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..
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.
Except for the two previous emancipation proclamations.
One of these inspired the rebel Governor of Virginia to complain that the Union forces were setting his own slaves free. And he wanted the Virginia general leading the rebel army to do something about it.
The rebel governor was Thomas Jefferson, the general was Washington, the Union forces were those of the United Kingdom of Great Britain, which included the British North American colonies in open rebellion.
The two emancipation proclamations were the Dunmore's and the Philipsburg proclamations. If London had defeated the "traitors" then slavery in north America could have ended 90 years earlier.
Sorry, but that's a misreading of history.
Germany's problem after the First World War was, they didn't feeeeeeel defeated, had never been invaded and were offered by Southerner US President Wilson "peace without victory'.
And "peace without victory" was perfect for Germans, just what they needed -- a twenty year break from war, then next time they'd show those verdammt Allies how to do it!
And plenty of Allied officials understood just what Germans intended in 1918, including our Army commander, Gen. Pershing, who wanted to march across Germany into Berlin to show the Germans who really won their war.
Another who understood was a young Under-Secretary of the Navy, in charge of naval codes & communications, a handsome fellow named... ah, yes, Franklin Roosevelt.
But Wilson's "peace without victory" prevailed until the Allies at Versailles began demanding reparations from Germany, and Wilson was too weak to stand his ground.
So yes, Germans felt "betrayed" & "stabbed in the back", but only because Wilson had promised them better and then, like any Democrat failed to deliver.
In fact, Germany in 1919 was treated certainly no worse than Germans treated countries they defeated, notably Belgium and Russia.
So the Allies in the Second World War intended not to repeat the mistakes of the First and instead could look back to the US Civil War where Union imposed costs on civilians (i.e., Sherman's march upgraded to 2.0 version became allied bombing) demanded Unconditional Surrender, militarily occupied the country for years afterwards, rooted out the root causes of the war -- slavery in one case, Nazism in the other -- and then welcomed the defeated people back into the family of states/nations.
But for those who just can't let go of hysterical historical hyperbole, let's also point out that Second World War Germany was, in fact, treated orders of magnitude more severely than were Confederates.
CondoleezzaProtege: "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."
No pro-Confederate on these threads accepts any comparison of Confederates to Nazis -- das ist verboten!!
So I am here only comparing Union Civil War actions to those of World War Allies.
The First World War taught us how not to do it, the Civil War taught Allies basics in how to do it.