Posted on 06/05/2013 7:52:32 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
Didn’t Lincoln celebrate the death of Southern soldiers?
Lincoln couldn’t do anything during Reconstruction, being dead.
Reconstruction politics changes several times, in response to conditions on the ground.
In questioning Lincoln, I would also question all would be Federalists. I wonder if Alexander Hamilton should be regarded as a Federalist tyrant?
In this case yes, I know of no file closing event where stragglers were shot. Then again once formed in a line of battle the Southern troops usual would not straggle.
That order was issued Feb 22nd '65. The troops were dug in trenches around Petersburg so forming a classic line of battle and attacking was not happening very often if at all.
Attempts by the Confederate government to do so, along with other efforts to suppress dissent in the seceded states—including intimidation by Confederate soldiers, militia, conscription and impressment agents, and “watchful secessionist neighbors”—often erupted into guerrilla warfare carried out against not only pro-government civilians but also Rebel military units.
Neely examined the records of the arrest and detention of over 4,000 civilians and concluded that the Confederate restrictions on the rights of civilians were at least equal to those of the Union. And the restriction began early. Indeed, Confederate authorities arrested a Florida newspaper correspondent on the same day Fort Sumter was fired upon and held him without trial. “There would never be a day during the Civil War when Confederate military prisons did not contain political prisoners.”
The Lost Cause narrative has portrayed Southerners as ardent supporters of individual rights above all else. But in the South, as in the North, most civilians accepted restrictions on their liberties because they believed the restrictions constituted temporary, necessary measures that ensured stability and would help win the war. Southern society was not nearly as “obsessive about liberty” as previously thought.
Neely’s most important sources are the records of the “habeas corpus commissioners,” a semi-official group of civilian lawyers who worked for the Confederate War Department. Operating with virtually no supervision or guidelines, the commissioners reviewed the cases of the civilian prisoners in Confederate military prisons, determining whether to release them, send them to a civilian court for trial, or leave them in jail indefinitely. Neely concludes that these commissioners in effect operated as “mobilization officers” by subjecting disloyal civilians to military service if possible and otherwise keeping them out of the way.
http://ashbrook.org/publications/oped-owens-07-civilliberty/
That would be Thomas Jackson, CSA.
So, I expect your apology shortly.
In what way?
Pickett was fairly famous for killing deserters, which was why he was sent to New Bern NC in the first place.
Rather like the bloods and Crips.
THE FLIGHT OF UNION MEN. – The Union men of the border counties in Virginia continue to seek refuge in Maryland from the frightful tyranny which the rebels are practicing in that State. – Within the last week upwards of fifth have crossed the river from Berkeley and Morgan counties, leaving behind them their families and homes, to avoid being pressed into service. One of the number brought with him the following notice which he took from a blacksmith shop in Morgan county: -
NOTICE. – All the militia belonging to the 89th Regiment V.M., are ordered to meet at Oakland, on Monday next, as early as they can, in order to march to head-quarters, Winchester, forthwith and I would make a friendly request of those men that failed to go before for them to turn out now, like true-hearted Virginians, and what they have done will be looked over, but if they do not regard this call they will work their own ruin. They can never be citizens of Virginia, and their property will be confiscated. The General will send troops of horse to Morgan as soon as we leave, and all those men that fail to do their duty will be hunted up, and what the consequences will be I am unable to say.
Sam’l Johnston,
July 24, 1861 Col. 89th Regiment V.M.
Less than half of the Waterford company obeyed the call to be mustered into rebel service. The company at Lovettsville sent ten men, and but four men went from the Hoysville company. Those that refused to array themselves under the rebel banner were Union men and courted the displeasure of the secessionists, and must be severly disciplined. A bitter war of ostracism and revenge was resorted to. Quite a number of Union men had been particularly demonstrative and had not hesitated to express themselves for the Union and its flag on every occasion. This class was threatened with punishment or arrest.
It will be remembered that a large portion of the citizens of Loudoun County were intensely loyal to the National Government. Many of them were willing to and some did suffer death rather than take up arms against the United States. They were generally comfortably situated, by industry and economy had accumulated a fair share of this world’s goods, and in maintaining their unswerving loyalty to the Union necessarily indicated a self sacrifice on their part of their property.
From Union citizens, who preferred to leave the State and all that was near and dear to them rather than go into the rebel army, their property, excepting their lands, was generally taken by that army.
They left their families in Loudoun, and if ever found visiting them they would be arrest and cast into a Southern prison, where their chances of lifer were very poor.
In December, 1861, William Smith, Armistead Magaha, Emanuel Ruse, and Isaac C. Slater had come from Maryland to visit their families, and on returning had got to the ferry opposite Berlin (now Brunswick), where they were arrested as spies, taken to Richmond and confined in Libby prison, where they almost starved to death. Slater, who was young and delicate, was reduced almost beyond recognition, and was years after his release regaining his health and strength.
