Posted on 01/17/2015 2:31:16 PM PST by BigReb555
During Robert E. Lee's 100th birthday in 1907, Charles Francis Adams, Jr., a former Union Commander and grandson of US President John Quincy Adams, spoke in tribute to Robert E. Lee at Washington and Lee College's Lee Chapel in Lexington, Virginia. His speech was printed in both Northern and Southern newspapers and is said to had lifted Lee to a renewed respect among the American people.
(Excerpt) Read more at huntingtonnews.net ...
“I spam therefore I am!”
Perhaps you missed reading the second part of Charles Francis Adams Jr.'s 1907 Address on the sterling Character of Robert E. Lee:
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915) was a member of the prominent Adams family, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams). He served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
...The technical argument—the logic of the proposition—seems plain and, to my thought, unanswerable. The original sovereignty was indisputably in the State; in order to establish a nationality certain attributes of sovereignty were ceded by the States to a common central organization; all attributes not thus specifically conceded were reserved to the States, and no attributes of moment were to be construed as conceded by implication. There is no attribute of sovereignty so important as allegiance,—citizenship. So far all is elementary. Now we come to the crux of the proposition. Not only was allegiance—the right to define and establish citizenship—not among the attributes specifically conceded by the several States to the central nationality, but, on the contrary, it was explicitly reserved, the instrument declaring that “the citizens of each State” should be entitled to “all Privileges and Immunities of Citizens in the several States.” Ultimate allegiance was, therefore, due to the State which defined and created citizenship, and not to the central organization which accepted as citizens whomever the States pronounced to be such.[note]
[note] See W. H. Fleming, Slavery and the Race Problem at the South, pp. 19, 20. An authoritative definition of United States citizenship, as distinct from the citizenship of a State was first given in the fourteenth amendment to the Federal Constitution, ratified in 1868. See J. S. Wise, A Treatise on American Citizenship, pp. 6, 13, 31.
Thus far I have never been able to see where room was left for doubt. Citizenship was an attribute recognized by the Constitution as originating with, and of course be longing to, the several States. But, speaking historically and in a philosophical rather than in a legal spirit, it is little more than a commonplace to assert that one great safeguard of the Anglo-Saxon race—what might almost be termed its political palladium—has ever been that hard, if at times illogical, common sense which, recognizing established custom as a binding rule of action, found its embodiment in what we are wont with pride to term the Common Law. Now, just as there can, I think, be no question as to the source of citizenship and, consequently, as to sovereignty, when the Constitution was originally adopted, there can be equally little question that during the lives of the two succeeding generations a custom of nationality grew up which became the accepted Common Law of the land, and practically binding as such. This was true in the South as well as the North, though the custom was more hardened into accepted law in the latter than in the former; but the growth and acceptance as law of the custom of nationality even in the South was incontrovertibly shown in the very act of secession,—the seceding States at once crystallizing into a Confederacy. Nationality was assumed as a thing of course.
But the metaphysical abstraction of a divided sovereignty, none the less, bridged the chasm. As a modus vivendi it did its work. I have called it a metaphysical abstraction; but it was also a practical arrangement resulting in great advantages. It might be illogical, and fraught with possible disputes and consequent dangers; but it was an institution. And so it naturally came to pass that in many of the States a generation grew up, dating from the War of 1812, who, gravitating steadily and more and more strongly to nationality, took a wholly different view of allegiance. For them Story laid down the law; Webster was their mouthpiece; at one time it looked as if Jackson was to be their armed exponent. They were, moreover, wholly within their right. The sovereignty was confessedly divided; and it was for them to elect. The movements of both science and civilization were behind the nationalists. The railroad obliterated State lines, while it unified the nation. What did the foreign immigrants, now swarming across the ocean, care for States? They knew only the Nation. Brought up in Europe, the talk of State sovereignty was to them foolishness. Its alpha bet was incomprehensible. In a word, it too “was caviare to the general.”
Then the inevitable issue arose; and it arose over African slavery; and slavery was sectional. The States south of a given line were arrayed against the States north of that line. Owing largely to slavery, and the practical exclusion of immigrants because thereof, the States of the South had never undergone nationalization at all to the extent those of the North had undergone it. The growing influence and power of the national government, the sentiment inspired by the wars in which we had been engaged, the rapidly improving means of communication and intercourse, had produced their effects in the South; but in degree far less than in the North. Thus the curious result was brought about that, when, at last, the long deferred issue confronted the country, and the modus vivendi of two generations was brought to a close, those who believed in national sovereignty constituted the conservative majority, striving for the preservation of what then was,—the existing nineteenth-century Nation,—while those who passionately adhered to State sovereignty, treading in the footsteps of the fathers, had become eighteenth-century reactionists. Legally, each had right on his side. The theory of a divided Sovereignty had worked itself out to its logical consequence. “Under which King, Bezonian?”—and every man had to “speak or die.”
