Posted on 04/14/2016 9:36:26 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
It's sometimes tempting to compare Confederates to Nazis, after all, both the Confederacy and Nazi Germany declared war on the United States and both suffered unconditional surrender.
Indeed, both still have US military forces stationed on their lands.
Further, such comparisons as Confederates = Nazis are the Left's stock in trade, they make their livings off of it.
But we must always resist such temptations and never make the comparison, because in every important sense, it does not apply.
Here's why:
By sharp contrast, every Jew who could escape Europe under the Nazis did so.
The fact is that Confederates fought honorably for a cause they believed was just, and indeed, many argue on Free Republic that Confederate troops were much better behaved on Northern soil than were Northern troops marching through the South.
Of course today no Conservative suggests returning to slavery, though the Left seems determined to impose a modern form of slavery on all of us.
But we should not condemn our ancestors for doing what they believed was right, even though history showed them to be sadly mistaken.
During WWII, my Pennsylvania born Dad took military training at Camp Forrest (named after Confederate General Nathan Bedford Forrest), Tennessee and after the war married a pretty North Carolina girl, my Mom.
They are recently deceased and lie side by side in a Pennsylvania cemetery, which is where also such old North-South animosities should be buried.
According to Lincoln there was no Confederacy. There were only American citizens in rebellion. He wasn’t waging war against another nation. He sent his army against Americans to force them to submit.
Regardless of what name you give them, Confederates first provoked war (seizing dozens of Union properties), then started war (at Fort Sumter), then formally declared war (May 6, 1861) on the United States while sending military aid to pro-Confederates in Union Missouri.
So, the war came because Confederates wanted a battlefield decision on their cause, rather than waiting the many months or years patient negotiations would take.
Thank you for that very thoughtful reply. I’m going to read it again when I get off my phone and digest it.
My you get and I are currently listening to “With Lee in Virginia” and it’s been great.
Also just finished an I depth study on the Sally Hemming issue. So it’s a topic that’s on my mind a lot these days.
My thing is, I don’t really trust Lincoln. I still hold the opinion that he was acting nefariously to some degree.
Have you ever read “The Class of 1848?” One of my all time favorite books on the interesting inter-connectedness of the men who led the war, on both sides.
Last Sunday on the way home from church, we were listening to “With Lee in Virginia.” It got to the part where Gen. Lee is surrounded, right before he surrendered.
I turned the CD off, plugged my phone into the speakers and made the family listen to Levon Helm singing, “The Night They Drove ‘Ol Dixie Down” twice. (The Last Waltz version on YouTube.)
It got all quiet in the car. Then my 10 year old said, “play that one again mama.”
I’m not a fan of Lincoln, I was simply pointing out that as far as he was concerned he was waging war against fellow Americans. He never regarded the CSA as a separate nation, they were just Americans who deserved to be killed if they believed that they could secede.
Consider an analogy: if you or somebody tried to convince me that, oh, say, Hillary Clintoon was good and worthy to be our President, they'd be totally wasting their time.
There's just nothing someone might say to make me think she is anything other than Satan's spawn... metaphorically speaking, of course.
And so with Lincoln haters, there's apparently nothing to say, not that I've ever seen, which might make a difference.
In their minds, "Ape" Lincoln is guilty of tricking Jefferson Davis into starting the war, and then of pursuing unlimited war until Confederates surrendered unconditionally.
What could be more dastardly?
And yet, and yet, consider this: no part of the nation in 1932, 1936, 1940 and 1944 voted more solidly for Democrat Franklin Roosevelt than the "solid South".
In Deep South states, Roosevelt got over 90% of the vote.
And who was FDR?
Well, a socialist for one, political grandfather of Lyndon Johnson and Barak Obama.
But more to our point here: to the Japanese and Germans of his time, FDR was the United States' Abraham Lincoln.
It can be argued, and indeed has been argued (incorrectly I think) that Roosevelt first tricked them into starting war (at Pearl Harbor), then fought unlimited war until they surrendered unconditionally.
So, was Franklin Roosevelt nefarious?
Well, maybe, but do we hate him for it?
No, as relates to WWII, certainly not.
But what about Germans and Japanese, do they hate FDR?
I don't think so.
Yes, I think they try to block it out of their memories, and like Southerners refer to that as a time of "unpleasantness", but I don't think they've grown to loath and hate FDR in the same sense as some still hate Lincoln.
And, objectively speaking, Lincoln was much kinder to Confederates than Roosevelt was to Japanese or Germans.
