Confederate Robert E. Lee birthday party today at US Capitol!

[MakeItSo]

Maybe Hillary wasn't so far off the mark with her "plantation" remark! Celebrating the birth of someone who defended the buying and selling of human beings in war, and LOST: can you say, "deranged?"

UNITED DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY
District of Columbia Division

Ms. Lloyce Ann West, President
requests the honour of your presence at the
Commemoration of the birthday of
ROBERT E. LEE

Statuary Hall
United States Capitol
Saturday, January 21, 2006 at 11:00 a.m.

Honourable Richard Bender Abell
Speaker

http://www.leecamp.org/home/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=17&mode=thread&order=0&thold=0

[bluestateguy]

1. Yet, anti-war protesters are the ones committing treason

Robert E. Lee actually led an armed rebellion against the United States government, and he gets a birthday party at the Capitol. But criticizing George W. "Baby" Bush is treason. I need an aspirin.

[Kagemusha]

2. Lee commanded an army of what to him was a separate country.

I think history is much kinder to Lee than a lot of his "admirers" such as those attending this celebration.

That said, I heard Arlington National Cemetary used to be Lee's personal estate.

[specimenfred1984]

5. Correct, His Land Was Taken When the War Started

and a cemetary was put right in front of his house so he'd have to look at all the dead he was responsible for.

If you look closely at the Lee supporters, you'll see a Nazi armband under their sleeves.

[NorCal]

6. Slavery wasn't the main issue in the war.

Before the war started Lee had already freed his slaves. The Civil War for him wasn't about slaves and slavery. It was about allowing the Federal government to have the power to dictate what the individual states could do or could not do economically. The ending of slavery didn't become an issue until 1862 when Lincoln made the emancipation proclamation, and that was done as a tactic to hurt the South in a time of war. The ending of slavery was a side goal to the war and not the original cause. These are people who are just honoring their ancestors. They are not the nazis like you want to portray them as, and as a side note just because someone has a differing view of the world than you do doesn't make them a nazi. That is a strong charge and in this case inappropriate. And before you go off and say that they are nothing but the KKK all dressed up, remember this. The KKK back then was nothing but the terrorist wing of the Democratic party and remained so for over a hundred years.

His house was used as a hospital after a major battle. I think second Manassas. So many people died at the makeshift hospital that they buried them where they passed and that was on the grounds of the estate. As punishment to Lee the Fed Govt. kept the plantation and made it the first National cemetery.

[MakeItSo]

8. And the Iraq War isn't about oil. Puleez...

If there hadn't been slavery, we wouldn't have had a war. I'm sure there were all sorts of noble Nazis as well. No need to celebrate them in capitol buildings

[FreedomAngel82]

21. The Civil war was

about slavery and economy stuff. Even the History channel knows that.

[alarimer]

37. Slavery had been an issue for decades prior to the Civil War

We nearly came to blows a number of times before the Civil War actually started. The Missouri Compromise (which didn't solve anything), Bloody Kansas were all about slavery. It is revisionist history to say that it was really about "states' rights". The only states' right they actually cared about was slavery.

[meow2u3]

106. 'States' Rights' was--and still is--just dixiecon code

circa 1860: states' rights = slavery
until 1964: states' rights = Jim Crow laws
now: states' rights = resegregation

[tsuki]

56. You need to read some history. n/t

[ThomWV]

58. You Need To Read Some Real History - He's Right

Slavery had very close to nothing at all to do with the Civil War. Like all wars it was economic of course, but the economics in question had nothing to do with slaves and everything to do with international commerce and tariffs. Go read some in depth history, not the crap they pass off as teaching in High Schools.

[BlackVelvet04]

60. thank you....

Lincoln MADE slavery the issue to sell the war just as bush made wmd's the issue to sell his war.

[tsuki]

61. Lincoln issued the EP to forestall England aiding the southern

cause. It was a great PR coup. Most seem to forget the EP covered only the states in rebellion. Slavery existed after the Civil War until abolished in states like Conn.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

121. Except that in their own letters of secession, the southern states list

slavery as the cause. Oops!

[BushOut06]

75. Little known fact - the Union kept slavery LONGER than the Confederacy

There were four slave states that stayed with the Union. The Emancipation Proclamation did not free all the slaves. It merely freed the slaves in the South that were were living on land controlled by the Union. It did not - and I repeat it did not - apply to slaves living in Union states. Those slaves were not freed until the passage of the 13th amendment shortly after the Civil War ended.

Of course, that fact is never taught in public school. I didn't know it myself until I actually read the EP and some background info. The EP was a PR move (and a brilliant one at that) to keep England and France from entering on the Confederacy's side.

[SaveElmer]

92. Very simple explanation for this...

Is that the Emancipation probably would have been declared unconstitutional had it not been issued on grounds of military necessity. It was designed to deny the South a resource in its efforts to secede. By this time however, Lincoln truly believed slavery was doomed and was glad it was. Attempt by some later on to revoke the Proclamation as part of a negotiated settlement were flatly rejected by Lincoln as a dishonorable action to take against those that had been promised freedom. Before he was assasinated, Lincoln had expressed support for initial suffrage for freed blacks.

[Yupster]

99. If something is unconstitutional, it's unconstitutional

The hell with military necessity.

Crap - that sounds like Bush.

It may be illegal, but I found it militarily necessary, so therefore it is not illegal.

[SaveElmer]

110. Interesting...

You are comparing the Emancipation Proclamation to Bush's war measures...

The South considered themselves a foreign power to the US Government. Lincoln simply obliged them. The Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to anyone within the US...

[Yupster]

111. According to Lincoln it did

and he ought to know since he wrote it.

He said the southerners were still in the USA. If they weren't he was launching an invasion of a foreign country.

If the southern states were part of the US as he said they were, then the EP was blatantly unconstitutional. Like it or not, slavery was written right into the Constitution and it couldn't be changed by the stroke of the president's pen. It needs an amendment to the document which happened right after the war.

I do compare Lincoln to Bush because they both ignored the law when they felt like it and said they had to do it for national security reasons.

[SaveElmer]

112. If they were to treat the South as a part of US...

It could not have taken any of the war measures it did. No confiscation of private property, no quartering of citizens in private homes etc...all unconstitutional. Are you saying the US should not have prosecuted the war?

Certainly the founders did not envision a civil war when they created the constitution, and so many of these issues stand on murky ground legally. Fact is, the Union took many war measures it had to take to defeat the South. Freeing their slaves was one of these.

[BushOut06]

114. There's also the embargo to consider

Technically, an embargo is considered an act of war, and can only be applied to other sovereign nations. I've read many articles stating that Lincoln's embargo against the Confederacy was therefore illegal if the Confederacy wasn't considered a separate nation.