In April, 1861, the galling yoke of secession was made still more oppressive to the Union citizens of Loudoun. The Loudoun Cavalry (Confederate) visited the farmers in the German and Quaker settlements, taking teams for the Confederate army. From many farmers a team of four horses and a wagon were taken, but where farmers were found with less than that number, one or two horses, or even one horse would be taken, and a wagon from others; thus making a complete four horse team from one or two small farmers. This property was taken with the promise that it would be returned, but this promise, like other promises of the Confederacy, was never fulfilled, neither did any of the citizens receive any compensation for the property thus taken, and taken at a time when the Confederacy had money to pay for supplies, if they had been actuated by honest motives.
http://cenantua.wordpress.com/2011/08/10/confederate-oppression-there-seems-to-be-a-trend-here/
Patrick Cleburne, a fiercely effective general in the Army of Tennessee, had broached the idea of arming slaves in exchange for emancipation in a memo that he read to an officers’ caucus in early January 1864. Cleburne’s suggestion received no support from Jefferson Davis’s administration; indeed, Cleburne was ordered to drop the matter. Yet by the fall of 1864, the Confederate government reconsidered the proposal in the face of battlefield setbacks, particularly William Tecumseh Sherman’s devastating march through Georgia and subsequent conquering of South Carolina, Abraham Lincoln’s reelection, and growing desertion from even Robert E. Lee’s army and consequent manpower shortages. The ensuing debate over emancipating and arming slaves took place in letters, newspaper editorials, and speeches from Confederate luminaries, such as Judah P. Benjamin, and Levine artfully mines these sources.
The proposal to enlist black slaves in the army excited considerable criticism, and that criticism, Levine points out, illustrated the contradictions inherent in the entire enterprise of the slave republic. Critics charged that in enlisting slaves the central purpose for which the Confederacy had been created—to preserve a slave-based society—would be abandoned. Further, for decades, Southern quack intellectuals had argued that black slaves were docile and content with bondage, even loyal and devoted to masters. The plan to arm slaves directly contradicted the myth of docility, while the necessity to offer freedom as an incentive to fight vitiated the myth of contentment.
Levine correctly notes the slaves’ own agency in their eventual freedom from bondage, for the debate within the Confederacy on arming the slaves was strongly influenced by wartime acts of slaves themselves. To those who argued that slaves would not fight, advocates pointed to the thousands of escaped slaves who had enlisted in the Union army and fought with valor and distinction. Further, Levine argues that growing black resistance on Southern plantations and farms prompted some to insist that home front safety demanded clapping slaves into the army. Just as the reality of thousands of escaped slaves crossing into the lines of the Union army forced the Lincoln administration and Congress to act, so, too, did the subsequent distinguished service of black Union troops force reconsideration of old assumptions regarding slave behavior in the South.
Perhaps most important, Levine dismisses a number of the arguments of Lost Cause adherents. After the war’s conclusion, Confederate devotees suggested that the willingness to abandon slavery proved that a desire for liberty from Northern tyranny and oppression motivated the formation of the Confederate government, not a desire to preserve slavery. Further, so the argument went, Cleburne, Lee, and Davis had all endorsed black Confederate troops and emancipation because slavery had never been central to their struggle. Yet Levine convincingly argues that only the exigencies of a failing war effort compelled the Confederate government and its principal officials to embrace emancipation as a tool to entice slaves into the army. Men like Lee and Davis continued to maintain that slavery worked for blacks and whites, and indeed intended to create a social and labor system as close to de facto slavery as possible in the post-emancipation South. Although J. D. B. De Bow and others initiated and perpetuated the “loyal slave” myth, Levine notes that the slaves’ evident thirst for freedom forced the Southern government to reluctantly offer emancipation as incentive to military service. Even then, few slaves took up arms for the Confederacy at the end of the war.
http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=14657
This provocative new study proves the existence of a de facto Confederate policy of giving no quarter to captured black combatants during the Civil War—killing them instead of treating them as prisoners of war. Rather than looking at the massacres as a series of discrete and random events, this work examines each as part of a ruthless but standard practice.
Author George S. Burkhardt details a fascinating case that the Confederates followed a consistent pattern of murder against the black soldiers who served in Northern armies after Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation. He shows subsequent retaliation by black soldiers and further escalation by the Confederates, including the execution of some captured white Federal soldiers, those proscribed as cavalry raiders, foragers, or house-burners, and even some captured in traditional battles.
Further disproving the notion of Confederates as victims who were merely trying to defend their homes, Burkhardt explores the motivations behind the soldiers’ actions and shows the Confederates’ rage at the sight of former slaves—still considered property, not men—fighting them as equals on the battlefield.
http://www.amazon.com/Confederate-Rage-Yankee-Wrath-Quarter/dp/B007K4U52M
Of course not. We have this little group of I guess paid dissers who come on every confederate thread and create chaos. I’m sure you and I don’t really care except for playing with them. They are provacateurs.
I mean who in the South really cares? They will be in the first die off when the SHTF as I feel confident none of them have an extra can of chili in the cupboard. But they will go out raging agains’t the old South. We are the new South and we are prepared. My only concern is that none of them wise up and try to move here. :-)
Good article. And surprisingly uncontroversial.
I saw part of the Bill Murray movie last week.
I don't want to give anything away but it gives a whole new meaning to the idea that Roosevelt created "work for idle hands".
I'll never think of him again without getting a little queasy.
Still waiting for proof about this statement.
So Lee’s own orders are not good enough? What, I have to show you rotten mean through the computer screen?
Have you found that cotton tax that you said was the cause of the secession yet?
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