Civil War History - General DiscussionFor Discussions on Civil War Era Personalities, Politics, Issues, Campaigns, Battles, and more. Serious Civil War Discussions Only Please! All other posts will be deleted.
BTW, I didn't check out your sites because I had already come across them, the last time I researched the events in St. Louis in 1861. <g>
My intent in posting accounts of Northern and Southen incidents/attrocities/massacres/"war crimes" is to show that I've heard about them and that they happened on both sides. Naturally enough, each one creates anger and fury and outrage. Each one inspires survivors/friends/family/comrades to a spirit of vengeance. Very often, no one can determine the true facts, or who did what first.
Right now, I am reading a science fiction book, a story of first contact between races. Two scouts, one from each race, meet unexpectedly in the woods of a new planet. Each race thought it was all there was in the universe. Startled, they each raise a weapon. One is killed on the spot; the other staggers back to camp and dies in the arms of a comrade. The other side comes across the body of their dead scout in the trees and follow the trail of the wounded man who escaped and died. Each thinks the others are murdering savages. No one can know what really happened. The war starts. Trying to pin the blame down for "attrocities" and "war crimes" is often like that.
In almost all cases of wars/attrocities/riots I have ever studied, some of what each side claims about the others is true; I have never seen it be entirely true, but it does come close with a few cases: like Hitler and the Nazis, or Pol Pot. The American Civil War is no different, other than that I see it as actually being, in a general sense, rather well-behaved and mild despite the sort of horrible events we are talking about here in this thread. Anyone who thinks it isn't needs to look at world history to put all this in perspective.
When order collapses, free rein is given to fears and violence. In Missouri in the Civil War, order came close to collapsing; it did collapse in certain parts of the state where the strong preyed on the weak. But it was never as bad across the war as it became in, say, the Spanish Civil War, The Terror in France, Spain in the Peninsular War (1908-14), the reprisals after the Sepoy Mutiny in India, or a large number of other places and times. When it gets bad on one side, the other side usually follows suit in one degree or another.
I can't agree with you on this. Sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. BOTH sides have to abide by the same rules. But that's not how you see it.
Sir, No offense intended, but we're not talking about a what's for supper. We're talking about our republican form of government. They are two completely different things.
There's no difference between goose and gander. Cook-n-eat 'em both, either one or the other. If you prefer sauce and I prefer grilled, no problem. Too each his own.
But our Government is totally dependent upon each or our consent.
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Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.
Upon election of His Excellency, Mr. Lincoln and his radical Republican cohorts, Southern consent ceased.
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That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of 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
"The Right of the People to alter or to abolish it!"
No Kidding! Maybe Ya'll didn't read the same history books I did.
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Originally Posted by unionblue
This is where I have the trouble also. The idea that by somehow refighting the war, not the study of it, is somehow going to make a difference in its outcome.
No, sir. I'm not "refighting the war" nor trying to "make a difference in its outcome". I'm just using this platform to shout my protestations against revisionist historians who continually frame that awful war into one and only one narrow way. A way which is totally alien to the truth of the matter.
When Lincoln called for those 75,000 recurits, when he sent his Legions to invade the Southland, when he killed my GGG Grandfather and burned down his farm and sawmill, he became a Tyrant and it was their/our duty to resist. Duty to Rebel.
I may not be the constituational scholar some of you are, but Duty to Secceed.
Last edited by Ozark Iron John : 05-18-2007 at 07:18 PM.
So the South had nothing to do with the war? It came as a complete surprise to it?
It was dressed in white, blameless, doing nothing put minding its own business, while the 'evil' North under Lincoln and his radical Republicans and abolitionists plotted the rape and pillage of the South with his 'Legions' to reap the profits under the guise of freeing the slaves.
No, John, your not refighting the war, you and others are merely trying to 'rewrite' the war. Talk about a narrow view! By trying to fit this camel version of history through they eye of historical fact, this is where it all comes apart for me.
It's the WHY of it that both facinates and appalls me. It's not history you want. You and others want the war called on some sort of distorted historical technicality.
And how you can take the events of a long dead issue and twist them into some kind of modern-day agenda is another beyond the pale past-time for me.
Blame Lincoln for the bloated federal government we now have? Immigration? Iraq? Mixed marriages and families? Security and Liberty? Stop the smoke screen and spit it out. Don't be shy. Tell us what you really think and how you can use this forum to tell it.
Unionblue
__________________ "The American people and the Government at Washington may refuse to recognize it for a time but the inexorable logic of events will force it upon them in the end; that the war now being waged in this land is a war for and against slavery." Frederick Douglass
"Loyalty to our ancestors does not include loyalty to their mistakes." George Santayana
Sir, No offense intended, but we're not talking about a what's for supper. We're talking about our republican form of government. They are two completely different things.