[Yupster]

120. Should the US have fought the Civil War

Geeze, talk about your what ifs of history.

Certainly an interesting question, but it would deserve its own thread at least. Dozens of what if history books have been written on this premise. Their conclusions come out all over the place.

I do think though that we can fight a war and preserve the Constitution at the same time. I'm sure Bush would disagree with me there, but oh well.

[Maru Kitteh]

30. Now I know who bought my oceanfront property in Nebraska

Where do you guys get this shit? You actually believe that smelly load of tripe you dumped here? Enjoy your brief stay here. Tell us, what do you like on your pizza, er, toumbstone?

:popcorn:

[LostinVA]

66. Yup, they do -- scary, huh?

Revisionist crap.

[agincourt]

32. Confederate revisionist nonsense,

Without slavery there would have been no civil war. Period. End of statement. The whole struggle between the Federal government and the southern political machine was about bringing slavery into the new states. Something previously settled by the Northwest Ordinance and the Missouri Compromise.
Nazi ideology is of course different than Confederate, I'm OK with that. But to say there would have been a civil war even if there was no slavery is completely false.

[theHandpuppet]

43. Bingo!!!

See the links I posted below. Some things about history -- like the Articles of Secession -- can't be so neatly erased by neoconfederate B.S.

(I'm posting just some excerpts from the Texas Declaration of Causes)

A Declaration of the Causes which Impel the State of Texas to Secede from the Federal Union.

The government of the United States, by certain joint resolutions, bearing date the 1st day of March, in the year A.D. 1845, proposed to the Republic of Texas, then a free, sovereign and independent nation, the annexation of the latter to the former, as one of the co-equal states thereof,

The people of Texas, by deputies in convention assembled, on the fourth day of July of the same year, assented to and accepted said proposals and formed a constitution for the proposed State, upon which on the 29th day of December in the same year, said State was formally admitted into the Confederated Union.

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. Her institutions and geographical position established the strongest ties between her and other slave-holding States of the confederacy. Those ties have been strengthened by association. But what has been the course of the government of the United States, and of the people and authorities of the non-slave-holding States, since our connection with them?

The controlling majority of the Federal Government, under various pretences and disguises, has so administered the same as to exclude the citizens of the Southern States, unless under odious and unconstitutional restrictions, from all the immense territory owned in common by all the States on the Pacific Ocean, for the avowed purpose of acquiring sufficient power in the common government to use it as a means of destroying the institutions of Texas and her sister slaveholding States....

In all the non-slave-holding States, in violation of that good faith and comity which should exist between entirely distinct nations, the people have formed themselves into a great sectional party, now strong enough in numbers to control the affairs of each of those States, based upon an unnatural feeling of hostility to these Southern States and their beneficent and patriarchal system of African slavery, proclaiming the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color-- a doctrine at war with nature, in opposition to the experience of mankind, and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law. They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States....

We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable.

That in this free government all white men are and of right ought to be entitled to equal civil and political rights; that the servitude of the African race, as existing in these States, is mutually beneficial to both bond and free, and is abundantly authorized and justified by the experience of mankind, and the revealed will of the Almighty Creator, as recognized by all Christian nations; while the destruction of the existing relations between the two races, as advocated by our sectional enemies, would bring inevitable calamities upon both and desolation upon the fifteen slave-holding states.

By the secession of six of the slave-holding States, and the certainty that others will speedily do likewise, Texas has no alternative but to remain in an isolated connection with the North, or unite her destinies with the South....

Adopted in Convention on the 2nd day of Feby, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixty-one and of the independence of Texas the twenty-fifth.

[theHandpuppet]

47. Here's another... this one from Mississippi:

(Excerpts)

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin....

It has grown until it denies the right of property in slaves, and refuses protection to that right on the high seas, in the Territories, and wherever the government of the United States had jurisdiction.

It refuses the admission of new slave States into the Union, and seeks to extinguish it by confining it within its present limits, denying the power of expansion....

It has nullified the Fugitive Slave Law in almost every free State in the Union, and has utterly broken the compact which our fathers pledged their faith to maintain.

It advocates negro equality, socially and politically, and promotes insurrection and incendiarism in our midst.

It has enlisted its press, its pulpit and its schools against us, until the whole popular mind of the North is excited and inflamed with prejudice.

It has made combinations and formed associations to carry out its schemes of emancipation in the States and wherever else slavery exists...

Our decision is made. We follow their footsteps. We embrace the alternative of separation; and for the reasons here stated, we resolve to maintain our rights with the full consciousness of the justice of our course, and the undoubting belief of our ability to maintain it.

[theHandpuppet]

39. Yeah, sure. When's the last time you read these?

How about a refresher on the Articles of Secession?

http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/reasons.html
http://www.mdcbowen.org/p2/rm/debunk/secession.htm

[Toots]

57. He led troops in a war against the USA

You can say it was all about State's Rights but the fact is the Right's they wanted was to own slaves. It was entirely about slavery no matter how you dress it up and every Confederate was a traitor to the USA. YOu can put lipstick on a hog but it is still a hog... You are right about how the Parties have changed over the years. It was when the Democrats wanted to force integration that so many left to become Republicans...

[LostinVA]

67. And, they actually DIDN'T agree or believe in States' Rights!

Nope, sure didn't. When the Northern states sheltered escaped slaves, the slave owners sure as hell didn't give a damn what the laws were in, say, Massachusetts. No, they wanted they PROPERTY back, and made sure the FEDERAL government gave them that right. Yeah, States' Righters my ass... only when it behooved THEM.

[MadHound]

59. Go look at each and every single declaration of seccession friend

You will find that within either the pre-amble, or the first two paragraphs, slavery is mentioned as being THE reason for that particular state to secceed. The whole arguement of states rights being the primary reason is just so much after the fact spin in order to prettify the whole mess, and cover up what a bunch of traitors to the Union the confederates were.

And quite frankly, this whole ancestor worship that southerners practice has provided a lot of cover and spin for even more racism and hate. Historically the DoCS and SoCS has been a very hate filled and racist organizations.

If you want to honor your confederate ancestors fine, but realize exactly what you're honoring, a bunch of traitors, racists and hatemongers.

[LostinVA]

65. Yeah, it pretty much was -- nice try, though

[northzax]

78. and when Governer Wallace stood at the doors of Bama

it as all about States Rights, correct? not about keeping the uppity n**gers in their place?

if lying to yourself helps you sleep at night, then by all means do so.

