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.

[DiogenesLamp]

I am not going to repost the documents issued by GA,SC,MS and TX explaining their reasoning for secession. You have read them. They go to great lengths to point out a perceived threat to slavery.

Four states out of eleven, and in the case of South Carolina, they did indeed put forth a financial argument for secession.

People are always trying to make those few states that did issue secession statements asserting slavery as speaking for all the rest, and this is deliberately misleading.

The way I read those documents, a strong belief, that in the future, Lincoln and the Republican, would act against slavery was the prime motivations for their actions.

Slavery was as important to their economic output as oil is today to ours. From their perspective, it's not much different from the Crazy Californians declaring that all energy will come from renewables and that oil and gas will be prohibited.

The Crazy Liberal Californians do not grasp that such a change cannot be done quickly or easily, and so too was it the same for those who advocated the rapid abolition of that peculiar institution.

I think economic and social forces would have eventually eliminated it as happened in the other slave holding countries, but it would have taken decades for that to happen because too much of their economic output was powered by slavery.

[central_va]

Confederates did in fact represent a major existential threat to the United States,

Ok, post reference from the period where one leader or newspaper editorial, either North or South, espoused that position. One.

[DiogenesLamp]

It was Lincoln who sent a war fleet with orders to fire on the Confederates around Sumter that created the necessity of neutralizing the fort to prevent it from firing on them when the warships attacked.

There was no intent to fire on Sumter until an acknowledgment reached the Confederate government that those ships really were coming, and they really were going to attack them.

But they don't teach the part about warships sent to attack the confederates in the public schools. They start the story from the point at which the Confederates attacked the fort to prevent it from being used against them when the warships attacked.

I didn't even know about these warships sent to attack them until the last few years. Prior to that, I had absolutely no knowledge of Lincoln's deliberately belligerent act.

[jmacusa]

Oh shut up. Christ sake you moron, time and again you're shown to be completely ignorant of Civil War history by a man who obviously knows the subject better than the both of us and yet it's with me you choose to argue with.

[jmacusa]

Well how do General! Where in tarnation you been keeping yourself?

[DiogenesLamp]

As usual you moron. Joe K kicks your ass with logic and then you try and have an argument with me.

I haven't noticed him kicking my ass. Since I skip most of what he writes, I wouldn't even notice if he really was kicking my ass, because the parts I do read indicate to me that's he's off in left field somewhere.

So far as trying to have an argument with you is concerned, I merely go down the list of messages and respond to ones that I feel deserve a response. You happen to have posted a few to which I responded, but I am not particularly trying to argue with you. If someone else had said some of the stuff you said, I would have responded to them too.

The South seceded from the Union and opened hostilities

Lincoln opened hostilities. He sent a war fleet with orders to attack them, and they knew about it a month in advance of it's arrival. When they had confirmation that the ships of the war fleet were arriving, that is when they neutralized Fort Sumter's ability to be used against them in the coming conflict with the warships that Lincoln sent.

Also, his government repeatedly lied to them about turning the fort over to them.

in order to preserve slavery

The Union preserved Union slavery all through the war. You keep trying to sell that claim, but the reality of what the Union did about it's own slavery during the war, makes that argument false.

[jmacusa]

You are one the stupidest, most self-centered morons I’ve ever encountered. None so blind.

[DiogenesLamp]

It is immaterial what we think. The decisions of the Courts interpreting the Constitution become the law of the land.

So did the decisions of Lincoln and his Army, but that does not make them valid from a constitutional perspective, and a court which had it's chief justice threatened with imprisonment was not likely going to say differently, also notwithstanding the cost in blood and treasure that had been expended to get to the point where they were.

The courts were going to rubber stamp. They daren't do otherwise.

[BroJoeK]

Central_Va: "The Union, as some ill informed would say was supposedly in the existential fight of it’s life, STARTED a huge project like that in the middle of a war."

The Union was at its most vulnerable in 1861, when ~70% of the battles were fought in Union states & territories and ~60% of Confederate battle deaths were in the Union.

By mid-1862 the tide began to shift, with more battles in Confederate states than Union.
However, even as late as the Fall of 1864 there were still major battles fought in Union states like Kansas, Missouri & West Virginia.
Near as I can tell, the last Confederate victory in a Union state was the Second Battle of Independence, October 22, 1864.

