Posted on 11/16/2018 2:44:55 PM PST by Jack Black
Civil division and its conquests are the true makers of America, and continue to shape its national progress—or threaten its undoing. Indeed, the very founding of the United States advanced the principle of civil conflict over all others. Our very identity, from the start, was framed as triumph over the “other.” We cast them out, like France cruelly expelled their heretic Huguenots in the 17th century. For our part, we drove out 100,000 loyalists we once counted as blood brothers. This civil war itself lasted 20 years, from 1763 to 1783, but the ensuing cold war and residual battles with Britain did not end until 1815.
By then there was another fissure in the nation. After 1815 a new cultural migration began. Young America itself split into two opposed ways of life and two increasingly bitter political identities, which fought another 20-year conflict, from 1857 to 1877. Threats of secession and nullification dominated American politics all the way to 1896 with Plessy v. Ferguson. Only the “lucky” generations, from the 1930s to the 1970s, could pretend to celebrate something like national unity. Even then, such privilege was the demesne of a single, favored political majority—completely coterminous with the prevailing liberal establishment.
(Excerpt) Read more at theamericanconservative.com ...
Jefferson Davis was jailed for two years before Horace Grealy & others posted his $100,000 bail, then he fled the country.
In 1868, along with all other Confederate leaders Davis was pardoned by their fellow Southern Democrat, President Andrew Johnson.
There's no actual evidence that Union troops in Confederate regions did anything which Confederate troops in Union regions had not already done.
And one thing Union troops never did -- they never kidnapped freed-blacks for sale in Confederate slave markets.
Boss Tweed.
One of my great grandfathers somewhat fit that description and fought against Confederate General Forrest at Tupelo, July 1864.
You may remember there Forrest first escaped a situation similar to what killed Stonewall Jackson a year earlier.
Forrest was reconning at night and accidentally rode through Union lines, but survived.
The reason, imho, is that was my great grandfather's unit and they remembered Forrest had treated them humanely at Dyer Station, Tennessee, in December 1862.
So they let him pass unharmed.
I still have a soft-spot for Forrest, he let my great grandfather live when others would not have.
Ok, the most ridiculous post of the day. Have you ever read General Lee's general standing orders to the Army of Northern Va concering obtaining supplies, conduct and behavior ? A Confederate soldier caught stealing in Union territory was punished as if he had done it anywhere. Burning private property would get you the firing squad.
There were exceptions, especially with the cavalry. Chambersburg was such a big deal because it was the exception that proved the rule.
When Chambersburg residents learned on the morning of July 30, 1864 that yet another Confederate cavalry raid was approaching their city, most people were not overly concerned. Rebels had occupied the city in October 1862 and again in June 1863, soon before the Battle of Gettysburg. On both occasions Southern troops had behaved reasonably well, although they had burned military supplies and railroad equipment during markerJeb Stuart's raid of 1862.
Arguably, Jefferson Davis exercised as much "big gubmint centralized control" over the Confederacy as Lincoln did over the Union.
Both the Civil War and modern "progressivism" are brought to us courtesy of the Democrats.
Republicans have (almost) always stood for preservation of Founders' Original Intentions.
During the Civil War Northern Democrats temporarily allied with Republicans to defeat Confederates, but then soon after renewed their bonds with Southern Democrats, effectively nullifying the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments for nearly 100 years.
Actually the anecdotal evidence is to the contrary though during a war a President will tend to act autocratic in many ways.
I have read a letter from Joseph Brown, the governor of GA, complaining to Pres. Davis on the unfairness of how soldiers from each state was provisioned. GA was not getting any supplies from their sea port( Savannah was completely shut off) where at the same time both AL and NC had fairly open sea ports for most of the war. Soldiers from AL and NC stood out on the battle field because they looked well shod and had good uniform where most of the rest of the Army looked like scare crows. Gov. Brown thought AL and NC should "share the wealth". Pres. Davis responded that there was nothing he could do about it and that the governors would have to work that out for themselves.
I find this type of info very telling.
