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Posted on 01/15/2011 2:24:43 PM PST by BigReb555
Young people will get a school holiday in remembrance of Dr. Martin Luther King whose birthday is January 15th. But, will anyone tell them that January 19th is also the birthday of Robert E. Lee?
(Excerpt) Read more at cumminghome.com ...
"The framers of our Consttution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken up by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession."
General Lee must have been heartbroken when he was faced with the decision to follow his State...
“General Lee must have been heartbroken when he was faced with the decision to follow his State...”
Sometimes you have to do what you have to do.
Lots of good comments on this thread. I am a blood descendant of Robert E. Lee, carrying proudly his last name as my middle one. While not perfect (as can be witnessed at Gettysburg)I still believe that he was one of the truly great men of his age.
On another matter, has anyone here ever read the book by Harry Turtledove, The Guns of the South? It is a great piece of alternate history. In it the South wins, thanks to the help of men who come back from the future to provide them with the AK-47. In it is the view that I have always held. If the South had been victorious it would have eventually emancipated the slave through a gradual process of emancipation. Reply privately if you have read this book or are interested.
Guns of the South is in view on my bookshelf right now. A very interesting piece of sci-fi/alternate history.
I was thinking more like the U.S. and Great Britain. Following the Revolutionary War, the U.S. and Britain fought one more war, almost fought one or two more, and didn't really ally on anything until the First World War. Isn't it likely that relations between the U.S. and the Confederacy would be similar?
I've come to the conclusion, personally, that Lincoln had a secret war platform, and that he and the leading Republicans acted in full knowledge and pursuit of that platform. That the exposition of that platform was the substance of Lincoln's "unrecorded speech" to the 1856 Republican convention, and that those who heard it kept its key points, of coercively reorganizing the South and abolishing slavery everywhere, in confidence.
More recently, I've been half-persuaded that young Mr. Lincoln, as a member of the House of Representatives, was exposed to the thinking of former President John Quincy Adams, a fellow anti-Southern representative, about the opportunity a civil war might present, for the Northern States to seize and coerce the Southern States and "reorganize" their governments, i.e. drive the Southern politicians out of public life and install quislings in their stead who would do the bidding of the Interests.
I based my conclusion about a "secret platform" on reading about various bold, organized, obviously well-thought-out and yet secret steps Lincoln took before he entered office, as opposed to the steps he would have taken, had he been a conciliator instead, like President Buchanan.
StandWatie was definitely NOT non-sequitur.
How could you possibly be an apologist for something that needs no apology.
No, it doesn't. All it requires is an inspection of the time line to see that Lee resigned his commission in the U.S. Army before accepting a commission in the Virginia Militia.
Lee resigned on April 20, 1861, three days after Virginia's secession convention reported secession articles and called for a plebiscite, and two days after Lincoln, acting through Joseph Blair as his proxy, offered Lee a general's rank and command of the Union field armies.
Lee asked Winfield Scott to assign him other duties that would not involve fighting in Virginia against his neighbors and fellow-citizens, and Scott refused, telling Lee that if he didn't want to accept orders to fight against the South, he'd better resign his commission right away. He resigned promptly.
Lee's Virginia Militia commission as a major-general, dating from just a couple of days later, predates both Virginia's plebiscitary secession vote and Virginia's joining the Confederacy, as well as Lincoln's blockade (declaration of war) against Virginia and North Carolina. North Carolina didn't secede until May, and neither State seceded before Lincoln blockaded them on April 27, 1861.
There's also the matter of several exchanges of gunfire -- cannon fire -- between federal ships and batteries, and Southern ones, before Sumter. That all has to be considered as well.
Also, there were shooting episodes involving Virginia Militia batteries on the shore of Chesapeake Bay, and federal gunboats, after Sumter but while Virginia was still a State of the Union. There were two such blockade-related clashes before Virginia's voters took the State out of the Union on May 23rd, 1861.
On the other side of the ledger, some of Virginia's state government officials, led by Gov. Letcher, were engaged in correspondence and cooperative actions, or at least noises, with the provisional Confederate government while Virginia was still unseceded, for which they might have been liable in a court of law. None of these actions involved Gen. Lee personally, however.
Go you one better. Nathan Bedford Forrest sat down to dinner at the Jubilee of the Pole Bearers and made a speech about reconciliation. He an ex-slave trader, and they freedmen.
As for what is done these days in MLK's name, he might have second thoughts himself. Be fascinating to know what he'd have made of the current Pres_ent in the White House.
Slavery may not have been the only reason for secession, but four Confederate states that published a declaration of causes for their secession (Georgia, Mississippi, South Carolina, and Texas) all made it clear that slavery was the issue for those states.
Georgia's declaration of secession begins:
The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war.
