Posted on 01/17/2013 2:16:28 AM PST by Kaslin
They introduce themselves politely in restaurants or diners, in a movie lobby or at some civic event, even in front of the Little Rock gate in Atlanta, which has become a kind of Arkansas crossroads. ("You don't know me, but . . .") Then they thank me for remembering Robert E. Lee every January 19th with a column on his birthday.
They don't tarry, and I may never see them again. Then they fade away, much like the Army of Northern Virginia (R.E. Lee, General). They have a look about them, or rather a manner. They come in different shapes and sizes, but they all have the same, diffident way about them -- as if they were used to dealing with people as persons, rather than en masse as customers or readers or voters or some other impersonal category. They know how to visit with others. It's a Southern thing, no matter where it happens.
Let's just say they have a shared understanding. They may be older, genteel white ladies or young military cadets. Sometimes they're aging black men, usually with roots in the Deep South, who mention that they had a grandfather or great-uncle named Robert E. Lee Johnson or Robert E. Lee Wilson, much like their white counterparts. Whatever the differences in their appearance, they share a distinctive quality that is never imposing but very much there.
Sometimes they'll let you know they don't make a habit of this sort of thing, that they're not interested in reliving the past or anything like that. They're the furthest thing from the bane of such discussions in these latitudes, the professional Southerner. ("I'm no Civil War buff or big Confederate or anything -- I do well to tell Gettysburg from Vicksburg -- but I just wanted to say . . .")
They're never intrusive. Indeed, they are concise almost to the point of being curt for Southerners, a voluble breed. It's clear they wish to make no display. It's as if they just wanted to . . . enroll. To go on record, that's all, and leave it at that. They know The War is over and, like Lee, they would let it be over.
The quality they have in common may be deference -- not only to others, and certainly not to the general himself, for deference would not in any way approach their feeling on that subject, but a deference to the human experience, with all its defeats and losses. Maybe that is why so many of them are middle-aged or older, as if they had encountered some defeats and losses of their own -- losses and defeats that can never be erased, that will always be a part of them, but that they carry almost with grace. The pain will always be there, but now it is covered by forbearance. They have learned that there are certain hurts that, in order to be overcome, must be gone through. Continually. Till it is part of their ongoing character.
The name for the kind of deference they exude, unmistakable for anything else, a deference to fact and to sacrifice, is maturity. They have discovered that duty is not only burden and obligation but deliverance. They would never claim to understand Lee, and they certainly would not presume to praise him overtly. They just want to indicate how they feel about the General, to let us know the bond is shared, and go on. For where Lee is concerned, there is a silence, a diffidence, that says more than words can. Or as Aristotle said of Plato, there are some men "whom it is blasphemy even to praise."
Ever hear a couple of Southerners just passing the time, perhaps in some petty political quarrel, for we can be a quarrelsome lot, when the name Lee is injected into the argument? The air is stilled. Suddenly both feel ashamed of themselves. For there are some names that shame rhetoric, and when we use them for effect, the cheapness of it, the tinniness of it, can be heard at once, like tinkling brass. And we fall silent, rightly rebuked by our better selves.
To invoke such a presence, to feel it like old music always new, invariably gives pause. The young officer in Stephen Vincent Benet's "John Brown's Body" pauses before he enters Lee's tent to deliver his dispatch. Looking at the shadow of the figure within bent over his papers, knowing that The War is inevitably winding down, the messenger can only wonder:
What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. Perhaps you see a man like that go on. And then you have to follow.
The Lost Cause still has its shrines and rituals, dogmas and debates. For four exhilarating, excruciating, terrible years, it had a flag of its own -- several, in fact -- and an army and even something of a government. But in the end all those proved only transient reflections of what endures: the South, the ever-fecund South.
What held that disparate, desperate concept called the South together, and holds it together still from generation to generation, from heartland to diaspora? After all our defeats and limitations, why do we yet endure, and, in Faulkner's words, even prevail? What keeps us going on? I wish I knew. Perhaps you see a man like that go on. And then you have to follow. If there is a single name, a single syllable for that shared bond and depth and grief and aspiration, it is: Lee.
. .
