re: Ike chose the portraits of 4 Great Americans to hang in his Oval Office

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The South's only way to victory was to destroy the Federal government.

The entire goal of the Confederacy was to topple the United States like Isis and Al Qaeda.

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That is not even remotely true. The South never had any intention of destroying the Federal government. They would not have forced the North to live under a Southern government, unlike the tyrants in the North.

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This country would have been fricked and eventually the nation of states in two separate countries on the same soil wasn't going to ever work (why the South believed it could be independant on the same soil is beyond imagination.).

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Several nations exist in Europe, Africa, South America, and Asia on the same soil. To think that 2 nations couldn't share the vast expanse of this country is ridiculous.

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"The South's war against her country was one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse." - US Grant

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Grant was a drunk and incredibly wrong. Fighting against tyranny is always a noble endeavor.

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The entire goal of the Confederacy was to topple the United States like Isis and Al Qaeda. Not really a noble endeavor in retrospect...I mean, when you think about it, objectively.

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Wrong. It was to succeed. If Lincoln had just waved bye-bye to the secessionist states, there wouldn't have been 600,000 dead Americans.

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The entire goal of the Confederacy was to topple the United States like Isis and Al Qaeda.

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You see, this is what happens when education becomes political and critical thinking skills are lost for a generation.

Nowhere did the Confederacy have the goal to "destroy" the United States or topple its government. The entirety of its goals was separate and independent status - completely comparable with the goals of the 13 colonies just four score and five years prior to the initiation of hostilities.

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Grant proposed civil rights legislation (and would be the last president to do so until Dwight D. Eisenhower, nearly a century later) Grant authorized federal troops to confront the Ku Klux Klan and other groups of anti-black terrorists. Declaring them “insurgents … in rebellion against the authority of the United States,” "The South's war against her country was one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse." - US Grant

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And, you know Grant presided over a tyrannical and corrupt federal government, right? Words and deeds are vastly different things under fire.

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The entire goal of the Confederacy was to topple the United States like Isis and Al Qaeda. Not really a noble endeavor in retrospect...I mean, when you think about it, objectively.

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Well that's not accurate.

When, in the course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bonds which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive to these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shown that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such government, and to provide new guards for their future security...

In 1776, the goal was freedom not to topple England. The South wanted freedom, not toppling the USA.

But might makes right, and to the victors go the spoils. Along with carpetbaggers we got an indivisible union! Of course its indivisible until someone comes along with enough might to change it! Maybe Cali will have better luck!

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The most outstanding thing that Robert E. Lee did, was to devote his best efforts to the destruction of the United States Government,

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Or maybe he was going against the guy who set the constitution to the side to further his own agenda. The founding fathers never meant for the federal government to have the power that they do and Lee knew that.