Mississippi's A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union begins:
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Unlike the first two, South Carolina's Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union starts with the issue of sovereign rights of states. However, after discussing the principle, the declaration identifies one, and only one, right of South Carolina that was trampled by the federal government, slavery:
The ends for which the Constitution was framed are declared by itself to be "to form a more perfect union, establish justice, insure domestic tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare, and secure the blessings of liberty to ourselves and our posterity."
These ends it endeavored to accomplish by a Federal Government, in which each State was recognized as an equal, and had separate control over its own institutions. The right of property in slaves was recognized by giving to free persons distinct political rights, by giving them the right to represent, and burthening them with direct taxes for three-fifths of their slaves; by authorizing the importation of slaves for twenty years; and by stipulating for the rendition of fugitives from labor.
We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States. Those States have assume the right of deciding upon the propriety of our domestic institutions; and have denied the rights of property established in fifteen of the States and recognized by the Constitution; they have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
Texas's A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union lists slavery as the cause for secession:
The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then *a free, sovereign and independent nation* [emphasis in the original], the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states thereof,
The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.
Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?
The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States.
We can argue today about the reasons for secession - historians disagree and many men who made statements during the Civil War made contradictory statements. However, at the time of secession, representatives of these four states took the time to write down the reason for secession. The legislative bodies of these states voted on and approved these statements as the reason for secession. Each of these declarations of secession list the reason as slavery.
LLS
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No, it doesn't. All it requires is an inspection of the time line to see that Lee resigned his commission in the U.S. Army before accepting a commission in the Virginia Militia.
To commit treason, taking up arms against one's country or giving aid and comfort to the enemy, one isn't required to be an officer in the military, or to be in the military at all.
"The framers of our Consttution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was intended to be broken up by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is intended for 'perpetual union,' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession."
So . . . if Lee believed that the Constitution provided for a 'perpetual union," and then took up arms against the union . . . well, being a gentleman, Lee would have told us all that he committed treason. Actually, he did admit to treason in his post-war loyalty oath.
There may be good treason and bad treason, based upon the reason for taking up arms against your country, or giving aid and support to the enemy of your country. But for treason, we'd be singing "God Save the Queen." However, just because your treason is justified doesn't keep it from being treason. I'm certain Ethel Rosenberg had a reason to commit treason, and she would have argued the moral right to do so until her death. Jane Fonda probably felt it was morally right to commit treason.
There may be a moral right for a second, armed American Revolution at some point. I hope not. But none of that keeps Robert E. Lee from being a traitor - a gentleman and a traitor for what many believe was a just and righteous reason, particularly after the federal government has extended its powers far beyond the encroachments of 1860's Kansas. But a traitor.
So scoutmaster is that what you teach your pointy headed little Yankee boy scouts that the South was wrong and that Lee was a traitor? I want to know.
If so, you are a sick man indeed and shouldn't be in front of any scouts.
Wait a second. FReeper Non-Sequitur was tossed over some posts on a homosexuality/DADT thread. He was also posting as Drennan Whyte, a FR screen identity that went back to 2001. (Some people think he has also posted as Abin Sur, but that's another issue.)
But are you telling me that stand_watie was also Non-Sequitur? I don't think so -- stand was personal friends with, and attended the wedding of, a couple of NYC FReepers who got married (cyborg and Petronski). He was in one of the wedding pix. Are you sure?! I really don't think that's correct .....
I don't trust the venom in your voice. Link to the document, please.
Or to a trustworthy source -- by which I don't mean James McPherson or any of the other "Red-diaper" historians who've been running around blackguarding the South since the Progs started their move to rewrite Civil War history 20 years ago.
Cite and quote. I won't take your word for it.
Then please explain why a document signed under duress (arrest) should be considered valid by us, or by a court of law.
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So scoutmaster is that what you teach your pointy headed little Yankee boy scouts that the South was wrong and that Lee was a traitor? I want to know.
If so, you are a sick man indeed and shouldn't be in front of any scouts.
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Ummm. My Scouts (not all are Boy Scouts; some are Venturing Scouts) from the United States are United States citizens, not Yankees. In fact, my home Troop is in Georgia. Because I'm most involved in international Scouting, sometimes 'my' Boy Scouts are from other countries and I'm in Japan, Sweden, Mexico, England, or elsewhere.
I don't teach 'my' Scouts about the War Between the States.
I never said the South was right or wrong. That's an outstandingly complex issue. I agree with the concept of federalism and limits on the federal government's power. I recognize the difference between most state constitutions (which generally give rights to individuals) and the federal constitution (which gives limited rights to the government). I also know that slavery was and is an abhorrent practice. I'd be in favor of U.S. military intervention today to end slavery in other countries.
You've jumped to a lot of conclusions.
As for me being a 'sick man' - too 'sick' to be in front of Boy Scouts - I'd take offense to that if I felt it were coming from someone who had rationally analyzed the situation or who knew me.
LLS
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