In the North the situation was simple. State and Nation stood together. The question of allegiance did not present itself, for the two sovereignties merged. It was otherwise in the South; and there the question became, not legal or constitutional, but practical. The life of the Nation had endured so long, the ties and ligaments had become so numerous and interwoven that, all theories to the contrary notwithstanding, a peaceable secession from the Union—a virtual exercise of State sovereignty—had become impossible. If those composing the several dissatisfied communities would only keep their tempers under restraint, and exercise an almost unlimited patience, a theoretical divided sovereignty, maintained through the agency and intervention of the Supreme Court,—in other words the perpetuation of the modus vivendi, was altogether practicable; and probably this was what the framers had in mind under such a contingency as had now arisen. But that, after seventy years of Union and nationalization, a peaceable and friendly taking to pieces was possible, is now, as then it was, scarcely thinkable. Certainly, with a most vivid recollection of the state of sectional feeling which then existed, I do not believe there was a man in the United States—I am confident there was not a woman in the South—who fostered self-delusion to the extent of believing that the change was to come about without a recourse to force. In other words practical Secession was revolution theoretically legal. Why waste time and breath in discussion!—The situation becomes manifestly impossible of continuance where the issue between heated men, with weapons handy, is over a metaphysical distinction involving vast material and moral consequences. Lee, with intuitive common sense, struck the nail squarely on the head when amidst the Babel of discordant tongues he wrote to his son—“ It is idle to talk of secession;” the national government as it then was “can only be dissolved by revolution.” That struggle of dissolution might be longer and fiercer,—as it was,—or shorter, and more wordy than blood-letting,—as the seceding States confidently believed would prove to be the case,—but a struggle there would be.
Historically, such were the conditions to which natural processes of development had brought the common country at the mid-decennium of the century. People had to elect; the modus vivendi was at an end.—Was the State sovereign; or was the Nation sovereign? And, with a shock of genuine surprise that any doubt should exist on that head, eleven States arrayed themselves on the side of the Sovereignty of the State and claimed the unquestioning allegiance of their citizens; and I think it not unsafe to assert that nowhere did the original spirit of State Sovereignty and allegiance to the State then survive in greater intensity and more unquestioning form than in Virginia,—the “Old Dominion,”—the mother of States and of Presidents. And here I approach a sociological factor in the problem more subtle and also more potent than any legal consideration. It has no standing in Court: but the historian may not ignore it; while, with the biographer of Lee, it is crucial. Upon it judgment hinges. I have not time to consider how or why such a result came about, but of the fact there can, I hold, be no question,—State pride, a sense of individuality, has immemorially entered more largely and more intensely into Virginia and Virginians than into any other section or community of the country. Only in South Carolina and among Carolinians, on this continent, was a somewhat similar pride of locality and descent to be found. There was in it a flavor of the Hidalgo,—or of the pride which the Macgregors and Campbells took in their clan and country. In other words, the Virginian and the Carolinian had in the middle of the last century not undergone nationalization to any appreciable extent.
But this, it will be replied, though true of the ordinary man and citizen, should not have been true of the graduate of the military academy, the officer of the Army of the United States. Winfield Scott and George H. Thomas did not so construe their allegiance; when the issue was presented, they remained true to their flag and to their oaths. Robert E. Lee, false to his oath and flag, was a renegade! The answer is brief and to the point:—the conditions in the several cases were not the same,—neither Scott nor Thomas was Lee. It was our Boston Dr. Holmes who long ago declared that the child's education begins about two hundred and fifty years before it is born; and it is quite impossible to separate any man—least of all, perhaps, a full-blooded Virginian—from his prenatal traditions and living environment. From them he drew his being; in them he exists. Robert E. Lee was the embodiment of those conditions, the creature of that environment,—a Virginian of Virginians. His father was “Light Horse Harry” Lee, a devoted follower of Washington; but in January, 1792, “Light Horse Harry” wrote to Mr. Madison: “No consideration on earth could induce me to act a part, however gratifying to me, which could be construed into disregard of, or faithlessness to, this Commonwealth;” and later, when in 1798 the Virginia and Kentucky resolutions were under discussion, “Light Horse Harry” exclaimed in debate, “Virginia is my country; her will I obey, however lamentable the fate to which it may subject me.” Born in this environment, nurtured in these traditions, to ask Lee to raise his hand against Virginia was like asking Montrose or the MacCallum More to head a force designed for the subjection of the Highlands and the destruction of the clans. Where such a stern election is forced upon a man as then confronted Lee, the single thing the fair-minded investigator has to take into account is the loyalty, the single-mindedness of the election. Was it devoid of selfishness,—was it free from any baser and more sordid worldly motive,—ambition, pride, jealousy, revenge or self-interest? To this question there can, in the case of Lee, be but one answer. When, after long and trying mental wrestling, he threw in his fate with Virginia, he knowingly sacrificed everything which man prizes most,—his dearly beloved home, his means of support, his professional standing, his associates, a brilliant future assured to him. Born a slaveholder in a race of slaveholders, he was himself no defender, much less an advocate of slavery; on the contrary, he did not hesitate to pronounce it in his place “a moral and political evil.” Later, he manumitted his slaves. He did not believe in secession; as a right reserved under the Constitution he pronounced it “idle talk”: but, as a Virginian, he also added, “if the Government is disrupted, I shall return to my native State and share the miseries of my people, and save in defence will draw my sword on none.” Next to his high sense of allegiance to Virginia was Lee's pride in his profession. He was a soldier; as such rank, and the possibility of high command and great achievement, were very dear to him. He quietly and silently made the greatest sacrifice a soldier can be asked to make. With war plainly impending, the foremost place in the army of which he was an officer was now tendered him; his answer was to lay down the commission he already held. Virginia had been drawn into the struggle; and, though he recognized no necessity for the state of affairs, “in my own person,” he wrote, “I had lo meet the question whether I should take part against my native State; I have not been able lo make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.” It may have been treason to take this position; the man who look it, uttering these words and sacrificing as he sacrificed, may have been technically a renegade to his flag,—if you please, false to his allegiance; but he stands awaiting sentence at the bar of history in very respectable company. Associated with him are, for instance, William of Orange, known as The Silent, John Hampden, the original Pater Patriae, Oliver Cromwell, the Protector of the English Commonwealth, Sir Harry Vane, once a governor of Massachusetts, and George Washington, a Virginian of note. In the throng of other offenders I am also gratified to observe certain of those from whom I not unproudly claim descent. They were, one and all, in the sense referred to, false to their oaths—forsworn. As to Robert E. Lee, individually, I can only repeat what I have already said,—[“]if in all respects similarly circumstanced, I hope I should have been filial and unselfish enough to have done as Lee did.”[note] Such an utterance on my part may be “traitorous;” but I here render that homage...
read the rest @ http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
Interesting.
