A Message To The NRA From Robert E. Lee

Obviously a bunch of yahoos in Cabela's hunting camo armed only with rifles wouldn't stand a chance against a fully intact military. That's Captain Obvious Hall of Fame level stuff.

But there are a whole bunch of perfectly plausible scenarios in which the military would either be divided (as has occurred in several modern civil wars, and to some degree our own) or would have become severely fragmented, rendering many of the more complex weapons and communications systems inoperable due to logistics failures (and sabotage). It's those systems that give a modern military its advantage over a bunch of riflemen.

A widespread societal breakdown-cum-insurrection today wouldn't be along easily-defined north/south geographical lines...one look at those "purple state" maps shows that. It would be a huge mix-up...and the military would reflect that chaos. While today's military has something of a conservative lean, it's still pretty representative of the general population. Any cause for such an insurrection would be reacted to by the military in a similar way to the general population. Again, we've seen this in other nations' civil wars over the last few decades. Part of the military remains loyal, part goes over to the insurrectionist side. BOTH lose considerable effectiveness. In these scenarios, civilian "irregulars" do indeed play a part.


Oh, and it should be pointed out that the Confederate Army (and make no mistake: it was a proper army, not a militia) very nearly won. It did win most of the early battles of consequence, but didn't get the knockout blow it needed. The Union then proceeded to the inevitable victory that the better-industrialized side will tend to attain in any longer term struggle. But that was a fight between two geographically-distinct, separate national entities. A modern American Civil War wouldn't be like that.

Lee's Special Order # 191, wrapped around some cigars, was found by one of McClellen's men. McClellen then knew Lee's plans and was able to defeat Lee. Otherwise it is likely that Lee would have defeated the cautious McClellen.

France and England were going to recognize the Confederacy and press Lincoln to abandon the war if there was another decisive Confederate victory.

It was that close.

they had a draft. Many resisted that draft, and the cops that chased them had a low life expectancy. Many of the people who worked in the CSA's "pentagon" type places were loyal to the US and regularly sent intelligence. The rented slave, who served coffee and donuts to Davis' staff during high level meetings was in fact a university educated free person with a photographic memory, who passed the top secret plans to her "owner" who passed it to the next link in the the spy network.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Bowser

I noticed that every once in awhile people would post my stuff... so I started thinking I should post my damn stuff.

And ignore the haters. I thought your blog was spot on. I was watching Larry Pratt of Gun Owners of America the other night being challenged by Chris Matthews to name a time when they needed guns to overthrow the government: he did all he could to avoid spouting: the Civil War.

a better response would be Athens, TN, in the 1940s.

Battle of Columbus, NM - Citizens help the U.S. Army against Panco Villa raid
Battle of Blair Mountain - Mine workers battle for days against Coal Mine Management guards. Over a million shots fired.
Battle of Athens, TN - Citizens battled corrupt country government
Deacons for Defense and Justice - Black milita that provided security for the civil rights movement. Several gun battles with the KKK.

There may be more, but those are the ones that I know of.

Good enough?

gotta admit the dark side is looking pretty vanilla . . .