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History Has been Transformed Into A Lie

Mike

Well-known member
“Every man should endeavor to understand the meaning of subjugation before it is too late…It means the history of this heroic struggle will be written by the enemy; that our youth will be trained by Northern schoolteachers; will learn from Northern school books their version of the war; will be impressed by the influences of history and education to regard our gallant dead as traitors, and our maimed veterans as fit objects of derision…It is said slavery is all we are fighting for, and if we give it up, we give up all. Even if this were true, which we deny, slavery is not all our enemies are fighting for. It is merely the pretense to establish sectional superiority and a more centralized form of government, and to deprive us of our rights and liberties.”
Maj. General Patrick R. Cleburne, CSA, January 1864.
 

m5farm

Well-known member
Mike, Majority is influenced by the minority to keep from offending People. The winner will always written history to their advantage. That's why they are so quick to blame the solders that fought with owning slaves. Heck most were nothing more than slaves themselves working as sharecroppers for the folks that never saw a battle.
 

Big Muddy rancher

Well-known member
Taking down a statue isn't going to change history, the Lee statue will mean different thing to different people so why not leave it up to remember that war shouldn't be what is needed to change injustices.
I know being a Canadian I should just stand back but we have similar problems up here, just because a statue is removed or the name on a building is changed doesn't mean it didn't happen and that people can't be reminded and learn from the events.
 

Faster horses

Well-known member
Big Muddy rancher said:
Taking down a statue isn't going to change history, the Lee statue will mean different thing to different people so why not leave it up to remember that war shouldn't be what is needed to change injustices.
I know being a Canadian I should just stand back but we have similar problems up here, just because a statue is removed or the name on a building is changed doesn't mean it didn't happen and that people can't be reminded and learn from the events.

:agree:
 

Traveler

Well-known member
There's a lot of history, and opposing history, about the Civil War that I've learned about, and became aware of, because of Mike's posts over the last few years......and a hell of a lot more I could learn, probably. Thanks Mike.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Traveler said:
There's a lot of history, and opposing history, about the Civil War that I've learned about, and became aware of, because of Mike's posts over the last few years......and a hell of a lot more I could learn, probably. Thanks Mike.
The only problem with "Mike's version" of history is that he chooses the authors that skew it in the direction that agrees with his preconceived beliefs. Now he will definitely disagree with everything in the following post

Confronting Slavery and Revealing the "Lost Cause"
By James Oliver Horton, Professor Emeritus, George Washington University
While slavery was not the only cause for which the South fought during the Civil War, the testimony of Confederate leaders and their supporters makes it clear that slavery was central to the motivation for secession and war.

Library of Congress
One of the most sensitive and controversial issues that any Civil War site interpreter will confront is the role of slavery in the South's decision to secede from and take up arms against the United States. Although an argument that slavery played an important role in the coming of the Civil War would raise few eyebrows among academic scholars, for public historians faced with a popular audience unfamiliar with the latest scholarship on the subject such an assertion can be very controversial. Whenever I speak to groups about the Civil War, I am reminded that slavery and the war are often separated in the public mind.

As historian James McPherson explained in a recent article, it is especially difficult for southern whites "to admit - that the noble Cause for which their ancestors fought might have included the defense of slavery." Yet, the best historical scholars over the last generation or more have argued convincingly for the centrality of slavery among the causes of the Civil War. The evidence for such arguments provided in the letters, speeches, and articles written by those who established and supported the Confederacy is overwhelming and difficult to deny. While slavery was not the only cause for which the South fought during the Civil War, the testimony of Confederate leaders and their supporters makes it clear that slavery was central to the motivation for secession and war. When southern whites in the 19th century spoke of the "southern way of life," they referred to a way of life founded on white supremacy and supported by the institution of slavery.

South Carolina led the way when its Charleston convention, held just before Christmas in 1860, declared that the "Union heretofore existing between the State of South Carolina and the other States of North America is dissolved ... " The reason for the drastic action, South Carolina delegates explained in their "Declaration of the Causes which Induced the Secession of South Carolina," was what they termed a broken compact between the federal government and "the slaveholding states." It was the actions of what delegates referred to as "the non-slaveholding states" who refused to enforce the Fugitive Slave Act of 1850 that was the specific example used as evidence for this argument. "In many of these States the fugitive [slave] is discharged from the service of labor claimed,.... [and] in the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied .... " The delegation made clear that the election of Abraham Lincoln in the fall of 1860 as "President of the United States whose opinions and purposes are hostile to Slavery" was the final straw. In the South Carolinian mind the coming of Republican political power signaled, in the words of the convention, "that a war [would] be waged against slavery until it shall cease throughout the United States."