"He did not believe in secession; as a right reserved under the Constitution he pronounced it 'idle talk'.""Then the inevitable issue arose; and it arose over African slavery; and slavery was sectional."
When someone posts the same long cut and pastes over and over, across multiple threads, it’s considered spam.
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915) was a member of the prominent Adams family, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams). He served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
...In Massachusetts, however, I could not even in 1861 have been so placed; for, be it because of better or worse, Massachusetts was not Virginia;—no more Virginia than England once was Scotland, or the Lowlands the Highlands. The environment, the ideals, were in no respect the same. In Virginia, Lee was Macgregor; and, where Macgregor sat, there was the head of the table. Into Lee's subsequent military career, there is no call here to enter; nor shall I undertake to compare him with other great military characters whether contemporaneous or of all time. As I said when I began, the topic has been thoroughly discussed by others; and, moreover, the time limitation here again confronts me. I must press on. Suffice it for me, as one of those then opposed in arms to Lee, however subordinate the capacity, to admit at once that, as a leader, he conducted operations on the highest plane. Whether acting on the defensive upon the soil of his native State, or leading his army into the enemy's country, he was humane, self-restrained and strictly observant of the most advanced rules of civilized warfare. He respected the non-combatant; nor did he ever permit the wanton destruction of private property. His famous Chambersburg order was a model which any invading general would do well to make his own; and I repeat now what I have heretofore had occasion to say, “I doubt if a hostile force of an equal size ever advanced into an enemy's country, or fell back from it in retreat, leaving behind less cause of hate and bitterness than did the Army of Northern Virginia in that memorable campaign which culminated at Gettysburg.”
And yet that Gettysburg campaign is an episode in Lee's military career which I am loth wholly to pass over; for the views I entertain of it are not in all respects those generally held. Studied in the light of results, that campaign has been criticised; the crucial attack of Gettysburg's third day has been pronounced a murderous persistence in a misconception; and, among Confederate writers especially, the effort has been to relieve Lee of responsibility for final miscarriage, transferring it to his lieutenants. As a result reached from participation in those events and subsequent study of them, briefly let me say I concur in none of these conclusions. Taking the necessary chances incident to all warfare on a large scale into consideration, the Gettysburg campaign was in my opinion timely, admirably designed, energetically executed, and brought to a close with consummate military skill. A well considered offensive thrust of the most deadly character, intelligently aimed at the opponent's heart, its failure was of the narrowest; and the disaster to the Confederate side which that failure might readily have involved was no less skilfully than successfully averted.
I cannot here and now enter into details. But I hold that credit, and the consequent measure of applause, in the outcome of that campaign belong to Lee's opponent, and not to him. All the chances were in Lee's favor, and he should have won a great victory; and Meade should have sustained a decisive defeat. As it was, Meade triumphantly held his ground; Lee suffered a terrible repulse, his deadly thrust was foiled, and his campaign was a failure.
So far as Lee's general plan of campaign, and the movements which culminated in the battle of Gettysburg, were concerned, in war, be it always and ever remembered, a leader must take some chances, and mistakes will occur; but the mistakes are rarely, if ever, all on one side. They tend to counterbalance each other; and, commanders and commanded being at all equal, not unseldom it is the balance of misconceptions, shortcomings, miscarriages, and the generally unforeseen and indeed unforeseeable, which tips the scale to victory or defeat. I have said that I proposed to avoid comparisons; at best such are invidious, and, under present circumstances, might from me be considered as doubtful in matter of taste. I think, however, some things too obvious to admit of denial; or, consequently, to suggest comparison. About every crisp military aphorism is as matter of course attributed to Napoleon; and so Napoleon is alleged first to have remarked that “In war, men are nothing; a man is everything.” And, as formerly a soldier of the Army of the Potomac, I now stand appalled at the risk I unconsciously ran anterior to July, 1863, when confronting the Army of Northern Virginia, commanded as it then was and as we were. The situation was in fact as bad with us in the Army of the Potomac as it was with the Confederates in the Southwest. The unfortunate Pemberton there was simply not in the same class as Grant and Sherman, to whom he found himself opposed. Results there followed accordingly. So, in Virginia, Lee and Jackson made an extraordinary, a most exceptional combination. They outclassed McClellan and Burnside, Pope and Hooker; outclassed them sometimes terribly, sometimes ludicrously, always hopelessly: and results in that case also followed accordingly. That we were not utterly destroyed constitutes a flat and final refutal of the truth of Napoleon's aphorism. If we did not realize the facts of the situation in this respect, our opponents did. Let me quote the words of one of them: “There was, however, one point of great interest in [the rapid succession of the Federal commanders], and that was our amazement that an army could maintain even so much as its organization under the depressing strain of those successive appointments and removals of its commanding generals. And to-day (1903) I, for one, regard the fact that it did preserve its cohesion and its fighting power under, and in spite of such experiences, as furnishing impressive demonstration of the high character and intense loyalty of our historic foe, the Federal Army of the Potomac.”[note]
[note] Stiles, Four Years under Marse Robert, p. 21.
