Posted on 08/05/2008 12:11:25 PM PDT by cowboyway
TAMPA, FLA. - Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket.
Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-75 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the highway intersection.]
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
The 15th Alabama fought very bravely, making uphill attacks against a well-ensconced enemy.
It was a very near thing and could easily have gone the other way.
Lee was not feeling well physically.
He was feeling worse at Chancellorsville and that didn't stop him.
Stuart wasn't there on the first and second day to provide reconnaissance.
Lee was his commander and Stuart's foibles were well-known to him.
The “expert” and back-stabber Longstreet deliberately tried to sabotage Lee's plans.
An unsubstantiated Lost Cause slander designed to make Lee appear the perfect and blameless hero and Longstreet the Judas goat.
Also, Custer was where Lee didn't know he was - behind the Union Lines - and the attempt on the third day to break the Union Lines would have gone off like a charm had Stuart not been delayed by Custer.
Custer was on the extreme Union right to the east of Culp's Hill and not behind Union lines southwest of Culp's Hill.
Stuart was not delayed by Custer, he was defeated by Custer. He was delayed by himself and his own vanity. Stuart had one job to do at Gettysburg after his belated arrival, and he failed utterly.
Lee planned to have Pickett and his unit hit the front of the Union Lines at the same time and place that Stuart was supposed to hit them from the rear, then roll them up on the flanks. It was a good plan and would have probably worked had the luck of the draw not stopped it.
It was not the luck of the draw. Lee made the assumption that Union cavalry would repeat the errors made by McClellan at Antietam (holding his cavalry completely in reserve) or Hooker at Chancellorsville (sending the bulk of his cavalry far behind enemy lines). Instead, Lee duplicated Hooker's Chancellorsville error - ensuring that he would not have adequate intelligence - and Meade intelligently used his cavalry on the Third Day to protect his flanks to avoid being rolled up.
The fact is, Union generalship left a lot to be desired and Lee was a pretty crafty and able commander.
But Lee was human and made mistakes - and his mistakes at Gettysburg cost him the battle. If he can take credit for Longstreet's masterly performance at Antietam and Stuart's brilliant performance at Chancellorsville, then he take blame for their failings at Gettysburg.
The fact that it took so many years for a part of the Country with so many more men and so much more industry and total control of the seas to defeat the South indicates where the real military talents lay.
The South had better generals from 1861-1864, no question.
And had Lee not decided to surrender at Gettysburg and save both the North and South and their civilian populations the cost of a long an uncertain guerrilla war, fighting may have gone until the 20th century.
Lee did not surrender at Gettysburg. Perhaps you are thinking of Appomattox Courthouse. There was a guerrilla war both before and after Lee surrendered. The guerrilla war was crushed handily.
And you can compare the way Lee treated northern civilians to the way that savage Sheridan and that other Savage Sherman treated the southern population to see who the real primitives were.
Popular myths, but Sherman and Sheridan did in GA and VA exactly what Early and Stuart did in MD and PA.
Sheridan and Sherman set the ground rules for the horrors of the Boer War, WW1, WW2 and all successive wars which involved attacks on civilian populations as a deliberate matter of policy.
More myths.
Attacks on civilians were never a matter of policy in the Boer War, WWI or WWII.
And Sherman and Sheridan did not attack civilians - they requisitioned what they needed from civilians and destroyed militarily significant rail links, storage facilities and buildings. They did not gather Southern civilians into camps as the British did with the Boers.
And if anyone was a precursor to the military doctrine of WWI it was Lee, with his thorough entrenchment of Petersburg.
By the way, I'm not a southerner.
Neither was Clement Vallandigham.
Well if you truly believe in research and evidence then that already puts you way ahead of most of your Southron cohorts.
He had every advantage of birth and wealth, and was raised to have a finely tuned sense of honor and decorum.
He chose a military career out of devotion to the example of his father the Revolutionary hero.
He was exemplary in every way.
And then he was faced with the choice between honoring his oath as an officer of the US Army and offending his neighbor's sensibilities, or breaking his oath and saving face.
He chose the latter.
It's interesting how one bad choice can affect the entire life of even the most accomplished and gracious individual.
I cannot speak from personal experience of course, not having been involved in the war. However, I'm a big fan of Don Troiani, who is probably the preeminent artist specializing in painting the rebellion, and what look to me to be versions of this flag frequently appear in his work. Troiani is a fanatic for accuracy, so I have no reason to believe that this flag wasn't used by confederate regiments in one form or another.