The editors at the Charleston Mercury agreed. They had anticipated the threat that a Republican victory would pose when in early November they warned South Carolinians and the entire South that "[t]he issue before the country is the extinction of slavery." "No man of common sense, who has observed the progress of events, and is not prepared to surrender the institution," they charged, "can doubt that the time for action has come-now or never." The newspaper editors, like most southerners, saw Lincoln's election as lifting abolitionists to power, and like most southerners they understood, as they plainly stated, that "[t]he existence of slavery is at stake." They called for a convention to consider secession because they saw such action as the only way to protect slavery. When the South Carolina convention did meet little more than a month later, it dealt almost entirely with issues related directly to slavery. It did not complain about tariff rates, competing economic systems or mistreatment at the hands of northern industrialists. The South was not leaving the United States because of the power of northern economic elites who in reality, as historian Bruce Levine observed, "feared alienating the slave owners more than they disliked slavery." The secession of South Carolina, approved by the convention 169 votes to none, was about the preservation of slavery.

Alexander Hamilton Stephens of Georgia also understood what the South was fighting for. A decade before secession, in reaction to the debate over the Compromise of 1850, he wrote to his brother Linton citing "the great question of the permanence of slavery in the Southern States" as crucial for maintaining the union. "[T]he crisis of that question," he predicted, "is not far ahead." After the war he would become more equivocal, but in the heat of the secession debate in the spring of 1861 Stephens spoke as directly as he had in 1850. On March 21, 1861 in Savannah, Stephens, the then Vice President of the Confederacy, drew applause when he proclaimed that "our new government" was founded on slavery, "its foundations are laid, its corner-stone rests upon the great truth, that the [N]egro is not equal to the white man; that slavery - submission to the superior race - is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth."

Mississippi's Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, was more cautious about declaring slavery as the pivotal issue. When he did address the issue, he generally did so within the context of constitutional guarantees of property rights. Yet, there was no doubt that the property rights he sought most to guarantee in 1861 protected slavery. He was sure that under Republican rule "property in slaves [would become] so insecure as to be comparatively worthless...." As a large slaveholder, Davis was concerned about the economics of abolition as well, but as an experienced politician he also worried that an overtly pro-slavery stand might alienate potential European allies and split the southern population. After all, by 1861 only about one-third of southern families in the 11 seceding states held slaves and the non-slaveholders always posed a potential problem for Confederate unity.

A special edition of the Louisville Daily Courier was detailed and direct in its message to non-slaveholders. The abolition of slavery would raise African Americans to "the level of the white race," and the poorest whites would be closest to the former slaves in both social and physical distance. Thus, "do they wish to send their children to schools in which the [N]egro children of the vicinity are taught? Do they wish to give the [N)egro the right to appear in the witness box to testify against them?" Then the article moved to the final and most emotionally-charged question of all. Would the non-slaveholders of the South be content to "AMALGAMATE TOGETHER THE TWO RACES IN VIOLATION OF GOD'S WILL." The conclusion was inevitable the article argued; non-slaveholders had much at stake in the maintenance of slavery and everything to lose by its abolition. African-American slavery was the only thing that stood between poor whites and the bottom of southern society where they would be forced to compete with and live among black people.

These arguments were extremely effective as even the poorest white southerners got the message. Their interest in slavery was far more important than simple economics. As one southern prisoner explained to his Wisconsin-born guard "you Yanks want us to marry our daughters to niggers." This fear of a loss of racial status was common. A poor white farmer from North Carolina explained that he would never stop fighting because what he considered to be an abolitionist federal government was "trying to force us to live as the colored race." Although he had grown tired of the war, a Confederate artilleryman from Louisiana agreed that he must continue to fight. An end to slavery would bring what he considered horrific consequences, for he would "never want to see the day when a [N]egro is put on an equality with a white person." Even northern soldiers understood the passion with which the Confederates fought to protect the institution of slavery. Most Confederates would have agreed with the assessment of a Union soldier in 1863, shortly after the passage of the Emancipation Proclamation. "I know enough about the southern spirit," he said, "that I think they will fight for the institution of slavery even to extermination." Fears of the consequences of abolition fostered white solidarity, forming the load-bearing pillar in the foundation of Confederate nationhood.

