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re: On this day 157 years ago, William T. Sherman presented Savannah, GA to Lincoln...
Posted on 12/23/21 at 7:51 am to RollTide1987
Posted on 12/23/21 at 7:51 am to RollTide1987
You do realize there was northern slave states post emancipation correct?
1
Posted on 12/23/21 at 7:55 am to tigersownall
quote:
You do realize there was northern slave states post emancipation correct?
I do. Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. That being said, those states weren't so wedded to the idea of slavery that they seceded from the Union to join a nation whose sole purpose was to protect that institution from the feds. That's the difference between those states and those which ended up in the CSA.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 8:30 am to GeauxVols
Noble men right there, also an illustration about how those with morals didn’t have to turn to treason and fight with the confederacy.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 9:22 am to SECSolomonGrundy
quote:
Yeah i dont know for sure. I guess i kinda just like that theory. Not sure why else Savannah was spared. It's said that Sherman really liked the place, but I'm not exactly sure why.
Any ideas?
Probably because it was a useful port for the Union.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 9:27 am to RollTide1987
The South suffered from hubris and not recognizing that as a society the had a losing hand from the start. Southern infrastructure was inadequate . Rail lines were wanting when compared to the Union. Key territorial control was an issue. Once Kentucky voted to not secede the South lost a key strategic peice because now the Union has total control of the Ohio on both sides from Pittsburgh to Cairo. This allowed for outflanking the South and the subsequent invasions through the Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers....see Shiloh and Nashville.
Also, history shows that the seceding territory is going to suffer more. It is hard for the breakaway provinces to mount affirmative defenses. That being said, the South does a good job up until Gettysburg. But it was doomed in April of 1862 when Grant landed 60,000 men in Southern Tennessee with relative ease.
You can berate Sherman all you want. Most of the criticism and legend grew after the war, spurred on by a pretty good propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Daughters of the Confederacy . Making it out that the South was oh so noble and portrayed the South as something akin to victims. They were victims that begged for their own victimhood. and victimization
Also, history shows that the seceding territory is going to suffer more. It is hard for the breakaway provinces to mount affirmative defenses. That being said, the South does a good job up until Gettysburg. But it was doomed in April of 1862 when Grant landed 60,000 men in Southern Tennessee with relative ease.
You can berate Sherman all you want. Most of the criticism and legend grew after the war, spurred on by a pretty good propaganda campaign orchestrated by the Daughters of the Confederacy . Making it out that the South was oh so noble and portrayed the South as something akin to victims. They were victims that begged for their own victimhood. and victimization
Posted on 12/23/21 at 9:34 am to KiwiHead
quote:
That being said, the South does a good job up until Gettysburg. But it was doomed in April of 1862 when Grant landed 60,000 men in Southern Tennessee with relative ease.
Jefferson Davis was an absolutely terrible Commander-in-Chief in that he thought not one square mile of Southern territory should fall into Union hands. As a result, he overstretched his already thinly held lines due to a vast amount of territory and inferiority in numbers. This made it easier for Federal armies to push deep into Confederate territory - particularly west of the Appalachians.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 10:32 am to Damone
Couple of points here:
I could be accused of being familiar with “lost cause” literature and I’m not sure I’ve seen it claimed that the South was completely united. I didn’t know of the detail of the 1st Alabama Calvary, but it’s not surprising to me, I think the Union was important to a lot of people even in the South. I’ve seen plenty of talk of competing sympathies in the border states in my reading, of course the same though to a less extent would be present in the Deep South. But like a said, the myth of united South seems mythical itself to me, I don’t know if such a position is widespread even among Southern partisans, from my reading. The north wasn’t united either, which is well documented. That’s kind of the nature of political associations.
Also, I take the charges of treason to be rhetorical and hyperbolic. I’d be interested in seeing the argument for this though from the Union perspective. I think a premise would be necessary that would undermine either allegiance or political self determination, while I don’t think the Confederacy is as vulnerable to such a premise.
