Trump: 'Robert E. Lee was a great general'

The Hill ^ | 10/12/18 | CHRIS MILLS RODRIGO

[yesthatjallen]

President Trump praised Confederate Geader Robert E. Lee as "a great general" on Friday during a campaign rally in Lebanon, Ohio.

"So Robert E. Lee was a great general. And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia. He couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee," Trump said before launching into a monologue about Lee, Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

"He was going crazy. I don’t know if you know this story. But Robert E. Lee was winning battle after battle after battle. And Abraham Lincoln came home, he said, 'I can’t beat Robert E. Lee,'" Trump said.

"And he had all of his generals, they looked great, they were the top of their class at West Point. They were the greatest people. There’s only one problem — they didn’t know how the hell to win. They didn’t know how to fight. They didn’t know how," he continued.

Trump went on to say, multiple times, that Grant had a drinking problem, saying that the former president "knocked the hell out of everyone" as a Union general.

"Man was he a good general. And he’s finally being recognized as a great general," Trump added.

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 13, 2018 Trump has drawn criticism for his defense of Confederate statues, including those of Robert E. Lee.

He drew widespread condemnation last year following a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., saying that white nationalist protesters were there to oppose the removal of a "very, very important" statue.

"They were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said at the time. “This week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

Trump, speaking at another rally in Ohio last year, said that he can be one of the “most presidential” presidents to hold office. "…With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office,” he said to a crowd in Youngstown.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "The North had the opposite problem..."

No need for a long complicated explanation, the North's problem came down to one word: Democrats.
Roughly half of Northerners were Democrats who until 1861 had been allies, partners and friends of Southern Democrats.
Northern Democrats had no problem with slavery and sympathized with secession.
They sure as heck didn't want to fight & die against their own party.

Properly groomed by Confederates Northern Democrats could have formed a rebellious force within the Union just as potent as emancipated slaves in the Confederacy.
Fortunately for the Union, that didn't really happen.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Only an idiot would buy the modern rewrite of history that the CSA EVER intended to conquer the North..."

Your fellow pro-Confederate, DiogenesLamp, does not share your view.
He has posted many times he thinks the Confederacy woulda', coulda', shoulda' taken over most Union states & territories had Lincoln not fought back.

central_va: "The fact that you actually believe this fairy tale means you are stupid, a liar, have and agenda OR PERHAPS ALL THREE."

You might ask DiogenesLamp why he shares my view, not yours.
My view is that the Confederacy absolutely represented an existential threat not only in 11 states of the Lower & Upper South, but also immediately in five more Border States, at least three territories (Oklahoma, New Mexico & Arizona), and, if Confederates controlled the Mississippi River, then pretty much all Midwestern states.

So, central_va tells us Confederates never wanted to "conquer" the USA, but there is no possible way to deny they wanted as much of it as they could grab.

As for "stupid", "liar" or "agenda", I plead innocent.
My "agenda" is simple historical truth, a concept that seems quite foreign to many Lost Causers.

central_va: "I will PAY anyone to find one contemporary reference that even mentions that as a real possibility.
I know because I've looked and still look for it while doing research."

You can't find it because you're looking for the wrong thing.
"Conquer the North" is not what the Confederacy was about.
But further reducing or effectively destroying the Union was certainly within what they thought possible.
Why else do you suppose Confederates declared Kentucky & Missouri to be Confederate states?

Ask DiogenesLamp.

Here's one vision of what the Confederate Empire might look like:

[BroJoeK]

DonCorleone: "Are you really certain that the South lost?"

You're kidding, right?
Everyone lost something, some lost everything, many gained a lot.
Democrats lost their virtual monopoly on power in Washington, DC, from ~1800 until secession in 1861, a loss they did not recover from until the Great Depression in 1932.

The South lost slavery, iirc, the nation's biggest single asset class at the time, and it lost its dominance over the Democrat party.
Today much of the South is prospering like never before, and its political leaders are important national figures.
And, as Republicans Southerners fit well with other "flyover" states' voters.

Bottom line: yes, the South lost a lot in the Civil War, but has since regained much -- the South has risen again.

[NFHale]

No argument. Not defending slavery.

But I’m sick and tired of the Left erasing our history. So if they’re raging about something, I’ll automatically take the opposing view.

And there is no question about Lee and company’s military prowess. They made HOW many Union generals look like chumps before we got to Grant, Sherman, et al???

Facts are stubborn things.