“And I don’t want no pardon
For anything I’ve done”.
The fact is, so did confederate.
And had Lee not decided to surrender at Gettysburg and save both the North and South and their civilian populations the cost of a long an uncertain guerrilla war, fighting may have gone until the 20th century.
Hardly. Lee considered the idea and immediately dropped it because he knew that any guerilla war would hit the Southern population the hardest. As he explained to Porter Alexander, who had advocated such a plan, "We must consider its effect on the country as a whole. Already it is demoralized by the four years of war. If I took your advice, the men would be without rations and under no control of officers. They would be compelled to rob and steal in order to live. They would become mere bands of marauders, and the enemy's cavalry would pursue them and overrun many sections they may never have occasion to visit. We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from." Any such campaign would have been brief, destructive, and would have left the South even more devestated than it was. And Lee knew that.
And you can compare the way Lee treated northern civilians to the way that savage Sheridan and that other Savage Sherman treated the southern population to see who the real primitives were.
You might want to look into that. The confederate treatment of Union civilians during their campaigns in the North wasn't a whole lot different than what you complain about Northern soldiers doing. In fact, the treatment of Southern civilains by the confederate army wasn't a whole lot different than what you complain about Northern soldiers doing.
“Lee was not feeling well physically.
He was feeling worse at Chancellorsville and that didn’t stop him.”
Military events are often impacted by uncontrollable factors. There is no way to defintely judge the relative impact of Lee’s health on the Chancellorsville or Gettysburg campaign. In my opinion it was a factor and may have had a greater impact at Gettysburg given the circumstances. Lee was under a lot of pressure, was away from his source of supplies, and operating on hostile ground. Also, unlike his opposing commander, he had been in overall charge of his army for a longer time with far worse supply and manpower problems. The stress must have been immense.
“Lee was his commander and Stuart’s foibles were well-known to him.”
Every commander has his own style of leadership and Lee’s had proven itself in other campaigns. He had to work with the personalities of his staff.
“An unsubstantiated Lost Cause slander designed to make Lee appear the perfect and blameless hero and Longstreet the Judas goat.”
That’s your opinion. Reams of material have been written on both side of the issue and my opinion is Longstreet was a mediocre leader with a greater sense of his own abilties than they deserved and I think he was envious of Lee. It is also my opinion and that of others that Longstreet did not direct the effort on the third day to the best of his abilities as he wanted that to fail as he disagreed with Lee over tactics. Lee never criticized anyone for what happened at Gettysburg or anywhere else to my knowledge but Longstreet made it quite clear who he blamed for not following his (Longstreet’s) plans.
“Custer was on the extreme Union right to the east of Culp’s Hill and not behind Union lines southwest of Culp’s Hill.”
Stuart was supposed to sweep around behind the Union lines and hit them from the rear at the same time and place as Pickett. He was delayed by an attack by Custer. Due to Custer’s attack the planned assault by Stuart on the rear of the Union lines never occurred. Had it succeeded the result of the battle and possibly the entire might have been very different. It is of course, not possible to know exactly what was planned as Lee never discussed it and no documents remain if any ever existed on this subject. Read “Lee’s Real Plan at Gettyburg” by Harmon.
“It was not the luck of the draw. ....”
But it was. Lee assumed Meade would be as inept as his several precedessors, and had the timing of Custer’s and Stuart’s movements not coincided as they did the results may have been very different. Campaigning in retrospect is always easier than in the pressure of the moment.
“But Lee was human and made mistakes - and his mistakes at Gettysburg cost him the battle. If he can take credit for Longstreet’s masterly performance at Antietam and Stuart’s brilliant performance at Chancellorsville, then he take blame for their failings at Gettysburg.”
Lee was human and humans make mistakes. But the result of Lee’s actions at Gettybsurg was not due to an entirely flawed plan. He had a logical reason for doing what he did and had circumstances turned out differently he very well may have succeeded. Luck in war is as important as skill.
“Lee did not surrender at Gettysburg. “
I know. I was thinking Gettysburg, not Appomatox when I wrote that.
“There was a guerrilla war both before and after Lee surrendered. The guerrilla war was crushed handily.”
It was a very ineffective one and was not directed by any responsible leaders. Had Lee been involved, or any of his lieutenants, it would have been a far more serious matter.
