Historian: Civil War tales are pure bunk

The Orlando Sentinel ^ | SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1998 | Mark Pino

[Ditto]

But you must have something that you base your claim of 60,000 free black males in Virginia on? And I would assume that that was free black males of all ages, so a sizable percentage would be children under military age.

According to the 1860 Census, there were only 27,721 Free Black males of all ages in Virginia. In fact, in all the Confederate states combined, there were only 62,968 Free Black males of all ages. But stand watie has every last one of them, from age 0 to 100+ serving in the Confederate Army plus another 17,000 who must have somehow magically appeared to defend the slavers.

These guys get more bizarre by the moment.

[Non-Sequitur]

I knew all that, but ol' sw doesn't go by the census figures, you see. The tax man knows all. The family Bible is the best source for a head count. And on and on. The fact is that there were fewer that 22,000 free black men of military age in all the south. Maybe they each enlisted 5 times?

[Non-Sequitur]

Hardly. The south would have just been faced with more death and destruction from a guerilla war. Given a fight like that why should the North have cared how much of Virginia was leveled in retaliation? It is the southern people who would have suffered, not the Northern ones.

[varina davis]

Sounds like your peerless general had his off days.

Brilliant deduction. No doubt you've heard of First Manassas? I could list the battle won by CSA generals with far less troops, supplies and equipment, but the amount of bandwidth won't allow it.

[Non-Sequitur]

Lee wasn't at First Manassas, at least not in any command.

Lee was a good general, and a brave and honorable man. But he wasn't the best general of the war, or even the confederacy for that matter. I think Jackson was the better general for the southern side and Grant was the better general for the North. I would put Lee a close third, withGeorge Thomas a William Sherman battling it out for fourth.

[Aurelius]

Very interesting. Thank you.

[RightOnline]

Walt Walt Walt...............you keep pointing at what YOU interpret to be "the record". I've addressed this........twice. To no avail.

Looks like we'll just have to agree to disagree. You will continue to pick and choose the data that you can hold up to support your contention. I will disagree with you, for I see the Civil War era wholly differently. Guess that's the way it will stay. However, one little friendly hint: it doesn't serve your argument by insinuating that the other party doesn't have a clue what they're talking about or is, otherwise, an idiot.

[Ditto]

You will continue to pick and choose the data that you can hold up to support your contention.

How is he 'picking and choosing'?

[Aurelius]

You evaded the question of why all of the animosity, all of the gratuitous rudeness and insults?

If your intent were really to "enlighten" all of the benighted southern apologists, as you pretend, one would think that you would use more honey and less vinegar.

[RightOnline]

Read my previous replies above. You'll understand.

[muleboy]

So why do some react so strongly against contemporary confederatism? Many reasons. The contempt for our united country. The desire to break it up into ineffectual or tyrannical smaller units.

The world has grown dangerous again, and if we really are to be locked in a conflict that will last for many years and hit home again, we can expect this confederatist sentiment to subside, as we recognize that we are one country again. We will come togther as we did in 1941. Indeed most of us alredy have. But if the war against terrorism is already behind us, one can expect neo-confederatism, like other pernicious post-modern fashions, to persist and attract followers.

How could smaller units possibly be more ineffectual and tyrannical than the current status quo? Is yours an argument for One World Government as well? I thought competition and choice were good things to be encouraged, especially in commerce and government.

How can a return to a homogeneous culture under a severely limited government be a "pernicious post-modern fashion"? It is so 18th Century.

[GOPcapitalist]

I'm just a little surprised that you made it down that entire list without calling a single one of them a commie. You must be slipping.

Do you deny that McPherson's professional history includes extensive and voluntary associations with the marxist movements of the radical left?

Do you deny that McPherson's appeared on a Bush bashing show from Mary Frances Berry's socialist Pacifica radio network?

Do you deny that on that show McPherson was interviewed by two openly communist hosts including one with ties to a black panther affiliated racial terrorist movement?

Do you deny that McPherson writes for the World Socialist Web Site, the internet wing of the Trotskyite marxist movement?

Do you deny that representatives of the World Socialist Website clearly identify McPherson as a "progressive" academic with credentials worthy of their movement's audience?

If you deny any of these things about your hero McPherson, by all means please say so and explain. Otherwise, consider your movement's preacher discredited as a socialist affiliated left wing shill.

[Non-Sequitur]

Otherwise, consider your movement's preacher discredited as a socialist affiliated left wing shill.

But still not a commie, huh? Like I said, you're slipping.

[GOPcapitalist]

The fact that Karl Marx perceived Lincoln as a great and good man in no way diminishes the fact that Lincoln -was- a great and good man.

...but the fact that Marx thoroughly embraced Lincoln's political agendas does speak volumes about those who supported the yankee cause. More importantly, your near identical use of Marx's argumentation even down to similar language itself to support Lincoln speaks volumes about where you get your tripe.

Doubt me? Consider your above quote about Lincoln. Look at the linguistic similarities:

"[Lincoln was] one of the rare men who succeed in becoming great, without ceasing to be good. Such, indeed, was the modesty of this great and good man, that the world only discovered him a hero after he had fallen a martyr." - Karl Marx, Address of the International Working Men's Association to President Johnson, 1865

[muleboy]

The "blame America" crowd heard today on college campuses reminds Beichman that these "irrational intellectuals ... are with us today as they were back in 1932 when Theodore Dreiser, Sherwood Anderson, Erskine Caldwell, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, Lincoln Steffens, Malcolm Cowley and Upton Sinclair, among others, signed a joint letter endorsing the communist presidential candidate because, they wrote, 'It is capitalism which is destructive of all culture, and communism which desires to save civilization and its cultural heritage from the abyss to which the world crisis is driving it.'" Linda Bowles WND 1.29.02

Non Sequitur = "a statement that does not follow logically from what preceded it"

It helps to know with whom one is wasting their time arguing with.

[muleboy]

I said "with" twice. I like "with".

[mamelukesabre]

In hindsight, the civil war did seem to serve a purpose. The civil war taught america how to fight. The indian wars, the war with mexico, the war with spain......America drew on skills learned in the civil war to fight all of these.

[Twodees]

Yes, and there are some states which have collections of records which were never turned over to the US military. One of my Great-great grandpas has a service record in the archives of the Library of the Virginias which is clearly a melange of at least two different records, recording a transfer to an artillery unit two years after the entry of a death notice in his name from Chimborazo hospital to his unit commander.

That particlular ancestor was admitted to the old soldier's home in Raleigh in 1914 with his unit records verified. Who the soldier in his unit of the same name who died of cholera at Chimborazo in '63 may have been is anybody's guess. I think that records were hauled to DC and warehoused in a careless fashion and it's likely that a huge volume of them have never been examined.

[GOPcapitalist]

But still not a commie, huh? Like I said, you're slipping.

May I take that to mean that you believe there is something wrong with referring to persons of openly communist political persuasion as "commies"?

[Chili Girl]

Thanks for the story - a fun lunchtime read! :)