Posted on 04/25/2007 10:11:37 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
Winston Churchill called him "one of the noblest Americans who ever lived," and Theodore Roosevelt called him "the very greatest of all the great captains that the English-speaking peoples have brought forth." But has political correctness turned Robert E. Lee into a villain? That will be the question explored by six historians this weekend at a symposium commemorating the bicentennial of the Confederate commander's birth. "We were afraid that Lee would not receive the honors he should get because of the prevailing political correctness," says Brag Bowling, a Richmond resident who helped organize Saturday's event at the Key Bridge Marriott Hotel in Arlington. The symposium will be the largest event of its kind this year honoring Lee, who was born Jan. 19, 1807.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Well, Here's The Platform he ran on. Where's the part about increasing Federal Power?
What crimes is he supposed to have committed? Can you point them out to me.
The Supreme Court had no problem finding their acts if unilateral secession to be illegal. And their actions could be certainly considered treason as defined by the Constitution.
There were several southern officers executed, including Henry Wirz, the commander of Andersonville prisoner of war camp.
To the best of my knowledge Wirtz was the only man tried for his crimes committed during the war and convicted.
I am sure Sherman would have been tried if he was captured by the Confederacy.
No doubt.
This was due to the collapse of Confederate currency and Confederate government securities, the freeing of the slaves, the union naval blockade, and the union policy of burning, looting, shooting livestock, and destroying railroads and factories.
Stripped to its most basic terms, it was due to the fact that the Southern states chose war to further their aims and then going and losing that war. Had they not initiated the conflict over Sumter nothing would have happened.
Only if the route to Mexico runs through Kentucky. From the Texas State Historical Society:
Lt. Gen. Edmund Kirby Smith,qv commander of the Trans-Mississippi Confederacy, approved of Quantrill and ordered McCulloch to use Quantrill's men to help round up the increasing number of deserters and conscription-dodgers in North Texas. Quantrill's men captured but few and killed several, whereupon McCulloch pulled them off this duty; McCulloch sent them to track down retreating Comanches from a recent raid on the northwest frontier. They did so for nearly a week with no success. Quantrill is credited with ending a near-riot of county "war widows" who were convinced that the Confederate commissary in Sherman was withholding from them such "luxury goods" as coffee, tea, and sugar. During this winter Quantrill's lieutenant, William (Bloody Bill) Anderson, took some of the men to organize his own group. With two such groups in the area, residents of Grayson and Fannin counties became targets for raids, and acts of violence proliferated so much that regular Confederate forces had to be assigned to protect residents from the activities of the irregular Confederate forces.Finally, General McCulloch determined to rid North Texas of Quantrill's influence. On March 28, 1864, when Quantrill appeared at Bonham as requested, McCulloch had him arrested on the charge of ordering the murder of a Confederate major. Quantrill escaped that day and returned to his camp near Sherman, pursued by over 300 state and Confederate troops. He and his men crossed the Red River into Indian Territory, where they resupplied from Confederate stores. Except for a brief return in May, Quantrill's activities in Texas were at an end. His authority over his followers disintegrated completely when they elected George Todd, a former lieutenant to Quantrill, to lead them. In an attempt to regain his prestige Quantrill concocted a plan to lead a company of men to Washington and assassinate President Abraham Lincoln. He assembled a group of raiders in Lafayette County, Missouri, in November and December 1864, but the strength of Union troops east of the Mississippi River convinced him that his plan could not succeed. Quantrill returned, therefore, to his normal pattern of raiding. With a group of thirty-three men, he entered Kentucky early in 1865. In May or early June of that year a Unionist irregular force surprised his group near Taylorsville, Kentucky, and in the evening battle Quantrill was shot through the spine. He died at the military prison at Louisville, Kentucky, on June 6, 1865.
Champ Ferguson. I'm sure Colonel Kangaroo can fill in the details on what a nasty piece of work he was.
Yeah, that was poorly written on my part. Thanks for catching that.
My point was that the south was devastated by the war, and that the southern states were occupied after the war and controlled by notherners. Anyone who had served in the Confederate military was not allowed to vote, so most of the voters were black. So it is not entirely true that the south got off easy.
If the Union had hanged Lee, it would not have gone over well in the south, the north, or outside the US. He is regarded as one of the greatest military commanders ever, and as a great man. He was not an instigator of secession. He made a difficult, and some would say treasonous, decision to side with the Confederacy, rather than make war on his own state.
Some of the Confederate political leadership fled the country. Those who were captured could have been put on trial and executed or given long prision sentences. Presumably their sentences would have been appealed to the Supreme Court, which would determine the legalities. Again, I am sure that the union leadership was concerned by how this would appear to the south and to the world.
The act of owning another human being would abuse enough. “Slavery wasn’t all sugar sweetness,” you say. Thanks for clearing that up.
Gen Sherman was a True Military Man who was ahead of his times.
His vision of war was a war that is total war. He believed that if you want war to end, you make it as cruel and inhumane as Possible. If we had Sherman in Iraq, and gave him a free hand,It would have ended sooner.
But when the Southern Gen went to talk terms, Sherman was very understanding, offering terms that was even better than what Grant offered Lee. Sherman was rebuked by Warhawks in Congress and told to revoke the terms.
Another thing that should speak to his character..he never got involved in Politics.
Sound like people in the south are still smarting from the beating old Billy Sherman put on Ya All....
Emancipation required a Constitutional amendment & Lincoln didn't have the power to emancipate the slaves in territories under Union control. It would have been an unlawful "taking". Territories in rebellion were either gonna win, making the proclamation irrelevant or they were gonna lose & become reconquered territory. They weren't going to be allowed back into the Union under the same terms they had when they left.
Northerners were tired of having their state's sovereignty violated by the Federal government & agents of Southern states while the Fugitive Slave Act was being enforced.
South had no problem using the big club of Federal power when it had the numbers to make the Fed serve its interests.
Meigs always saw himself as a Southerner who remaned loyal to the Union. Ever hear of books?
“remaned” = “remained”. Sorry for the typo.
Meigs was born in Georgia and his family was from Georgia, but he moved to Pennsilvania as a young child. He was Quatermaster General of the Union army.
Let’s See.....
Slavery.....ummm!
I support the troops but I don’t support the mission (slavery).
Where have I heard this before? Am I on the right forum? Has my computer mysteriously taken me to DU land?
Pretty much the same thing that happened to German and Japan. The lesson is, don't start a war if you can't win it.
At the end of the war Gatewood and much of his gang fled to Texas where I suspect they did their part in the making of the legend of the lawless West.
It's ironic to hear the latter-day whining about Sherman when the Confederacy fostered outlaws like Ferguson, Gatewood, Anderson and Quantrill not to mention the routine oppressiveness of local Confederate government.
“Had Lee’s chattel then run off to Union lines they could not have been returned to slavery if caught.”
that’s a laugh. have you ever read about the type of treatment those “freed” slaves were subjected to behind Federal lines?
For now Yank. For now.
Nicely put.
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