No brief outline of the general's career can explain the effect of that name still: After a shining start at West Point, our young officer spends 12 years of tedium on the Army treadmill, followed by brief renown in the Mexican War, then a two-year leave to attend to matters at home. Returning to the service to put down a fateful little insurrection at Harper's Ferry that cast a great shadow, he declines a field command in the U.S. Army as a far greater insurrection looms, one he will lead. He accepts command of the military of his native country -- Virginia. Then there comes a series of brilliant campaigns that defy all the odds, at the end of which he surrenders. Whereupon he applies for a pardon, becomes a teacher, and makes peace.
What is missing from such an abrupt summary of the general, his life and career, is everything -- everything inward that made the man Robert E. Lee. His wholeness. His integrity. His unbroken peace within. There was about him nothing abrupt but everything respectfully direct -- in his manners, in his leadership, in his life and, when he finally struck the tent, in his death.
Yes, he would fight what has been called the most nearly perfect battle executed by an American commander at Chancellorsville, defeating an army two and a half times the size of his own and better equipped in every respect.
Even in retreat, he remained victorious. One single, terrible tally may say it better than all the ornate speeches ever delivered on all the dim Confederate Memorial Days that have passed since: In one single, terrible month, from May 12th to June 12th of 1864, from after The Wilderness to Cold Harbor, Grant's casualties on the other side would total 60,000 -- the same size as Lee's whole, remaining Army of Northern Virginia, poor devils.
In the end, it is not the Lee of Chancellorsville or of Appomattox who speaks to us, who quiets and assures us. It is not even the Lee of Fredericksburg and his passionate dispassion atop Marye's Heights as he watches the trapped federals below, poor devils, being destroyed. He was no stranger to pity. ("It is well that war is so terrible," he murmured, looking down at the carnage he had engineered, "or we should grow too fond of it.")
It is not even the Lee of Gettysburg who speaks to us, the Lee who would meet Pickett after it was over -- all over -- and say only: "All this has been my fault." And then submit his resignation as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia. Jefferson Davis may not have had much sense, but he had more sense than to accept that resignation.
In the end, it is the Lee who saw through all victory as clearly as he did all defeat who elevates and releases us, like one of the old Greek plays. It is the Lee who, for all his legend, could not command events but who was always in command of his response to them. Just to think on him now is catharsis. That is why his undying presence, just the mention of his name, was enough to lift men's gaze and send them forth again and again. It still does.
And this description is largely spin.
Why did Davis' lawyers fight his indictment in the courts for four years if what he really wanted was to go to trial?
Okay — get lost.
Correct. His first command was in West Virginia and the confederates were pretty easily routed. Davis then sent Lee to build coastal defenses in Georgia and South Carolina. After that, he was assigned as a military aid to Jeff Davis and only after Joe Johnston was wounded at Seven Pines a full year into the war did Lee replace him as commander of the Army of Northern Virginia, a move that was criticized at the time by the Confederate press who called him "Granny Lee."
In Citizen Sherman, Michael Fellman describes how Sherman’s chief engineer, Captain O.M. Poe, advised that the bombing of Atlanta was of no military significance (the Confederates had already abandoned the city) and implored Sherman to stop the bombardment after viewing the carcasses of dead women and children in the streets. Sherman coldly told him the dead bodies were "a beautiful sight".
Union artillery, under Sherman's supervision, carried out the bombardment orders.
Here are a few examples of Union troops executed for just that:
"Preble James, 22, b.Batavia (NY), pvt, co K, 12 NY cav., shooted at Goldsboro (NC) 31 march 1865 for attempted rape on Mrs Rebecca Drake (23) and Miss Louise Jane Bedard, her cousin (17) and rape of Miss Letitia Craft her aunt (58) near Kingston (NC) on the afternoon of 16 march 1865."
"Catlett Alfred, 20, from Richmond (Va), farmer, pvt, co E, 1st heavy Art. USCT / Colwell Alexander, 26, farmer from NC, pvt same unit / Turner Charles, 18, farmer from Charleston (SC), pvt same unit / Washington Jackson, 22, farmer from NC, pvt co K same unit / The four was shooted at Asheville (NC) 6 may 1865 for the gang rape of "a young white woman". (in OR S1 vol XLIX part II).
You said: "That can be easily denied, since he ordered the burning of precisely one city - Atlanta."
Not only can your contention be denied, but proved a canard.
Scores of towns and villages in Georgia and South Carolina were torched by Sherman's troops. If you want to assert that he did not order any further burning after Atlanta in Sept of 1864, the word had not reached his officers by February of 1865. Here is documentation from a post by Rustbucket: the burning and destruction of those listed SC towns and villages.