[Mr. Blonde]

103. That was all about Politics

Wallace was very progressive when he first ran for office, but he was defeated on that platform. He was even endorsed by the NAACP. So he became a staunch segregationist. Later in life he changed his views again to be very much in support of integration. He opened the Alabama government up to Blacks at a faster rate than the national government and many northern states. In addition he won his final term in office with over 90% of the Black vote.

[misanthrope]

80. It WAS about white supremacy...

...or at least that's what these guys thought:

The fellows who voted

Last time I checked, racial purity and hierarchy sounds an awful lot like what was bandied about when Adolf and the boys gathered 'round the steins in the beerhalls.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

122. LOL! This is hillarious!

Where did you get this? Seriously! Oh man, that's too good.

The south declared slavery to be THE reason themselves when they seceeded. NOt only that, but when it was suggested that maybe they should allow black slaves to fight the idea was shot down because "that would defeat the purpose of the war".


But seriously, this is great.

PS. No, what makes people a Nazi is the belief that one man is superior to another based solely on race.

[lynne]

10. The federal government actually returned the property -

- to the Lee family after the war, later paying them $150,000. to purchase it back for use as Arlington National Cemetery.

[Yupster]

15. But that was after the general had died

Court cases last longer than faulty hearts unfortunately.

[FreedomAngel82]

20. Good

Perfect right there. Love that (about the cemetary).

[long_green]

102. actually, Arlington belonged to his wife's family

Lee was of good family, but poor due to the imprudence of his father.

[FreedomAngel82]

19. How disgusting

This is one of the sad things about the south.

[agincourt]

63. The conservative confederates own Washington,

and their goal is bring back slavery under the insidious canard of Globalization. Their agenda is that a tiny fraction own all and that people are a commodity without any rights. Unfortunately there are too many Americans who would sell themselves into slavery to buy the lottery ticket of being an overseer.

[stepnw1f]

3. Celebrating a Traitor's Birthday?

And I bet they are Right Wingers too.

[Yupster]

16. Lee was indicted for treason

The government was too scared to try him.

To many I guess that makes him guilty in some odd twisted way.

[tabasco]

4. Honoring the leader of an insurrection vs. the United States.

Traitors honoring traitors.

Sickening. :puke:

[Yupster]

17. Lee the leader

of the insurrection?

He was against secession, didn't join until his state left the union months after Jefferson Davis took over as president. How does that make him the leader. He was a very good general put in his various positions by the elected president.

[lynne]

28. Lee was actually requested to lead -

- a Union army but turned it down as it would have pit him against family and friends who lived in the south. He was against sucession but felt he had no choice but to serve to defend his home state should it come to war.

No doubt, Lee was between a rock and a hard place. He had to choose between country and family, something I doubt that any of us would ever want to be forced to do.

[LostinVA]

69. H e was a traitor, plain and simple

He turned a request to lead the Union's army. He spat on the oath he had taken. He did all he could to prolong slavery, and to try to destroy the sovereign government and nation of the United States. I don't acre if he was a nice guy, etc. He still did this. Arlington should have been taken from him, and it never should have been given back.

[Yupster]

100. How did Lee try to destroy the

US nation?

If the Confederacy was allowed to leave peacefully the US government wouldnt have survived?

Many people think the country would have been better off if they were allowed to leave.

[alcibiades_mystery]

7. Perceptions on both sides are skewed a bit with this

When I lived outside Atlanta, I really couldn't believe the way Lee was revered; it was quite shocking to me. He was hoisted to the status of a minor demi-god - bizarre. Everyone was quick to tell you that 1) his decision to go with the Confeederates was a tortured one, and he decided based mainly on his loyalty to the state of Virginia and 2) Lee freed his slaves. In the North, where I spent most of my childhood and adulthood, Lee is not looked on with antipathy so much as indifference, so the Lee-cult among Southerners appears just weird and out there. There was, of course, the big controversy about students learning more about Harriet Tubman than Robert E. Lee. As a purely historical matter, it's completely unclear to me that Lee is a more important figure in American history, but the reverence accorded to Lee in the South really drives the supposedly obvious point that Lee is a major American figure, while Tubman is a minor one: this is decidely less obvious in the North, except perhaps among Civil War buffs (from a strictly military history perspective). In the end, I think Lee satisfies in microcosm the general feeling of classical tragedy that runs so much Southern self-identity: the noble figure struggling mightily in the lost cause. Whether any of that mythology does anything of value is another question altogether. I fear at this point that this post will be taken as "South-bashing." The feeling of victimization also pervades Southern culture and runs that disacourse to some extent, though no doubt many6 Northerners who have no business commenting on the South say pretty stupid and awful things as well. I hope it is not taken that way. It is merely my observation of the differences, having lived in both places. That said, I'm a Northerner through and through. When I stand at the Union lines at Gettysburg - the "high tide of the Confederacy," I get a sense of pride at what was accomplished by farmers from Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Ohio, Maine. I never pine for what might hyave been, primarily because I buy Lincoln's line on this:

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate -- we can not consecrate -- we can not hallow -- this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.

At the end of the day, for me, it was Harriet Tubman that lived up to that simple precept much more vigorously than the patrician (if tragic) Lee.

[baldguy]

9. By all accounts, Erwin Rommel was a good & honorable man too.

He was still a Good German who served the Nazi cause. Should we celebrate his b-day?

[alcibiades_mystery]

11. Why are you addressing this to me

I certainly don't buy into the Lee lovefest, and nothing in my post would indicate that I do.

:shrug:

[Yupster]

18. I think Rommel's son

is the Mayor of Stuttgart or Nurnberg or some major city, or was recently anyway.

[Uncle Joe]

64. Comparing the Confederates and the Nazis is Apples and Oranges. n/t

[alarimer]

38. You make some good points

I read a book recently called "Bound for Canaan". It is a history of the Underground Railroad. There are actually a lot of other people who were more instrumental in the formation of the Underground Railroad than Harriet Tubman even (although the books talks mostly about them rather than Tubman- I can't remember their names right now either); they were largely ministers and farmers and they risked a lot to bring these slaves to freedom, often in Canada. The thing that struck me about this book was that it told of the evolution of the abolitionist movement over the years.

[alcibiades_mystery]

50. Of course

Harriet Tubman stands in, as it were, as a figure for a more complex and wide-spread historical movement. To be sure. As does Robert E. Lee, being the point. That's how history is taught at the grade school level.