Notwithstanding the fact that until the death of Jackson and the Gettysburg campaign we were thus glaringly outclassed, and at a corresponding disadvantage in every respect save mere men and equipment, the one noticeable feature of the succession of Virginia campaigns from that of 1862 to that of 1864, was their obstinacy and indecisive character. The advantage would be some times on one side, sometimes on the other: but neither side could secure an indisputable supremacy. This was markedly the case at Gettysburg; and yet, judging by the Confederate accounts of that campaign which have met my eye, the inference would be that the Union forces labored under no serious disadvantage, while Lee's plans and tactics were continually compromised by untoward accident, or the precipitation or remissness of his subordinates. My study of what then took place leads me to a wholly opposite conclusion. Well conceived and vigorously carried out as that campaign was on the part of the Confederate leader, the preponderance of the accidental—the blunders, the unforeseeable, the misconceptions and the miscarriages—was distinctly in Lee's favor. On any fair weighing of chances, he should have won a decisive victory; as a matter of actual outcome, he and his army ought to have been destroyed. As usual, on that theatre of war at the time, neither result came about.
First as to the chapter of accidents,—the misconceptions, miscarriages and shortcomings. If, as has been alleged, an essential portion of Lee's force was at one time out of reach and touch, and if, at the critical moment, a lieutenant was not promptly in place at a given hour, on the Union side an unforeseen change of supreme command went into effect when battle was already joined, and the newly appointed commander had no organized staff; his army was not concentrated; his strongest corps was over thirty miles from the point of conflict; and the two corps immediately engaged should have been destroyed in detail before reinforcements could have reached them. In addition to all this—superadded thereto—the most skilful general and perhaps the fiercest fighter on the Union side was killed at the outset, and his line of battle was almost fatally disordered by the misconception of a corps commander.
The chapter of accidents thus reads all in Lee's favor. But, while Lee on any fair weighing of chances stands in my judgment more than justified both in his conception of the campaign and in every material strategic move made in it, he none the less fundamentally misconceived the situation, with consequences which should have been fatal both to him and to his command. Frederick did the same at Kunersdorf; Napoleon, at Waterloo. In the first place, Lee had at that time supreme confidence in his command; and he had grounds for it. As he himself then wrote—“ There never were such men in an army before. They will go anywhere and do anything, if properly led.” And, for myself, I do not think the estimate thus expressed was exaggerated; speaking deliberately, having faced some portions of the Army of Northern Virginia at the time and having since reflected much on the occurrences of that momentous period, I do not believe that any more formidable or better organized and animated force was ever set in motion than that which Lee led across the Potomac in the early summer of 1863. It was essentially an army of fighters,—men who, individually or in the mass, could be depended on for any feat of arms in the power of mere mortals to accomplish. They would blanch at no danger. This Lee from experience knew. He had tested them; they had full confidence in him. He also thought he knew his opponent; and here too his recent experience justified him.
The disasters which had befallen the Confederates in the Southwest in the spring and early summer of 1863 had to find compensation in the East. The exigencies of warfare necessitated it. Some risk must be incurred. So Lee determined to strike at his opponent's heart. He had what he believed to be the better weapon; and he had reason for considering himself incomparably the superior swordsman. He was; of that he had at Chancellorsville satisfied himself and the world. Then came the rapid, aggressive move; and the long, desperately contested struggle at Gettysburg, culminating in that historic charge of Pickett's Virginia division. Paradoxical as it may sound, in view of the result, that charge—what those men did—justified Lee. True, those who made the charge did not accomplish the impossible; but towards it they did all that mortal men could do. But it is urged that Lee should have recognized the impossible when face to face confronted by it, and not have directed brave men to lay down their lives in the vain effort to do it. That is true; and, as Lee is said to have once remarked in another connection, “Even as poor a soldier as I am can generally discover mistakes after it is all over.” After Gettysburg was over, like Frederick at Kunersdorf and Napoleon at Waterloo, Lee doubtless discovered his mistake. It was a very simple one: he undervalued his opponent. The temper of his own weapon he knew; he made no mistake there. His mistake lay in his estimate of his antagonist: but that estimate again was based on his own recent experience, though in other fields.
On the other hand, from the day I rode over the field of Gettysburg immediately following the fight, to that which now is, I have fully and most potently believed that only some disorganized fragments of Lee's army should after that battle have found their way back to Virginia. The war should have collapsed within sixty days thereafter. For eighteen hours after the repulse of Pickett's division, I have always felt and now feel, the fate of the Army of Virginia was as much in General Meade's hands as was the fate of the army led by Napoleon in the hands of Blücher on the night of Waterloo. As an aggressive force, the Confederate army was fought out. It might yet put forth a fierce defensive effort; it was sure to die game: but it was impotent for attack. Meade had one entire corps—perhaps his best,—his Sixth, commanded by Sedgwick—intact and in reserve. It lay there cold, idle, formidable. The true counter movement for the fourth day of continuous fighting would on Meade's part have been an exact reversal of Lee's own plan of battle for the third day. That plan, as described by Fitzhugh Lee, was simple. “His [Lee's] purpose was to turn the enemy's left flank with his First Corps, and, after the work began there, to demonstrate against his lines with the others in order to prevent the threatened flank from being reinforced, these demonstrations to be converted into a real attack as the flanking wave of battle rolled over the troops in their front.” What Lee thus proposed for Meade's army on the third day, Meade should unquestionably have returned on Lee's army upon the fourth day. Sedgwick's corps should then have assailed Lee's right and rear. I once asked a leading Confederate general, who had been in the very thick of it at Gettysburg, what would have been the outcome had Meade, within two hours of the repulse of Pickett, ordered Sedgwick to move off to the left, and, occupying Lee's line of retreat, proceeded to envelop the Confederate right, while, early the following morning, Meade had commanded a general advance. The answer I received was immediate: “Without question we would have been destroyed. We all that night fully expected it; and could not understand next day why we were unmolested. My ammunition”—for he was an officer of artillery—“was exhausted.”
