re: Donald Trump: Robert E. Lee was a great General, Lincoln had a phobia he couldn't beat Lee

I'd argue about liberals trying to rewrite history to white knight for injustices that occurred generations before they were born but after they guilted an astronaut into apologizing for quoting Churchill - what's the point?

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I almost typed this, if Lee developes trench warfare at the outset instead of Petersburg they could have bled the union into a treaty of some sort.

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America wasn't going to sign any treaty...and stop being America.

Like the Russians vs. Germany...once the Red Army entered the war, it was just a matter of time.

Man-power and resources.

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Then explain Vietnam, Iraq and Afghanistan.

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None of those treaties involved the United States giving up half of its land to a foreign power.

Which is what I assume he meant when he said: "America wasn't going to sign any treaty...and stop being America."

Though I could be wrong.

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Didn't Lincoln ask Lee to fight for the north and Lee turned him down?

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lee was ready to be the commanding general of the union army because he thought virginia would side with the union.

lee was a federalist and was for central gov't. he fought for the south because he couldn't fight against his home.

It was America. Not a big fan of couching it as North vs. South.

America wasn't going to divide itself and lose it's burgeoning international power to become a collection of States that frankly - would have had strange trade agreements that often would have conflicted and been enirely incompatitable. If the South wanted to truly secede, the only option was to move. America wasn't giving up the Southern part of the country. It was already expanding. It had paid for the Louisiana Purchase and was looking further West with the Lewis and Clarke expedition.

The POTUS, the Union - as you'd want to call it...wouldn't have ever capitulated. It was America or bust. Not - America vs. Confederacy on the same Continent, same land and same former and current trade partners.

How this the South believed this could ever work or that America would just give it up - absent all costs - is beyond me.

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First of all. Not a civil war. War of northern aggression. After bull run it was over but Lee pulled back thinking the north fold but the winners get to write history.

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lee was a federalist and was for central gov't. he fought for the south because he couldn't fight against his home.

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And when he did fight for his home, he advocated against States' rights and for a strong centralized Confederate government.

He spent his entire life being a Union man; his father was against earlier attempts at Virginia leaving the Union.

Lee came from a family of Federalists who believed in a strong nation as well as the need to look after Virginia’s interests.

In 1798 his father had opposed the Virginia and Kentucky Resolutions, with their strong advocacy for state power, because they would have denied the national government “the means of preserving itself.”

The Virginia Resolutions, Light-Horse Harry Lee argued, “inspired hostility, and squinted at disunion.” If states could encourage citizens to disobey federal laws, “insurrection would be the consequence.”

Lee’s devotion to the American republic made sense for one who had served it for 30 years.

His hero was George Washington.

Lee opposed secession during the winter of 1860-1861, and in the letter to his sister Anne already quoted described his “devotion to the Union” and “feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen.”

His letter to Winfield Scott on April 20 further testified to how wrenching it had been “to separate myself from a Service to which I have divoted all the best years of my life, & all the ability I possessed.”

Earlier that year, Lee echoed his Federalist father in telling Rooney, his middle son, that the framers meant for the Union to be perpetual. He read Edward Everett’s The Life of George Washington, published in 1860, and thought his professional model’s “spirit would be grieved could he see the wreck of his mighty labors!” Lee lamented the possibility that Washington’s “noble deeds [would] be destroyed and that his precious advice and virtuous example so soon forgotten by his countrymen.”

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“devotion to the Union” and “feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen.”

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And that's what Lee was saying and that's how it was interpreted at the time.

This wasn't North vs. South.

This was Americans vs. no-longer-Americans. Because the minute you disavow, you become a foreign country.

The South wanted a foreign country on American soil.

That was never going to happen. The South would have never ever ever ever ever won the War...becuase it would have just kept on going on until America had won.

America wasn't going to have a foreign nation on their own soil. And that's what it would have been. Not only a foreign nation that now believed in its own currency and centralized government, but one that was hostile to the US.

Let me educate you. Many North American and South American citizens consider them selves Americans. So when Grant killed citizens in the Confederate States of America he was in fact killing Americans. You need to be more specific, Lee killed United States of America soldiers. Grant killed Confederate States of America soldiers. You have hubris to believe our country is the only country that can claim the American label. You are sadly mistaken.

It’s factual, but Grant beat the brakes off of Lee.