Posted on 01/07/2014 6:48:32 AM PST by BigReb555
the reason the reb gunners were over shooting their targets was because of the fuses supplied by the Confederate ordnance dept. Until the late spring of 1863 all fuses for ANV artillery came from the Richmond Arsenal. The fuse manufacturing facility blew up in May. CSA ordnance ordered another arsenal further south (Selma, I think)to supply the ANV fuse needs for the invasion. the other arsenals fuses when cut to the same length as the Richmond fuses actually exploded a couple of hundred yards further in range. The CSA ordnance dept. did not discover this disparity in fuse performance until after Gettysburg.
As an American citizen, I take great pride in my country, her prosperity and her institutions, and would defend any State if her rights were invaded. But I can anticipate no greater calamity for the country than the dissolution of the Union. It would be an accumulation of all the evils we complain of, and I am willing to sacrifice everything but honor for its preservation. I hope, therefore, that all constitutional means will be exhausted before there is a resort to force. Secession is nothing but revolution.
He also wrote this:
The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom, and forbearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it were intended to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It is 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 by the consent of all the people in convention assembled.
It has often been said that given the economic trajectory of the South and North at the time, had the war broken out 20 years before or after 1860, the outcome would have been different.
Interesting. I've never heard anyone say that before. I would disagree.
I stand corrected on timing.
I was not aware the late war unionists controlling MO freed their slaves by state convention. I thought the 13th amendment rounded out the emancipation for those areas occupied by or remaining in the union.
Being ever curious, I see that while Julia Dent in her assisted biography said the slaves were hers, there is argument about whether she owned them, or was just provided them by her father for servants while he continued their ownership.
Whether Grant had any influence in the matter of her slaves is probably moot...if like my family, Mom pretty much runs it anyway.
He did free one in 1859 that his father-in-law gave him personally.
What a time it would have been to live in.
“You can save your patronizing attitude for others, I’ll not react to it, beyond suggesting that others may well be as well read as you.”
It is a flip attitude really, not patronizing. My flip keys aren’t working well at all.
The post was general, not aimed at you. Sorry for the misunderstanding. It is all “what if’s” and not worth riling over.
“That it was the only issue that simply could not be compromised.”
Yup. The final abolition of slavery was one of the good things to come from the war.
The end of that horrid institution completed the real meaning in the Declaration of Independence and it’s worth.
“all men created equal”
And, the 20th century would have been a lot uglier as well had the US become two rump nations competing on the same continent as the world went to heck around it.
Truly, God’s will and plan as many thought at the time.
I'd go farther than that.
Had the South seceded in 1850, it would have been successful. The railroad network in the 1860s was just barely extensive enough to support the logistics of invading the South. Also the disproportion in industrial power and population was a lot less. War would have ended in fairly short order with the North recognizing it couldn't defeat the South.
In 1870, OTOH, the disproportion would have been much greater, and the war would have ended more quickly with a Union victory.
IMO, the war was fought during the only period when we could have had a long, bloody war. YMMV
“Lee a union man and Lincoln vs the SCOTUS.”
You are reading well beyond what I write in a pique. Books are written about these topics for a reason. They are complex, like men. Positions evolve over time, like men.
Lee most definitely DID (learned those caps from you) think the South had it right.
Lee fought for secession for 4 years to bring the Feds to the table to recognize Southern independence. Whatever he was up until 1861 and after 1865...he was for secession in between. Like most on both sides, he wished the war had never come, but once come, he did his duty as he saw it. Virgina and home over DC and nation.
As you well know, most of the Southerns were union men right up until they had to choose. I am sure you know Senator Breckenridge of KY (former VP and even prez candidate in 1860) was arguing for union on the Senate floor right up until Union troops started arresting people back in KY. Once back in KY to try to stop the insanity there, he had to flee to VA. There he helped raise a rebel regiment of exiled Kentuckers and accepted a Confederate generalship. Go figure. Unionist? Rebel? Both depending on the time and circumstance?
Methinks you get it. You just want to argue.
When forced, Lee chose Virgina because it was his home and like others saw the feds as over reaching. Otherwise he would have followed fellow southerns like George Thomas and Andrew Johnson and thousands of others who stayed loyal to the Feds.
Likewise, my reference to SCOTUS vs Lincoln didn’t have a gosh darn thingie to do with Taney secession rulings which never occurred. It was to demonstrate that Lincoln ignored the Constitution left right and sideways in many areas whenever it suited him....kind of like Obama, eh?
Army troopers arresting citizens for political speech would tear it for me even though I am a unionist.
Now do we want to argue over the SCOTUS authority to rule on executive actions or laws being made from whole cloth by Justice Marshall? Hope not. There are books about that as well.
I won’t patronize you, but likewise, don’t presume to send high school Survey of American History lectures in my direction.
Just when I decided to be nice, too.
Sherman,
Let me apologize publicly. My last post to you has hostile and undeserved when I re-read your initial comments.
Please blame it on male menopause and too much scotch in a hillbilly Scots-Irishman.
Your comments are sound. Arguable, but sound.
