Could the South Have Won?

NY Books ^ | June 2002 ed. | James M. McPherson

[WhiskeyPapa]

What was the cause of the war?

In a word, GREED

Yep. The greed of the slave power.

Typical CSA apologist dodge.

Walt

[lentulusgracchus]

Back on topic over here, picking up the gauntlet Wlat slapped Bobby Lee with.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Bobby Lee was no more a traitor than George Bush is. He resigned his commission in good order, like Longstreet did, and went with his State.

Nope.

There was an overlap of several days after Lee accepted a commission from Virginia and before he was released from his oath to the U.S. And he was paid for those days.

He was very much guilty of treason.

It's in the record. You can't wish it away.

Walt

[lentulusgracchus]

Yep. The greed of the slave power.

Nope. The greed of the Eastern Whig/Republican Millocracy, to take private the national agenda the way their antecedents had ramrodded and bullsteered the ratification of the Constitution of 1787. The greed of the industrialists and their bankers in the East Coast money centers, to strip the continent of its wealth and work its immigrants into the dirt for 15 cents a day.

That couldn't happen, with the old, agrarian, Jacksonian America standing in the day. So.....pick an issue, what issue will do, boys, to split the West off from the South? Oh, I know! Slavery! Let's throw our weight behind that Lincoln fellow, he's spoiling for a fight with the Sothrons. He'll get us where we need to go!

[Non-Sequitur]

You castigate Walt for disparaging Lee and his motives, and then you go and do the same for Farragut and George Thomas and John Gibbon and countless others. These men stood by what they thought was right, fought for what they believed in, and are just as worthy as respect as someone like Lee. Where the hell do you get off deciding that your cause was the only one worth fighting for or that your general is the only one deserving honor?

[lentulusgracchus]

There was an overlap of several days after Lee accepted a commission from Virginia and before he was released from his oath to the U.S. And he was paid for those days.

Mail delay. You going to hang him for that? Oh, not literally -- but Wlat, you've hanged every Southerner who ever drew breath five times over on Free Republic, so quit talking to me about mercy. You're tendentious and vindictive, and that is in the Record! Smoke that, Wlat!

[lentulusgracchus]

These men stood by what they thought was right, fought for what they believed in, and are just as worthy as respect as someone like Lee.

That's just the point. Wlat hangs Lee five times a day. He accords him zero respect, none, zippo. Pardon me for being tedious, but I just thought I'd point that out to you.

[muleboy]

What was the cause of the war? In a word, GREED Yep. The greed of the slave power. Typical CSA apologist dodge. Walt

Not to mention the greed of the mercantilists who used force to "free" the slaves (as long as they don't come up here) and to establish a "more perfect union, of the corporations, by the corporations, and FOR the corporations", which, by the way, we still have today.

[wardaddy]

This is all a part of the neverending argument. Walt and Company will always feel the way they do. We will always disagree. The most troubling aspect of all this to me is that these threads on FR appear that Reconstruction has never completely gone out of style. The history of the WBTS era will have to be written 4 or 5 centuries later at the earliest...sort of like the English Civil War and Cromwell. It's odd that for nearly 120 years after Reconstruction that historians for the most part were fairly even handed and willing to attribute faults or accolades where they fell to either party. Now here on FR (a Conservative website I'm told) we have FReepers hand in hand with the PC revisionist crowd once again trying to dismatle Southern heritage and place every molecule of blame for that damned war squarely on Southern shoulders. History is NEVER that simple....except to simpletons.

BTW...Cromwell is still a hero or villian to many..LOL

[WhiskeyPapa]

Mail delay.

Oh I thought it was done in good order as you said in your #560.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Walt and Company will always feel the way they do.

If we get some business cards, they should say "Walt and Company".

That's what I think any way.

Walt

[muleboy]

History is NEVER that simple....except to simpletons.

Excellent point. That one goes into my quote file. Many thanks.

btw, Cromwell is still a villain to those of us blessed with "Irish Alzheimers" ... we forget everything but the grudge.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Not to mention the greed of the mercantilists who used force to "free" the slaves ...

Gee, imagine using force to free slaves.

Walt

[Huck]

Gee, imagine using force to free slaves.

"I prayed for twenty years but received no answer until I prayed with my legs."