Although the defense of slavery was central to the Confederacy, the abolition of slavery was not initially the official goal of the United States or the primary concern of most of the American people. As the most respected historians of our generation have shown, Lincoln and the vast majority of Republicans sought only to limit the expansion of slavery. Most who supported this "free soil" program that would maintain the western territories for free labor, did so out of self-interest. To urban or farm workers or to northern small farmer owners, Republicans offered the possibility of cheap land devoid of competition from slave labor or even from free blacks, who faced restriction in western settlement. "Vote yourself a Farm," was the not-so-subtle Republican message to white laboring men with the understanding that the western territories, having undergone Indian removal in the 1830s and 1840s, would be racially homogeneous.

Abolitionists, black and white, sincerely sought the end to slavery and accepted its geographical limitation as a step toward its inevitable demise. But although most whites in the North wanted to restrict slavery's spread, they would not have gone to war in 1861 to end it. President Lincoln understood his constituency very well and his statements on slavery were calculated to reassure white northerners as well as southern slaveholders that the U.S. government had, in his words, "no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with slavery in the States where it exists." Indeed, Lincoln even reluctantly agreed to accept an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would have protected slavery in those states where it existed. Ohio, Maryland, and Illinois actually ratified this measure that, ironically, would have been the 13th Amendment. Although this may have played well among northerners who were willing to concede protection to slavery so long as it remained in the South, slaveholders understood only too well it was not that simple.

Since most Americans saw the West as the place that would provide the vitality of national progress, to deny slaveholders access to that territory was to deny them access to America's future. Southerners took such restrictions as a direct affront to their regional honor and a threat to their social and economic survival. Georgia secessionist Robert Toombs put it succinctly: "we must expand or perish." Lincoln did not have to explain that slavery had no place in the nation's future, the South was well aware that in order to save their institution of bondage they must leave the United States and that is precisely what their secession movement was calculated to do.

Thus, while northerners claimed that they meant only to restrict slavery's expansion, southerners were convinced that to restrict slavery was to constrict its life blood. This war was not about tariffs or differences in economic systems or even about state's rights, except for the right of southern states to protect slavery. It was not willing to stand for state's rights except to preserve its institution of slavery where it existed and where it must expand. Some southerners had argued in the 1850s for the annexation of Cuba, one of only two other remaining slave societies in the western hemisphere, as one plan for slavery's expansion. Others looked to Mexico and Latin America, but always it was about saving and expanding slavery. And while the U.S. government may not have gone to war to abolish slavery in the South, it did go to war to save the union from what it increasingly came to believe was a "slave power conspiracy" to restrict citizen liberties and finally to destroy the United States. The northern determination to contain slavery in the South and to prevent its spread into the western territories was a part of the effort to preserve civil rights and free labor in the nation's future. The South was willing to destroy the union to protect slavery.

Lincoln's issuance of the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863 transformed the war into a holy crusade, but there was always disagreement among U.S. troops about outright abolition. Yet, increasingly after 1863, "pro-emancipation conviction did predominate among the leaders and fighting soldiers of the Union Army." Regardless of whether U.S. troops fought to limit or to abolish it, however, slavery was the issue that focused their fight, just as it did for the Confederacy. A half-century after serving the Confederate cause, John Singleton Mosby, legendary leader of Mosby's Rangers, offered no apologies for his southern loyalties. He was quite candid about his reason for fighting. "The South went to war on account of slavery," he said. "South Carolina went to war - as she said in her secession proclamation - because slavery w[oul]d not be secure under Lincoln." Then he added as if to dispel all doubt, "South Carolina ought to know what was the cause of her seceding."

Of course, Mosby was right. South Carolina, Georgia, Mississippi, and the other states that seceded from the United States did know the reason for their action and they stated it clearly, time and time again. They named the preservation of slavery as foremost among their motivations. When such a wide variety of southerners - from private citizens, to top governmental officials, from low ranking enlisted men to Confederate military leaders at the highest levels, from local politicians to regional newspaper editors - all agree, what more evidence do we need?
 