But in all this, as in every speculation of the sort,—and the history of warfare is replete with them,—the “if” is much in evidence; as much in evidence, indeed, as it is in a certain familiar Shakesperian disquisition. I here introduce what I have said on this topic simply to illustrate what may be described as the balance of miscarriages inseparable from warfare. On the other hand, the manner in which Lee met disaster at Gettysburg, and the combination of serene courage, and consequent skill, with which he extricated his army from a most critical situation commands admiration. I would here say nothing depreciatory of General Meade. He was an accomplished officer as well as a brave soldier. Placed suddenly in a most trying position,—assigned to chief command when battle was already joined,—untried in his new sphere of action, and caught unprepared,—he fought at Gettysburg a stubborn, gallant fight. With chances at the beginning heavily against him, he saved the day. Personally, I was later under deep obligation to General Meade. He too had character. None the less, as I have already pointed out, I fully believe that on the fourth day at Gettysburg Meade had but firmly to close his hand, and the Army of Northern Virginia was crushed. Perhaps under all the circumstances it was too much to have expected of him; certainly it was not done. Then Lee in turn did avail himself of his opportunity. Skilfully, proudly though sullenly, preserving an unbroken front, he withdrew to Virginia. That withdrawal was masterly.
Narrowly escaping destruction at Gettysburg, my next contention is that Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia never sustained defeat. Finally, it is true, succumbing to exhaustion, to the end they were not overthrown in fight. And here I approach a large topic, but one closely interwoven with Lee's military career; in fact, as I see it, the explanation of what finally occurred. What then was it that brought about the collapse of the Army of Northern Virginia, and the consequent downfall of the Confederacy? The literature of the War of Secession now constitutes a library in itself. Especially is this true of it in its military aspects. The shelves are crowded with memoirs and biographies of its generals, the stories of its campaigns, the records and achievements of its armies, its army corps and its regiments. Yet I make bold to say that no well and philosophically considered narrative of the struggle has yet appeared; nor has any satisfactory or comprehensive explanation been given of its extraordinary and unanticipated outcome. Let me briefly set it forth as I see it; only by so doing can I explain what I mean.
Tersely put, dealing only with outlines, the southern community in 1861 precipitated a conflict on the slavery issue, in implicit reliance on its own warlike capacity and resources, the extent and very defensible character of its territory, and, above all, on its complete control of cotton as the great staple textile fabric of modern civilization. That the seceding States fully believed in the justice of their cause, and confidently appealed to it, I do not question, much less deny. For present purposes let this be conceded in full. But, historically, it is equally clear that to vindicate the right, next to their own manhood and determination, they relied in all possible confidence on their apparently absolute control of one commercial staple. When, therefore, in 1858, with the shadow of the impending conflict darkening the horizon, a thoughtful senator from South Carolina, one on whom the mantle of Calhoun had fallen, declared that “Cotton is King,” that “no power on earth dares to make war on it,” that “without firing a gun, without drawing a sword,” the cotton-producing South could, if war was declared upon it, bring “the whole world” to its feet, he only gave utterance to what was in the South accepted as a fundamental article of political and economical faith. Suggesting the contingency that no cotton was forthcoming from the South for a period of three years, the same senator declared, “this is certain: England would topple headlong and carry the whole civilized world with her, save the South. Who,” he then exclaimed, “that has looked on recent events, can doubt that cotton is supreme.” In case of conflict, cotton, if it went forth, was to supply the South with the sinews of warfare; if it did not go forth the lack of it would bring about European civil commotion, and compel foreign intervention. In either case the South was secure. As to a maritime blockade of the South, shutting it up to die of inanition, the idea was chimerical. No such feat of maritime force ever had been accomplished, it was claimed; nor was it possible of accomplishment. To “talk of putting up a wall of fire around eight hundred and fifty thousand square miles” situated as the Confederacy was, with its twelve thousand miles of seacoast, was pronounced too “absurd” for serious discussion. And, certainly, that no such thing had ever yet been done was undeniable. But, even supposing it were possible of accomplishment, the doing it would but the more effectively play the Confederate game. It would compel intervention. As well shut off bread from the manufacturing centres of Europe as stop their supply of cotton. In any or either event, and in any contingency which might arise, the victory of the Confederacy was assured. And this theory of the situation and its outcome was accepted by the southern community as indisputable.
What occurred? In each case that which had been pronounced impossible of occurrence. On land the Confederacy had an ample force of men, they swarmed to the standards; and no better or more reliable material was ever gathered together. Well and skilfully marshalled, the Confederate soldier did on the march and in battle all that needed to be done. Nor were the two sides unequally matched so far as the land arrays were concerned. As Lee with his instinctive military sense put it even in the closing stages of the struggle—“The proportion of experienced troops is larger in our army than in that of the enemy, while his numbers exceed our own.” And in warfare experience, combined with an advantageous defensive, counts for a great deal. This was so throughout the conflict; and yet the Confederate cause sank in failure. It did so to the complete surprise of a bewildered world; for, in Europe, the ultimate success of the South was accepted as a foregone conclusion. To such an extent was this the case that the wisest and most far-seeing of English public men did not hesitate to stake their reputation for foresight upon it as a result. How was the wholly unexpected actual outcome brought about? The simple answer is,—The Confederacy collapsed from inanition. Suffering such occasional reverses and defeats as are incidental to all warfare, it was never crushed in battle or on the field, until its strength was sapped away by want of food. It died of exhaustion,—starved and gasping!
