Posted on 06/22/2018 11:46:12 AM PDT by DIRTYSECRET
That was according to my 8th grade history teacher-retired military. The only one who came close was MacArthur. That brings up the politics of the left. If it is true that Lee was a great General isn't it at least worth acknowledging? This tearing down of statues should stop. Educated persons should acknowledge the truth. It's the left that's the intelligent ones as they would have us believe. I see no conservatives standing up for this truth. The Senate GOP candidate in Virginia should start an 'intellectual' conversation on Lee and let the left react. Don't wait for a baiting reporter to to knee-jerk him into a quick response that they can interpret their own way.
Breaking the line.... the line at the wall.... the high water mark... not breaking through.... breaking the line at the wall.
Actually, though he didn't call for it, Lincoln didn't oppose such a constitutional amendment. The Corwin Amendment would have been, ironically, the 13th, and would have permanently barred Congress from interfering with the institution of slavery where it then existed. It passed the House and Senate on the eve of Lincoln's election, and Lincoln said "holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable." The war began before it could be sent to the states for ratification.
Including William Mack Lee, who had been the general’s personal cook and ‘body servant’. He wrote a book about his time with Lee, I think this is probably it:
https://docsouth.unc.edu/neh/leewilliam/lee.html
The North endured the casualties, those casualties brought victory. Fort Donalson falls, a Confederate army surrenders, and Tennessee is open all the way to Muscle Shoals Alabama. Vicksburg falls, a second Confederate Army surrenders, the Mississippi is in Union hands and the Confederacy is split in tow. Chattanooga relieved. Braggs Army driven off. After the Overland Campaign, Lee’s Army penned in Petersburg where it will wither away to a shadow of its former self. Within the year, a third Confederate Army would surrender to U.S. Grant and the Capitol of the Confederacy is in Union hands. The Confederate government on the run, desperately trying to avoid capture. Casualties are the price of victory in war. Grant brought the Union victory in war.
Very nice reply, Lamp! You’re a thoughtful person unlike a few people here. It is no insult to be compared to Gore Vidal on these issues - he was marvelously educated on the subject of the Civil War. He went to war with Norman Podheretz when he suggested that the Civil War meant nothing more to him than the Trojan War. How can an American not feel impacted by this great event, for God’s sake??! It is, after the Revolution, the defining moment in American history?
I’m one of the few people who consistently blame the British for bringing that effen evil institution to our shores. They take no responsibility for it any more than they do their contributions to Africa, India or the Caribbean. And yet, every day, in their newspapers, they bash us for racism!
I always love to remind people that FIVE SLAVE STATES remained in the UNION, as SLAVE STATES.
After Lee surrendered, several of those states remained SLAVE STATES until the passage of the 13th Amendment eight months after the war ended.
So the last flag to fly over legal slavery in the USA was the stars and stripes.
Thank you, Pelham!
You think the majority of Union soldiers wanted to fight for black freedom? The majority of them hated black people. Yes, we've all seen the cherry picked letters from the abolitionist kooks in the Union Army, but I very much doubt this represented the dominant opinion among the ranks.
If it was the cause of black freedom that motivated these men, then how do you explain the New York riots where they killed mostly free black men? Why were they shouting slogans like "Our lives are worth less than a slave!" (Noting that for $300.00 you could get out of the war, but a slave cost $1,000.00 at that time.)
I think you are projecting a modern day morality on those men. I believe that most of them didn't give a crap about the slaves, they fought because they were drafted into doing so, and would be labeled as cowards or traitors if they did not.
Sure, the government pumped up the propaganda like "Battle Hymn of the Republic" and "Battle Cry of Freedom", but propaganda for your army was routine for most of human history.
They grabbed the Scots Irish right off the boat and forced them into the army. How much sh*t could they give for people whom they had never seen, especially when they were fleeing poverty in their former country?
They fought because they were put into a position where they were forced to fight, not because they cared about Black folk. Had Lincoln ordered them to stop fighting, they would have done that, and been greatly relieved.
Defeat in battle, no matter how you wish to phrase it. Meade defeated Lee at Gettsyburg
In short: yes ... yes, it was.
God! Here is the propaganda again. The UNITED STATES was a country based on slavery.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed, all the states were slave states. By 1889, when the US Constitution was ratified, the vast majority of the states were still slave states.
Slavery was legal in the Northern states all through the War, and it lasted six months longer in the Union states than it did in the Confederacy.
Lincoln urged passage of the "Corwin Amendment" that would have made it permanent.
No effort to pass a constitutional amendment to abolish slavery was ever put forth, and had one been put forth, it would have failed to pass.
The US Constitution explicitly protects slavery in Article IV, Section II.
The Civil War was two slave nations fighting over money. It wasn't any noble cause, it was down right dirty greed and power behind that war.
"If you bring these (Confederate) leaders to trial it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution secession is not rebellion. Lincoln wanted Davis to escape, and he was right. His capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one." - SCOTUS Chief Justice Salmon P. Chase, July 1965 (Foote, The Civil War, Vol. 3)
1) The real disaster is not that the North won, but that Lincoln was assassinated before he could implement his vision for Southern reconstruction following the war. His main goal for his second term was national reconciliation, and building up and integrating the Southern economy.
What happened to the South instead was similar to what happened to a defeated Germany at the signing of Versailles treaty “ending” WWI. In choosing to punish, humiliate, and leave Germany with a massive debt - its neighbors helped set the groundwork for Hitler, the Nazis, and ultimately World War II. Germany’s revenge.
The Nazis lost WWII. And to this day there are Neo-Nazis who wave or tatoo Confederate flags on themselves in the South and around the world.
2) Regardless of the actual motives behind it —economic or otherwise: the Emancipation Proclamation signed by Lincoln was the first major step setting African-Americans on the path towards freedom..
It was a war over that European money stream.
Utter bullcrap. Slavery existed in much of the colonies at our nation's inception but slavery was NOT foundational.
Gotta stop the commerce. Once Europe got a taste of far healthier profits than they had through the North, that would have been it.
The Declaration of Independence disposed of it. Same way it disposed of all the states from the United Kingdom.
Brilliant reply!
Why don’t “unionist” freepers understand this? Instead, they want to continue to push southerners’ faces in the mud? I don’t get it.
I recently visited Andrew Johnson’s home in TN and was amazed at how conciliatory he was towards the south. He was following Lincoln’s ideals.
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