Traveler

Well-known member
I've seen Mike be correct about controversial issues enough times not to discredit his viewpoints.

https://youtu.be/VvqNEDvgWhU?t=37
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
And now we have the Judge's opinion.Slavery was not dieing. Slave states were being added and slavery was expanding. It was quite a while before the mechanized "cotton picker" was invented.
 

Mike

Well-known member
The reason for the War of Northern Aggression is as plain as the nose on your face. The Southern State's were protecting themselves from invasion.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Mike said:
The reason for the War of Northern Aggression is as plain as the nose on your face. The Southern State's were protecting themselves from invasion.
Well that was a complete fail if that was it...

The new Constitution has put at rest forever all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institutions--African slavery as it exists among us--the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution [...] The general opinion of the men of that day [Revolutionary Period] was, that, somehow or other, in the order of Providence, the institution [slavery] would be evanescent and pass away [...] Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition.......Alexander Stephens, Vice President of the Confederate States of America
 

Mike

Well-known member
Abraham Lincoln,Stephen Douglas
Charleston, Illinois
September 18, 1858

FULL DOCUMENTACADEMIC STANDARDS
MR. LINCOLN’S SPEECH.

Mr. Lincoln took the stand at a quarter before three, and was greeted with vociferous and protracted applause; after which, he said:

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN: It will be very difficult for an audience so large as this to hear distinctly what a speaker says, and consequently it is important that as profound silence be preserved as possible.

While I was at the hotel to—day, an elderly gentleman called upon me to know whether I was really in favor of producing a perfect equality between the negroes and white people. [Great Laughter.] While I had not proposed to myself on this occasion to say much on that subject, yet as the question was asked me I thought I would occupy perhaps five minutes in saying something in regard to it. I will say then that I am not, nor ever have been, in favor of bringing about in any way the social and political equality of the white and black races, [applause]—that I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will forever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be the position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.

Lincolns 1st Inaugural address:
Lincoln stated emphatically that he had "...no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

Also in that same address:
Lincoln explicitly stated that he had no objection to the proposed Corwin Amendment to the Constitution, which had already been approved by both houses of the United States Congress. This amendment would have formally protected slavery in those states in which it already existed, and assured to each state the right to establish or repudiate it. Lincoln indicated that he thought that this right was already protected in the original Constitution, and thus that the Corwin Amendment merely reiterated what it already contained.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Yep....Lincoln simply wanted to preserve the union and had stated that he had no intention to abolish slavery. The South (now known already as the CSA) was fighting for right to keep slaves. The Corwin amendment was not needed however, it was approved by both houses of congress and ratified by 6 states already when your dear CSA decided to fire on Ft. Sumpter, unprovoked and ratification became a moot point. Slavery had been preserved by the U.S. Constitution as the colony of South Carolina had refused to join the union without a provision that allowed slavery to remain legal. The U.S. capital was also located in a slave state to pacify those slave states who were afraid they would lose power. (DC was once part of Virginia). I think I've mentioned before Mike that every Article of Secession filed by seceeding states listed slavery as the primary reason for secession.....war was the only action left after secession....... Now tell me why the CSA never freed those slaves and made soldiers out of them almost assuring them total and quick victory??? Stupidity?? Ignorance??? Afraid of losing their property?? Apparently so as they ended up losing them and then having to resort to a new fear tactic "The KKK" and share cropping to try and keep the freed slaves indebted to the landowner, the company store, and still enslaved.You might even enjoy reading about the industrialized slavery practiced in your own state of Alabama.

I think at least one time previous you claimed the war was all about unjust taxation. That tax was an import tax and was applied to all of the states of the union, not just the southern states, just as import tariffs are applied to imports today. Those that import the most pay the most taxes. That is the purpose so any excessive taxes paid were done so by choice.

Now you keep preaching your bull shyt version of history....maybe someday you'll even believe it yourself. In the meantime enjoy the benefits of being a part of the United States of America.....BTW go buy some good books written by some of the most highly regarded historians in the country and get a real history of the war instead of simply pulling up links from sites that agree with your preconceived notion of that horrible war. Someday maybe you'll accept facts unless you purposely choose to remain stupid.

You should have moved to Mississippi Mike. You could have owned your own slaves until 2013 when they finally ratified the 13th amendment.
 

