Posted on 05/16/2015 5:12:04 AM PDT by OttawaFreeper
The North rejoiced: The rebellion had been put down and the Union saved. But Northerners also breathed a sigh of relief. Many had feared that the Confederacy would not accept defeat, but instead would continue the struggle by means of guerrilla warfare. Indeed, Lee’s chief of artillery, E. Porter Alexander, had suggested this option before Lee’s surrender. The Confederate president, Jefferson Davis, also wished to continue the war in this manner. But Lee rejected the guerrilla option in favor of unifying the country. And General Joseph Johnston defied Davis’s orders to continue hostilities, instead surrendering his force to William Tecumseh Sherman at Durham Station in North Carolina in order to “save the people [and] spare the blood of the army.” But in reality, the war was not over. It would continue for nearly another decade and a half in the form of Reconstruction.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationalreview.com ...
i dunno but if he was really really smart he would have worked to avoid a civil war and deconstruct slavery in a way that would not have caused the problems we have today. a lot of Black and white slaves to government. i’m not a civil war history expert but this is just my opinion from where i see things today. Fed government control based on the 14th amendment which wasn’t needed. Once there was no slavery everyone born in the US had the same status under the existing constitution. enforcement of the constitution which didn’t happen is the same problem we have today. make another law, make another amendment, don’t enforce the one we have.
Rome forced a harsh peace on Carthage in the 2nd Punic War before destroying it in the 3rd. The analogy here is that a harsh peace was imposed by the victor on the defeated, and that cannot be credibly denied even if the severity is debatable.
The Spanish Civil War had much wider participation- it was a flash point between fascism and communism (both nihilistic ideologies that sought annihilation of each other) particularly in regard to the involvement of Germany, Italy, and the Comintern. The American Civil War saw no such outside interference; the Falangists were also attempting to take control of the entire country whereas the Confederacy was attempting merely to leave the Union and form its own. The comparison, therefore, is quite tenuous.
I note you didn’t bother to point out a great civil war in history in which the defeated were treated less harshly. Which was my point.
Calling Reconstruction a Carthaginian peace is hyperbole.
It needs to be realized that the European monarchic powers had a strong interest in seeing the US ripped apart. Britain ran spy networks from Canada against the North (Google Albert Pike) and France imposed the Maximillian dictatorship in Mexico with the hope of a western flanking operation. Britain was contemplating actively breaking the Northern blockade of Southern ports with their navy when Czar Nicholas I threatened to throw the Russian navy against them. Russia saved our azz and helped keep the European powers at bay during our Civil War.
By the standards of the day, did Lincoln’s security people fail him?
Were there standards in place for the protection of the President that were relaxed on the day of his assassination, or was it just a case of the assassin getting through the barriers as they existed at that point in time?
In my opinion, by the standards of the day, Kennedy’s security people did fail him. How they could let him ride in an open car past multi-story buildings with no rooftop observers (or any observers anywhere looking at those buildings) was, to me, a failure of security standards as they existed at the time.
Can we say the same for the Lincoln assassination, or not?
“I note you didn’t bother to point out a great civil war in history in which the defeated were treated less harshly. “
A pointless task- ‘great’ is a vague criteria that will be defined by you as anything other than whatever war I would list.
There was no "right" policy. Rebuilding the country was a thankless task. Somebody was bound to find fault with whatever was done and whatever happened. And the things that most people object to now weren't what most people objected to earlier. More like the opposite.
The awful calamity of civil war is a wound that has not been allowed to heal. Both North—and South tolerate each other almost like the Sunni and Shia of Islam.We have much in common—yet much that to this day divide us.
Really? We aren't killing each other in the streets. Compared to what goes on in other countries -- even compared to the Black-White conflicts going on now -- North-South hostility isn't that big a thing. A lot of the time, it's just a matter of bloggers trying to get attention by stirring up old enmities.
Silly. It was a volatile situation. A lot of different things could have happened. Maybe Southerners would have realized how foolish the whole thing was and given it up. That was certainly what unionists hoped for and expected.
I would suggest that the secessionist leadership wanted a major break, a point of no return. They also wanted something dramatic to tip Virginia and the Upper South, which had rejected secession, into the secessionist camp. If the event was dramatic enough, it might bring the Border States into the Confederacy.
Also, Davis and his government were like the French Revolutionary leader who went running after the crowd saying "I must follow them for I am their leader." They had to get out in front of the hotheads in South Carolina and elsewhere and show that they were really running the show. They had to demonstrate their leadership and earn public support somehow.
So no, they weren't going to sit on their hands, and they weren't necessarily "manipulated" into anything either.
I presume you mean Lincoln. In fact the insurrection began even before he took office and he was playing defense from the word go. The Lincoln administration took every reasonable effort at moderation and negotiation but the slavocracy wasn't interested in anything except war.
Were there standards in place for the protection of the President that were relaxed on the day of his assassination, or was it just a case of the assassin getting through the barriers as they existed at that point in time?
Good questions. Presidential protection was very lax in those days. Indeed, the Secret Service was created in 1865 to deal with counterfeiters and only began to protect the president in 1901 after McKinley was assassinated.
Lincoln did have a guard -- four policemen rotated as presidential bodyguards. Three of them had very good records. It was the other guy who was on duty that night. More here.
There is some evidence to indicate that that analogy is not so very far off. I certainly keep an open mind regarding it.
Reconstruction only lasted, at the longest, what, 15 years?
But the Voting Rights Act of 1965 has been with us 50 years, and like a boot on our necks, let’s the federal government have the final say in all our political decisions, even to include how we incorporate our towns and cities.
Everyone should have the right to vote, but those who kept blacks from voting have long passed. Why do Southern states still have to have this imposed on them, but not the Northern and Western states, some of which have more bigotry then here?
Cynical is my middle name. You do know that Diogenes is the father of Cynicism? That Johnson was a Racist Southern Democrat who had the typical Democrat attitude regarding Blacks is not lost on me. I just don't think he anticipated that giving them government housing and welfare would result in the destruction of the black family which subsequently occurred.
In other words, I don't think Johnson was that smart. I think he could see the votes, but never thought about it much beyond that. Johnson was a good politician, but a brain surgeon he was not. Most Democrats had no idea what was going to happen. The sole exception was Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who looked into the situation and wrote a treatise about it. The rest of the Democrat party was just ignorant stupid power seekers, same as today.
Lincoln was a dedicated abolitionist. He campaigned on his opposition to slavery. He could not run away from the issue, nor finesse it in such a manner as to retain the Southern states. They saw his election as proof that they engine of their economy would never be accepted by the rest of the Union, and that it was only a matter of time before slavery was abolished in the Union.
Lincoln had two choices. Either let them go, or use the superior industrial and military might of the North to subjugate them and force them back into the Union. There was no way he was going to negotiate his way out of the situation.
That is an interesting theory and is also probably a good stab in the direction of the truth. That does not preclude the possibility that Lincoln manipulated them too.
A lot of events are vector sums of numerous interacting factors. Both possibilities could be concurrently true.
OK. Any civil war lasting more then 3 years.
Johnson absolutely understood that government dependency would facilitate permanent bondage. This has been a traditional ploy in the old south since reconstruction. It sold in the North as beneficence and it was understood in the South as a structural tenet of racism.
A civil war is a war within a country. Lincoln’s decision to invade the Confederate States of America was not a war within one country.
the csa was never a nation. No real nation ever formally recognized their legitimacy.
Linmcoln viewed the war as civil, opposing traitors. The South insisted on the Commonwealth as a voluntary membership. The fixed membership of the Union prevailed.
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