Read “April, 1864: The Year That Saved Americ”
“Popular myths, but Sherman and Sheridan did in GA and VA exactly what Early and Stuart did in MD and PA.”
I don’t think so. Numerous books have described Sheridan’s destruction and warfare against civilians in the Shenandoah valley as well as Sherman’s incredible swath of destruction in the deep south.
“More myths.
Attacks on civilians were never a matter of policy in the Boer War, WWI or WWII.”
The British government used a deliberate polic of interning the wives and children of Boers in what would later be called “concentration camps” during the Boer War. The causalty rate from starvation and disease in these camps was extremely high. It was done deliberately to break the will of the Boer troops. It worked.
The Germans didn’t deliberately target civilians in Serbia and in Belgium in WW1? Hitler targeted civilians in WW2 and so did Stalin. The Japanese rape of Nanking was just one in a series of sordid attacks on Asian civlians.
We did also. At Hieroshima and Dresden.
“Neither was Clement Vallandigham.”
So, maybe I WOULD have been a Copperhead. Maybe not. So what? Anderson at Ft. Sumter was a southerner. Did that make him a traitor, or a man who followed his conscience, just like Lee?
“Obama and others have already been elected. Does that mean we’re in Stage 4?”
Ladyjane, I believe we’re headed into Stage 4 and early attempts at Sharia Law [Stage 5] are underway....I first noticed it when the school board who came under pressure to put Muslim holidays on the school calendar.
I don’t argue about 1861-1865 much any more....it’s not really about the war anyway....it’s about the Civil Rights movement.
Meanwhile the coming CW slips deeper into it’s foundation phase with increasing tribalization accompanied by small scale ethnic cleansing.
“And then he was faced with the choice between honoring his oath as an officer of the US Army and offending his neighbor’s sensibilities, or breaking his oath and saving face.”
I don’t think it was as simple as that and had the South prevailed, it would not be termed a “bad” choice. Even as the South did not prevail, I doubt if Lee thought his choice was a bad one, but the one his conscience told him he had to make.
Most Northerners probably had a greater sense of nationhood than did most Southerners. Before the Civil War, it was “these United States” and after the civil war it became “the United States”. But even northerners had a strong sense of statehood back then.
I think Lee thought as his father would have thought - that the Union was a voluntary compact of states and one’s primary loyalty was to one’s state. You may think his choice was a bad one, but in Lee’s thinking he made the only honorable one, regardless of circumstances.
“The fact is, Union generalship left a lot to be desired...
The fact is, so did confederate. “
I guess Union generalship was more so - they lost most of the early battles.
“’And had Lee not decided to surrender at Gettysburg and save both the North and South and their civilian populations the cost of a long an uncertain guerrilla war, fighting may have gone until the 20th century.”
“Hardly. Lee considered the idea and immediately dropped it because he knew that any guerilla war would hit the Southern population the hardest. As he explained to Porter Alexander, who had advocated such a plan, “We must consider its effect on the country as a whole. Already it is demoralized by the four years of war. If I took your advice, the men would be without rations and under no control of officers. They would be compelled to rob and steal in order to live. They would become mere bands of marauders, and the enemy’s cavalry would pursue them and overrun many sections they may never have occasion to visit. We would bring on a state of affairs it would take the country years to recover from.” Any such campaign would have been brief, destructive, and would have left the South even more devestated than it was. And Lee knew that.”
???????????
And his decision didn’t save both the north and the south??
“They would be compelled to rob and steal in order to live. They would become mere bands of marauders..”
Or like Sherman’s troopers.
“You might want to look into that. The confederate treatment of Union civilians during their campaigns in the North wasn’t a whole lot different than what you complain about Northern soldiers doing. In fact, the treatment of Southern civilains by the confederate army wasn’t a whole lot different than what you complain about Northern soldiers doing.”
Well, give me some source books on the actions of Southerners in the north. Aside from the burning of Chambersburg, I can’t think of anything else.
Sheridan deliberately wasted civilian homes and farms in the Shenandoah Valley and so did Sherman. Sherman’s march created a swath of devastation miles in width and signs of the damage lasted generations.
When Lee invaded the north during the Antietam campaign, a number of Confederates refused to follow him as they stated they were fighting to protect their own country, not to invade somebody else’s.
I have never read anything about the Southern army burning the homes and farms of southerners.
Fort Henry, Fort Donelson, Iuka, Corinth, Shiloh, New Orleans, Memphis, Nashville, all early Union victories.
And his decision didn’t save both the north and the south??