Mike

Well-known member
When urged by an Illinois congressman that he should “maul” the South, Lincoln replied “Tell the people of Illinois that I’ll do it” (Donald E. Sutherland, “Abraham Lincoln, John Pope, and the Origins of Total War” – The Journal of Military History, no 4 (October 1992) Page 581)

Given the ferocity of the Battle of Shiloh in April 1862, Ulysses S. Grant decided that the depth of Southern determination to break free of the control of the Federal Government was so deep that simple military victory would be insufficient to defeating it; he decided that to defeat the South he would follow a strategy that would annihilate the South. He would “consume everything (of civilian property) that could be used to support of supply the armies. (Janda page 13)

He and his generals proved themselves in sync with the views of the political leadership in the summer of 1963 when they proceeded to demonstrate how the doctrine of military necessity would be enforced.

Grant wrote to his subordinate commanders (Sherman and Sheridan) that the South was getting what it deserved and that “We are not only fighting hostile armies, but a hostile people, and we must make old and young, rich and poor, feel the hard hand of war. (Janda page 18)

Acting in a manner his commander – and Commander in Chief – would approve, on July 23 1862, General Pope issued Order No. 11, which ordered the US Army Commanders to ‘proceed immediately to arrest all disloyal male citizens within their lines or within their reach in rear of their respective stations.’ If such citizens did not swear an oath of allegiance to the US government, they would be expelled from their homes; if they returned to their homes, they were to be shot as spies; for him who took an oath and violated it “he shall be shot and his property seized…”

The result of this order was that Pope’s troops went on a rampage throughout Tennessee and parts of Virginia, citing his orders to justify acts of plunder and indiscriminate destruction.

A Union general in Stafford Country Virginia observed “our men… now believe they have a perfect right to rob, tyrannize, threaten and maltreat any one they please, under the orders of Gen. Pope.” (Janda page 12)

Further, there were numerous charges of rape and violence against both Black and White women.

Again, the Lieber Code is filled with restrictions that are obviated by the over-riding requirement of “military necessity” which in reality justifies violating all its more humane rules.

As we list the myriad violations of the code to come, keep in mind that the General Order 100 purports to be a document which on the one hand places limits on military actions and on the other absolves all violations of such limits under the doctrine of “military necessity.”

The code states:

“All wanton violence committed against persons in the invaded country, all destruction of property not commanded by the authorized officer, all robbery, all pillage or sacking, even after taking a place by main force, all rape, wounding, maiming, or killing of such inhabitants, are prohibited under the penalty of death, or such other severe punishment as may seem adequate for the gravity of the offence.”

What is left unsaid by this unequivocal statement was nonetheless not lost on Lincoln or Grant or his subordinates: EXCEPT WHEN REQUIRED BY MILITARY NECESSITY, which undid virtually ALL the protections for civilians and non-combatants that were written in the code.

The fatal contradictions in the Leiber Code allowed for all its apparent protections to be subverted. All Southerners were to be treated as rebels and traitors and as such deserved no protections beyond what the commanders in the field found convenient to grant them.

Paragraph 151 of the code defined the Southern states as ineligible for the very protections the code was supposedly written to enforce:

“The tern rebellion is applied to an insurrection of large extent, and is usually a war between the legitimate government of a country and portions of its provinces of the same who seek to throw off their allegiance to it and set up a government of their own.”

Of course, the great historical irony here is that this is the PRECISELY the concept of Liberty that the colonial governments had in 1776 when they adopted the Declaration of Independence and created the very Union that was now, in a curious case of national patricide, trying to overthrow and destroy.

By defining the Southern position as “rebellion” rather than “secession” the Lieber Code becomes a self-annihilating document, which allows the Federal armed forces to make war on civilians; that is, it considers them “disloyal citizens.”

Paragraph 156 of the Code states that the commander in the field:

“will throw the burden of the war as much as lies within his power on the disloyal citizens” – that is, the very citizens whose place in the “sacred, perpetual union” the Lincoln Government was waging a very bloody and destructive war to preserve.

Lastly, the Code considers any sort of resistance, “armed or unarmed,” to be war against the Federal Government of the United States and therefore an act of treason.

Before leaving the codes of warfare as they were understood by the opposing armies, we should take a look at the code that was understood to be in force by the Confederacy.