Studies by German scholars show that the initiatives pushing Austria to issue ultimatums and invade Serbia came from the German Kaiser's staff.
The alliances then took effect, with Russia mobilizing to defend Serbia and Germany mobilizing to invade... France!
The French responded, and the Brits, and the Great War was on.
But the plot was hatched in Berlin and pushed by the Kaiser's High Command.
David Fromkin: "Europe's Last Summer, Who Started the Great War in 1914?"
Sure, but one reason Lee marched North in the first place was to capture enough Northern contraband to feed & supply his army.
It's the reason Stuart was out galivanting instead of there serving as Lee's eyes & ears.
And of course Stuart paid nothing for what he took.
But more to the point: whenever Confederate forces invaded Union regions, they took what they needed and destroyed contraband they couldn't move.
They also kidnapped freed-blacks for return & sale in Confederate slave markets.
And on occasion they also massacred white Unionists, i.e., Lawrence, Kansas in August 1863.
So there was nothing Union troops did in Confederate regions which Confederate troops in Union regions had not previously done.
Sure, and I don't minimize your point.
I'm not aware of similar Union issues.
On the other hand Davis exercised more day-to-day control over Confederate armies than Lincoln did over the Union's.
So at most, net-net it was a wash and nothing to justify claims that somehow Lincoln was exceptionally "big gubmint centralized control."
Davis exercised more day-to-day control over everything Confederate than Lincoln did over anything Union.
No doubt the Kaiser was warmongering... but I[’m merely pointing out that when you have a people with a wounded national pride (the French emperor Napoleon III was hauled back as a prisoner publicly after the disastrous battle at Sedan, for one thing, the humiliating loss of Alsace-Lorraine, another) and you’re teaching a couple of generations of schoolkids that the hated Boche are the root cause of all of your ills and woes, it doesn’t take much to make a spark into a conflagration. They were itching for a fight, and they got one.
NOT letting the Kaiser off the hook here, merely pointing out that if it wasn’t the assassination of Archduke Frankie and his wife, it would have been something else.
Check out Alistair Horne’s book The Price of Glory. He goes into a lot of detail of the pre-war mindset of the French and the Germans. One gets the impression of the two biggest mouths on the block; sooner or later, they’re going to meet up.
If you look at actual images of the Declaration of Independence, it starts “... Declaration of the thirteen united States of America,”.
“united” not capitalized.
Her running again would be a good gift for us politically.
My great Uncle rode with Forrest as a member of the 5th Miss Cav . Maybe mine and yours crossed paths .
The supposed victors still try to write the history and spin the narrative . This is why it is important to be victorious in the first place . No lost causes ! Just win from the git go. O, to be able to do a Harry Turtledove number on said history ;^)
Except when Lincoln arrested the Maryland State legislature and countless journalists. That was kind of a control thing.
That is absolutely not true and a lie. Confederate soldiers has to pay for supplies the bought in towns the marched through. They did not raid and pillage at all. They couldn't, under orders they would have been punished. An contrary to popular myth confederate money wasn't worthless in the North. It could be exchanged for green backs (as low as .25 on the dollar at the end ) or bartered for things like tobacco. If you did deep and read actual letters from soldiers you can get true picture that most historians seem to not care about or overlook.
I read one letter form a guy in Ewell's corp that talk about Pennsylvania and the shop keepers he dealt with. Confederate soldiers had to stack arms in camp and were not allowed to go armed into any town, North or South. Did you know that? Only officers carried side arms in town. Anyway this guy buys honey in store in Harrisburg and almost gets into a fist fight because the shop keeper called him a Tory. He also called home a reb and other names and that didn't bother him but being called a Tory was way over the top.
Sure, I get that -- the tinder was bone dry, kindling stacked everywhere, all it needed was a spark from anywhere to conflate the whole forest.
But when the Fire Department investigates, they will not be satisfied to report "the spark may have come from anywhere," when they know it actually came from little Willie playing with matches and hoping to burn down little Johnny's play-fort without losing his own.
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