No. The scattered soldiers would have been in Virginia and North Carolina. They would have been forced to live off the local populace, who would have borne the brunt of their depredations.
Or like Sherman’s troopers.
Those were Lee's words, not mine. He knew his men better than you or I did.
Well, give me some source books on the actions of Southerners in the north. Aside from the burning of Chambersburg, I can’t think of anything else.
There are a couple of them, but one of the best is a recent one, "General Lee's Army: From Victory to Collapse" by Joseph Glatthaar. That's a fairly recent look at the Army of Northern Virginia, especially intersting in that he spends comparatively little time discussing battles but instead concentrates on organization, leaders, weapons, training, discipline, support, and what have you. Among other things, Glatthaar deals with the actions of Lee's soldiers towards civilians, both North and South.
It's a debate. I would argue that Lee's sprains at Gettysburg were a lesser concern that the nearly-fatal bout of pericarditis he suffered just before Chancellorsville, and I would argue that the pressure was greater at Chancellorsville - at Chancellorsville he was very poorly provisioned and risked being encircled and destroyed by a vastly superior Union force with Longstreet's division posted more than a hundred miles away. At Gettysburg he was as well-provisioned as he had ever been and did not have to risk battle if he didn't want to.
I think the stress at Chancellorsville was greater: had Hooker been successful in his plans, the Army of Northern Virginia would have been destroyed in detail.
It is also my opinion and that of others that Longstreet did not direct the effort on the third day to the best of his abilities as he wanted that to fail as he disagreed with Lee over tactics.
Longstreet did not want Pickett's Charge to fail - he believed it was doomed to failure from the beginning, and he was concerned that the aftermath of the charge would have been the destruction of the ANV.
I don't think he was engaging in a petty squabble - he was trying to stave off total disaster. If Longstreet's men hadn't survived sufficiently intact to cover the retreat, the ANV could well have been smashed to pieces. One could with equal justice argue that Longstreet's foresight saved Lee's blunder from becoming a total strategic defeat.
Stuart was supposed to sweep around behind the Union lines and hit them from the rear at the same time and place as Pickett. He was delayed by an attack by Custer. Due to Custer’s attack the planned assault by Stuart on the rear of the Union lines never occurred. Had it succeeded the result of the battle and possibly the entire might have been very different. It is of course, not possible to know exactly what was planned as Lee never discussed it and no documents remain if any ever existed on this subject. Read “Lee’s Real Plan at Gettyburg” by Harmon.
That's a good read. A thumbnail summary is this: on Day 1 there was no real plan. On Day 2 the plan was to roll up the Union's left and right flanks, but that plan failed at Culp's Hill and Little Round Top. On Day 3 the plan was to make a frontal assault combined with a cavalry flank movement on the Union right. In the event, Pickett's Charge came far closer to success than Stuart's flank movement.
But it was. Lee assumed Meade would be as inept as his several precedessors
Thus it was not the luck of the draw. Lee blundered. It was not as if Lee correctly anticipated a strong cavalry defense on the Union right, and despite his preparations it failed anyway. That would be bad luck. In assuming that Meade would make the exact same mistake that McClellan made at Antietam, Lee allowed his contempt for Union captains - and not any actual reconnaissance - to dictate his battle plan. That was bad generalship.
It was a very ineffective one and was not directed by any responsible leaders. Had Lee been involved, or any of his lieutenants, it would have been a far more serious matter.
Jubal Early, John Bell Hood and Nathan Bedford Forrest all attempted to get a guerrilla war going. Two of them were Lee's lieutenants. All three were leaders of national reknown in the Confederacy. Their attempts failed because the South was used up - thanks to Farragut, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.
Numerous books have described Sheridan’s destruction and warfare against civilians in the Shenandoah valley as well as Sherman’s incredible swath of destruction in the deep south.
Again, there are any number of books that will retail the most scurrilous stories about Sherman and Sheridan, but they did not send their troops to attack civilians. Sherman's goals and actions are very frankly described by him: to seize all forage and materiel in his army's path and to destroy all rail links that could be used to reinforce the Confederacy along its internal lines. When he moved from Georgia to South Carolina, he amended these goals to include the destruction of the property of the leaders of the secession, just as the ANV had fired the property of abolitionists and Unionists in MD and PA.
The British government used a deliberate polic of interning the wives and children of Boers in what would later be called “concentration camps” during the Boer War.
