best efforts, not everything is yet on the internet.
As for your screen name, what would you think of a West Point grad today who took up arms against the U.S. Government?
PS to whom? We all know that the unionists didn't go to war to free the slaves.
By the end of the war, though, that's what the union managed to do, thanks to a constitutional amendment that wouldn't have been passed otherwise.
There is some sense, though, in the supposed popular wisdom that you condemn: when the Confederacy was too closely identified with the preservation of slavery and did nothing to shake that tie, the other side naturally came to be identified with freedom for the slaves.
And in the big picture, that's what they achieved. People will argue about whether the Unionists should get some moral kudos for that, but what happened happened.
Thanks for the link to the Republican Platform of 1860. The offended plank must have been "That the normal condition of all the territory of the United States is that of freedom;" (NB, this was opposing the expansion of slavery into new territories, not speaking about slavery in existing states).
As for:
"2. That the maintenance of the principles promulgated in the Declaration of Independence and embodied in the Federal Constitution, "That all men are created equal; that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights; that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness; that, to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed." is essential to the preservation of our Republican institutions; and that the Federal Constitution, the Rights of the States, and the Union of the States, must and shall be preserved."
Wisdom is Timeless!!!
What are my "absurdities"?
Destroying American union would have destroyed much more than was lost in the Civil War
In light of how much was lost in the Civil War...what exactly would have been lost had the southern states been permitted to leave peacefully?
If you want to cast blame for those who died in the Civil War, blame the Confederates who started it.
Now that is absurd...the choice to wage war was entirely the north's
As to the Gettysburg Address...the underlying message was laughable considering the context of the times...as you note, Lincoln's only goal was preservation of the union...evidenced by the fact that he suported the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 and the Corwin Amendment (that was introduced in the Senate by William Seward).
So, when Lincoln said that we were engaged in a great civil war testing whether a nation conceived in libery and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure...that was a lie. Early on, Lincoln very much hoped that he could induce the southern states to stay in the union by offering to assist in the subjugation of blacks in the south
Were Lincoln honest in that speech about what the Civil War was about...he would have said something more along the lines of what Hitler said on the subject of federalism in Mein Kampf
Except that Lincoln and the "other side" offered the Confederacy an amendment to the Constitution that would preserve slavery in perpetuity in the slave states if they would forgo secession
So maybe the close identification of the Confederacy with the preservation of slavery and the other side with the cause of freedom has more to do with the winners writing history than it does with reality
So maybe the close identification of the Confederacy with the preservation of slavery and the other side with the cause of freedom has more to do with the winners writing history than it does with reality
Or maybe it's slight of hand to argue that proposed concessions to the Confederacy on the slavery question are to be taken more seriously than the secessionists' own attitudes about slavery. Nobody in 1860 would have seen the Unionists as pro-slavery or the secessionists as anything but that.
Complete nonsense. The South had exerted a disproportionate level of influence over the government and its power for the 80 years prior to the rebellion. If it had grown into an intrusive monster then it's because the Southern politicians grew it.
They tried to stop Leviathan before it grew too entrenched. They were crushed for their temerity, their homes and property torched to compel fealty to the politicians in Washington, D.C., and our liberties are the victim.
Then initiated an armed rebellion against the federal government and got beaten for their pains.
The secessionists were mostly pro-slavery...no question. But politics and economics were working against slavery and it almost certainly would have become so economically unviable that there would have been tremendous pressure from slaveholding interests (for compensated emancipation), from white laborers (who suffered from having to compete with slave labor) and from abolitionists. I think after the Lecompton Constitution failed for the last time and it became clear that Kansas would be admitted as a free state and until the Republicans won and it became clear that the expansion of slavery into US territories was finished...slaveholding interests in the South held out hope that they could maintain power in the Congress and force through federal measures that would help preserve slavery...at least for a while
As to the Unionists...yes...almost none were pro-slavery. By the same token...most didn't care much about the slaves in the slaveholding states...they were most concerned in (1) preserving the Union (and the economic benefits the south brought to the northern industrial interests) and (2) in ensuring that new territories remained free of slavery...although in the case of Lincoln and many Republicans...this concern was driven by a desire to keep the territories open for white workers
Try again. His goal was to feed the Army of Northern Virginia off the Northern population for a while, and to gather enough food and supplies by to maintain his army when he returned to the South. He accomplished this by stripping the countryside of everything edible and which he could use for his men and sending it South. That goal occupied his thoughts, governed his actions, and was somewhat successful. Even after his fiasco at Gettysburg he returned to Virginia with most of his looted goods. Of course, it was at the expense of leaving 7,000 wounded behind.