[Dhalgren]

12. I am a southerner; born and raised. It is ridiculous for anyone to

try and make the Civil War into anything other than a bloody rebellion to maintain and secure slavery. The southerners who rebelled against the US government were, by definition, traitors. They were misguided butchers who not only underestimated the strength and will of the American people, but never accepted the fact that they were whipped soundly and defeated utterly. They were losers then and anyone who aggrandizes them now is one, as well. Not being able to admit that you were wrong and that you LOST is one of the traits we criticize Bush for...

[FreedomAngel82]

23. I agree

[Yupster]

25. I think much of the bitter feelings in the south after the war

was the people's belief that they were right, yet they still lost everything. In any situation in life it's very difficult to swallow having to admit defeat even when you really believe you were and still are right.

[Yupster]

27. By definistion traitors

Well every prosecutor thinks the defendant is absolutely guilty and the defendant's lawyer thinks he has a perfectly valid defense. That's why we have courts to see which one is right.

Jefferson Davis was indicted for treason. He assembled a high profile group of northern lawyers to defend him and he demanded a trial. The government never tried him. After many delays, they just left him indicted and released on bail.

Under those circumstances, it's pretty distasteful to declare him guilty without trial.

___________________________________________________________________

Think of yourself arrested for child molestation. The arrest is front page news and the DA holds press conferences detailing the horrible things you did.

You are sure you are innocent and can't wait for the trial to start so you can get this cloud off your head.

Then the government delays your trial, and delays it, and delays it, and finally just never holds it. Just leaves you indicted and bailed out of jail.

Now someone on the internet is going to declare you a child molestor?

I bet people wouldn't think it was fair if it happened to them.

[Dhalgren]

45. If you are a citizen of a country and take up arms against that

country then you are a traitor to that country. You may be justified in your rebellion (the south wasn't), but to your country you are a traitor. The fact that most southerners did not think that slavery was wrong does make them, therefore, right in rebelling. They loved being the masters of slaves more than they loved their country - what does that make them?

I had great-great grandfathers on both sides of my family who fought for the south in the Civil War. They were all "poor as Job's turkey" (as the saying goes)and so owned no slaves, but they fought anyway. I can only surmise that they were either afraid not to fight or were simply dumb (could have been both). Were they brave? Yes, probably, but so was Benedict Arnold...

[Yupster]

49. The people of texas voted 80-20 to leave the USA

and join the CSA. Very few of them had slaves.

The rest of them just thought they were exercising their right to choose their government just like they did 15 years earlier when they voted to join the USA.

That makes them traitors? I guess some would say yes, others no.

As far as the traitors go, the citizens of the Confederacy did not consider themselves citizens of the USA. That ended once their states left the Union, so they would not fall under your definition of treason.

To them they ceased being citizens of the USA.

They then became citizens of the CSA.

Then their nation was invaded by a foreign power and they rose to defend it.

That's why so many anti-secession southerners fought so loyally for the CSA. They felt they were part of a country which was being invaded by a foreign power so they defended it.

[alfredo]

34. Look at the red states, except for two, they were slave states, or had

no law against slavery. If anything, the south has taken control of our government. Though they can't bring back slavery, they can bring back the stratified society they had in the old south.

[alarimer]

40. It was a tragic episode for sure

To this day, I encounter people like my co-worker who insists on calling it "the War of Northern Agression". Lincoln's main aim was preservation of the union at all costs; it wasn't so much the abolition of slavery he sought. But the new Republican Party had abolition as a major part of their platform so when he was elected, that was the impetus for secession; at least that's how I read it.

[misanthrope]

93. HUZZAH! Hear, hear...

...and all other like exclamations...from another born and bred in the South.

[kevinbgoode]

13. Celebrating the birthday of a traitor

in the nation's capitol! Ain't this typical of the wingnuts running the show...the Daughters of the Confederacy, a rogue government formed to separate from the United States - the ultimate act of treachery to the Union!

[FreedomAngel82]

24. No wonder they don't care about the Constiution

I wonder if Bush will be there to give some speech.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

14. He was a killer and a traitor.

Lee was beaten, and knew he was beaten, after Gettysburg. There was no hope for the Confederacy. Yet, he continued to fight an unwinnable war that killed 10s of thousands after Gettysburg and devastated the south needlessly.

Much like what is going on Iraq right now. An unwinnable war that is still costing lives because the politicians and generals are afraid to admit defeat.

[Kagemusha]

29. Unlike Zarqawi, Lee was not in charge of the decision to fight.

He fought a war others decided would be fought to the bitter end because he felt a responsibility to do what his political leadership demanded. Some might argue if he'd refused to fight that rather than someone else fighting instead, the Confederacy would have collapsed; turning traitor on traitors thus ending the war. This is an argument based largely on fantasy...

The fact is, generals who "admit defeat" are removed and replaced by generals who do not. Defeat is for politicians to decide, not generals. (Such a division of authority does not always exist, but the Confederacy *did* possess it.)

So let's keep in mind two things: Lee's not responsible for fools who seek to use him as an icon in place of the failed political leadership he loyally served while he was alive, and by the standards of the day, the US founding fathers were traitors to the British crown, their crimes fully punishable by death. This made arguing that all rebellion should be punished by death a little difficult. Also, if unity is all-important to the point that no one is allowed to disagree, why shouldn't everyone become an American, by open conquest if need be? Obviously the Lincoln adminstration and those which followed had better things to do - or, at least, try to do - than present the issue as one of universal treason vs. universal submission.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

41. Lee could have surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia.

He didn't have to have "permission" to do so. The history books I read don't mention Lee going to the politicians when he did surrender almost 2 years later. Anymore than Pembroke asked permission to surrender Vicksburg. Nor did Johnston when he surrendered to Sherman.

Lee, and Davis and the rest, didn't just "disagree", they took up arms against the government for the miserable cause of slavery under the thin veneer of "states rights" after he opposed secession.

[Yupster]

48. Lee was in constant communication

wth President Davis who was waiting for him in Danville. They had couriers going back and forth between them until Lee was surrounded.

Davis had taken the government by train to Danville.

Lee had executed a masterful disengagement from his front which was in a long arc north of Richmond all the way around to south of Petersburg. He got the army out without losing any major parts and they were to rejoin at Amelia Courthouse where there were trainlaods of food waiting for them to get rations and then follow the railroad down to Danville. As the federal armies got followed them further and further they would have to slow down to await supply trains and Lee's Army could join Johnston in N Carolina.

Then the incredible happened. Due to a mixup, the trainloads at Amelia Courthouse were loaded with arms and ammunition. Not a single bit of rations.

After 2-3 days marching without rations Lee had to call a halt at Amelia Court House and spend over a ful day combing the local communities for food to feed his army.

