Posted on 10/01/2010 4:15:03 PM PDT by BigReb555
Benedict Arnold died in London in 1801 of natural causes.
Jack
If that's the case, then why is Lincoln so revered?
General Lee had good lieutenants. He botched things when he did not listen to them.
His greatest sin was he knew that he had lost when Grant trapped him in the trenches around Petersberg. He knew the war was lost and yet thousands more died because he would not stop the war. Their blood is on his hands.
Just visited his old house in Arlington National Cemetary this past weekend. Nice old place. I’m glad he wised up and did the right thing for the Country after the war.
I don't think Lee was overrated. I do think that, after Shiloh (death of Albert S. Johnston), Lee was a s good as any and better than most.
The strategic vision in every defensive struggle has to be survival...period. He didn't have the resources to do otherwise.
I also think Longstreet was as good as they get. He proved it in the Wilderness and in other places.
Lee erred greatly at Gettysburg but still nearly won.
Big men make big mistakes.
3 grown kids and 2 grand kids here...
My point being ... ‘ya got good genes!
Raise them young-uns right!
I’m no civil war expert, but it seems to me it was the Navy that won the war, not the Army. The northern Navy’s blockade of the south had more to do with the eventual outcome than anything else.
Hard to fight a barefoot army, no matter how good Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. The south didn’t have much of a Navy, a few raiders, and various and sundry other small vessels, and that was it. I don’t know how the south thought they could win without at least as good a Navy as their Army.
Have read 50-some posts here, good points on both sides.
Different world 150 years ago so I contend most of us don’t quite understand the love of one’s home state felt during that era.
I’m not sure how I feel about Lee. As a strong believer in States’ rights, I see his side. Since he went to West Point, served our country, and took an oath to uphold our Constitution and defend our Nation, I see the side of those who consider him a traitor.
Ultimately, he’s a traitor because he lost.
FWIW, if I had been alive back then, I’d probably have fought with the South.
My son has been a studier of administrations. He told me more than once that Grant would have come down at least average or better if he hadn't had a second term.
He also had difficulty judging men when they were not in uniform. That puts him in a big club...with such as Benjamin Franklin.
That’s what I recall of the story too. Ultimately the US government was forced to pay for it after the USSC ruled that they had taken it illegally.
many in england even in the 18c supported the american revolution,it was not clear cut as its presented today.
I guess the old saying is true , don’t beleive everything you read. I was reading a history book( 70’s)where it stated that Arnold was hanged. I did a little checking and at one time it was common for history books to list Arnold as being hanged. You were correct, he died in England 1801.
In these United States, prior to the War, the States had much more stroke than they do today, and far greater self-determination. The federal Government was still limited to Federal things, and was not a National Government, but a Federal one.
The incredible array of usurpations of power, both through taxation, regulation, the Commerce Clause misinterpretation, and a host of other furtherances of abuse of the Constitution present the modern American with a very different view of the duties, powers, and responsibilities of Federal and State Governments, so different that the Government of today and the government of 1850 would be unrecognizeable to most Americans were they catapulted ahead or back in time to the other time frame.
With little exception, the states were far more soverign then, and often the dominant form of government any one person encountered after a mayor or County Sheriff.
As such, loyalty toward one's State was indeed honorable. Just after the Revolution, many property owners, among them my ancestors, swore oaths of loyalty to the soverign State they lived in. No doubt the Lee family had like ties to Virginia.
Lee's last words were, "Mpfhhhh." He walked in the door from a vestry meeting, hung up his coat, and had a stroke, which left him unable to speak.
I'm not sure the South has a monopoly on bad historians. I think Shelby Foote was from Mississippi, and he had unmost respect and affection for Grant. In retrospect, so did legions of Confederate enlisted men who survived the war.
My personal favorite was Bruce Catton. Now, he was a Northerner...from Michigan.
Doris Kearns Goodwin is from New York, and I bet her conclusions and mine rarely meet.
I just think history is fun, and when I start a work by someone incapable of rational thought I tend to move on early.
I'll read anything and everything about R. E. Lee. I just think Grant was as fine a general as Lee, probably better, and he proved it over and over and over again long before Appomattox.
Don't you think it's funny that someone on FR can put up any story on the Civil War and it draws readers and opinions for days in just an instant? I believe the Civil War brought greatness out of the woodwork, and one person can be great without diminishing another.
PC?’’ ‘’oilstick”’? ad hominems don’t make a good verbal starting point. Listen pal, you couldn’t be further from the truth. I prefer the America under the Stars and Stripes. Not the Stars and Bars. The South lost and the North won, if you want to get prosaic about it. If it hadn’t, what rights could someone like me be afforded under the constitution of the CSA?
I always think Lee was born too late. He should have been one of the Founding Fathers.
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