Is that an attack? I guess it depends on hiow you define "attack." In any case, Sherman did not intern the wives and children of the Confederates. So obviously he was not responsible for setting any precedent in that regard.
The Germans didn’t deliberately target civilians in Serbia and in Belgium in WW1? Hitler targeted civilians in WW2 and so did Stalin. The Japanese rape of Nanking was just one in a series of sordid attacks on Asian civlians.
Nothing Sherman did in Georgia is even remotely related to those atrocities. Stalin and Hitler were intent on eliminating populations. Sherman's goal was the seizure of property.
He had no interest in slaughtering Confederate civilians, and he never enacted such an alien policy.
We did also. At Hieroshima and Dresden.
Leftist propaganda. Both Hiroshima and Dresden were legitimate military targets and their destruction was undertaken not to kill civilians but to cripple enemy logistics.
So, maybe I WOULD have been a Copperhead. Maybe not. So what?
The choice between evil and good is an important choice. Vallandigham chose slavery and treason.
“General Lee’s Army: From Victory to Collapse” by Joseph Glatthaar. “
Thanks. I WILL check it out.
The victories you mentioned, I believe were all in the west under Grant. Union performance in the East was miserable until Grant took over. But they WERE early victories.
You know, you had me there until the last comment.
One ma’s traitor is another man’s hero. I don’t know much about Vallandigham beyond the fact that he was a militant copperhead.
In the Revolution, Tories were considered traitors but the Whigs. But were they really, or just following their consciences like Anderson, Lee, and perhaps Vallandigham.
I would consider Arnold a real traitor as he changed sides for purely personal profit. If a person sincerely believes that what they are doing politically is correct, does that make them a traitor?
“Leftist propaganda. Both Hiroshima and Dresden were legitimate military targets and their destruction was undertaken not to kill civilians but to cripple enemy logistics.”
Not sure about that. I wouldn’t waste tears on civilians killed in either situation, personally, but I think the “collateral damage” in those attacks was so massive and would have been so obvious to the planners that its hard to think they were not planned. There is no doubt in my minid that Dresden was payback time by the Brits for the bombing of London.
“He had no interest in slaughtering Confederate civilians, and he never enacted such an alien policy.”
Perhaps. But all things proceed by degrees and by the military practise of the time his acitons were pretty shocking. Its also hard to believe that these actions did not result in substantial civilian collateral damage either directly or due to exposure and starvation created.
“Nothing Sherman did in Georgia is even remotely related to those atrocities. Stalin and Hitler were intent on eliminating populations. Sherman’s goal was the seizure of property.”
Again, all things proceed by degrees. And I think Sherman himself stated that he intended to make war so horrible to the civilian population by this actions that they would no longer support the war effort. Connecting the dots there leads to some frighting conclusions.
“So obviously he was not responsible for setting any precedent in that regard.”
All things proceed by degrees.
“..just as the ANV had fired the property of abolitionists and Unionists in MD and PA.”
Is the source for this the book you mentioned in this post?
“Jubal Early, John Bell Hood and Nathan Bedford Forrest all attempted to get a guerrilla war going. Two of them were Lee’s lieutenants. All three were leaders of national reknown in the Confederacy. Their attempts failed because the South was used up - thanks to Farragut, Grant, Sherman and Sheridan.”
Aside from Forrest, the other two were not very effective leaders, were they? The South had many leaders - these were but three. Even one of those - Mosby - became a good Republican afterwards.
In the East, yes. Not in the West.
And his decision didn’t save both the north and the south??
Nope. The guerrillas would not have been able to project force into the North, so they would be forced to live off the Southern people - and most Lost Causers don't like to discuss it, but the majority of the Southern people were sick and tired of the war and a sizable minority of Southerners were sick of the Confederacy, period.
For the last two years of the war, almost no one from North Carolina was bothering to respond to draft orders, thousands and thousands of Confederate soldiers were deserting, and areas like East Tennessee, southeastern Mississippi, northern Alabama, northern Georgia and western North Carolina more or less ignored the Confederate government and the Confederate war effort.
Read "Bitterly Divided: The South's Inner Civil War" by David Williams. To survive and succeed, a guerrilla army needs to "swim in the sea of the people" and the people of the South did not have a whole lot of resources for guerrillas to live off and not much tolerance for guerrillas after they had already been despoiled by successive waves of deserters moving through their territory.
Or like Sherman’s troopers.
