Posted on 07/15/2003 6:06:12 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Edited on 07/12/2004 4:05:14 PM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
He was, at the war's end, the senior lieutenant general in the Confederate Army, Lee's trusted friend and second-in-command of the Army of Northern Virginia --- yet it was not until 1998 that a statue was erected anywhere to honor James Longstreet. This slight can be traced to his membership in the Republican Party during Reconstruction, but even more damaging to his reputation was the image created by his postwar enemies: He became a villain in Southern eyes, a scapegoat for the Confederate defeat, and one of the South's most controversial figures.
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I was giving this as an example of how others can use the same non-dispositive types of arguments that LS was using. I stated that I did not intend to respond in kind.
Nevertheless, you have pounced on the fact that the Cassius Clay--as opposed to most of the rest of the Clay family--was a maverick. Fine, I should not have given you the opening by selecting the former Heavyweight Champion, as an example, of the argument I had chosen not to make. As a boxing fan, I just grabbed that as something that came instantly to mind, as I was typing. But note, he repudiated not only the name of his abolitionist benefactor--the Cassius Clay you mentioned did manumit the boxer's ancestor--but the whole Clay family.
My discussion with LS had nothing to do with Republican history. It dealt with analyzing the feelings between the races in the Old South.
As for Oberlin, I got my money's worth and then some. I went there to improve my techniques for dealing with modern "liberal" types. Oberlin had been connected with all of the major Leftwing movements of the 19th Century in America--it is not generally known, but in addition to the Abolitionist and Feminist connections, the Anti-Saloon League, which put Prohibition over after World War I, was actually founded in the Oberlin College Library in 1896! While perhaps not on the absolute cutting edge of 20th Century Leftist thinking, it was well enough into it, that I learned much about irrational ways that Leftist dogma is formulated and promoted.
But I thank you for your concern for my finances.
William Flax
What is your statement, however, that Stevens had no respect for Slaveholders, but evidence of hatred? Many of the Founding Fathers were slaveholders. One can find fault with the system, but that is not the same thing as having no respect for the men. One who cannot respect men, with whose values he disagrees, is indeed a hate-driven fanatic.
As for his oposition to Capital Punishment? Generally the parlor intellectual Egalitarian fanatics--as opposed to the street thug types (like the Bolsheviks and Nazis)--do not favor capital punishment. But does that indicate a loving humanity, or simply their disrespect for the victims of criminals? Conservatives, generally, support Capital Punishment, when it is 'earned!'
It was, of course, the height of injustice that Jefferson Davis was imprisoned. Calling him a traitor, was only more evidence of the fanaticism of which Stevens was a part.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
"a good system"
Truly, there are people who quote out of context, and then there is yourself. My actual statement was as follows:
What is weak, and morally reprehensible is your need to hurl aspersions against your fellow Americans who had a different system, than you or I think was a good system.
My statement clearly acknowledges that you and I do not think the system of forced labor was a good system: "Different system, than you or I think was good," can have no other reasonable meaning. Why, in a debate over historic issues, do you choose to employ such tactics? Your discussion of the battle field achievements of famous Generals, shows you are a rational man. Why demagogue other issues?
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Worshipping at an altar of scoundrels again, eh partisan? You are truly no better than those democrats who call Bill Clinton a "statesman" and our "greatest president."
I prefer the other eulogy, given by a former colleague in Congress, who properly remarked upon the scoundrel Steven's death that the Republican Party had finally been emancipated. Truer words of our party were never spoken.
That claim is not legally supportable for the following reasons.
"The Constitution says: "Treason against the United States shall consist only in levying war against them, or in adhering to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort." This is the only definition of treason given by the Constitution, and it is to be interpreted, like all other criminal laws, in the sense most favorable to liberty and justice. Consequently the treason here spoken of, must be held to be treason in fact, and not merely something that may have been falsely called by that name.
To determine, then, what is treason in fact, we are not to look to the codes of Kings, and Czars, and Kaisers, who maintain their power by force and fraud; who contemptuously call mankind their "subjects;" who claim to have a special license from heaven to rule on earth; who teach that it is a religious duty of mankind to obey them; who bribe a servile and corrupt priest-hood to impress these ideas upon the ignorant and superstitious; who spurn the idea that their authority is derived from, or dependent at all upon, the consent of their people; and who attempt to defame, by the false epithet of traitors, all who assert their own rights, and the rights of their fellow men, against such usurpations.