Take a living organism, whatever it may be, place it in a vessel hermetically sealed, and attach to that vessel an air pump. You know what follows. It is needless to describe it. No matter how strong or fierce or self-confident it may be, the victim dies; growing weaker by degrees, it finally collapses. That was the exact condition and fate of the Confederacy. What had been confidently pronounced impossible was done. The Confederacy was sealed up within itself by the blockade; and the complete exclusion of cotton from the manufacturing centres of Europe did not cause revolution there, nor compel intervention here. Man's foresight once more came to grief. As usual, it was the unexpected which occurred.
Thus the two decisive defeats of the Confederacy,—those which really brought about its downfall and compelled Lee to lay down his arms,—were inflicted not before Vicksburg nor yet in Virginia,—not in the field at all; they were sustained, the one, almost by default, on the ocean; the other, most fatal of all, after sharpest struggle in Lancashire. The story of that Lancashire Cotton Famine of 1861 to 1864 has never been adequately told in connection with our Civil War. Simply ignored by the standard historians, it was yet the Confederacy's fiercest fight, and its most decisive as well as most far-reaching defeat. A momentous conflict, the supremacy of the Union on the ocean hung on its issue; and upon that supremacy depended every considerable land operation:—the retention by the Confederacy of New Orleans, and the consequent control of the Mississippi; Sherman's march to the sea; the movement through the Carolinas; the operations before Petersburg; generally, the maintenance of the Confederate armies in the field. It is in fact no exaggeration to assert that both the conception and the carrying out of every large Union operation of the war without a single exception hinged and depended on complete national maritime supremacy. It is equally indisputable that the struggle in Lancashire was decisive of that supremacy. As Lee himself admitted in the death agony of the Confederacy, he had never believed it could in the long run make good its independence “unless Foreign Powers should, directly or indirectly, assist” it in so doing. Thus, strange as it sounds, it follows as a logical consequence that Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia were first reduced to inanition, and finally compelled to succumb, as the result of events on the other side of the Atlantic, largely stimulated by a moral impulse over which they could exert no control. The great and loudly trumpeted cotton campaign of the Confederacy was its most signal failure; and that failure was decisive of the war...
read the rest @ http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
==============================
Now, this was part 3. We're coming to part 4, and then we can move on to the unposted parts 5, 6, 7, 8 & 9.
Maybe there's even moar. This scion of the Adams Presidents was AWESOME. His thoughts are succinct, and not long-winded in the slightest. :)
It's not a cut and paste, it's the complete text of the subject of the original post.
Why do you have such a problem with me posting it?
In human–computer interaction, cut and paste and copy and paste are related commands that offer a user-interface interaction technique for transferring text, data, files or objects from a source to a destination. Most ubiquitously, users require the ability to cut and paste sections of plain text. The cut command removes the selected data from its original position, while the copy command creates a duplicate; in both cases the selected data is placed in a clipboard. The data in the clipboard is later inserted in the position where the paste command is issued.unless you're transcribing that entire document each time, you're using the computer cut and paste commands.
And my only problem with it is that you keep posting the same thing over and over and over, which is just lazy. It was interesting the first time as an example of the Marble Man hagiography at its peak, but what was the point after that?
Say, I wonder if everyone got to see part four of Charles Francis Adams Jr.'s missive on Robert E. Lee, in a prelude to posting part five:
Charles Francis Adams, Jr. (May 27, 1835 – May 20, 1915) was a member of the prominent Adams family, and son of Charles Francis Adams, Sr. (son of President John Quincy Adams and grandson of President John Adams). He served as a colonel in the Union Army during the American Civil War.
http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
...It is very curious, at times almost comical, to trace historical parallels. Plutarch is, of course, the standard exemplar of that sort of treatment. Among other great careers, Plutarch, as every college boy knows, tells the story of King Pyrrhus, the Epirot. A great captain, Pyrrhus devised a military formation which his opponents could not successfully face, and his career was consequently one of victory. But at last he met his fate. Assaulting the town of Argos, he became entangled in its streets; and, fighting his way out, he was struck down, and killed, by a tile thrown from a house-top by an Argive woman. The Confederacy, and, through the Confederacy, Lee underwent a not dissimilar fate; for, as an historical fact, it was a missile from a woman's hand which was decisive of that Lancashire conflict, and so doomed the Confederacy. A startling proposition; but proof quite irrefutable of it exists in a publication to which as an authority no Southern writer at least will take exception, the organ established in London by the agents of the Confederacy in 1862. Sustained as long as the conflict continued from Confederate funds, with a view to influencing European public opinion, the Index, as it was called, collapsed with the Confederacy in July, 1865. Naturally those in charge of it watched with feverish interest the progress of the cotton famine. Not only was the British pocket nerve touched at its most sensitive point, but in Lancashire starvation emphasized financial distress. The pressure thus brought to bear on public opinion in Great Britain, and, through that public opinion, on the policy of Europe, was confidently counted on for results decisive of the American struggle. Ten years before Harriet Beecher Stowe had launched through the press her Uncle Tom's Cabin. Translated into every civilized tongue, it had soon become world literature. In Great Britain, and especially in Lancashire, it “carried the new gospel to every cabin in the land.” Whoever in those days read anything, read Uncle Tom's Cabin. That it was a correct portrayal of conditions actually existing in the region wherein the incidents narrated were supposed to have occurred, is not now to be considered. That Uncle Tom himself was a type of his race, or indeed even a possibility in it, few would now be disposed to contend.[note]
[note] J. C. Read, The Brothers War, pp. 194–198. There is in Mr. Read's book, published fifty years after the appearance of Mrs. Stowe's historic tale and forty years after the Proclamation of Emancipation, a chapter (ix) entitled, “Uncle Tom's Cabin,” in which are to be found the views of an observant and reflecting Georgian on the statement in the text.