"Find out just what any people will quietly submit to and you have the exact measure of the injustice and wrong which will be imposed on them. "

"If there is no struggle, there is no progress. Those who profess to favor freedom, and deprecate agitation, are men who want crops without plowing up the ground, they want rain without thunder and lightning. "

"Power concedes nothing without a demand. It never did and it never will. "

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. "

--Frederick Douglass

[muleboy]

"Where justice is denied, where poverty is enforced, where ignorance prevails, and where any one class is made to feel that society is an organized conspiracy to oppress, rob and degrade them, neither persons nor property will be safe. " --Frederick Douglass

That sounds like a very prescient description of our present Federal Government, brought to us by that boffo group from the 60's, "Saint Abraham and the Mercantilist-Abolitionists". On sale now at any one of our 100,000 FedGov outlets/agencies. Buy your copy now and you'll never need to listen to anything else.

[Huck]

Why not blame him for the weather while you're at it?

[Non-Sequitur]

So what you've shown is that you are no different than he is. It's a fact that there were more Northern born confederate generals then there were southern born Union generals. If your contempt for southern men who remained loyal to the Union runs so deep, then what do you have to say about generals like John Pemberton and Josiah Gorgas? Men who were born in the North but fought for the confederacy? I can just imagine what you must think of men like them who turn their backs on their native states just because the south offered a higher rank or a better deal.

[Huck]

the way their antecedents had ramrodded and bullsteered the ratification of the Constitution of 1787.

Isn't that what it always comes down to with you folks? The Constitution itself was an evil conspiracy. The USA is the enemy. Amazing.

[Ditto]

Like I said, finding some sort of territorial compromise, either on the lines of Popular Sovereignty or the 1820 Missouri Compromise (and we are talking about amending the Constitution here, so Dred Scott goes away) would pacify the planters enough that secession would go away. But Lincoln didn't do that, did he? IMHO because war was his plan all along, and his goal wasn't exclusion, but extinction, of slavery -- in the South, contrary his platform, never mind what he said on the stump. It's the only explanation that makes sense to me.

A lot of pure conjecture. The Republican party was founded with free-soil as its primary plank. Lincoln talked almost exclusively about restoring the Missouri Compromise and repealing Kansas-Nebraska. There is no way in the world he could have or should have backed off on territorial expansion anymore than we would expect Jeff Davis to become an abolitionist. And Lincoln said at the time, the slaveocrats would not have stopped with another 'compromise'. They were, after all, the ones who pushed to overturn the Missouri Compromise in the first place. They desperately needed expansion and any 'compromise' with them would have been a purely temporary arrangement. Lincoln recognized that fact and drew a line in the sand. He did not in any way challenge or interfere with slavery where it existed. He would have likely gone along with a return to the Missouri Compromise which would have been a return to the pre-Kansas-Nebraska status, but beyond that, he could not go. On the surface, that seems to be all the compromise necessary by the Federal government and it was up to the states to 'compromise' as well. But looking at the economics of slavery, expansion wasn't simply one option --- it was a absolute 100% necessity to the survival of the 'planter class.' That is why they started the war.

[WhiskeyPapa]

He accords him zero respect, none, zippo.

Lee wrecked his own army.

He was a major player in ensuring that a war that was completely winnable was disastrously lost.

Lee also was two-faced.

Robert E. Lee is no proper hero for Americans, saying in 1865 that the best relationship of whites and blacks was that of master and slave. (1) Lee agreed that the system of chattel slavery in the south was a positive good, both rational and Christian, and thus an institution fit to be made permanent to serve as the cornerstone of the Confederate "nation". Too, he was in fact a slave owner, his estate at Arlington being the home of 63 slaves. (2) Lee took up arms against the United States before his letter of resignation was accepted. (3) He was not even a very successful general, squandering his army's manpower in bloody battles that destroyed his opportunity for offensive action and ultimately led to mass desertions. "He failed to rise above local professional concerns and view the war as a whole, displaying little interest or understanding of the overall strategic situation, demonstrating a predilection for Virginia - and Virginians - to the exclusion of all other theaters." (4) If you like losers, Robert E. Lee is the man for you.

And Lee's honor? His statements were inconsistant and self serving:

"The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom and forebearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for 'perpetual union' so expressed in the preamble, and for the establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolved by revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It is idle to talk of secession." January 23, 1861 (5)

"All the South has ever desired is that the union, as formed by our founding fathers, should be preserved." Jan 5. 1866 (6)

(1) Lee Considered, By Alan Nolan p. 21

(2) Ibid p. 10

(3) Ibid p. 52

(4) from "A Civil War Treasury" by A.A. Nofi

(5) Lee Considered By Alan Nolan p. 34

(6) Ibid p. 56

Walt