Hardeeville: "[SHERMAN'S MARCH THROUGH THE CAROLIINAS] Confederates skirmish at Hardeeville and federals burn the town all night/1865" Link
Barnwell: "The town of Barnwell was burned as was part of Orangeburg and Winnsboro." Link
Grahamville: "Most of the buildings in the town were burned by Gen. Sherman’s troops in 1865." Link
Gallisonville: "burned and left in ruin" Link
McPhersonville: General Logan (Union) to General Howard (Union), January 7 - March 31, 1865 report: "In accordance with your Field Order, Numbers 29, I moved the corps from McPhersonville to Hickory Hill, breaking camp at 7 a.m. Before the rear of my column passed through McPhersonville I regret to inform you that the village was in flames. This was doubtlessly induced by the desertion of their houses by the entire population, for on our entrance into the village not a human being was to be found." Link
Barnwell: "The town of Barnwell was burned as was part of Orangeburg and Winnsboro." Link
Blackville: "On February 12th the army marched out of Blackville, leaving a trail of smoke behind them. A few homes and other buildings survived due to the vigilance and fast work of the villagers." Link
Orangeburg: "Sherman's men push back the Confederate forces at Orangeburg and begin to destroy the railway there and set fire to the town. By the end of the day nearly half the town is destroyed by the fire." Link
Lexington: "The town suffered tremendous loss of buildings in 1865 under the occupation of forces under the command of Gen. Sherman (Lexington was under control of the army guarding the Western Flank of Shermans troops.) Most businesses and homes, the county jail and courthouse and St. Stephen’s Lutheran Church were all burned." Link
Columbia: "The city of Columbia surrenders to Sherman. Union troops occupy the city. A fire breaks out, and by the next day, nearly two-thirds of the city has been destroyed." Link. And: Union Captain George Whitfield Pepper reported in his 1866 book that he met crowds of soldiers returning from Columbia "waving gold watches, handfuls of gold, jewelry, and rebel shinplasters [rb: paper money] in the air, and boasting of having burned the town."
Winnsboro: "During the Civil War, it was looted and partially burned by Union troops in 1865, but many older structures remain." Link. And: "On his march north from the capital city of Columbia in February 1865, General William Tecumseh Sherman had stopped just long enough to burn most of the town, an act that was not soon forgotten." Link. And: ""There were about thirty buildings burned, including dwellings and stores. The Yankees did not seem to care whether a building was occupied or not, but picked out-houses where, in their burning, they would communicate the flames to other premises. Every particle of property burned belonged to private individuals. No public property was destroyed. ... The Yankees also set fire to, and destroyed, the Episcopal Church, situated in the northwestern portion of the town; and while it was burning they took the organ, played upon it, and sang blasphemous songs. Many of the citizens were plundered; wedding rings and mementoes of deceased husbands or parents were stolen as ruthlessly as gold coin would have been. Watches and jewelry were cut from the persons of ladies, and, in some instances, their shoes removed on the pretence of searching for rings." Link
Camden: "Ultimately, like so many other towns in South Carolina, Camden did not escape the wrath of Sherman's men. In February 1865, many of its buildings were once again burned." Link. And: “Most of Camden escaped the torch …” Link. And: "On the 24th of February 1865, during the Civil War, a part of Gen. W. T.Sherman's. army entered Camden and burned stores of tobacco and cotton, and several buildings." Link. And: "In Camden, the Federals burned the railroad depots, a bridge, two thousand bales of cotton, food warehouses, and a flour mill." Link
Cheraw: "Outlying plantations and summer homes are burned, but no in town dwellings or churches are destroyed. Valuables are stolen and there is much vandalism. The official headquarters is the Matheson House. Sherman himself stays on McIver Street. When they leave the town will be destitute, and without food for more than a day or two. Almost the entire business district is destroyed by an accidental Yankee explosion." Link
Williston: "The Union forces then tore up railroad tracks and burned many of Williston’s homes." Link
That is a vast misrepresentation of the truth. In his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more during his "march to the sea."
From The Augusta Chronicle [Georgia] as reported in an 1864 issue of the New Orleans Daily Picayune:
In their route they [Sherman's troops] destroyed, as far as possible, all mills, cribs, and carried off all stock, provisions, and negroes, and when their horses gave out they shot them. At Canton they killed over 100. ... All along their route the road was strewn with dead horses, Farmers having devoted a large share of their attention to syrup making, there is a large quantity of cotton ungathered in the field, which was left by Federals, but there is not a horse or ox in the country, hence the saving of corn will be a difficult matter. At Madison, they broke open Oglesby's office and carried off all his medicines. ...