By the time they got back on the road, the federals had blocked the retreat at Jetersville. That caused the ANV to detour to the west on thin rations and bad roads. The fedearl cavalry was able to harrass them enough to let the federal infantry cut them off at Appomattox and that was that.

The whole trip, Lee and Davis were in contact with each other as well as they could be.

When Lee finally had his last attempt to breakout stopped he surrenedered, but at the time he was General in Charge of All Confederate Armies, not just the Army of Northern Virginia. Grant asked him to surrender all Confederate Armies thus ending the war.

Lee declined as only the army he was with was in a hopeless situation that needed to be surrendered. Not all Confederate Armies.

[Kagemusha]

51. I still think treason should have a high bar. For Lee and liberals alike

Because like I said, it quickly morphs into an argument that all dissent, armed, verbal, or thought, is treason. Or put another way, that there is no surrender for rebels, because only national troops can surrender, therefore there is only capture and execution. Not that I don't see an argument for that - I just think the argument could be used against George Washington. The difference being, Washington won.

I in no way sympathize with the Confederate cause and would be baffled if asked to find a reason to do so. But, I don't think that wanting Lee's head on a pike out of the same need for tarring him as an icon is much different than feeling the need to worship him as some sort of saint to legitimize the rebellion. Maybe my point is simply not something that can be appreciated objectively but, I mean to say that Lee was a human being, not a flag to rally around, and that there's no reason to assume he'd approve of people using him for mass denial about the Confederate defeat. Lee's war ended over 150 years ago; why should we in the present, feel the need to continue the war he stopped fighting, and drag his name into it?

I mean that both for Confederate fanboys and for people feeling the need to transform Lee from a general into a degenerate terrorist.

[Dogmudgeon]

55. Calling "Treason!" is getting popular on the Left

It used to be an exclusively Rightist hobby, but "our side" is also picking up the habit. It's an excellent poke-in-the-eye, but trying to make a sound intellectual case for a taunt is a dumb-ass activity.

Some background: Lincoln granted amnesty to "Johnny Reb" after Lee surrendered to Grant, and brought the Civil War to a close. Lee was authorized to do this, having been appointed the Commander-In-Chief of the military, second only to Jefferson Davis, who was often on the run, incommunicado, and unable to make battlefield judgments.

Davis himself favored a never-ending guerrilla war, to be fought from the Appalachians, but Lee appears to have talked him out of it.

Lee was granted amnesty, accepted back to the Union by Lincoln, and later made a formal, written, sworn declaration of allegiance to the USA, of his own free will, even when it was again politically acceptable to avoid doing so. Only through a clerical lapse did Lee's amnesty papers NOT get processed; this oversight was corrected by President Ford, who formally recognized Lee's amnesty and accepted his renewed Pledge of Allegiance.

I have more to say about Lee -- and the role of "Confederate fanboys" (excellent term, by the way!) -- a few posts below. But my take on this recent fartclap in the perfume factory is simple: any study of the Civil War requires a level of intellectual integrity that the right-wing knuckledraggers are unwilling to develop. And, sadly, "our side" has been playing their game, calling people like R. E. Lee a "traitor" when the term is best left for when it's needed to rile the rightists into a state of frenzy.

We need to exercise better tactical judgment in these matters. Robert E. Lee isn't the villain here, it's the Confederate Fanboys, pretending they are "dangerous thinkers" when they are simply disrespectful boors abusing the name of Robert E. Lee -- as they abuse and disrespect everything they set their filth-carrying hands and minds on. Our own response should be better-planned than to shout that Lee is a "traitor". The Confederate Fanboys do not deserve the emotionally-satisfying response of riling us up.

They deserve opprobrium. They deserve ridicule. They deserve shame.

Grant them amnesty only when they apologize and develop a rudimentary conscience.

--p!

[Yupster]

31. That's just ridiculous

In the spring of 1864 the Confederacy ran up a string of victories in Louisiana, Florida, and Tennessee. In North Carolina an entire garrison surrendered to the CSA. Victories like New Bern and Olustee and the Red River Campaign are forgotten now, overshadowed by the Overland Campaign and the Atlanta campaign, but saying the CSA had no chance of winning in the spring of 1864 is ridiculous.

In fact it was just at that time that Lincoln told his cabinet that he was very likely to lose his reelection. If that happened, the Confederacy had every prospect of winning its independance.

Remember, the CSA didn't have to win anything. It just had to keep fighting long enough for the north to go home.

Also, as a general in charge of one army, whether his country was winning or losing the war was not his question to answer. He did what the Secretary of War and the President told him to do. If he was told to send one of his three corps to Tennessee, that's what he did.

Deciding when the war was lost was above his pay grade.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

44. The "battles" you list were very minor and had no impact.

The transmississippi was a backwater of the war. They contributed nothing to the overall war effort except as a diversion.

Did Lee or the Secretary of War decide to surrender at Appomattex? Did Pembroke get the OK at Vicksburg? Did Johnston get permission to surrender to Sherman?

If Lee had surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia after Gettysburg, (he was trapped on the wrong side of the Potomac and surrounded - only Meade's caution saved him), the war would have ended and thousands of lives saved.

[Yupster]

53. That's true the victories of the spring 1864 were

relatively minor, especially compared to the later campaigns I meantioned, but the Confederacy didn't need to win any battles, minor or major to achieve its independance.

They just needed to keep fighting long enough for the federals to go home.

The North Vietnamese didn't win any major battles against us either and yet we left.

If we are driven from Iraq, it's unlikely the resistance will ever be able to point to any great victories they had over US troops.

As far as surrendering your troops, Lee surrendered his troops after he tried and failed to break the ring around him. It would be the same as a sargeant with a dozen troops surrounded in a building and hopelessly cut off. In fact the sergaent would have better communication with the Secretary of Defense tday than Lee had back then. There wasn't anyone to confer with or ask. He was surrounded.

In fact a committee of his generals approached him the day before to ask him to surrender. He rebuffed them. He did seek other advice though. The best was by General and former Virginia Governor Henry Wise. When asked what he thought of the situation, Wise told Lee the war was lost and any additional blood was on Lee's hands. "Situation?," Wise said. "There is no situation. All that's left is to let these poor men go back to their poor farms." Lee told him the situation was not so bad and his burdens were enough without Wise adding to them."

I wonder if we still have generals today who will stand up to authority as General Wise did.

I also disagree that Lee was trapped after Gettysburg. If Meade had been quicker, Lee could have still retreated into the mountains and gone back to Virginia the same way he came. That would have been much more dangerous and left Virginia open to attack while he waded through the Shenanah with his army, but it would have saved the army, though maybe not Richmond.