Before Sherman set foot in Georgia, Lee's troopers had been through western Maryland three times as well as southwestern Pennsylvania. While Lee's commanders often claimed they paid for what they took, the reality is that sometimes they offered receipts "reimbursable" by the Confederate government and sometimes they didn't. But they took whatever they wanted and destroyed what they wanted to destroy.
When Lee invaded the north during the Antietam campaign, a number of Confederates refused to follow him as they stated they were fighting to protect their own country, not to invade somebody else’s.
And just before Antietam, some Union units refused to fight because by their reckoning they had reached the end of their enlistment and they claimed that it was not because they didn't want to fight - it was a matter of honor and legal principle.
I would suspect a similar psychology.
I have never read anything about the Southern army burning the homes and farms of southerners.
Then you should read up on the so-called "Free State Of Winston" - a region of northern Alabama that "seceded" from the Confederacy and whose inhabitants had their homes and property seized or destroyed by the Alabama home guard - a home guard that consisted in large part of well-connected Alabamians who were excused from having to fight at the front because they owned a sufficient number of slaves to meet the exemption.
The three Curtis brothers - Joel, George and Thomas - of Winston, AL were one example of Southerners victimized by Southerners.
Joel refused to take up arms against his country, so he was assassinated by a sniper.
George, enraged by this, left home and signed up with the Union Army. Incredibly, he actually returned home on leave. An informer told the authorities, and the home guard broke into his house at dinner and murdered him in front of his wife and children. Thomas logically feared for his life and fled to Texas. An Alabama home guard informed on him in Houston and Texas Confederate soldiers took him outside of town and shot him execution-style without trial.
Their homes were seized and their wives and children evicted to live in the hills of northern Alabama.
The Curtises were far from alone. Winston, AL and its surrounding towns raised the 1st Alabama Cavalry US Volunteer regiment that rode with Sherman through Georgia and fought against the Confederate Army that had claimed their homes and livelihoods.
Indeed they are, because treason is the betrayal of an external moral obligation, not a function of one's personal feelings.
I think the “collateral damage” in those attacks was so massive and would have been so obvious to the planners that its hard to think they were not planned.
The very reson why Dresden is so famous/infamous is because of the freak occurrence of a firestorm that had never occurred in any previous bombing runs, including many runs that dropped multiple times the amount of ordinance dropped on Dresden.
The weather, the fact that Dresden lacked the extensive network of air-raid shelters that characterized Berlin and Hamburg, and the fact that Dresden had far more wooden than concrete/brick construction - unlike other German cities - resulted in a casualty count far above what the Allies or the Nazis would have expected.
No one had any idea what the casualties at Hiroshima might be - the US had only tested the weapon in desert areas.
by the military practise of the time his acitons were pretty shocking
Not at all.
Every general of the Civil War was a student of the Napoleonic Wars and were well aware of the tactics employed by French troops in Spain.
Sherman's conduct was quite restrained compared to Napoleon's in the Iberian peninsula.
There was nothing shocking about Sherman's march in historical context, except for the country in which it was taking place.
And I think Sherman himself stated that he intended to make war so horrible to the civilian population by this actions that they would no longer support the war effort.
And he did so, not by murdering civilians, but by seizing property - showing civilians that war had a cost.
Again, all things proceed by degrees.
Killing people and seizing livestock do not differ in degree - they differ in kind.
Aside from Forrest, the other two were not very effective leaders, were they?
They certainly were responsible for thousands of Union casualties.
'States rights' is a commonly used term (I've heard Ann Coulter use this term and she was editor of her law review) that is derived from the original states being sovereign.
Of course it does, but it says nothing about states having "rights."
Nor does it say anything about 'the people' having 'rights':
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Your posted link is full of rhetoric, but it boils down to: The federal government isn't doing enough to force free states to hunt down escaped slaves.
You read exactly what you wanted to and ignored the rest. Typical public school revisionist history yankee.
"Either use federal power to force Ohio and New Jersey to obey South Carolina, or we will secede."
Once again, you've either proven that you don't have reading comprehension or, you're a typical propagandizing yankee.
First of all, that document WAS the secession instrument. It wasn't a threat to secede.
Second, it documented the states that committed unconstitutional acts, such as Ohio and New Jersey and stated that if some states could violate the constitution to the economic detriment of other states without a legal remedy, then the constitution was no longer valid and the 'union' was a farce.
"States' rights" indeed! What a joke.
Have some more Kool-Aid, idiot.
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