The Southerner’s point is to give context to the mud slinging over slavery. If you know what the President was saying, or what the Congress was doing, or what was going on in the states still in the Union, it makes the slavery issue less cartoonish. Isn’t that fair to the Southerner?
quote:
Late to this party, but an interesting vignette about Sherman’s March. At the vanguard escorting Sherman? The 1st Alabama Cavalry. Mostly raised from the mountainous areas in Northern Alabama. Their existence an inconvenience to the myth that the South was united.
quote:
Noble men right there, also an illustration about how those with morals didn’t have to turn to treason and fight with the confederacy.
I could be accused of being familiar with “lost cause” literature and I’m not sure I’ve seen it claimed that the South was completely united. I didn’t know of the detail of the 1st Alabama Calvary, but it’s not surprising to me, I think the Union was important to a lot of people even in the South. I’ve seen plenty of talk of competing sympathies in the border states in my reading, of course the same though to a less extent would be present in the Deep South. But like a said, the myth of united South seems mythical itself to me, I don’t know if such a position is widespread even among Southern partisans, from my reading. The north wasn’t united either, which is well documented. That’s kind of the nature of political associations.
Also, I take the charges of treason to be rhetorical and hyperbolic. I’d be interested in seeing the argument for this though from the Union perspective. I think a premise would be necessary that would undermine either allegiance or political self determination, while I don’t think the Confederacy is as vulnerable to such a premise.
quote:
I do. Kentucky, Missouri, Maryland, and Delaware. That being said, those states weren't so wedded to the idea of slavery that they seceded from the Union to join a nation whose sole purpose was to protect that institution from the feds. That's the difference between those states and those which ended up in the CSA.
The Southerner’s point is to give context to the mud slinging over slavery. If you know what the President was saying, or what the Congress was doing, or what was going on in the states still in the Union, it makes the slavery issue less cartoonish. Isn’t that fair to the Southerner?
Posted on 12/23/21 at 10:45 am to Sip_Tyga
quote:
I’d be interested in seeing the argument for this though from the Union perspective.
The American secessionist movement began in New England with Federalist opposition to the War of 1812 and ended with the Hartford Convention. The Convention's final report was the basis for South Carolina's nullification position a decade later. This isn't taught in history class though because it doesn't fit "the South is evil" narrative.
This post was edited on 12/23/21 at 10:45 am
Posted on 12/23/21 at 10:52 am to SCLibertarian
quote:
The American secessionist movement began in New England with Federalist opposition to the War of 1812 and ended with the Hartford Convention. The Convention's final report was the basis for South Carolina's nullification position a decade later.
Yeah, really smart for South Carolina to use the blue print of a political party whose secessionist movement was so unpopular that it effectively killed itself as a political entity. You're not doing your argument any favors here.
This post was edited on 12/23/21 at 10:57 am
Posted on 12/23/21 at 11:00 am to RollTide1987
quote:
Yeah, really smart for South Carolina to use the blue print of a political party whose secessionist movement was so unpopular that it effectively killed itself as a political entity.
Completely irrelevant to the point at hand. Even still, the Federalists rebranded themselves as National Republicans and elected John Quincy Adams after Monroe's second term. The point is, you have gone on and on about the moral righteousness of the Union and the North, but ignore that the very secessionist ideology which led to the war was started by the very people who opposed it mere decades later.
This post was edited on 12/23/21 at 11:00 am
Posted on 12/23/21 at 11:19 am to SCLibertarian
quote:
you have gone on and on about the moral righteousness of the Union and the North
I haven't seen RT87, or really anyone ITT doing that seriously.
I do grant Lincoln the moral prerogative to keep the Union together. As a Libertarian, I could easily see where you would disagree with that.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 11:30 am to SCLibertarian
quote:
The point is, you have gone on and on about the moral righteousness of the Union and the North, but ignore that the very secessionist ideology which led to the war was started by the very people who opposed it mere decades later.
