ROBERT E. LEE: OUR GREATEST GENERAL?

[DIRTYSECRET]

That was according to my 8th grade history teacher-retired military. The only one who came close was MacArthur. That brings up the politics of the left. If it is true that Lee was a great General isn't it at least worth acknowledging? This tearing down of statues should stop. Educated persons should acknowledge the truth. It's the left that's the intelligent ones as they would have us believe. I see no conservatives standing up for this truth. The Senate GOP candidate in Virginia should start an 'intellectual' conversation on Lee and let the left react. Don't wait for a baiting reporter to to knee-jerk him into a quick response that they can interpret their own way.

[DiogenesLamp]

More like it seems that way because your head is twanging to the blows like a stretched rubber band.

[rockrr]

I agree - he should have told the slavers to go piss up a rope.

[DiogenesLamp]

Unfortunately, for the South and the newly-reunited country, Johnson wasn't able to control the wing of the Republican Party who wanted to punish the South. Lincoln probably could have kept them under control.

It is unquestionable that Lincoln would have absolutely kept them under control. Having wielded dictatorial powers, no one was going to cross him. People that crossed him ended up in jail or shot.

Lincoln was not to be trifled with.

[DiogenesLamp]

Not a general principle, but a highly conditional one.

The only condition the Declaration places on a populace is a desire for a new government. It places no other "conditions".

The Declaration of Independence first establishes the unique conditions under which such an insurrection Maybe valid and then proceeds to document the ways the numerous and unique ways in which the behavior of the King has made those conditions exist.

The Declaration asserts it is a courtesy to list the causes, not a requirement.

The states rights argument Falls laughably hard Hollow given hell the precipitation of more was the Southern States desire to export slavery into States who’s earliest settlers had no interest in slavery.

Why do the opinions of some give them veto power over others? Under the constitution of that era, Slavery was legal so far as the Federal government was concerned. The Constitution required states to respect the privileges and immunities of other states, and the territories should have been required to do so as well.

If slave holders wanted to move into the territories, under the law of that time, they should have been allowed to do so if they wished. Of course none of the territories could have supported plantation slavery, and it would have been a waste of time, but that is beside the point.

They knew that there would be less political defense for slavery the more and more non-slave states joined the union so they pressed on to ensure that other states did not have rights including that they must participate in the evil process of rounding up and sending back off on to their torture and even death slaves sua dared to escape the Deep South.

Actually, the US constitution required that they do that. Look up article IV, section 2. It requires slaves to be returned. At the time of the writing of the US Constitution, the vast majority of states were slave states. What the none slave states wanted was the ability to change the US constitution without going through the amendment process.

They eventually got that.

[BroJoeK]

Svartalfiar to stormer: "How did Lincoln not invade the South?"

I'll let stormer answer that one, but I want to address the rest.

Svartalfiar: "The majority of battles were fought in the South."

No, in the Civil War's first year, the majority of battles were fought in Union states, see below.

Svartalfiar: "The whole first year of the war was mostly Union forces invading VA."

Here is a list of all the Civil War battles.
I counted them up for the first year, from April 12, 1861 through April 11, 1862.

1. In total there were 52 battles in 13 states & territories.

2. Seven of the 13 were Confederate states:
   • Virginia -- 11 battles (3 major)
   • North Carolina -- 4 battles (1 major)
   • Tennessee -- 3 battles (all major)
   • Georgia, Florida, Arkansas & South Carolina -- 1 battle each = 4 total, three of them major.
   • Total in seven Confederate states = 22 battles, 10 of them major.
   
   
3. Six of the 13 were Union states or territories:
   • Missouri -- 11 battles (2 of them major)
   • West Virginia -- 7 battles (3 major)
   • Kentucky -- 6 battles
   • Oklahoma -- 3 battles (1 major)
   • New Mexico -- 2 battles (both major)
   • Maryland -- 1 battle
   • Total in 6 Union states or territories = 30 battles, 9 of them major, or over half of all battles fought in the Civil War's first year.

So, bottom line: all claims the Confederacy seceded "peacefully" and "just wanted to be left alone" are total bogus nonsense.
From the very beginning Confederates invaded Union states, territories & properties whenever & wherever they could.

Svartalfiar: "The only reason the South even tried invading the North (only two major campaigns) was to force them to end the war, not to capture territory."

Total nonsense as the above review shows.

[DiogenesLamp]

Courage aside, the South could have NEVER won. The logistics were simply not in it's favor.

They could have won had Lincoln been as sane as "Mad King George". Nobody expected the North to expend such blood and treasure to subjugate them.

[DiogenesLamp]

Amen, and don’t forget Lincoln wanted to consolidate power in DC.

He did. People want to blame Wilson for the expansion of Federal power, but the leviathan was hatched during Lincoln's term.