On going to McCradle's place he [a Georgia legislator] found his fine house and ginhouse burned, every horse and mule gone, and in his lot 100 dead horses, that looked like good stock, that were evidently killed to deprive the planters of them.
...No farm on the road to the place, and as far as we hear from toward Atlanta, escaped their brutal ravages. They ravaged the country below there to the Oconee River. The roads were strewn with the debris of their progress. Dead horses, cows, sheep, hogs, chicken, corn, wheat, cotton, books, paper, broken vessels, coffee mills, and fragments of nearly every species of property strewed the wayside.
...They gutted every store, and plundered more or less of everything. ... Many families have not a pound of meat or peck of meal or flour.
A couple of points:
I averred out that crimes are committed by soldiers in every army - the quality of a commander consists in whether he permits or forbids such crimes to be committed and whether he punishes such forbidden crimes when discovered.
Your posts show that Sherman did not approve of such activity, and that he punished it when discovered.
Also, Fellman's quotations of Poe are interesting - in light of the fact that Poe was tasked with burning down the remainder of Atlanta and that he did it.
I highly doubt that Poe, a trained engineer, was stupid enough to believe that a city that was a core railhead in the center of the South was "of no military significance."
Sherman informed the mayor that when he surrendered the city, the bombardment would end - and the mayor surrendered and the bombardment ended.
Finally, your list of towns that were partially burned underlines the fact that they were not ordered to be burned. Some fires began as deliberate acts of sabotage by Confederates who - intelligently - wanted to deprive the Union Army of stores. Some fires began accidentally - posting troops who are building literally thousands of campfires is going to start a large quota of fires in residential areas.
And then there are the fires set deliberately on Sherman's orders: Atlanta.
Stay classy, lg.
We have a saying down here. “Do the South a favor put a yankee on a bus”.
Luckily, I know the South well, and I know that its people are far better than the example several of their self-appointed representatives are setting on this thread.
reference please.
And, of course, this has been the common practice of armies for centuries.
Moreover, what is with all this talk of "aggression"? Did the Union fire on Fort Sumter?
The Army of the Tennessee was ordered TO plunder. Conversely the Army of NoVa was order NOT TO plunder. Of course some in the AofNoVa violated the orders and when caught were PUNISHED.
Bless your little pea picking heart.
Case of Davis, 7 F. Case 63 (C.C.D. Va. 1867)
C. Ellen Connally did a lengthy piece on the case in the 2009 University of Akron Law Review.
This was the appeal that Davis brought to the Federal Circuit Court in Virginia - the history of the case is extremely complex, and he fought it in court for close to four years.
You are doing your cause no favors.
The Army of Northern Virginia was ordered not to requisition anything without the empty formality of offering worthless Confederate government IOUs first.
So, clearing aside the technical language, both armies were ordered to take whatever they felt like taking. And they did. With both hands.
Davis motioned the court three years post war.
But let's say the clerk was wrong and Wikipedia is right: how does that change the fact that Davis, rather than welcoming the indictment, appealed it?
Davis' desire to go to trial magically appeared only after it was certain that he would not be put on trial.
I guess like any human he wanted to be put on trial or freed, the cowardly Yankees couldn’t make up the widdle minds. They were skirt of Massa Davis.
I suspect Lee's in for a lot of "debunking" -- a general who goes against the country he once swore allegiance to and makes the conflict much bloodier than it would otherwise have been -- especially after so many decades of reverence.
At least we should consider that there are two sides to the controversy. I'm not saying the Civil War is still going on, but we're not quite at the point where the English -- who can look back on Cavaliers and Roundheads and bless them both equally and without distinction -- are with their Civil War.
It’ll be rural vs city - yes some places will be less so such as Texas where Austin I’m sure will be quickly taken out, but here in Ohio it’ll be the five city enclaves vs 1/2 the suburbs and everyone else. Illinois will be Chicago and e St. Louis and Springfield vs farm country. Indiana may be mainly north vs south ... Even New York has its folks who wills seek out redress from the burden of NYC and Albany.
I see cordons around the cities and channels between the cities.
Perhaps when FreeRepublic gets back on its feet again I can see what foolishness the Lost Cause Losers have posted this time ;-)
The Coven has descended....