Ethically, he was a Christian martyr of the most advanced description and, on the large class who accepted the work as a correct portrayal, the pathetic story and cruel fate of the colored saint, moralist and philosopher made an indelible impression. Indeed, that female and sentimentalist portrayal lent a force which has not yet spent itself to the contention that the only difference between the Ethiopian and the Caucasian is epidermal; the negro being in fact merely a white man—a Yankee, if you please—who, having a black skin, has never been given a chance! Nay, more! if Uncle Tom and Legree were to be accepted as types, the black man was superior naturally to the white; for Uncle Tom was a fully developed moralist, while Legree was a demon incarnate. And this presentation of life and manners, and this portrayal of typical racial characters were in Lancashire implicitly accepted as gospel truth! Such indisputably was the fact; and, when the final issue was joined, the fact told heavily against the Confederacy. In contemplation of it,—realizing the handicap thus imposed, the burden of which at the moment the historian has since ignored, and few consequently now appreciate,—the writers for the Index fairly cried aloud in agony. Their wail, long repeated, has in it as now read an element of the comic. The patience of the victims of the cotton famine, they declared, was the extraordinary feature of the foreign situation; and the agents of the Confederacy noted with unconcealed dismay the absence of political demonstrations calculated to urge on a not unwilling Palmerston ministry “its duty to its suffering subjects.” There was but one way of accounting for it. Uncle Tom and Legree were respectively doing their work. So it was that the Index despairingly at last declared—“ The emancipation of the negro from the slavery of Mrs. Beecher Stowe's heroes is the one idea of the millions of British who know no better, and do not care to know.” Like the Cherubim with the flaming sword this sentiment stood between Lancashire and cotton; and the inviolate blockade made possible the subjugation of the Confederacy. With Pyrrhus, it was the tile thrown by a woman from the house-top; with Lee, it was a book by a woman issued from the printing press! The missiles were equally fatal. It was only a difference of time, and its changed conditions.
Foreign intervention being thus withheld, and the control of the sea by the Union made absolute, the blockade was gradually perfected. The fateful process then went steadily on. Armies might be resisted in the field; the working of the air pump could not be stopped: and, day and night, season after season, the air pump worked. So the atmosphere of the Confederacy became more and more attenuated, respiration sensibly harder. Air-hole on air-hole was closed. First New Orleans fell; then Vicksburg, and the Mississippi flowed free; next Sherman, securely counting on the control of the sea as a base of new operations on land, penetrated the vitals of the Confederacy; then, relying still on maritime coöperation, he pursued his almost unopposed way through the Carolinas; while Grant, with his base secure upon the James and Fortress Monroe, beleaguered Richmond. Lee with his Army of Northern Virginia calmly, but watchfully and resolutely, confronted him. The Confederate lines were long and thin, guarded by poorly clad and half-fed men. But, veterans, they held their assailants firmly at bay. As Lee, however, fully realized, it was only a question of time. The working of the air pump was beyond his sphere either of influence or operations. Nothing could stop it.
As early as the close of 1863 Lee wrote of his men, “Thousands are bare-footed, a greater number partially shod, and nearly all without overcoats, blankets, or warm clothing;” and later, in the dead of winter, referring to the elementary necessities of any successful warfare, he said,—“The supply, by running the blockade, has become so precarious that I think we should turn our attention to our own resources . . . as a further dependence upon those from abroad can result in nothing but increase of suffering and want.” The conclusion here drawn, while necessary, was extremely suggestive. “Our own resources!”—the Confederacy had always prided itself on being a purely agricultural community. With institutions patriarchal in character, it had looked upon the people of the North as its agents and factors, and those of Europe as its skilled workmen and artisans; and now that community shut up within its own limits, under conditions of warfare active and severe, had only itself to rely upon for a supply of everything its defenders needed, from munitions to shoes, from blankets to medicines and even soap. Viewed in a half century's perspective, the situation was simply and manifestly impossible of continuance. To it there could be but one outcome; and when at last on the 16th of January, 1865, the telegraph announced the fall of Fort Fisher, the Confederacy felt itself hermetically sealed. Wilmington, its last breathing hole, was closed. Still, not the less for that, the air pump kept on in its deadly silent work.