I haven't really been doing that. I've simply been denying the moral righteousness of the South.
This post was edited on 12/23/21 at 11:32 am
Posted on 12/23/21 at 11:59 am to RollTide1987
The South and its planter class which effectively ran the state legislatures and were inordinately represented in Congress were quite intransigent when it came to the question of slavery which was the linchpin of the States Rights argument that they used. If you even suggested to them that slavery needed to be addressed it was met with open hostility and even fights in the Congress. There is the story of the Southern Rep/Senator getting into an altercation and bludgeoning a northern rep over it.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 12:37 pm to RollTide1987
I think the best take is that neither side was wholly righteous, as is typical of humans, but that we can recognize that slavery was a wrong and that political self determination is a right, regardless of the purity of northern views on slavery and southern views on political self determination. Ideally, slavery could’ve ended while maintaining a consent based union.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 12:37 pm to Damone
You got to be a traitor to form a new nation. You think that it was always a peaceful leave?
Posted on 12/23/21 at 12:41 pm to Sip_Tyga
It should have never happened. Greedy politicians are responsible for thousands of lives lost for nothing.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 12:46 pm to RollTide1987
quote:
Explain, please. You can't call Sherman a war criminal for burning through the Deep South and, in the same breath, praise generals such as LeMay, Spaatz, and Doolittle as war heroes when their strategic air bombing campaign killed millions of innocent civilians. If you are willing to excuse the latter but not the former then you are nothing more than a hypocrite.
In fairness, I will grant you that Spaatz wasn't purposefully trying to kill German civilians. Though there are exceptions to this (Dresden). LeMay, however, was absolutely trying to terror bomb the Japanese civilians into submission.
Well, for one, they were not considered to be citizens of this nation at the time of that happening. Two, that was total war. Meaning their entire populous had hands in their war effort. Three, they were dedicated to the complete overthrow and destruction of this nation. The Confederacy was not dedicated to those goals. The Confederacy did not want to be a part of the Union anymore, the Union could not abide that. I don't know how much more tyrannous a people can get when they simply will not allow a people to peaceably withdraw and form their own system of governance especially when you consider that it was not illegal. And again consider that not even 100 years previous, this nation did the very same thing to its own tyrannical rulers.
The two biggest hypocrisies this nation has ever been a part of is slavery, and the forced subjugation of a people that were trying to peacefully withdraw from the Union.
It's rather Soviet-esque when you think of it when you think about how the Soviets had machine guns rifles trained against their own civilians to keep them from leaving as well.
I think Patrick Cleburne sums it up best:
quote:
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.
Patrick Cleburne
quote:
I am with the South in life or death, in victory or defeat. I believe the North is about to wage a brutal and unholy war on a people who have done them no wrong, in violation of the Constitution and the fundamental principles of government. They no longer acknowledge that all government derives its validity from the consent of the governed. They are about to invade our peaceful homes, destroy our property, and murder our men and dishonor our women. We propose no invasion of the North, no attack on them, and only ask to be left alone.
Patrick Cleburne
This post was edited on 12/23/21 at 12:50 pm
Posted on 12/23/21 at 12:50 pm to dchog
Forget the traitor designation. If a region is going to secede from the whole, get ready for a fight and a vicious one at that. Couple that with the fact the South actually fires the first shots at Charleston. Did the South think that the Union would just be like, " it's all good, you can leave."
Posted on 12/23/21 at 12:56 pm to KiwiHead
But this take should go the way of slavery, for the same reason. Political unions should be consensual just as civilized people expect social unions to be. And the South firing the first shot is one of those things where the more details are considered, the less compelling it is as an aggressive move.
Posted on 12/23/21 at 1:07 pm to KiwiHead
The North were never going to let the South leave. Lincoln said who would pay for the government? You have to fight for freedom if you desire it because no government is going to let anyone off the hook that easy.
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