No, I'm not comparing Confederates to Nazis, but I am relating average Southerners in the 1860s to average citizens of, say, Germany in the 1930s and 1940s.
So far as I know, average Germans today don't hate or blame Roosevelt in the same way some Southerners profess to hate and blame Lincoln.
Yeah, we are all familiar with the official sanitized version of history. Northern support for John Brown’s terrorism somehow never gets mentioned. But then that would push the start of the war inconveniently earlier.
You know perfectly well Lincoln believed the Confederate army had to be defeated and destroyed, but only after Confederates first provoked, started, formally declared and began to wage war against the United States.
Late in the war, at Hampton Roads, Lincoln conferred with Confederate representatives, offering them peace and compensation for freed slaves.
They refused immediately, preferring to fight on until unconditional, uncompensated surrender barely two months later.
It was their choice.
But you know perfectly well that Northern support for John Brown's 1859 raid on Harper's Ferry was minimal at most.
Nearly all of Brown's direct supporters fled the country to avoid prosecution -- one even committed himself to an insane asylum!
Northerners generally, and the US Federal Government specifically fully understood that Brown's raid was lawless and they supported actions of the US Army under Col. Lee in bringing Brown's raiders to justice.
Sure, a small minority of Northern abolitionists cheered Brown on, however, Brown's raid was certainly not an act of war by "the North" any more than serious violence in "bleeding Kansas" represented movements by Northern & Southern armies.
Yes, Southern Fire Eaters' De Bow's Review claimed: the North "has sanctioned and applauded theft, murder, and treason," but that was pure political hyperbole.
In fact, Northerners generally condemned any actions which might weaken the bonds of Union.
So Brown's 1859 raid is in no way comparable to the dozens of provocations for war committed by Confederates in early 1861, or the Confederacy's starting war at Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861 or the Confederacy's formal declaration of war on May 6, 1861, or the simultaneous sending of military support to pro-Confederates fighting in Union Missouri.
*Snicker* Are you suggesting that the feckless Buchanan administration was complicit?
Nope
That’s certainly the version that apologists for Lincoln like best.
Referring to Flemming’s book linked to by Pelham above:
Is anyone else familiar with this book?
Do you have opinions on it?
Please note, I’ve never denied that Fire Eater secessionists felt strongly about it.
But before November, 1860, they were a distinct minority, even in the Deep South.
Then Lincoln’s victory became their victory over Southern unionists.
That only happened through careful electioneering and over-the-top anti Republican propaganda.
But while the Fire Eaters’ propaganda was adequate to drive Deep South secessions, it did not help instill a sense of cautious good judgment necessary to delay Civil War until the Confederacy was ready and able to win it.
Pelham: “That’s certainly the version that apologists for Lincoln like best.”
No, it’s simply an accurate summary of historical facts.
The fact is that Lincoln promised secessionists in his first inaugural that they could not have civil war unless they themselves started it.
Well, propagandists in the Confederacy took Lincoln’s words themselves as a “declaration of war”, and called for military assault on Fort Sumter.
Jefferson Davis immediately ordered preparations for military actions which were unequivocally acts of war.
By the time his body hung from the gallows for his crimes at Harper's Ferry, abolitionists had made John Brown a "holy martyr" in the fight against Southern slave owners. But Northern hatred for Southerners had been long in the making. Northern rage was born of the conviction that New England, whose spokesmen and militia had begun the American Revolution, should have been the leader of the new nation.It looks like the sort of pablum that pelly would be drawn to. I found a used copy for $6 so I'll give it a go but I doubt that there will be anything other than neo-confederate nonsense there.
Lincoln wanted the war. He was foolish enough to believe it would end shortly.
If true then Lincoln was certainly not alone in that. The same sentiments held sway over the South as well.
The difference is that Lincoln was in control of events, as Buchanan had been before him when shots were fired at The Star of the West. Buchanan had sent an army to suppress the Mormon rebellion in Utah Territory but he didn’t choose to do the same against South Carolina. I suppose if he had and had started the civil war himself he would be regarded as a Great President instead of the goat that he usually is.
It was Lincoln’s decision to call up 75,000 troops for an invasion rather than let events play out short of war. The battlefields are in the south, not the north, a fact ignored since its meaning is obvious on its face.
Lincoln’s decision for war, and he made this on his own Congress being out of session, pushed the wavering border states into joining the Confederacy, guaranteeing a long and bloody war.
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