[DiogenesLamp]

They did for a long time, but eventually it was mostly the Yankee ships carrying the slaves.

They carried them to the Caribbean and to South America. Sugar was big business back then.

[DiogenesLamp]

One aspect of post Civil War that gets little mention is that Yankees bought up everything at rock-bottom prices.

Wiping out the economic base for millions of people tend to leave the survivors in a very poor financial condition.

The entire thing was a massive power grab for money and control.

[DiogenesLamp]

Nope. Chase said they would lose everything in court that they had won on the battlefield.

Losing at trial would have been a propaganda disaster for the North.

[DiogenesLamp]

Awwwwww, you found a new friend. Isn’t that special?

I've regarded miss marmelstein as a friend for several years. I actually think we are all friends here, we just occasionally get a little testy with each other.

[DiogenesLamp]

And yet God was not terribly kind to Lincoln. If he was doing the lord’s work, why was his personal life so filled with tragedy?

[DiogenesLamp]

You don't get to force facts to fit your theory. Lincoln sent warships to attack the South. Had he not done so, there would have been no war started at Charleston.

Lincoln's cabinet told him the sending of those warships would start a war. Major Anderson said it would start a war. The person who is responsible for starting a war is Lincoln, and no one else.

[DiogenesLamp]

believe in the glory of an evil system of human bondage

Crap. The Union had legal slavery. It was protected by the US Constitution. The Flag of Slavery was the flag of the USA.

Slavery was an *AFTER THE FACT* excuse to justify the bloodshed Lincoln launched to stop European trade from moving to the South and out of the Control of Washington DC.

You keep banging the drum of "evil system of human bondage" because the real facts don't fit your compelling need to justify the invasion and subjugation of people who wanted independence.

You force it to be about slavery, because you dare not accept it was about Independence. It wasn't about slavery when it began. It wasn't about slavery for the entire first year of the conflict.

It didn't become about slavery until January of 1863. It wasn't even about slavery then, because Union slave states were still holding people in "an evil system of human bondage." Except it wasn't so evil when they were doing it. In fact, Union states were holding people in "an evil system of human bondage" for 8 months longer than those evil Southerners.

It was about RAW POWER and CONTROL of money. 200 million dollars in European money that was about to be yanked from New York. That is what the war was about.

[OIFVeteran]

Please do not post to me anymore. I have had my fill of your distortions, manipulation of facts, and out right lies about the causes of the civil war. I really believe that if I could send you back in time to the South Carolina secession convention you would actually argue with them that they aren’t really seceding because of slavery.

Your head is so far up your fourth point of contact in regards to the civil war that I don’t even think the jaws of life could pry it out.

[morphing libertarian]

I like that jaws of life analogy. L:OL.. Going to use it.

Why do apologists for the traitors refuse to accept slavery as A cause of the war. the issue was foremost in the south since the declaration of independence and the writing of the constitution. An then since the 1820s, they feared more free states would enter given the move to the western territories. Even if you talk economics in the south, it is related to slavery.

people who represent a slave state or country cannot say we aren’t defending slavery. It is self-evident.

a few more new states and there would have been a war then because the vote in congress would have banned what? Slavery. Owning other human beings and not wanting them to be free doesn’t bode well for the rest of the argument.

[Lagmeister]

Wasted enough time on this. Your source is slanted and the title screams it... your numbers are nitpicked and over-embellished (Grant went after Lee with 400 thousand armed men you say???? what??? - he could have instantly surrounded Lee and choked every move!!)

This isn't worth the cutting and pasting I would do in some not-worth-the-effort reply to show you where I got my numbers. I am glad you enjoyed the book.

I guess you win the argument by a massive amount of whatever against the wall.

[Calvinist_Dark_Lord]

They could have won had Lincoln been as sane as "Mad King George". Nobody expected the North to expend such blood and treasure to subjugate them.

No, they would not have won at all. The bottom line is that if Lincoln, or McClellan (who opposed him in the 1864 election) had not continued the war, the business interests in the North would have found somebody pliable enough to continue the war. Have to say that i'm very surprised that your cynicism concerning Northern monied interests didn't let you see that.

After all, it was not as if they or the Southern aristocracy were doing the actual fighting and dying (with very few exceptions on both sides). The war was going to continue to a conclusion no matter who was in the White House or the Gray House in Richmond.

Rich man's war, poor man's fight. Same as it ever was

[dangus]

Not just a desire to overthrow governments at will.

When in the Course of human events it becomes NECESSARY for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth...

...Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. 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.

The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

[Now when did the Union ever do any of these such things, or anything like them?] He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

[miss marmelstein]

Thank you, DL. I think of you as a friend as well. I admire almost all of our generals from all generations and political persuasions. RE Lee has always held a special place in my heart - especially his post-war work as President of Washington & Lee (Well, Washington College, of course). Imagine what he would have made of the mess in Lexington this past weekend!