There's no difference between goose and gander. Cook-n-eat 'em both, either one or the other. If you prefer sauce and I prefer grilled, no problem. Too each his own.
But our Government is totally dependent upon each or our consent.
No, we're talking about "wild-eyed Southern boys" killing innocent people -- and you think that's just fine. But if Northern boys do the same -- you think it is evil. That's a double standard. It has nothing to do with anything except you deciding you want to blame one side and praise the other. I think you believe it, and say it believing it is truth and justice. It is not.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozark Iron John
No, sir. I'm not "refighting the war" nor trying to "make a difference in its outcome". I'm just using this platform to shout my protestations against revisionist historians who continually frame that awful war into one and only one narrow way. A way which is totally alien to the truth of the matter.
From the moment the first words about the war made it into print, there have been untold views on the war, some true, some false, and most somewhere in the middle. The thought that anyone has ever been able to restrict the interpertation of the war into just one narrow way is the funniest thing I have heard this month.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ozark Iron John
When Lincoln called for those 75,000 recurits, when he sent his Legions to invade the Southland, when he killed my GGG Grandfather and burned down his farm and sawmill, he became a Tyrant and it was their/our duty to resist. Duty to Rebel.
I may not be the constituational scholar some of you are, but Duty to Secceed.
Before Lincoln called for a single one of those men, the Confederate Congress had authorized Davis to call for up to 100,000 men from the seven seceded states -- and Davis had actually called for more than 30,000 of them. The day after Lincoln's first call, Davis made his third call, bringing the total required to over 60,000 men. Confederate troops had besieged Federal troops at Ft. Pickens and Ft. Sumter, and attacked Ft. Sumter. This is a matter of just reading the Confederate records and accounts; no "historian" has distorted it for you -- unless you think some Southern-leaning "historian" has hidden it from you.
I fail to see an obligation to rebel over the election of a president one doesn't like. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I've read of no other rebellion over a presidential election.
The right to rebel carries with it no guarantee that the rebellion will succeed. And there is a stiff price to be paid, successful or not. The Founders knew the price and took the chance anyway. I have to believe that the secessionists were equally aware of the risk when Sumter was fired on.
Ole
__________________ I never knew a man who wished to be himself a slave. Consider if you know any good thing that no man desires for himself. A. Lincoln
Tell us what you really think and how you can use this forum to tell it.
I wish I could unionblue. I can't for fear of my own life, liberty and pursuit of property. His Excelllency has tasked his sychophants to monitor these boards constantly and log IP & E-mail Addresses and link them to what we say to whom when and where.
We may not know each other Ya'll, but THEY know US. Each and every one of US. They watch what we say. They coax US towards Sedition and all they while track US just waiting for the opportunity to crush our dissent.
Well, back to the border country and the Civil War. Maybe any discussion of secession should go onto a secession thread, of which there are several. Or not.
I'm interested in the quasi, irregular warfare of this region. Can anyone recommend a good book?
Trying to quantify murder, is a dangerous game, because if indulged in, it becomes easy to condone murder. If one tries to say that one murder was worse than another, one is, in effect, saying that one murderer was more justified than another. As some on this threat are apparently doing.
P.S. When local law breaks down, or worse, takes sides, then the law had to be enforced by higher authority, all the way up to military force, as required.
Some apparently do not know that all gov't, local, state or nat'l are All, ultimately, based upon force.
The right to rebel carries with it no guarantee that the rebellion will succeed. And there is a stiff price to be paid, successful or not. The Founders knew the price and took the chance anyway. I have to believe that the secessionists were equally aware of the risk when Sumter was fired on.
Ole
Ole,
In military circles, the attitude was that, in order for an officer to justify resigning and joining the rebellion, he had to see the rebellion as not only justified but also having a reasonable chance of success. Aiding a rebellion doomed to failure was considered unjustified, because it only inflicted more horror and bloodshed than necessary in a hopeless cause. Some of the Confederate West Pointers were very sensitive on the issue, and wrote afterwards of how the chances for success in 1861 were very good. Longstreet, IIRR, was one of these.
I wish I could unionblue. I can't for fear of my own life, liberty and pursuit of property. His Excelllency has tasked his sychophants to monitor these boards constantly and log IP & E-mail Addresses and link them to what we say to whom when and where.
We may not know each other Ya'll, but THEY know US. Each and every one of US. They watch what we say. They coax US towards Sedition and all they while track US just waiting for the opportunity to crush our dissent.
You may be one of 'em unionblue.
"Down with the Eagle! Up with the Cross!"
Don't worry. If you are right and they are out there, you have already told them.
But then, I think you are wrong, so what would I know?
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