The Coven has descended....just as soon as you posted.
Yes it is a myth. Sherman sure did destroy a lot of stuff... railroads, cotton gins, factories, anything that might have military value. And his foragers sure made off with a lot of food and livestock (and I'm sure silver tea sets and other things of value.) That's what armies living off the land do and what Lee did in his northern campaigns. Sherman also did burn the homes of known rebel leaders or places where he encountered organized resistance, and he did hang a few bushwhackers his men caught.
But Shelby Foote looked for years for evidence of the Southern lore he was raised with of vast raping and killing of women and children that the Lost Cause Sherman myth insists upon, and he could find no evidence for any of it.
Sherman was very effective in breaking both the ability and the will of the Confederates, but he was not the mass murdering Gengis Kahn that the Lost Causers Myth crowd invoke.
Sherman probably saved tens of thousands of lives both North and South by bring that war of attrition to a conclusion a year or so before it would have ended otherwise.
Thanks for posting the article.
My great-grandfather’s oldest brother was in Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia, with the 13th Mississippi. I believe wardaddy’s wife is related to his commanding officer at Gettysburg.
Like you would know? Feh.
“At least we should consider that there are two sides to the controversy. I’m not saying the Civil War is still going on, but we’re not quite at the point where the English — who can look back on Cavaliers and Roundheads and bless them both equally and without distinction — are with their Civil War.”
The composition of differences that began in the 1890’s and continued up to about 1960 was criticized, and then overthrown, by liberal and Prog pols interested in splitting the conservative middle in this country and driving Midwestern and Western conservatives away from Southern conservatives, as a way to destroy the GOP and introduce a single-party, “one-armed democracy” that would be the vanguard dictatorship that Fabians and Communists have been laboring to achieve for 100 years.
Rush discusses the political aspect of the steady demonization of the South by the Alinskyites around Clinton and Obama that began in 1991 with Ray Garganus’s scalawaggy article in The New York Times, advocating public banishment of the Confederate Battle Flag, in this recent transcript posted to FR:
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/2978139/posts
He was unsuccessful - every court that reviewed his indictment upheld it. It was through the magnanimity of his former foes - Ulysses Grant and Salmon P. Chase - that the charges were dropped. Grant did not want to open old wounds.
It was only after he was assured of his freedom, and when he began holding court at Beauvoir with his admirers, that he started claiming that he had wanted to go to trial.
This was an obvious falsehood - he had fought his indictment in court for years rather than face trial. He did one thing, but said another.
I invite any disinterested observer to compare our respective posts on this thread and then judge for themselves.
You can believe any fairly tale you want. Civil War “History” as it is POPULARLY understood is so much reconstructed BS to make an unjust war waged by Northern Industrial forces against a tariff hating South palpable to the masses. I cant blame you - for the truth is hard to take.
Nolu chan hasn’t posted in years...wish he still did.
man...he destroyed the Klowns at Posse once they turned on him...their mistake
i bet some of these south bashers were klowns...that was our first refuge from here for those sorts and their race card antics
Nolu chan hasn’t posted in years...wish he still did.
man...he destroyed the Klowns at Posse once they turned on him...their mistake
i bet some of these south bashers were klowns...that was our first refuge from here for those sorts and their race card antics
William Barksdale was my wife’s great great uncle.
His sister Virginia Barksdale Wade was her great great gandma and the wife of State Senator Levi Wade who owned a large cotton plantation southeast of Nashville between Smyrna and Murfreesboro called Bellevue...not to be confused with another Bellevue home in West Nashville which still stands.
My wife’s family home was razed by the Federals during the Stones River and Tullahoma etc campaigns that ran up and down the Old Nashville Highway where it was located.
Levi had voted for Secession at the last moment as a state senator and was a colonel in the CSA away in Virginia and the Yankees pillaged the home and foraged the crops and appropriated all the male field slaves for labor. The family (women and children) with the house slaves and women and girls and younger boy slaves fled to kinfolks in the hills to the east in Smith county near what is now Center Hill lake. Virginia Barksdale wrote quite a bit on this in her journal which my wife’s aunt has to this day.
Ironically...all of the descendents I know today are Republicans...it would be hard to explain to them if you could today how the parties have sorta switched as to who is now the progressive.
But we still have the same pickle whereby a transformational progressive time and again gets elected President of the USA without a majority of the vote,
Though Obama got 10 points more than Lincoln.