Instead of regarding this false and calumnious meaning of the word treason, we are to look at its true and legitimate meaning in our mother tongue; at its use in common life; and at what would necessarily be its true meaning in any other contracts, or articles of association, which men might voluntarily enter into with each other.
The true and legitimate meaning of the word treason, then, necessarily implies treachery, deceit, breach of faith. Without these, there can be no treason. A traitor is a betrayer --- one who practices injury, while professing friendship. Benedict Arnold was a traitor, solely because, while professing friendship for the American cause, he attempted to injure it. An open enemy, however criminal in other respects, is no traitor.
Neither does a man, who has once been my friend, become a traitor by becoming an enemy, if before doing me an injury, he gives me fair warning that he has become an enemy; and if he makes no unfair use of any advantage which my confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in his power. For example, our fathers --- even if we were to admit them to have been wrong in other respects --- certainly were not traitors in fact, after the fourth of July, 1776; since on that day they gave notice to the King of Great Britain that they repudiated his authority, and should wage war against him. And they made no unfair use of any advantages which his confidence had previously placed in their power.
It cannot be denied that, in the late war, the Southern people proved themselves to be open and avowed enemies, and not treacherous friends. It cannot be denied that they gave us fair warning that they would no longer be our political associates, but would, if need were, fight for a separation. It cannot be alleged that they made any unfair use of advantages which our confidence, in the time of our friendship, had placed in their power. Therefore they were not traitors in fact: and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution.
Furthermore, men are not traitors in fact, who take up arms against the government, without having disavowed allegiance to it, provided they do it, either to resist the usurpations of the government, or to resist what they sincerely believe to be such usurpations.
It is a maxim of law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent. And this maxim is as applicable to treason as to any other crime. For example, our fathers were not traitors in fact, for resisting the British Crown, before the fourth of July, 1776 --- that is, before they had thrown off allegiance to him --- provided they honestly believed that they were simply defending their rights against his usurpations. Even if they were mistaken in their law, that mistake, if an innocent one, could not make them traitors in fact.
For the same reason, the Southern people, if they sincerely believed --- as it has been extensively, if not generally, conceded, at the North, that they did --- in the so-called constitutional theory of "State Rights," did not become traitors in fact, by acting upon it; and consequently not traitors within the meaning of the Constitution." - Lysander Spooner, 1867
Wasn't it "That Devil Forrest" who pulled the old routine of bringing the same fieldpiece over a hill, running it around the side to the back again, and then bringing it over the top again? I seem to remember one time that a Confederate commander did that while he was engaged in surrender talks with a Union officer, who asked him after seeing artillery in a seemingly endless stream coming over the hill, "How many fieldpieces have been able to keep up with you?" to which the reply from the Confederate was, "Well, I've counted 16 so far", all of which were the same fieldpiece.
Nope, if Forrest had been placed in command of the Army of Tennessee after Joe Johnston's removal, things may have gone very differently.
The United States of America are a Federation of Sovereign States, they are not a monolithic body--like Germany after Hitler destroyed States Rights; or in the ideological sphere, like al-Quaeda. If your Thad Stevens so loved the United States of America, why did he promote sectional antagonism--the very thing that George Washington warned against on the domestic front? Loving the United States of America, meant loving the individuality of the several States; meant respecting even the things you found distasteful in your sister States. Whether or not one believes that the South over-reacted to the Lincoln election; no one can deny that there were provocations; that rights vouchsafed in the document that created that Federal Union--"the United States of America"--were being trampled on.
Perhaps you need to reexamine who was traitor and who loyalist. It depends upon how you interpret the compact, and how you rank such considerations as honor vs. wishful thinking. Many of us have strong opinions. They are not all your opinions.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
If memory serves me it was indeed Forrest. Another similar incident happened shortly after McClellan's landing on the peninsula. The main confederate force hadn't arrived yet and the force that was there consisted of about 12,000 men under John B. Magruder. McClellan didn't know that though and Magruder kept marching the same men back and forth, convincing the yankees that a 100,000 man army stood in between them and Richmond. As a result McClellan hesitated and the main confederate army had time to arrive.
"Opium fiend" is hardly a fair term to use to describe Hood. True, after lkosing use of an arm at Gettysburg and losing a leg a Chickamauga, Hood was in constant pain and did indeed become addicted to laudinum(sp?). But Hood's headlong recklessness, which earned him his reputation as a fighter and generally served him well at the division level was disastrous as the head of an army.