That may have been the goal of the 1862 campaign in Maryland, but not 1863. And the 1862 campaign was a dismal failure. Lee had hoped to attract thousands of recruits from Maryland and he got only a handful. The fact that he campaigned in the western part of the state where Unionist sympathies were strongest didn't help.
What do you base this claim on?
Your absurdities speak for themselves ...
Lincon, one of our greatest Presidents, who preserved the Union, did so out of no desire at all to change the basic structure of the United States, but to preserve it!
This neo-confederate bashing of Lincoln seeks to place him responsible for nationalizing historical trends and changes that occured well after he was assassinated in 1865. Remember, he died before the 13th and 14th amendment was even enacted. And if you read his second inaugural and his other speeches/writings, he sought a peace that would preserve, not change, the balance of state's rights in the south.
The only major change at issue during his life was the institution of slavery, which as you acknowledge was not an original war goal of the Unionists. It became so over time, as the north recognized that, as Lincoln foretold "A house divided cannot stand". Lincoln had the moral sense to understand slavery was fundamentally wrong, but also the historical understanding to be against revolutionary overthrow of that institution. Yet the impatient slave-holding ruling elites of the south were against even changes to the balance of slave/free power. It was egregious of those elites to force secession and break the union simply in order to maintain their slave-holding institution. The result was a far quicker dissolution of slavery than otherwise might have happened, as Lincoln and northern leaders used the "Emancipation Proclamation" and other means to bring an end to the institution in the rebel areas.
BTW - It's frankly disgusting that you use Adolf Hitler as some kind of expert on American history when he was both evil, a racist, and an ignoramus wrt U.S. and Federalism. He has no place in this discussion.
"southern states been permitted to leave peacefully?"
They broke the peace when they fired on Fort Sumpter.
Losing America as one united and great nation would have been an unfathonable and great loss for modern civilization. I could imagine that totalitarianism might have triumphed in the 20th century without America as a singular bulwark against it. I could imagine that the world wars might even have even been fought on our soil, had the different nations walked separate and dangerous paths. I could imagine that a south with a majority of black slaves and a white minority elite could have gone the way of south africa or haiti had they insisted on keeping an institution that has no place in the modern world. If confederates can rebel, why not slaves? Who knows?
I do know that the conferates instigated the rebellion and initiated the violence of the civil war, so share the blame in death and destruction caused by it.
"So, when Lincoln said that we were engaged in a great civil war testing whether a nation conceived in libery and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal can long endure...that was a lie."
He spoke the truth. Which part was a lie?
- it was the truth that, yes, the United States was conceived in liberty; unless you are an America-hater that is
- it was the truth that "all men are created equal" was the testimony of our declaration of independence; and isn't it something you agree with?
- it was the truth that the civil war was a test of democratic unity itself; it is obvious that if any part of a political unity can simply secede if they disagree on some points, that the political organization itself is untenable.
"Early on, Lincoln very much hoped that he could induce the southern states to stay in the union by offering to assist in the subjugation of blacks in the south"
What was egregious was not Lincoln's offer of compromise in order to keep the union, but the south's stubborn refusal to accept it.
What the Corwin amendment did not do was guarantee expansion of slavery to the territories. The confederate constitution guaranteed slavery every bit as strongly as the Corwin amendment would have plus it ensured that slavery would exist in all confederate states plus it protected slave imports. So given that why would the rebels return for the half-loaf that the Corwin amendment offered them when they had already written the full loaf into their own constitution?
So maybe the close identification of the Confederacy with the preservation of slavery and the other side with the cause of freedom has more to do with the winners writing history than it does with reality
And perhaps the rebel insistence that slavery really had little to do with it has more to do with the losers writing the myths than it has to do with reality?
Guess who wrote the forward for the CW Desk Reference? James MacPherson..... the same author of this article.
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