* all that stands of the old homeplace is the graveyard which some of us try to keep up...their family never recovered economically...they did keep the land and sharecropped out to the older slaves who stayed and they even built a small farm house in 1868...which burned down in the 1970s under new owners...the foundation of the original plantation still exists
We are not discussing fairy tales, but hard facts.
Fact 1: Davis was indicted for treason.
Fact 2: Davis publicly claimed that he wanted to stand trial.
Fact 3: Despite his public claims that he wanted to stand trial, he fought the indictment in court to prevent a trial.
All three facts are a matter of public record, and I even specifically cited case law for you.
Civil War “History” as it is POPULARLY understood is so much reconstructed BS
There are three main popular versions of Civil War history, all of them specifically partisan. I avoid all three.
an unjust war waged by Northern Industrial forces
The war was initiated by the Confederacy. That also is a historical fact.
The Constitution also gives the Federal government supremacy of legal jurisdiction over all states that adopted the Constitution. That's another fact.
You are working with a definition of "unjust war" that is simply contradictory to the entire tradition of Western public law.
against a tariff hating South
The North was far more agricultural than it was industrial. It only seemed industrial compared to the South. And the war was not about tariffs. If it were, it would be a war unjustly waged by the South on that account alone. But tariffs had almost nothing to do with the statements and motivations of the secession movement.
The nullification crisis was about tariffs. If the Civil War was about any legislation, it was about the Kansas-Nebraska Act.
palpable to the masses
I assume you mean "palatable."
I cant blame you - for the truth is hard to take.
Your comments on this thread indicate that you have done very little independent investigation of the matters under discussion.
You have completely bought into the "Lost Cause" version of events. This is not about truth for you, in my opinion. It is about confirming yourself in your unexamined personal convictions.
I know I don't have all the answers. But I try to ask the right questions.
In today's program, Rush noted that although 65% of Americans think that the 2nd Amendment is intended to protect their freedom, the current liberal meme seems to be that only whites and only Southerners support the 2nd Amendment. Thus, it must be racist and Southern and anti-civil rights like what happened in the 60s to support the 2nd Amendment.
Projecting again, ain’t you Reb? Funny thing is Lincoln didn’t have Lee hung, isn’t it?
General Sherman ‘’raped women and children’’? Really? I suppose you have proof that William Tecumseh Sherman did exactly that?
I suppose you should read all of the posts and replies before you comment.
I’m looking at yours. You said General Sherman ‘’raped children and women’’. All I’m doing is asking you for proof of that.
“Projecting again, ain’t you Reb? Funny thing is Lincoln didn’t have Lee hung, isn’t it?”
He might have had a problem accomplishing that in the brief time he was still alive. Although I doubt that he even considered such an idea.
April 9th Lee surrenders at Appomattox Court House
April 15th, Lincoln assassinated by John Wilkes Boothe
Hanging Lee and Jeff Davis is a fantasy cherished only by modern loonies who spend more energy hating the South than they do celebrating whatever virtues they imagine that they possess.
Neo-yankee chauvinism is something new that grew up post 1960s and it now flourishes like some parasitical mold, spreading its hateful poison wherever it lodges. I can understand it coming out of Hollywood but it is curious to see it at conservative forums. Must be a sign of the times.
There is no "Neo-yankee chauvinism". Certainly not on these boards. However, there is southron bigotry writ large here and it is thick~n~chewy. The difference is that we just consider the source and shrug it off.
You should try it some time.
I didn’t catch today’s show but I heard him mention something along those lines yesterday or the day before. It had to do with the left attempting to isolate the southern states in their continuing agenda of divide and conquer.
And of course the reason why they are doing so is because the south is more unified in its opposition to Øbongo’s agenda than any other geographic area.
Perhaps it is becoming a reoccurring theme on his show?
Your myths and delusions are even harder to take.
I never thought I would meet a crazier loon than Stand Watie on this forum, but I think you are right in his league and about ready to pass him up.
Rather, Lee should have been tried for having southern soldiers murdered when they wouldn’t continue in treason.
Actually, the revisionists are the lost cause losers.
They pretended for years that Lee never owned slaves.
Eventually his will was found, and it was revealed that he did. he was another slave owner, fighting to further the institution of slavery.
Except that Lee was a slave owner, and a person who served as slave overseer for a slave plantation.
A shameful thing that. One that the worshipers at the alter of Lee pretend didn’t happen, or worse yet, pretend it didn’t matter.
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