Three months later the long-delayed inevitable occurred. The collapse came. That under such conditions it should have been so long in coming is now the only legitimate cause of surprise. That adversity is the test of man is a commonplace; that Lee and his Army of Northern Virginia were during the long, dragging winter of 1864–5 most direfully subjected to that test need not here be said; any more than it is needful to say that they bore the test manfully. But the handwriting was on the wall; the men were taxed beyond the limits of human endurance. And Lee knew it. “Yesterday, the most inclement day of the winter,” he reported on February 8, 1865, the right wing of his army “had to be retained in line of battle, having been in the same condition the two previous days and nights. . . . Under these circumstances, heightened by assaults and fire of the enemy, some of the men had been without meat for three days, and all were suffering from reduced rations and scant clothing, exposed to battle, cold, hail and sleet. . . . The physical strength of the men, if their courage survives, must fail under this treatment.” If it was so with the men, with the animals it was even worse. “Our cavalry,” he added, “has to be dispersed for want of forage.” Even thus Lee's army faced an opponent vastly superior in numbers, whose ranks were being constantly replenished; a force armed, clothed, equipped, fed and sheltered as no similar force in the world's history had ever been before. I state only indisputable facts. Lee proved equal to even this occasion. Bearing a bold, confident front, he was serene and outwardly calm; alert, resourceful, formidable to the last, individually he showed no sign of weakness, not even occasional petulance. Inspired by his example, the whole South seemed to lean up against him in implicit, loving reliance. It was a superlative tribute to Character. Finally, when in April the summons to conflict came, the Army of Northern Virginia, the single remaining considerable organized force of the Confederacy, seemed to stagger to its feet, and, gaunt and grim, shivering with cold and emaciated with hunger, worn down by hard, unceasing attrition, it faced its enemy, formidable still. As I have since studied that situation, listened to the accounts of Confederate officers active in the closing movements, and read the letters written me by those of the rank and file, it has seemed as if Lee's command then cohered and moved by mere force of habit. Those composing it failed to realize the utter hopelessness of the—situation the disparity of the conflict, I am sure Jefferson Davis failed to realize it; so, I think, in less degree, did Lee. They talked, for instance, of recruits and of a levy in mass; Lee counselled the arming of the slaves; and when, after Lee had surrendered, Davis on the 10th of April, 1865, held his last war conference at Greensboro, he was still confident he would in a few weeks have another army in the field, and did not hesitate to express his faith that “we can whip the enemy yet, if our people will turn out.” I have often pondered over what Davis had in mind when he ventured this opinion; or what led Lee to advocate the enlistment of negroes. Both were soldiers; and, besides being great in his profession, Lee was more familiar than any other man alive with actual conditions then existing in the Confederate camps. Both Davis and Lee, therefore, must have known that, in those final stages of the conflict, if the stamp of a foot upon the ground would have brought a million men into the field, the cause of the Confederacy would thereby have been in no wise strengthened; on the contrary, what was already bad would have been made much worse. For, to be effective in warfare, men must be fed and clothed and armed. Organized in commands, they must have rations as well as ammunition, commissary and quartermaster trains, artillery horses and forage. In the closing months of the Civil War, both Lee and Davis knew perfectly well that they could not arm, nor feed, nor clothe, nor transport the forces already in the field; they were themselves without money, and the soldiers most inadequately supplied with arms, clothing, quartermaster or medical supplies, commissariat or ammunition. Notoriously, those then on the muster-rolls were going home, or deserting to the enemy, as the one alternative to death from privation—hunger and cold. If then, a million, or even only a poor hundred thousand fresh recruits had in answer to the summons swarmed to the lines around Richmond, how would it have bettered the situation? An organized army is a mighty consumer of food and material; and food and material have to be served out to it every day. It must be fed as regularly as the sun rises and sets. And the organized resources of the Confederacy were exhausted; its granaries—Georgia and the valley of the Shenandoah—were notoriously devastated and desolate; its lines of communication and supply were cut, or in the hands of the invader...
read the rest @ http://leearchive.wlu.edu/reference/misc/centennial/adams.html
=====================
To paraphrase Walter Brennan from The Real McCoys:
"No spam, jest the original text"
Wish I could post the laugh. LOL! :)
And of course, "Tersely put, dealing only with outlines, the southern community in 1861 precipitated a conflict on the slavery issue, in implicit reliance on its own warlike capacity and resources, the extent and very defensible character of its territory, and, above all, on its complete control of cotton as the great staple textile fabric of modern civilization."
So it appears that this historian you consider "awesome" believed that the south started the war because of slavery and that Lee never believed it could stand on its own without foreign help.
I could swear I'm fishing up the html, rather than "plain text", but whut do I know? LOL! :)
Nice! In this part he attributes the south’s defeat to a woman.
I suppose if I was a Southern aficionado, that single paragraph out of the many, many, many other paragraphs that young Adams wrote might bother me.
I don't see how your brief snippet lessens the might of Charles Adams' paean to the greatness and Character of Robert E. Lee. :)
If he would have listened to Longstreet at Gettysburg, the south may have won the war.
While he was loved by his troops, he was a pretty poor general letting his ego cloud his judgment and by his own admission was responsible for the unnecessary death of thousands of his men at Gettysburg which was the turning point of the war.
Lee was clearly outsmarted by Meade at Gettysburg.
Meade deserves a lot of credit for outmaneuvering Lee in the days leading up to the battle.
Once battle was joined the Southern Army was effectively trapped into making a frontal assault.
Having said that, it would certainly appear to a fairminded observer to be something to the notion that Northern economic warfare against the south did in fact occur at least with some degree of frequency and intensity over the decades leading up to the northern push in the late 1850's for the odious Morrill tariff, and certainly the Tariff of Abominations of 1828 bore it's name for a reason.
It gives perhaps added meaning to the words; " But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security."; does it not?
I toured Gettysburg last fall...what an amazing place! The interpretive center and the private guide service is first rate.
It is amazing standing on Cemetery Hill imagining the Confederate troops advancing across over a mile of open terrain and thinking WHY? Why would a general supposedly as intelligent as Lee order an assault on an entrenched army when if he would have listened to Longstreet the southern troops should have by-passed Meade and headed for Philadelphia?
The eventual outcome of the war probably would have been the same, but the immediate slaughter would have been avoided.
I highly recommend everyone visit Gettysburg...stay overnight in town and take in the magnitude of the battle.
But that's not you, right?
Then the questions should help you learn.
Are you such a tyro that you've never heard the expression that "If Momma ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy"?
Amazing how you continue to troll for a rise out of ANYONE over the South's defeat.
The South lost. Get over it, troll.
Wonder which one of you Spiveys is Non-Sequitur. LOL!
Looking at one of those older threads, I see that a LOT of the troll-the-Southerners posters are no longer with us. :)
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