I sometimes miss Wlat.
No problemo.
I’ve had a lot worse said to me when discussing the subject. Some around here appear to think that only those who think Lee and Davis were the bee’s knees can be true conservatives. Anybody who disagrees is a Lincoln-worshiper and a closet liberal.
I have read a great deal about the period, which I find fascinating. My comments reflect my synthesis of all that research and my understanding of what really happened, not an attempt to hunt around and find ammo to promote a cause for today.
Way too many people, IMO, see our modern conflicts as foreshadowed in great detail by the WBTS. By this idea, modern conservatives are just warmed-over confederates, racist and violent. Most who think this way are liberals, but amazingly, to me, a number of people who claim to be conservatives seem to agree. Group A thinks they strike some kind of blow against modern American conservatives when they denounce slavery and the CSA, and group B seems to think they are defending America and conservatism when they defend slavery or the CSA.
I think both groups are weird. Very few conflicts of more than a few decades back can be analogized directly to those of today. Most certainly not the WBTS.
Ol Abe was among those in a movement for colonization in part on the belief that the blacks would not assimilate into the society.
These are not my words, they are that of those who lived it before, during and after the Civil War.
My GG Grandparents on two sides of the family owned plantations. One in Elora TN, the other in LA.
Stories I heard as a child were of mammys takin care of the children. They'd sing to them before bedtime...they were a part of the family. When the war of Northern aggression ended, the black folk did not want to leave their home, which happened to be the plantation.
This is where they lived, worked, raised their children. Slavery was a black eye on this nation, wrong to the core. I must say, I never ever heard of any stories of blacks being abused on these family plantations. Not one.
We must look at all the facts, not just the facts that give us warm fuzzies about how the North went to war to free the slave from the evil Southern plantation owners.
African natives were initially sold into slavery by....oh my gosh, African natives. One tribe or another would concur in battle, they'd put into slavery those men from the other tribe that were useful to their purposes. The rest, they sold into slavery to the white man. These ARE the facts.
Black men were just as guilty of slavery as the white man, only on a different continent. Black Africans were the original owner/sellers of Black Africans. At that point, in an odd way, the slaves were very lucky to still be alive and walking. Often times when one tribe defeated another, the losing side would be decimated.
This doesn't excuse slavery in America by no means, but what it does is lay out the truth. It is time to end this attack on Southern pride, Southern way of life and Southern history.
The race baiters have gone too far. By in large, the black communities problems are caused primarily by the black community. It is time for blacks to stand up and take responsibility and stop blaming everyone else for their failures.
It's always easier to blame someone else that to pull up your boot straps and get on about the job of fixin the issues.
Damn spell check....lol
Couple minor points:
Lincoln served one term in the House during the Mexican War. He was never in the Senate.
AFAIK, Lincoln while in the House did not submit any bill regarding colonization. If you have evidence to the contrary, I'd be interested in seeing it.
It would not be surprising if you had never heard stories of blacks abused on your family's plantations. Even before the war, such abuse was not widely publicized, if only because slaveowners knew it would be used to attack the institution.
After the war, former slaveowners had every reason in the world to minimize the brutality of slavery and its importance to the Lost Cause. They even developed the theory that secession and the War hadn't been about slavery at all, the exact opposite of what the same people said before and during the war.
Colonization was widely popular, including in the Upper South in early 1800s, among people who considered slavery an evil but didn't know how to safely get rid of it.
It was essentially a way for people who wanted to get rid of slavery to avoid the issue of how black and white people could live together in peace and equality after emancipation. Give the problems we're still having 150 years later, they appear to have had a point.
We shouldn’t forget that Lee was a big proponent of voluntary emigration as well.
I think it is also relevant to point out that Lincoln, when discussing colonization, always made it clear he was talking about voluntary emigration, possibly with financial incentives.
Not all colonization proponents were so inhibited, some proposed deportation. Or, as we call it today, ethnic cleansing.
Stand corrected. While serving in Congress.
Thank you. I was not aware of that problem.
George Washington was of course a British subject who took up arms against the King.
Using DManA’s criteria Washington would be a man without honor, Washington having taken an oath to defend the Crown when he was a colonial officer. But South-haters are notorious for employing a double standard when describing the rebellions of 1776 and 1861 so we won’t be hearing any similar charges against GW.
Interesting. You mention extremists and look who shows up LOL.
I think GW’s position, from the point of view of honoring an oath of allegiance, is less defensible than that of Lee.
Lee stayed firmly loyal to the government to which he had sworn allegiance until his State withdrew from it, then sadly tendered his resignation.
Washington was one of the leaders of the rebellion, and indeed took command of the traitorous (from the British POV) forces a year before the colonies declared themselves independent. For that year even GW would have agreed he still owed allegiance to the King he was fighting.
All of which is not intended to say GW acted dishonorably, only that not every man who violated a previous oath was therefore proven dishonorable.
Now I happen to believe the State of Virginia acted dishonorably when it waged war for a month or more on a Union to which it still technically belonged. But that’s a whole other story.
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