[AspenRose]

22. Inappropriate.

He was a traitor. Maybe in the minds of some, an "honorable" traitor. But still a traitor to the United States. Period.

[gkhouston]

74. I think some in our time see him as a traitor because we

find it ludicrous that the Union could ever be dissolved. In the 1860's, less than a hundred years after the Revolution, the notion that states (colonies) which had voluntarily joined together could never break free of that union was equally absurd to some. Shelby Foote had a great comment about the Civil War, "it made us an 'is'." Before the Civil War, it was common to say "the United States are" but afterwards, people were more likely to say, "the United States is" as if "United States" is singular when it's actually plural.

[Yupster]

101. I don't understand this idea of

declaring someone guilty of treason without a trial.

That seems like the most un DU-ish thing there could be, but I guess it's one of those cases where it just depends on whose ox is being gored.

Lee would probably brush it off himself. To me it's more unfair to Jefferson Davis who was indicted for treason and demanded his "speedy" trial to clear himself, and the government was too scared to try him.

Now people today declare him guilty without trial.

That just seems to go against any standrads we recognize here. I think people just have two different standards though -- one for them and their friends and the other for their enemies.

[SPKrazy]

26. Big Deal

It is their heritage they are celebrating.

Nothing wrong with being a southerner.

I don't celebrate Lee's birthday, or fly a confederate flag, but I would defend the right of anyone to do so. We still are a FREE country, aren't we?

BTW, several years ago in Arkansas, they celebrated Lee's birthday and MLK day on the same day!

How's that for Schizophrenia?

[LostinVA]

70. It's a bad heritage, and that needs to be said and remembered

[SPKrazy]

105. Why is it a "bad heritage"?

It is their heritage

they have a right to celebrate it

you aren't from the south are you?

[Dogmudgeon]

33. Neo-Cons: Peeing on Lee's grave, then laughing at the puddles.

The history and characters of the Confederacy have been turned into a political football by the lunatic Right, and we ought not to play their game. They simply want to poke America in the eye, and then pat themselves on the back for being such radical, dangerous thinkers, sticking it to The Man and keeping one step ahead of the Thought Police.

By celebrating the Confederacy.

They even maintain the pre-WWI forms of Commonwealth (British) English. They call the Civil War by the title of "The War for Southron (sic) Independence" or the better-known but less provocative "War Between the States".

If any of the Confederate leaders were still alive, they'd certainly take umbrage at this collection of overdressed, over-financed buffoons. The leadership of the CSA was largely idealistic, even if most of those ideals were corrupt. After the war, Lincoln granted them amnesty, of which many of them wrote in admiration, long after it was politically expedient to do so. Robert E. Lee would have rather opened a vein than act like our age's born-again "Confederates," who might as well pee on his grave for all the good they are doing the man's name.

There's a place for the study of the Confederate States of America and remembrance of its fallen. That place is NOT in antagonizing African-Americans, Northerners, women, liberals, Democrats/Republicans (as the case may be), or patriots to the USA. Certainly, whining about "libbruls", then holding a high-profile shindig in the capital city of the United States of America, doesn't qualify as "respectful".

These unreconstructed fools should learn from the example of Lee, who accepted humiliating defeat with as much grace as any man of his time could, declined to wage an unending guerrilla war from the Appalachian Mountains, and worked for the brief remainder of his life (he died in 1870) in service to America as a whole. Among his work, he advanced the cause of education among the non-elites of the North and South alike as a means toward the improvement of the lives of the poor and the practice of Democracy. As president of Washington College (now Washington And Lee College), he introduced an honor code that his supposed latter-day followers would do well to emulate: "We have but one rule, and it is that every student is a gentleman". (The Wikipedia article here contains some more factual information and better links on Lee).

It is appropriate that we of the United States of America seek to understand how the Civil War happened; to make sure it never happens, in any form, again; and to grant the clemency of time to those of its leaders who accepted defeat and were granted their return to America by Abraham Lincoln.

But NOT to hono(u)r, elevate, idealize, or suborn treason.

Lee can't exactly be called a traitor, either; after the war, he re-affirmed his allegiance to the USA in a public, civil, written-and-signed loyalty oath. Unlike the high-falutin' trash who foul his name, Lee admitted his faults, his guilt, and sought to heal some of the injury he did to his country.

Anyone who presumes to rattle the bones of the dead in a juvenile, totemistic attempt to be irritating probably shouldn't be called a traitor, either.

"Assclown" is much more appropriate.

--p!

[Yupster]

35. Lee was actually quite a

innovator in the field of education too.

As Superintentdant of West Point he got rid of the classical Greek and Latin requirements and put in engineering and other more practical classes instead.

Samething after the war at Washington University he replaced the classical studies with some of the country's earlies classes in agriculture and even astronomy.

[alarimer]

36. It is a state holoday here in Texas

We had MLK day on Monday (an official holiday) as well as Confederate Heroes Day on Thursday- 8 hours of holiday time if you are a state worker. As far as I am concerned they (Jefferson Davis et. al.) are not heroes but that's just me.

[Yupster]

42. Texas is an especially interesting case

Because in 1835, Texas was a state of Mexico.

Then it became an independant country until 1845 when it became a US state.

So when the Confederacy started, Texas had been part of Mexico, a free country and an American state all within the last 25 years.

The Confederacy started. The people of Texas held a popular vote to see whether they should stay with the union or leave it and join the CSA. The vote went 80-20 to leave.

I don't think they took it as that big a deal.

The US government had very little impact on people's lives back then. There as no social security or welfare or federal or medicaid or Department of Education or Transportantion or Energy.

There was a garrison of troops on the western frontier, but they would always be there whether they were Mexican, or Texan, or US or Confederate.

I just don't think it would be seen as such a dramatic change. Just like the people voted to join the USA in 1845, they voted to join the CSA in 1861. After changing nations three imes in 25 years, were they supposed to think that all of the sudden they had no right to change anymore?

I wouldn't think so.

[blogslut]

46. it is?

I've lived in Texas all my life and I've never heard of that holiday.

PS: My mother's family is one of the thousands that are supposed to be related to Lee. That man got around. Regardless, we sure don't celebrate his birthday.

[alarimer]

54. Well it is for state workers at least

I don't know that it is commemorated in any other way though.

[Bridget Burke]

77. "Confederate Heroes' Day" is a "partial staffing holiday"

Most Texas State Employees do NOT get the day off.

www.tsl.state.tx.us/ref/abouttx/holidays.html

[Rocknrule]

52. Bush probably sees him as a "defender of freedom"

[agincourt]

62. As dumbed down as americans are,

in a few years half will probably believe that Lee was fighting to free the slaves. Up is down, black is white, the civil war was about tariffs. LOL.

