Posted on 09/11/2014 6:50:36 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
On a rainy night in early 1865, Secretary of War Edwin Stanton arrived in Savannah, Ga. — which the Union had captured weeks earlier — with a question: What should become of newly free black people? It was a question that many in power had been asking for some time. What was different this time was to whom the question was posed: the newly free black people themselves.
It was a visit born of a massacre about a month before, and it launched a debate that continues to this day.
The issue of where these people should go had dogged Maj. Gen. William T. Sherman, too, as he marched through Georgia in the fall of 1864. Sherman had expected to pick up able-bodied black men to assist his troops (but not to join them; Sherman would not allow that). An unintended consequence of his scorched-earth policy was that all manner of freed slaves — including women, children and the elderly — abandoned the plantations and fell in behind him.
More than 10,000 black refugees followed Sherman’s March to the Sea. That many mouths to feed would have proved challenging for a well-stocked force, but for an army that survived by foraging, it was nearly impossible. James Connolly, a 21-year-old major in the Illinois Volunteer Infantry (and future congressman), wrote that the refugee camps were so numerous that they often ringed the camps of the corps. The “contrabands,” as they were called, regularly wandered into Union camps to beg for food. And as Sherman’s force approached the sandy and less fertile Georgia coast, it became even more difficult to accommodate them....
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
No more - or less - than any president has to propose anything about anything. What's your point? Oh, and BTW - it's self-evident that he had not only to power to emancipate, but he had the prerogative to do so.
History is written by the “victors”, and leaves out a great deal- in this case the radical republicans.
And the myths by the losers. SOS
Welcome to the march of Progressives.
Lincoln stopped one dead in his tracks with davis. The thing about progs is that they're akin to buses - there's always another coming up right behind the last one.
Lincoln stopped one dead in his tracks with davis.
Sorry, but it's just silly to call Davis or the CSA "progressives." They were reactionaries attempting to impose an older order of society based on hereditary status on an America that had otherwise moved past that.
Progressivism is not the only negative political ideology.
First, the president can propose whatever he wishes.
Congress may or may not chose to dispose.
Second, even before the Civil War, the US recognized the right of a US military force to declare enemy property "contraband of war", and seize it.
During that war, many Confederate raids into Union states were specifically for that purpose -- to declare and seize Union "contraband".
Even the act of a US commander declaring enemy-owned slaves "free" had pre-war precedents.
That's why Lincoln aimed his 1863 Emancipation Proclamation specifically at states in rebellion, whose territories fell under Union Army control.
Lincoln's authority to do this was not questioned by Congress at the time, nor has it been since.
Instead, Congress passed and the states unanimously approved the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments.
John S Mosby: "Sherman...his destruction of private property...
Confederate "total war" was practiced in Union states long before Sherman began his Georgia "march to the sea" (November 1864).
The biggest example is Early/McCausland's burning Chambersburg, Pennsylvania (July 1864), but there were others, including Quantrill's raid into Lawrence Kansas (August 1863).
So Sherman did not invent the idea -- Confederates did.
Finally, your comments on Lincoln's Secretary of War, Edwin Stanton, are pure fantasy.
The truth of the matter is that Lincoln valued Stanton's services highly, and said so, while others continued to honor him for decades afterwards.
As for conspiracy-fantasies about "who shot Abe", this site lists seven major "theories" and several other more speculative suggestions.
It affirms that your Stanton-theory was fabricated out of thin air by an Austrian immigrant named Otto Eisenschiml in 1937, and has since been soundly debunked.
As for having "family that was there", I do have "family that was there" -- unionists in Confederate states who suffered deprivation and massacre at the hands of Confederates.
So I'm not so super-sympathetic to those oppressors.
cc: Sherman Logan -- comments?
Of course you're posting nonsense, and have now been corrected on virtually every point.
The one and only point we agree, as I posted before is:
Early’s raid on Chambersburg in July, 1864 was planned specifically as retaliation for Hunter’s raid through the Valley in June.
I doubt it’s accurate to claim southerners started the total war notion. Lawrence was a special case and was not really conducted under CSA authority. It was more along the lines of retaliation in a vendetta than a military operation.
There seems little doubt, to me at least, that the great majority of pillaging and destruction of private property was done by Union forces. This was due more to where the war was mostly fought than to inherent moral superiority of southerners.
BTW, I have ancestors on both sides. Indeed, I have one CSA ancestor soldier who was captured and then joined the Union Army and was sent out west to fight Indians.
There are plenty of examples on both sides -- perhaps more from the Union than Confederates because, as you explain, the war was fought more in the Confederacy.
On the other hand, most Union armies, most of the time had reliable supply lines that Confederates could only envy.
On this subject, am reminded that -- was it Shilo? -- a Confederate route of Union forces died when advancing southern soldiers stopped to eat the mountains of rations left behind by fleeing Union troops -- and that was in a Confederate state!
Meanwhile, Confederate forces in Union states were always there, primarily or secondarily, to secure and return Union "contraband" for the Confederate war effort.
The most notorious example being JEB Stuart's ride around Gettysburg, which arguably contributed to Lee's losing the battle.
And there were others, in every Union state Confederate forces could reach.
Of course, it's true, the war's ferocity amplified as years dragged by, each new incident being worse that ones which preceded it.
Therefore, the "who started what" is unanswerable, meaning it's just as fair for me to accuse the Confederates as it is for them to accuse Union forces... right?
;-)
Quite a few southerners claimed that the southern soldiers, particularly the cavalry, were worse looters than the Union soldiers.
This no doubt varied from place to place, over time, and by commander of the unit.
But, as you say, southern forces were far more often undersupplied or even starving.
I also have an ancestor -- straight off the boat from Europe, speaking little or no English -- who was easily captured by Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest.
Fairly early in the war, Forrest was the perfect gentleman, releasing these obviously useless soldiers on "parole".
By war's end these young troops were not quite so useless, winning back honor for their unit.
But Forrest's treatment of my ancestor highly colors my favorable opinion of Forrest, despite his later wrong-doings.
I suspect part of Forrest’s “chivalry” may have been based on his normal mode of operations. Lightning raids through enemy territory don’t exactly lend themselves to hauling along large numbers of prisoners.
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