So Central_va tells us the Union would have done just fine without Confederate states, but Confederates never stopped fighting to take over more Union states & territories.
They were an existential threat to the United States.

[DiogenesLamp]

Oh shut up. Christ sake you moron, time and again you're shown to be completely ignorant of Civil War history by a man who obviously knows the subject better than the both of us and yet it's with me you choose to argue with.

You argue about as well as he does. All emotion, little real fact. Much interpretation to get the result you want.

I have not been shown to be ignorant on this subject. I've shown that I'm not going to be steered by public opinion and opprobrium. I will call things as I objectively see them, and not go along with the "group think" simply because it's popular with the majority.

The war fleet caused the war. I see this as an objective fact, and most of Lincoln's cabinet as well as Major Anderson says so as well.

[DiogenesLamp]

Thanks! :)

[jmacusa]

No. The South caused the war by violently seceding from the Union.

[DiogenesLamp]

The Union was at its most vulnerable in 1861, when ~70% of the battles were fought in Union states & territories and ~60% of Confederate battle deaths were in the Union.

After Fort Sumter, where was the first battle fought? Who was invading who's territory?

[DiogenesLamp]

No. The South caused the war by violently seceding from the Union.

They didn't violently secede. They seceded peacefully. They only got violent when they realized that Lincoln was not going to leave them alone.

[jmacusa]

No, they opened fire on Ft. Sumter. As Joe K told you Lincoln had ordered no first use of force.

[Bull Snipe]

As I said, two did offer up some financial arguments, but they paled in comparison to the slave issue. Include Arkansas statements before the secession vote. They include a substantial argument for the protection of slavery from the black republicans and Lincoln. The primary reason for seceding by four of the first 7 states to do so was slavery. That is what they wrote. I would consider that more apropos to the discussion than a letter written 40 years before or TJs opinion some years before that. But suit your self.

[DiogenesLamp]

No, they opened fire on Ft. Sumter. As Joe K told you Lincoln had ordered no first use of force.

Lincoln ordered that if they were "resisted" to use the entire force at their disposal to put both men and arms into fort Sumter. This despite the fact his generals had informed him it would take 20,000 men to take and hold Sumter.

Had those ships obeyed the orders they had been given, (but could not because the Powhatan command ship was sent to Florida without their knowledge) every ship would have been destroyed by the Confederate shore batteries.

Lincoln had sent those men to their deaths, except for the curious fact of the command ship not arriving, and the order to not do anything until it did arrive. (Which it never would.)

No, the Powhatan was busy in Pensacola, attempting to start the war there.

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "Lets’ see all of the pig iron that could of been used to make war materials was used to make useless rails."

Rails were far from "useless".
Indeed one huge advantage the Union had was its miles of usable rails and vastly greater capabilities to build and maintain more than Confederates could.

One reason the Union began building the transcontinental railroad in 1863 was: the 1860 Republican platform promised, and Republicans then as now were all about "promises made, promises kept."

Construction began in California on the Central Pacific in January 1863, it went very slowly.
The Union Pacific did not even begin work in Omaha, Nebraska until July 1865 after Civil War ended.
Then it used many thousands of war veterans to complete its 2,000 mile run to Utah.
Throughout 1865 Union Pacific competed for railroad supplies with other companies working to repair railroads damaged by the war.

US railroads in 1870:

[Bull Snipe]

your point? Other than habeas corpus, what court cases were bought before the Supreme court during the War, that challenged Lincoln’s authority to conduct the war. What was the Court ruling on those cases. The courts have always given the President wide latitude to prosecute war.

[DiogenesLamp]

As I said, two did offer up some financial arguments, but they paled in comparison to the slave issue.

Now I think that is a matter of interpretation. People see what they want to see. To the people intent on justifying the war because the South had practiced legal slavery in the Union for "four score and seven years", it is important to play up the slavery issue, but to people who see it as a financial struggle between the existing power structure and the challenger of it, the financial arguments seem more important.

I would consider that more apropos to the discussion than a letter written 40 years before...

I don't know what you are referring to here.

...or TJs opinion some years before that. But suit your self.

TJ's opinion is relevant because he perceived the issue as a smoke screen for a larger power struggle behind the scenes. I've come to look at this issue with this same concept in mind.

I cannot reconcile how a Northern congress could pass the Corwin Amendment while claiming to be against slavery. It doesn't stand to reason if you believe morality is the force behind what they did, but it makes perfect sense if you look at it as a fight over money.