[Hyernel]

68. Lee was one of America's best commanders...

But it was a time when State citizenship was seen as more important than it is now. Didn't you guys see Gettysburg? (The one with Martin Sheen playing Lee.) Lee was fighting for his home of Virginia...not for slavery.

[LostinVA]

71. No, he fought for slavery

I don't care what he said -- there were more than a few Southern generals and officers who didn't believe some misplaced s=tate pride was more important than the morality (or arther lack there of) of slavery.

Lee had a choice. Personal responsibility. Just as people on DU clamor for the Bushbots to take some, so should Lee be assigned some. He was lucky he wasn't executed or languish in prison for the rest of his life.

Fighting on the side of slavery was being for slavery. There is no way around that.

[Hyernel]

73. I disagree...

Right now we have thousands fighting and dying in Iraq for a lie....or several lies. They are fighting for Halliburton and the oil industries short-term profitability, but few of the troops on the ground will see it that way. Officers are doing it because battlefield experience is good for their careers.

They think they are protecting "Freedom" or avenging 9/11, or someother such bullshit.

Jefferson Davis was the traitor. Lee was doing his duty to Virginia.

[AbbyR]

90. I've been reading this thread all the way, and

I find it very sad. I am a southerner.
My father, long dead, kept two books on his bedside table: The Bible and Lee's Lieutenants by Douglas Southall Freeman. I grew up in Richmond. I marched for integration and black voters' rights, and I still smile when you say the name of Robert E. Lee. I understand Lee, I think, and I believe with all my heart that he was fighting for a state he loved, not the institution of slavery. I love Virginia, too - my heritage is there, my ancestors lived and died there. I understand why black people hate the Confederate battle flag. When I see it today, I think "redneck." But I love my state. I love Gen'l. Lee. Does that make me a traitor? I don't think so. Lee loved Virginia, and to me, that is where his story rests.

Flame away - I may be of two minds, I never condoned slavery and never would, but the general will always be among my heroes, right along with Winston Churchill. Maybe I've believed a lie all my life, but I don't think so.

[SaveElmer]

83. Slavery is the ground upon which the South CHOSE to fight...

Certainly Robert E. Lee cannot be looked at through modern eyes. One must look at how American's viewed being American at the time. And the underlying fact is that slavery was the issue upon which the south CHOSE to prosecute the war. A rabid pro-slavery position was not always endemic in the south. For most of the antebellum period, slavery was viewed, even in the south as a necessary evil, best to die out eventually. It was the crisis over nullification, increased agitation by abolitionists, evangelical defense of slavery, and most of all, a desire by southern politicians, particularly John C. Calhoun, to unify the south after it was fractured during the nullification crisis, that moved the south from its "necessary evil" position, to one which defended slavery as a good.

Robert E. Lee defended this position. By all accounts Lee was honorable personally, and truly believed in what he was fighting for, despite as US Grant says that is one one of the worst causes for which any man fought. He also behaved admirable at Appamattox, and in realizing prolonging the war was not in the best interests of the south or north. Still, honoring him with holidays and such is simply not warranted.

In my opinion, the true hero (after Lincoln), of the war is U.S. Grant. If anyone deserves holidays and accolades it is him.

[AZBlue]

72. WTF?? This is disgusting.

I support the freedom of speech and if these people want to celebrate, then they should. But allowing it a the Capitol, when we can't even get a room to hold hearings, is totally inappropriate.

[oneoftheboys]

76. Robert E. Lee was a great American.

Call him what ever you want. But the fact remains that Virginia did not secede until after Lincoln suspended habeas corpus and sent federal marshals to arrest the Supreme Court.

If the miniature minded moran from Texas did that today, what would you do?

[Beelzebud]

79. Lee was a traitor to America.

No amount of Southern white-wash is gonig to erase that...

We were at civil war, and those who suceded were traitors...

[oneoftheboys]

81. It was not a civil war. You should educate yourself.

The south was not trying to take over the central government.

No, they joined the union voluntarily and they sought to leave it voluntarily as well. Which they had the perfect right to do after Lincoln became an autocrat.

[Beelzebud]

84. See post #82, and educate yourself....

[Bridget Burke]

86. A "Civil War" can be defined in several ways....

The American Civil War fits into the categories mentioned in Wikipedia:

A civil war is a war in which the competing parties within the same country or empire struggle for national control of state power. As in any war, the conflict may be over other matters such as religion, ethnicity, or distribution of wealth. Some civil wars are also categorized as revolutions when major societal restructuring is a possible outcome of the conflict. An insurgency, whether successful or not, is likely to be classified as a civil war by some historians if, and only if, organized armies fight conventional battles. Other historians state the criteria for a civil war is that there must be prolonged violence between organized factions or defined regions of a country (conventionally fought or not).

Ultimately the distinction between a "civil war" and a "revolution" or other name is arbitrary, and determined by usage. The successful insurgency of the 1640s in England which led to the (temporary) overthrow of the monarchy became known as the English Civil War. The successful insurgency of the 1770s in British colonies in America, with organized armies fighting battles, came to be known as the American Revolution. In the United States, the term 'the civil war' almost always means the American Civil War, with other civil wars noted or inferred from context.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civil_war

I'm sure the Sons & Daughters of the Lost Cause would prefer another title. But they lost.

[oneoftheboys]

89. Losing doesn't make one wrong. Unless, of course,

you believe that might makes right.


Civil War
Causes

<<The name Civil War is misleading because the war was not a class struggle, but a sectional combat having its roots in political, economic, social, and psychological elements so complex that historians still do not agree on its basic causes. It has been characterized, in the words of William H. Seward, as the "irrepressible conflict." In another judgment the Civil War was viewed as criminally stupid, an unnecessary bloodletting brought on by arrogant extremists and blundering politicians. Both views accept the fact that in 1861 there existed a situation that, rightly or wrongly, had come to be regarded as insoluble by peaceful means.>>

http://www.encyclopedia.com/html/C/CivilW1arU1S1.asp

[Bridget Burke]

91. Depend on a children's encyclopedia for a more simplistic definition!

Which name do you prefer? "The War of Northern Aggression"? Where in the South do you live? I'm in Houston, but few of my ancestors were in this country when That War was fought. I've got NO roots in The Old South.

Lee was a great general, but the South lost the war. How many more Southerners died because he chose their side?

[oneoftheboys]

96. If you don't like my source, there are many more out there...

But I prefer to call it what is was. "The War for Southern Independence." I live in southeastern VA and many of my ancestors fought in that war.

