Posted on 10/12/2018 7:13:42 PM PDT by 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.
Something tells me you are including the people killed in that Union cannon explosion as "casualties at Confederate hands." You tend to be quite liberal with your interpretations when it favors your side.
And how many of these Union casualties occurred in Union states? (and no, you can't count West Virginia, which was illegally made into a state.)
“Preamble.” An inside joke. Inside your head anyways. Skip.
But in both cases totally accurate comparisons for which your denials & refusals only illustrate your own intellectual short-comings.
Here's the bottom line: if you could credibly deny their accuracy, you would, but you can't so you handwave them away.
Here you go with deliberately labeling things to fit your premise. They didn't provoke a war. They went to great lengths to avoid it. They merely asked Lincoln to get his garrison out of their harbor.
Lincoln started the war by sending a fleet of warships to attack them instead of just ordering those troops to come home.
Fake news.
In fact what Lincoln (who was not there) instructed his people was:
Remember, contrary to DiogenesLamp's fake-news, it was Seward, not Lincoln, who brought in train-car loads of supporters to Chicago.
Perhaps you got that impression, but that is entirely of your imagination, just as is many of your more creative "interpretations" and arguments.
I merely point out that we don't need people to interpret plain language for us, especially when their interpretation contradicts what the language plainly says.
If my saying people can think for themselves has you believing I am the ultimate authority on constitutional meaning, then you are reading a lot more out of it than I am putting into it.
You are a little weak on the specifics. What Union ships were seized prior to Ft. Sumter?
But my point is that the first invasion of the Confederacy was by sea. It was that Fox expedition. I suppose the Pickens expedition counts too.
More fake-news.
Lincoln never called secession "rebellion".
He did call rebellion "rebellion", and when Confederates formally declared war on the United States, May 6, 1861, all doubts about it were erased.
DiogenesLamp: "Money was the reason why he launched the war."
According to DiogenesLamp and nobody else, least of all Lincoln himself.
So yet again DiogenesLamp puffs himself up with god-like powers to declare which laws are "actual" and which are "usurpations".
I was hoping my pre-preamble humor would take care of that problem, but apparently I was too subtle...
Amazing.
Really? What does this mean?
No Person ... shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour,
But Seward carried the handicap of having been too long and too conspicuously the frontrunner, so that he was the principal target of all the other candidates, and of this fact Judge David Davis, campaign manager for Abraham Lincoln of Illinois, took shrewd advantage. The bargaining for votes was ruthless, the argument that Seward’s nomination would hopelessly alienate the South was pressed to the hilt, and the galleries of the Wigwam—the convention hall built for the occasion—were packed with leather-lunged Lincoln shouters brought in on counterfeit tickets while the Seward forces were parading through the streets on their optimistic way to the arena. When Lincoln’s name was placed in nomination, reported an eyewitness, “five thousand people leaped to their seats, women not wanting, and the wild yell made vesper breathings of all that had preceded. A thousand steam whistles, ten acres of hotel gongs, a tribe of Comanches might have mingled in the scene unnoticed.” Seward’s lead on the first ballot was cut to a hair on the second, and on the third Lincoln was nominated. But behind and beneath their rivalry and contention Lincoln had formed a true judgment of the quality of Seward, and one of his first acts after his election in November was to recruit Seward as Secretary of State.Most of Lincoln’s other Cabinet appointees were also closely connected with his search for the nomination. Some had, like Seward, been rival candidates. Others were holders of political due bills. Simon Cameron was one of these; he had delivered the Pennsylvania delegation for Lincoln. He wanted the Treasury portfolio; he got the War Department. Perhaps the only Cabinet officer not convinced he would have made a better President than Abraham Lincoln was Gideon Welles, the stubborn, tetchy, clearheaded Secretary of the Navy.
It is exactly what he did. He couldn't let them go, so he deliberately conflated their democratic secession with "Rebellion" because using the word "Rebellion" was the only means by which he could get his hands on the power necessary to stop them.
According to DiogenesLamp and nobody else, least of all Lincoln himself.
"What shall I do for a revenue?"
So tell me Bro, what do you think of legal Abortion and Homosexual marriage? Can you point out to me where such laws were enacted by the legislature?
In 1941 Pearl Harbor was a distant American army & navy outpost attacked by enemy forces who destroyed expensive (though obsolete?) US assets, making it the opening battle of the 20th century's greatest war.
In 1861 Fort Sumter was a distant American army outpost attacked by enemy forces who seized an expensive (though obsolete?) US asset, making it the opening battle of the 19th century's greatest war.
At both Sumter & Pearl US Presidents were warned not to send the navy there because it might provoke an enemy attack and in both cases the warnings proved prescient.
At Pearl Harbor President Roosevelt believed he must move his Pacific "war fleet" there to prevent surrender in case of enemy attack on US army forces in the Pacific.
At Fort Sumter President Lincoln believed he must send his Atlantic "war fleet" there to prevent surrender in case of enemy attack on US army forces there.
In both cases, the Presidents' "war fleets" failed in their missions and US forces were defeated & surrendered at Fort Sumter and MacArthur's Philippines.
Your claim that the Japanese were not provoked by FDR's "war fleet" is just as wrong as your claim the Jefferson Davis was provoked.
In fact, Davis had already decided to attack Fort Sumter, fleet or no fleet, and the Japanese saw our vulnerable fleet as a golden opportunity to win the war with one great blow.
The fact is there are far too many solid parallels to just handwave them all away.
In biology we might say Sumter & Pearl aren't quite "homologous" but they are clearly "analogous".
Read it again.
The only mention of Pearl Harbor is in my quote of your own words.
You’re welcome to get the hell out - any time.
“My country, right or wrong; if right, to be kept right; and if wrong, to be set right.”
DiogenesLamp: "Don't be so sure.
Seward was governor of New York."
It's a problem which our Lost Causers exploit and encourage confusion on: they wish us to believe Civil War was over "secession", but it wasn't.
In fact, everyone in late 1860 and early 1861 acknowledged that Federal government had no authority to stop states from declaring secession, and no efforts were made to either stop secession or punish it.
The issue was whether Federal government could continue to enforce its laws in secession states -- i.e., tariffs.
Lincoln believed it could & should but Confederates took great umbrage at that.
So war began at Fort Sumter not over "secession" but rather over Lincoln's attempt to resupply US troops there.
What about Seward?
What would he have done about Fort Sumter?
The answer is that like other cabinet members Seward opposed resupplying Fort Sumter at first, but like the others came around to Lincoln's view eventually.
Had Seward been President, it's hard to guess what he might have done differently -- perhaps Seward the diplomat would have been more successful than Lincoln at negotiating the "fort for a state" deal with Virginia, who knows?
But the bottom line is Seward got along well with Lincoln, admired Lincoln and believed he, Seward, had a lot of influence over Lincoln.
So it's very likely the two were more of one mind than we might at first glance suspect.
Right, obviously some mixed signals in the backfield, quarterback threw to the wrong receiver, busted play, etc.
But the fact remains that Porter misunderstood what Fox & Lincoln intended -- resupply of Fort Sumter under cover of darkness using small boats from ships stationed safely off shore.
There were no orders to attack Confederates any more than needed to protect the resupply boats.
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