re: Robert E. Lee surrendered to Ulysses S. Grant on this day 157 years ago...

Anyone care take a guess where this is? It was new to me. Wasn’t there last time I visited.

Do you only start threads on Yankee accomplishments?

Tough day for the OT

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Do you only start threads on Yankee accomplishments?

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I always read his threads and only rarely post. RT87 seems to me to pretty much just post information on the events of the day in question.

Whether you agree or disagree with whatever position he may take, I salute him for continuing to post these as they are always a good read.

Like a true Kentuckian I ride the fence. My ancestors fought for the South, but I think we can all agree ending slavery was the right thing.

I just imagine had I been alive and enlisted or conscripted, thinking as I do today, I would have been of the mindset of fighting for state's rights.

I believe the states should have the freedom to exercise what rights they see fit and the Fed keep its nose out. Was the right in question being fought for slavery? Yes. It is possible to fight for the principle of states rights and not agree with that particular right. Somewhat akin to fighting for freedom of speech even if it means you've got extreme idiots like Westboro Baptist or some Satanic cut or whatever you're in effect protecting.

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America won, racists lost!

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By today’s standards they were all racists. Try to keep up groomer.

Grant > Lee

I think it clearly did when South Carolina forces took the Fort.

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The US was violating the sovereignty of South Carolina by occupying Fort Sumter when it no longer had any legal standing to remain within the fort's walls.

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Fort Sumter was not federal property merely because South Carolina had no right to secede, and therefore, Fort Sumter was still within the authority of the federal government or within the geographical confines of the United States. The federal government's claim to Fort Sumter was not premised merely upon its location within the United States. Similarly, the federal government did not claim ownership of the whole of South Carolina.

Rather, South Carolina had ceded several sites to the federal government in 1805 because South Carolina wanted the locations maintained and/or forts built on those sites but South Carolina did not want to pay the maintenance and construction costs. More specifically, on December 17, 1836, South Carolina officially ceded the Fort Sumter location to the federal government:

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Resolved, That this state do cede to the United States, all the right, title and claim of South Carolina to the site of Fort Sumter and the requisite quantity of adjacent territory

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Fort Sumter, like Naval Station Guantanamo Bay, was the subject of a specific property interest held by the United States. When the Cuban communist forces took power in Cuba in 1959, they claimed the US occupation of NS Guantanamo Bay to be illegal. Like Fort Sumter, it would be foolhardy to believe that the US government would take a shelling of Gitmo as anything other than an act of war. How do you think this country would react if forces inside of Cuba shelled and then seized Gitmo?

South Carolina’s secession on December 24, 1860, through The Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union did not start the Civil War. To the contrary, it was not until April 15, 1861, three days after Fort Sumter was shelled for 34 hours by 43 guns and mortars at Fort Moultrie, Fort Johnson, a floating battery, and Cummings Point, that Lincoln issued Proclamation 80 to peacefully repossess property seized from the Union:

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Whereas the laws of the United States have been for some time past and now are opposed and the execution thereof obstructed in the States of South Carolina, Georgia, Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Texas by combinations too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings or by the powers vested in the marshals by law:

Now, therefore, I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States, in virtue of the power in me vested by the Constitution and the laws, have thought fit to call forth, and hereby do call forth, the militia of the several States of the Union to the aggregate number of 75,000 in order to suppress said combinations and to cause the laws to be duly executed.

The details for this object will be immediately communicated to the State authorities through the War Department.

I appeal to all loyal citizens to favor, facilitate, and aid this effort to maintain the honor, the integrity, and the existence of our National Union and the perpetuity of popular government and to redress wrongs already long enough endured.

I deem it proper to say that the first service assigned to the forces hereby called forth will probably be to repossess the forts, places, and property which have been seized from the Union; and in every event the utmost care will be observed, consistently with the objects aforesaid, to avoid any devastation, any destruction of or interference with property, or any disturbance of peaceful citizens in any part of the country.

And I hereby command the persons composing the combinations aforesaid to disperse and retire peaceably to their respective abodes within twenty days from this date.

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By April of 1865? My guess is that the US Army of the Potomac was fairly professional by then. I think that they would be able to compete in a war in Europe against the French, Prussian or British armies.

By April of 1865, the Union armies had gained lots of combat and campaign experience, for sure. I'd guess that their staff work and logistics work were very good by then.