Trump: 'Robert E. Lee was a great general'

The Hill ^ | 10/12/18 | CHRIS MILLS RODRIGO

[yesthatjallen]

President Trump praised Confederate Geader Robert E. Lee as "a great general" on Friday during a campaign rally in Lebanon, Ohio.

"So Robert E. Lee was a great general. And Abraham Lincoln developed a phobia. He couldn’t beat Robert E. Lee," Trump said before launching into a monologue about Lee, Lincoln and Ulysses S. Grant.

"He was going crazy. I don’t know if you know this story. But Robert E. Lee was winning battle after battle after battle. And Abraham Lincoln came home, he said, 'I can’t beat Robert E. Lee,'" Trump said.

"And he had all of his generals, they looked great, they were the top of their class at West Point. They were the greatest people. There’s only one problem — they didn’t know how the hell to win. They didn’t know how to fight. They didn’t know how," he continued.

Trump went on to say, multiple times, that Grant had a drinking problem, saying that the former president "knocked the hell out of everyone" as a Union general.

"Man was he a good general. And he’s finally being recognized as a great general," Trump added.

— NBC News (@NBCNews) October 13, 2018 Trump has drawn criticism for his defense of Confederate statues, including those of Robert E. Lee.

He drew widespread condemnation last year following a deadly rally in Charlottesville, Va., saying that white nationalist protesters were there to oppose the removal of a "very, very important" statue.

"They were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said at the time. “This week it's Robert E. Lee. I noticed that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next week and is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you really do have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”

Trump, speaking at another rally in Ohio last year, said that he can be one of the “most presidential” presidents to hold office. "…With the exception of the late, great Abraham Lincoln, I can be more presidential than any president that’s ever held this office,” he said to a crowd in Youngstown.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Yes, you send an invading army into another country, and it was completely unreasonable for them to invade you back."

But the fact is there was no "invading army" before Confederates provoked, started & formally declared war on the United States.

Immediately after Fort Sumter, Jefferson Davis began sending military aid to Confederates fighting in Union Missouri.

After Fort Sumter the first Union troops killed were in Union Maryland.

After Fort Sumter the first battles were in Union states like West Virginia, Missouri and even Virginia while it was still officially a Union state.

In all of 1861 of 35 larger battles fought, 25 (71%) were in Union states & territories and nearly 60% of Confederate casualties fell in the Union.

So again, please explain: in what possible way did the 1861 Confederate invasion of the Union not represent an existential threat to the United States.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "This is another reason I have such contempt for claiming the Supreme Court is an "ex Cathedra" body.
Nope, they are pretty much a political body that will bend with the prevailing wins, depending upon who gets put upon it."

And yet DiogenesLamp is happy to defend crazy Roger Taney's Dred Scott decision.
It's only when SCOTUS ruled against slave-holders' interests that DiogenesLamp goes all cynical on us.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "As i've said on so many other issues, the court's rulings impress me not at all.
Was Plessy v Ferguson ever correct?
Did the law change, or did the personal preferences of the Judges change?"

Because DiogenesLamp doesn't like certain SCOTUS rulings he prefers to invoke the previously unknown pre-preamble which grants DiogenesLamp ultimate authority to decide just what the Constitution does & does not mean.

</sarcasm>

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "William Seward should have been our 16th President.
Much bloodshed and destruction would have been avoided.
So too would we have avoided the growth of the Federal Monster thus created in 1861. "

In 1860 Seward was the Republicans' leading candidate going into Chicago.
Now DiogenesLamp has previously posted a lot of fake news about goings on at the Republican convention in Chicago, but the fact is Republicans were not willing to nominate Seward for good reasons.
One is the very thing DiogenesLamp is most noted for: Republicans didn't like that Seward was a New Yorker.
Another is they believed only Lincoln could carry Illinois and other midwestern states, states which had previously been part of the Democrats' "blue wall".

If, with Seward the Republican nominee, those Midwestern states voted Democrat in 1860 then the election would be thrown into the House of Representatives and there Deep South Fire Eaters would make their demands, especially for something akin to the Corwin Amendment.
And the House would likely have elected Democrat Douglas President which means Georgia Governor Herschel Johnson would become President when Douglas died in 1861.

With a Corwin-type amendment ratified and Georgian Johnson as President, abolition in the United States would be off the table and expansion of slavery into free territories & states would be next on the Slave Power's agenda.

Lincoln said it this way:

"We shall lie down pleasantly dreaming that the people of Missouri are on the verge of making their State free; and we shall awake to the reality, instead, that the Supreme Court has made Illinois a slave State."

With President Herschel Johnson running for reelection in 1864, the outcome would be anybody's guess.

Senator Herschel Johnson from Georgia (Douglas' VP) would become President in 1861 had Republicans nominated New York's Senator William Seward for President in 1860:

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Secession is not rebellion."

Correct, but rebellion is rebellion and that's why they fought a Civil War.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I reject your premise that the Supreme Court does not lie.
It lies, and far too often."

Your problem is that constitutionally we have to go by what the Supreme Court rules until we can elect enough representatives from our own party to change the court's makeup more to our own liking.

The only other option is what we saw last week when demonstrators attacked the actual doors of the Supreme Court hoping to force them to make more Leftist decisions.

How do you think that will work out for them?

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You didn't post message number 433.
I do not know to what message you are referring, but it sounds like it may be that Pearl Harbor thing again. I won't entertain that idea."

Should say post #410, sorry for the "typo."
My post #410 addresses several points, including a Pearl Harbor comparison, which you should both acknowledge & address -- the analogy is too close to legitimately ignore.

Post #410 also supports the fact that Jefferson Davis planned to start war at Forts Sumter and/or Pickens regardless of what Lincoln did or didn't do.