[DiogenesLamp]

If you were going to do that, you wouldn't have replied. No, what you are trying to do is get your version of events out, and ignore the factual information that I have put before you.

There is a constitutional clause REQUIRING slaves to be returned to the people to whom their labor is due according to the laws of the state that holds them.

No lesser act of congress can override that. It simply does not matter what congress says on the subject, because the Constitution itself says they have to be returned.

If you want a fig leaf, Lincoln could have ordered his army to force the states to abolish their laws, but what he can't do is free them when state laws hold them, and the constitution requires those state laws to be enforced.

[DiogenesLamp]

Yes, British Law didn’t allow people to give up their allegiance. Our Declaration of Independence made it a fundamental right to do so.

[DiogenesLamp]

Propaganda and nothing more. Slavery would have been perfectly safe in the Union, just as it was in the Union slaves states during the war.

[DiogenesLamp]

Not going to give your insistence on “necessity” any consideration what so ever. I’ve already shown you that New York clearly regarded the choice to leave as up to the people, and so did Virginia.

[DiogenesLamp]

A lie which DiogenesLamp well knows but repeats endlessly anyway.

You very much wish it were a lie, but as I have also pointed out endlessly, every member of Lincoln's cabinet except one said Lincoln's actions in sending that war fleet was going to cause a war.

Major Anderson immediately realized it was going to cause a war when he heard of the plan. The decision to go to war was Lincoln's, and everyone around him at the time clearly understood this.

[DiogenesLamp]

War fleet caused war. You can keep repeating your tired old propaganda, but i've finally learned the truth.

War fleet caused war.

[DiogenesLamp]

Not even going to read his one. Your normal operating method is to jut launch replies ad nauseum with "Nonsense!" and "Rubbish!" being central components of them, while simply contradicting anything to which you respond.

It's formulaic and intellect-less.

[DiogenesLamp]

I haven’t thrown any such words out. You will have to ask someone who has.

[DiogenesLamp]

You are now doing second order shark jumping. That’s actually petty funny.

[DiogenesLamp]

In fact, Lincoln ordered emancipation of slaves in states & regions in rebellion against the United States.

And once again, he cannot legally do that. The constitution requires the laws of the states that hold them to be obeyed. It doesn't give him an "except in the case of rebellion" card to play.

If the states are part of the Union, the constitution must be obeyed regarding them. The only out is to declare them not part of the Union, and therefore constitutional law won't apply to them.

But as i've said, the status of southern states was maintained in a condition of quantum super position, being both in the Union and Out of it simultaneously, depending upon what legal argument needed to be made to do what Lincoln wanted.

[DiogenesLamp]

The constitution requires the slave holding laws of states in the Union to be obeyed. It doesn't give you a "but, but, but, but, they are in rebellion!" card to play.

Lincoln behaved as if the States were out of the Union for the purpose of freeing slaves in areas he didn't control, and then he behaved as if the States were still in the Union to claim jurisdiction over them in every other way.

[DiogenesLamp]

If the confederates were out of the Union, they had no obligation to follow the Missouri compromise. They would have gotten those western states above Missouri too.

[DoodleDawg]

If you were going to do that, you wouldn't have replied.

I didn't. I replied to ontop and you put your two cents worth in and I had to reply to you. I believe you began posting your idiotic opinion on the Constitutionality of Lincoln's actions in post 258. I made sure to ignore you then, and continued to do so until you forced it back into the conversation.

[DiogenesLamp]

Funny, your message showed up when I looked at my pings.

[OIFVeteran]

You just answered your own question there. Abraham Lincoln had no constitutional authority to free slaves in the north. As has been explained to you before the official stance of the United Stares government is that the confederacy was nothing more than a rebellion. Therefore the president, under his constitutional powers to supress rebellion, issued the Emancipation Proclamation. Now this was done after the US congress issued a series of warnings to the people in rebellion, through the second confiscation act, that they had sixty days to surrender or face confiscation of their land and properties.
So the emancipation proclamation was constitutional.

[OIFVeteran]

Your wrong. There were people, a minority to be sure, that believed that blacks were just as intelleigent and capable as whites. There was a bigger minority than that believed that they deserved the same freedom as any white man. Abraham Lincoln was one of those people. I think it’s a shame that more didn’t feel that way.

As far as your juvenile attacks on a great American President, I think you would find people more agreeable to your views in the Antifa Or Black Lives Matter crowd.