I don't understand why some people choose to judge those from the past by the standards of today. It’s annoying to see great men like Jefferson, Washington, Madison and yes, Lee derided by individuals who have no idea what it was like to live during their times.

[Bridget Burke]

107. Call the War what you will; it let's people know where you stand.

Washington & Jefferson did much in their lives besides own slaves. Much that was good.

Lee wasn't much of a long-term slaveowner. But he had no problem leading men into battle to protect the rights of slaveowners. Of course, many of the men who fought & died did not own slaves; in fact, owning more than 20 was a draft exemption. The descendants of those who fought took great comfort from the ideals of The Lost Cause--even when their ancestors had been considered white trash by those who started the war.

But Lee did photograph well--snow white hair & beard & an always immaculate uniform. Some other generals took war far more seriously.



"Hurrah! Hurrah! we bring the Jubilee!
Hurrah! Hurrah! the flag that makes you free!”
So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the sea,
While we were marching through Georgia.

[oneoftheboys]

113. If Lee had fought the war like Sherman...

plundering and pillaging the North's cities, burning people's homes, killing their livestock, gang-raping women and killing thousands of all races, things might have turned out differently.

But as it was, the war ended soon after Sherman's campaign and he was free to pursue what he called "the final solution to the Indian problem."

Your admiration of Sherman let's people know where you stand as well.

(BTW) The war was not about slavery. Lincoln started a war with the South to "preserve the Union."

[Bridget Burke]

117. Your account of the March to the Sea is mostly legend....

http://people.cohums.ohio-state.edu/grimsley1/myth/myth.htm

Yes, I saw "Gone With the Wind" too. I even read the book--but I knew it was a novel.

The Confederates left the Union to preserve their right to own slaves. The Civil War ended slavery in the US, even if that was not Lincoln's primary purpose.

[Yupster]

97. For me the most neutral and accurate title is

The War For Southern Independance.

[DelawareValleyDem]

82. Actually, Virginia seceded April 17

which was before habeas corpus was suspended.

[oneoftheboys]

88. It looks like my memory let me down.

It's been a long time since I have looked at this matter. Anyway, what I should have said is that Virginia didn't secede until after Lincoln dispatched troops to fight the south.

Still, Lincoln did suspend habeas corpus (10) days later. Then, when the SC overturned his decree, he sent federal marshals to arrest the court.

[Yupster]

98. But after Lincoln unconstitutionally

called forth the militias and gave each state a quota to fill.

That was a diplomatic blunder of Bushian proportions. It forced Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina to choose sides. Tennessee had just had a popular election and voted NOT to call a secession convention. Then Lincoln pulled his Bushian act of diplomacy and Tennessee held another vote and left.

There could be no effective Confederate Army without Virginia, North Carolina and Tennessee. They were three of the four largest population states in the CSA. If Lincoln hadn't pulled that moronic play, then Lee, Stonewall Jackson, AP Hill, Jubal Early, JEB Stuart, Dick Ewell and many other famous Confederate leaders would have fought for the north rather than the south, or at least would have sat on the sidelines, and a much shorter war it would have been, if there even would have been a war.

[Bridget Burke]

85. Ah, the distinguished General Lee. Such a fine figure of a man.

He had very few slaves, himself. But he "inherited" about 63 men, women & children from his father-in-law. (Distinguished men do tend to marry well.) His father in law's will indicated the slaves should be freed within 5 years--at the latest. Lee waited until the very end of that period to free them.

Given a West Point education, Lee did well in the Imperialistic Mexican War. When the Civil War came, Lee was supposedly torn. But he went with the rebels & joined the war that led the South into destruction. Many a poor Southerner fought because his "country" needed him. Or because he was drafted. And then returned to a desolated home. I don't fault those who had so few choices. But Lee, descended from Virginia aristocracy, lived to see an "honorable" retirement.

I prefer Sam Houston. He was deposed from the Governorship of Texas because he refused to swear an oath of loyalty to the Confederacy. Fellow-Citizens, in the name of your rights and liberties, which I believe have been trampled upon, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the nationality of Texas, which has been betrayed by the Convention, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of the Constitution of Texas, I refuse to take this oath. In the name of my own conscience and manhood, which this Convention would degrade by dragging me before it, to pander to the malice of my enemies....I refuse to take this oath."

Of course, Houston's forebears were NOT aristocrats.

[long_green]

104. one thing that needs to said on Lee's behalf

he refused to indulge in any of the bitterness rampant in the South after Appomattox. He encouraged scores of prominent young Southerners, including officers in his army, to swear allegiance to the Union after the war (he did not do so himself).

in fact, one of his sons served as a general in the Spanish-American War (not that that war was just).

[Bake]

87. Didn't the Civil War END about 150 years ago?

And with the end of the war, didn't our forebears all become Americans once again? I'm not sure, but I think there was probably some type of amnesty decree for those who fought for the South. In which case there's no need to hang Gen. Lee some 150 years later for treason.

So why do some of you insist on fighting it all over again?

So some people want to celebrate Lee's birthday. So let 'em.

Oh, I forgot, we only want free speech for OUR side. Just like the Pukes.

Bake

[misanthrope]

94. Not below the Mason-Dixon it didn't.**nm

*

[Bake]

95. Down here we refer to it the War of Northern Aggression ...

Or the "Recent Unpleasantness." That oughta set some people off here.

Bake

[Beelzebud]

115. It's time to enter the present time.... n/t

[ComerPerro]

108. Well, he was a decorated Union General before his treason

[lpbk2713]

109. Oh Look! ..... It's another regional bashing thread.

I always look forward to the "My part of the country is better than yours." threads.


They're always so productive.




:popcorn:

[LiberalInGeorgia2005]

116. None

Hard to deny that Lee was a very honorable man who reluctantly fought for the south. I don't know if he owned slaves, but if he did, my opinion of him, which is pretty low now as it is, would go down even more.

[Yupster]

119. He was a career army man

and worse than that his specialty was an engineer, so he moved from place to place very frequently.

He'd work on the Jersey coastline for a while, then be moved to work on the defenses of another fort.

When the war started he was in Texas looking at frontir defenses.

Not the kind of life where you can have slaves, so it's hard to tell if he wanted them or not. It just wasn't practical for him to have had them either way.

The slaves he did own he inherited as executor of his uncle's estate and then freed them as the will instructed him to. It was quite a bother to him getting and recieving letters right in the middle of the war concerning this slave's plans and desires, and where this slave would get income from once freed. It's all part of Lee's letters collection today.

[izzybeans]

118. Jeebus, who

let the stormfront folks in the room?

It's about Heritage, White Heritage. nothing more. Attempts at parsing history above seem a tad suspect.