All of which contradicts your favorite historical fantasies, which is the real reason you ignore it.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You put “Pearl Harbor” into your message, I won’t read it.
I don’t care what else you’ve put in there, the word’s “Pearl Harbor” discredit the entire thing in my opinion."

FRiend, all of your historical fantasies discredit yourself, Free Republic, the Constitution and everything else within the pervue of your imagination.
And yet I take your fantasies on, one by one by one, repeatedly, ad nauseum, because it's important, because the truth matters and should not be replaced by mere figments of DiogenesLamp's overactive imagination.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "And what part of the North is Norfolk in?"

At the time (May 18) it was still officially part of Union Virginia.
When Virginia voters ratified secession, on May 23, 1861, and joined the Confederacy's declared war on the United States, then the "international border" ran through the Chesapeake Bay off Norfolk.

DiogenesLamp: "And when did West Virginia become a State of the Union?"

At roughly the same time Virginia voters ratified secession, West Virginians voted to join the Union.

[OIFVeteran]

You couldn’t be more wrong. Seward was even more of an abolitionist than Lincoln. Also the southern fire eating states had already said that if any republican was elected they would secede. And there was no way Seward, or any other republican president, was going to just let the southern states go.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Funny. Lieutenant Porter wrote in his memoirs the exact thing I said.
He wrote that those ships would have been torn to pieces and every one sunk.
I think Abner Doubleday also said they would have been wiped out."

First, didn't Porter go with Powhattan to Fort Pickens, not Sumter?

Second, "Lincoln's plan" originated with Doubleday -- it was effectively the Doubleday/Fox/Lincoln plan and it was simply to use the cover of darkness and small boats to resupply Fort Sumter from larger ships sitting off shore well out of Confederate gun range.

DiogenesLamp:"I believe the orders referred to 'resisted in any way.' "

Orders to Fox & others used the words "opposed" and "resistance" without other modifiers like "in any way".

Regardless, no orders told any Union commanders to attack or assault Confederates in Charleston harbor, only to protect the Union boats delivering supplies to Fort Sumter.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "I very much believe Lincoln ignored any authority with which he disagreed. It is clear in his actions."

Obviously Lincoln never read the previously unknown pre-preamble which grants DiogenesLamp sole exclusive authority to declare ex cathedra what is and is not "constitutional".

DiogenesLamp: "Why pay attention to rubber stamps?
I can read the constitution with my own eyes, and I can see how he violated it in numerous ways.
I don't need a court to blow smoke up my @$$."

Right, especially now that the pre-preamble grants DiogenesLamp exclusive authority to declare from on-high what is & is not constitutional.
Why-ever would we need no stinkin' Supreme Court?

</sarc>

[rockrr]

Executive vetoes can be a mofo ;’}

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Well if it's so important to strengthen slavery at the beginning of the war, so as to preserve it as founded, then why was it okay to ignore article 4, section 2, later?"

Try this: if you declare & wage war against the United States, you'll lose some of your constitutional rights.

DiogenesLamp: "Now you are going to tell me that this means that he was adamantly against it, and people are just interpreting his words incorrectly, and really it was all about Pearl Harbor or something, and "Look! Squirrel!""

Corwin passed both houses with just the bare numbers required and opposition came entirely from Republicans.
Publicly, Lincoln did his constitutional duty which was to forward it to the states.

In fact, Corwin may have helped keep both Kentucky and Maryland, which ratified Corwin, in the Union, but had no significance beyond that.
In time Corwin was replaced by the 13th amendment which had Lincoln's full backing & support.

Maryland was the 4th state to ratify the 13th.
Kentucky never ratified the 13th until 1976.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: ""Due Process" means a hearing in court.
It doesn't have another meaning that congress can tamper with. "

And you can quote legal scholars from the Civil War era who believed Confederates should have more "due process"?

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "Isn’t Taney the judge who ruled in the Dred Scott case?
I know he was a virulent racist."

Yes & yes, I call him "crazy Roger".
What do you think?

[BroJoeK]

NFHale: "Sometimes, these threads kind of remind me of that... and it’s not worth fighting or arguing over - ESPECIALLY with folks who are allies on almost every other issue.
We have a belly-full of fighting ahead of us beating the Left to save our Country."

You might want to look at it this way: the old-time Dixiecrats, such few as are left, would really, really like to become good Republicans but the only way they can do it is if we buy into their Lost Causer mythology which essentially demonizes everything we value as Republicans.

What do you think, should we take that deal?

[BroJoeK]

central_va: "That wasn’t my question you disingenuous pile."

I answered your question correctly, you don't like the answer so you resort to name calling?

Sad.

[DiogenesLamp]

I thought some brainaic might say something like that.

What, find your narrative challenged by the fact that George Washington was a traitor to the United Kingdom?

What you want to do is portray Lee as a traitor, but are completely unwilling to do so about Washington.

That’s comparing apples to chained up Black guys picking cotton.

And here is the attempt to deflect from the salient point by once again injecting slavery into the discussion, (because slavery wasn't legal in the Union for four score and seven years") while implying that Washington and Lee are different.

Let's see. Washington was a Virginian who led the armies of a slaveholding confederacy in breaking away from a Union, while the Union was offering freedom to those slaves who would join them in suppressing the rebellion.

Yeah, that's completely different from what Lee did. Not even the same thing at all. It's like comparing apples to chained up black guys picking cotton.

[DiogenesLamp]

Never said makes it right. Only that is the law. That is fact.

So "the law", such as the law that some men can hold others to work for them, is okay with you, so long as it's "the law."

You don't have an ethical belief in the moral foundation of law?

Does the law mean what it says, or does it mean whatever judges want it to mean?