Posted on 04/23/2013 3:28:30 PM PDT by BigReb555
Seven years ealier this is what Roosevelt had to say about another general:
"Grant, in short, stood for the great elementary virtues, for justice, for freedom, for order, for unyielding resolution, for manliness in its broadest and highest sense. His greatness was not so much greatness of intellect as greatness of character, including in the word "character" all the strong, virile virtues. It is character that counts in a nation as in a man. It is a good thing to have a keen, fine intellectual development in a nation, to produce orators, artists, successful business men; but it is an infinitely greater thing to have those solid qualities which we group together under the name of character—sobriety, steadfastness, the sense of obligation toward one's neighbor and one's God, hard common sense, and, combined with it, the lift of generous enthusiasm toward whatever is right. These are the qualities which go to make up true national greatness, and these were the qualities which Grant possessed in an eminent degree."
“I think Ulysses S. Grant is vastly underrated as a man and as a general. I know people think this and that about his drinking habits, which I think have been exaggerated way out of line. The fact is, he never demanded more men or material from the war department, he took over an army that had a long history of retreating and losing. That army had no confidence in their fighting ability and Grant came in as a real outsider. He had so many disadvantages going into the 1864 campaign, now 100 years ago. But he met every test and rose to the occasion unlike I’ve ever seen in American history. He was a very tough yet very fair man and a great soldier. He’s not been given his due...Grant devised a strategy to end the war. He alone had the determination, foresight, and wisdom to do it. It was lucky that President Lincoln didn’t interfere or attempt to control Grant’s strategic line of thinking. Lincoln wisely left the war to Grant, at least in the concluding moves after he came east. Grant is very undervalued today, which is a shame, because he was one of the greatest American generals, if not the greatest.” — Dwight Eisenhower, July 1964
That would come as a heck of a surpise to all those Indians that the Spanish enslaved for decades before anyone came to what is now the Northern U.S.
Not a chance.
If George Washington had been born in 1820 he would have been in grey uniform in 1861, no question. Your intellectual dishonesty noted.
I think Col Wirz got the shaft. Yes, the suffering at Andersonville Prison was bad, but not on purpose. Only by neglect. Northern Prison could have been much better as the resources were there, Yankee atrocities were on purpose.
Grant was the greatest general of the war mostly because, unlike Lee, he had to overcome a massive amount of politics to fight in his way. Grant had to fight politicians as hard as he fought Lee.
“intellectual dishonesty”? coming from you that’s rich. So tell me - why do you believe a man like Washington would even share the same room with a bunch of traitors like the confeds?
What do you base that on?
It was Captain Wirz, and conditions in prisons on both sides was deliberate. And reprehensible. Wirz deserved what he got, but he shouldn't have been there alone. There are others North and South who should have swung as well.
If you think a Virginian like Washington wouldn’t fight for the Confederacy you no student of history and intellectually dishonest. Or stupid....
Most of the suffering at Andersonville came from the Yankees themselves. Wirz let the Yankees make their own rules and run the place internally.
Washington was an American. He said so himself. Or have you never read his farewell address?
"Citizens, by birth or choice, of a common country, that country has a right to concentrate your affections. The name of American, which belongs to you in your national capacity, must always exalt the just pride of patriotism more than any appellation derived from local discriminations. With slight shades of difference, you have the same religion, manners, habits, and political principles. You have in a common cause fought and triumphed together; the independence and liberty you possess are the work of joint counsels, and joint efforts of common dangers, sufferings, and successes. But these considerations, however powerfully they address themselves to your sensibility, are greatly outweighed by those which apply more immediately to your interest. Here every portion of our country finds the most commanding motives for carefully guarding and preserving the union of the whole...In this sense it is that your union ought to be considered as a main prop of your liberty, and that the love of the one ought to endear to you the preservation of the other.
Anyone who reads Washington's words and then believes he would hitch his wagon to a rebellion devoted to slavery is intellectually dishonest. Or stupid.
They starved themselves to death? They denied themselves shelter and clean water? They did all that to themselves?
Thieves and marauding gangs fed on the weak.
Must not have fed very well. Almost a third of them died due to malnutrition, starvation, exposure, and disease.
I know you know that Washington was a land owning Virginian that would have fought for the Confederacy. I know you know it, you know I know you know it. Give it up. This is laughable, your position is delusional.
Some of the Yankees were well fed at the expense of their fellow prisoners. Like I said the prisoners were in charge in the camp.
I agree that Col Wirz got the shaft. My limited recollection, from a visit to Andersonville in 1977, is his commander was not available for the war crimes trial, and Wirz was his surrogate.
North Carolina had the highest proportion of freedmen before the war, and went farthest at Gettysburg, and at Chickamanga.
considering who was in charge of the state governments when black soldiers would have applied for pensions, I submit it was southern racism post reconstruction that resulted in the wholesale deletion of soldier and substitution of servant for black confederates, and not a Northern conspiracy.
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