Causes of the Civil War
Posted on 02/19/2002 3:18:50 PM PST by Dawgsquat
Bottom line, Rosecrans was an idiot, and he got creamed -- moving his line around in the face of the enemy, even when a general engagement had been in progress on his left since early in the morning.
My point is that Longstreet was there -- and that his being there was half the battle, and proof of his strategic ability. Polk, Bragg, and the rest of them brought with them an army and a willingness to fight, but not much else, as the returns from the battlefield showed. Longstreet brought a corps and winning ideas, and his maneuvers -- both strategic and operational -- set the Union generals back seven or eight months with a one-day effort.
My point is that a lot more of that kind of thinking would have made the Civil War a lot rougher for the Union, and it was already "plumb rough" as it was. Longstreet demonstrated the ability to think in sweeping strategic terms that the political and doctrinal strictures imposed by Davis shackled and immured, except just that once.
In any case, Longstreet's ideas were shot down, and Lee's proposals were approved, and the rest, as they say, is history.
That the South had no other issue, and must therefore be wrong in everything, and the North washed clean?
Lincoln felt his responsibility for engaging in war very keenly. You seem to feel that if only you can point at the Southerners and say, "it's all their fault, we were just minding our own business", then the entire burden of the issue must fall on the people who got screwed.
And if the South was wrong, then the North must not have been, and all the wretched excesses of the Gilded Age must not have been the actual objective of the North's war on the South, but only truth, beauty, and freedom.
Exactly. You don't have any choice now, do you? Unless you can get the moderator to remove my posts.
Walt
Having a bad day?
Not any more.
Walt
That's the southern view of what caused the Civil War.
That's certainly Stephens' view. With an event so large as the civil war, and with so many politicians involved, so many newspapers, essayists, etc., it's easy for anyone to put together a "quote salad" to support virtually any argument. In truth, the war was complicated, and had multiple causes. Slavery was the most obvious feature of the Southern states, but there is a strong argument to be made that it wasn't the cause of the war. Certainly not the sole cause, given the prominent issues of federalism and taxation which were also major factors.
Lee's ultimate objective in invading the North was to take the war onto their soil in an attempt to demorilize them. Facing twice his number (or better) was nothing new to him. He was convinced that the North was growing tired of the war and thought that if the war could be shifted from Southern ground to Northern ground they would sue for peace. What he needed to pull that off was victory , but victory eluded him. The subsequent Union victories served to strengthen, not weaken, their resolve.
I noticed. I don't know much about "Pappa" and his history here, so this may not apply to him, but dodging on-point questions is typical behavior for a johnny-one-note mentality.
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