The South, whose military commanders were from families steeped in military tradition, took the codes of conduct towards civilians that were taught in West Point and other military colleges in the South very seriously. They did NOT operate under the doctrine of “military necessity,” which over-rode all other humanitarian considerations in pursuit of victory.

The Confederacy did NOT seek to annihilate the North, nor exercise their influence upon it, nor foist its cultural and social values on it, nor rule it; they sought to LEAVE IT.

Robert E. Lee gives us a clear view of how the South understood the rules of war in his General Order 73, issued in 1863 during the Pennsylvania campaign:

“No troops could have displayed greater fortitude or better performed the arduous marches of the past ten days.

Their conduct in other respects has with few exceptions been in keeping with their character as soldiers, and entitles them to approbation and praise.

There have however been instances of forgetfulness on the part of some, that they have in keeping the yet unsullied reputation of the army, and that the duties expected of us by civilization and Christianity are not less obligatory in the country of the enemy than in our own.

The commanding general considers that no greater disgrace could befall the army, and through it our whole people, than the perpetration of the barbarous outrages upon the unarmed, and defenseless [sic] and the wanton destruction of private property that have marked the course of the enemy in our own country.

Such proceedings not only degrade the perpetrators and all connected with them, but are subversive of the discipline and efficiency of the army, and destructive of the ends of our present movement.

It must be remembered that we make war only upon armed men, and that we cannot take vengeance for the wrongs our people have suffered without lowering ourselves in the eyes of all whose abhorrence has been excited by the atrocities of our enemies, and offending against Him to whom vengeance belongeth, without whose favor and support our efforts must all prove in vain.

The commanding general therefore earnestly exhorts the troops to abstain with most scrupulous care from unnecessary or wanton injury to private property, and he enjoins upon all officers to arrest and bring to summary punishment all who shall in any way offend against the orders on this subject.” – (The Wartime Papers of R. E. Lee (New York: Bramhall House, 1961, pages 533-534)

Writing in his book, “April 1865” (which was called “A superb piece of history” by ultra-pro Lincoln court historian Doris Kearns Goodwin, author of her own hagiographical book “Team of Rivals,” upon which the Steven Spielberg movie “Lincoln” was based) author Jay Winik documents the Lee’s views on warfare:

“But as great a fighting man as he was, Lee had had his flaws, with many of the virtues of a man becoming vices as a commander… he was not stern enough with his men… Nor was he cruel enough. In contrast to a Sherman or a Sheridan, he refused to burn or plunder enemy property, or engage in selective assassination, declaring it ‘Unchristian’ and “atrocious,’ even though the South could have greatly benefited from such tactics.”

Facing certain military defeat should he continue to fight by conventional means, Lee’s young Chief of Artillary E. Porter Alexander recommended that the Confederate armies in the field evaporate into the Hills where they could wage guerrilla warfare for as long as it took to force the North to sicken of the cost, Lee opposed the idea.

Winik writes:

“Lee, however, principled to the bitter end, was thinking not about personal glory, but along quite different lines. What is honorable? What is proper? What is right? …he quickly reasoned that a guerrilla war would make a wasteland of all that he loved. Brother would be set against brother, not just for four years, but for generations. Such a war would surely destroy Virginia, and just as surely destroy the country as well. Even if it worked, and perhaps especially if it worked… For Lee, that was too high a price to pay. No matter how much he loved the Cause… there were limits to Southern Independence.

However, there were no limits that the Federal forces recognized regarding what should be sacrificed to Lincoln’s mythical concept of a “perpetual sacred Union.”
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
As I said once before, apparently you have absolutely no knowledge of military strategy adn tactics let alone ever participated in any military action. You never leave anything the enemy can use against you. And when you're fighting a country that has begun drafting 13-14 year olds you don't give a dam how old they are when they're shooting at you. You shoot back. Wanna hear abouta few confederate atrocities adn war crimes???? There are plenty available.
 

Mike

Well-known member
I must take it for granted that you have no knowledge of the Lieber Code, by which Lincoln and the Union Military was bound to abide.
 

TexasBred

Well-known member
Mike said:
I must take it for granted that you have no knowledge of the Lieber Code, by which Lincoln and the Union Military was bound to abide.
Of course I do.....did the confederates have such a code since they were so use to taking what they wanted from the female slaves?? Now tell me about this invasion by the north.....they crossed the Potomac river and the entire confederacy thought they were being invaded.....hilarious. :mrgreen:
 

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