The frontal assault at Franklin, driven largely by Hood's anger from his perception that his division commanders let Schofield slip by him at Spring Hill, was Hood's undoing. At the Battle of Nashville 2 weeks later the Army of Tennessee was utterly destroyed, and Hood resigned in disgrace. As the remnants of that gallant army trudged back through Alabama to Georgia, some wag composed this little ditty (sung to the tune of "The Yellow Rose of Texas"):
So now I'm marching southward;
My heart is full of woe.
I'm going back to Georgia
To see my Uncle Joe.
You may talk about your Beauregard
And sing of General Lee,
But the gallant Hood of Texas
Played hell in Tennessee.
(Stanley Horn, The Army Of Tennessee, p.418)
Longstreet's one of my favorite Southern commanders. He was a brilliant tactician. If Lee had listened to him, at Gettysburg, they may have won.
I don't rate Gettysburg as significant a battle as others do (except for what it did for northern morale), but Longstreet was certainly in the right.
I think it's pathetic what the "Cult of Lee" has done to his reputation over the years.
The only difference is that Lee was pushed out of Pennsylvania and didn't get very far.
Sherman, of course, marched straight through the South with little or no opposition.
Yes, I'm certain most slaves would have chosen freedom over slavery.
But the reason they didn't revolt in the South, and stayed with their masters, and on the plantations, etc, is something that can't be overlooked.
It was for complex reasons...yes, there was some familial attachment, especially for house slaves. There was also "fear"...where would they go?...who would take care of them?...how would they eat?...where would they sleep?...those thoughts certainly kept many a slave in circumstances that they would not have otherwise chosen given an "ideal" alternative.
If they knew that all they had to do was make it to a certain camp, or location, in the north, and they would be given food, water, clothing, and a bed...and their freedom...well, then I imagine 90% of the blacks in the South would have fled.
But though the Union had promised freedom, they didn't promise anything else. And most slaves probably stayed with their masters, and on their masters property because they were too afraid to do anything else. The "fear of the unknown".
That doesn't mean they stayed becaue they "loved" their masters, or anything...it's much more likely it was because they feared the alternative.
The issue is too complex, I think, to boil down to "most slaves hated their masters and bolted at the first opportunity" or "most slaves loved their masters and stayed with them because of it".
The United States of America are a Federation of Sovereign States, they are not a monolithic body--like Germany after Hitler destroyed States Rights; or in the ideological sphere, like al-Quaeda. If your Thad Stevens so loved the United States of America, why did he promote sectional antagonism--the very thing that George Washington warned against on the domestic front? Loving the United States of America, meant loving the individuality of the several States; meant respecting even the things you found distasteful in your sister States.
Whether or not one believes that the South over-reacted to the Lincoln election; no one can deny that there were provocations; that rights vouchsafed in the document that created that Federal Union--"the United States of America"--were being trampled on.
Perhaps you need to reexamine who was traitor and who loyalist. It depends upon how you interpret the compact, and how you rank such considerations as honor vs. wishful thinking. Many of us have strong opinions. They are not all your opinions.
To which you responded:
Patriots can -- and do -- deny your slurs against the United States of America.
Perhaps you would be so good as to advise us:
1. Who are these patriots, to whom you refer? (Surely, they are not those who hurl insults at many of the Founding Fathers, who authored the compact that created the United States of America.)
2. What in the above statement, of mine, is a slur against the United States of America? The provocations, to which I refer, were the provocations of those who openly defied the laws of the United States of America--such as the demented sociopath John Brown--who was hanged for his sedition, but treated as a hero by some Northern agitators; such as people from my aforementioned (earlier in this thread) radical alma mater, Oberlin, who interfered with the enforcement of Federal Law and bragged about it. It was actions, such as those, which made the South feel very threatened by the election of a party entirely from other sections of the United States.
Was George Washington a "patriot" in your eyes? Jefferson? Madison? Just who in the devil do you think you are, trying to define patriotism in terms of anti-southern fanaticism?
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Likewise, between you and me, OF COURSE all slaves were not field hands---many, in the cities, worked wage-type "jobs" where they returned the wages to their masters; some were manumitted based on these types of occupations. Slavery in the cities was growing on the eve of the Civil War.
But these finer points of the occasionally "benign" examples of slavery, while totally accurate, distract us (and those "neo-confederates" who have an ideological point about slave culture) from the main issue, which was the horrific treatment of a large majority of slaves, and, above all, a system that was based totally on coercion and force, not on "love" or "familial attachment." Once the force was removed, few slaves remained with their "families."
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