What if Ft. Sumter had not been fired upon?

[thea_447]

Neil,
You are certainly correct that I have overstated my point about all Southerners on this board not agreeing with me that the South had the right to secede. Just as I'm quite certain that not all Northerners would agree that the North should have committed themselves to "total war" against their Southern brethren. I suppose only "the winners" can justify this type of warfare. It certainly doesn't get much "play-time" in the history books that are written with a Northern tilt. I wonder how many young Yanks would have marched off to war had they known that Southern lands would be put to the torch, women and children left with no food, no clothing, or worse yet, shipped away from their homes? (I only mention this since you seem to imply that Southerners were coerced into going to war and that probably they would never have done so if left to their own accord.)

The "why on earth" tone that you took with me is somewhat mystifying though. I had thought that on this board we were a little above calling someone a bastard and I don't remember the last time, if ever, I called Lincoln a mass murderer, although I can probably be accused of calling him a dictator. I just didn't call him a dictating "bastard". I think this brings us to a new low. But since you seem to approve, I will sheath my sword for the moment.

As for your paragraph four, I think it's chock full of blueberries. If Lincoln hadn't done a few of the things he did to stop some states from seceding, the war might have taken an entirely different direction and I would be writing to you from Alabama, C.S.A. instead of occupied Alabama! <grin>

While we're all playing "wish games" my scenario is every bit as valid as yours!
(.....walking away whistling "Dixie".)

[johan_steele]

Occupied Alabama? Now that is a new one, having been stationed awhile at Maxwell AFB... occupied Alabama. That is choice, thank you Thea I needed to smile this morning.

I hope all who love "Dixie" realize that Mr Lincoln was particularly fond of the song and even more ironic that it was a song written by a Yank.

Lincoln has been called every name imaginable on this site from comparisons to "Lying, thieving, cut-throat, Socialist to at least one reference to being a dictator and please lets not get started on that special hatred for Sherman and his men. I'm suprised anyone can be offended by the slandering of the dead as every man who ever wore the blue has been considered a rapist, thief and murderer by many of Pro confederate, Lost Cause or Neo Confederate leanings. At least I don't think anyone could honestly call Lincoln treasonous... a bastard oh yes and frequently worse on this site and any other w/ pro CS leaning members.

The only "new low" on this site was when no pro CSer jumped in w/ both feet to correct a misguided young man who earnestly believed slavery wasn't all that bad, he might have even believed it was benevolant. The silence from the pro-CS crowd was deafening, maybe it was really all about slavery and if anyone needed a more stringent admission it was in that silence.

There can be no claims of failng to have followed the conversation as my referencing to the scalping of any who tried to place my wife and daughter into slavery was gleefully referenced later as some sort of proof that I was... less than nice.

I'm particularly fond of being referred to as a Pro-Coercinest... I have always much preferred the title proud American.

[bill_torrens]

Shane,

In view of your expressed enthusiasm for the subject of being hung, drawn &amp; quartered, I am doing you a special favour by attaching a link to a website which gives the details of a pub called “The Hung, Drawn &amp; Quartered” at (appropriately) Tower Hill in London: http://www.beerintheevening.com/pubs/show.shtml/3294/Hung_Drawn_and_Quartered/To wer_Hill

I wonder if there is a bar anywhere in the States called “Let’s Fry The Retard (When The Governor Is Up For Re-Election)”?

Anyway, I want to talk to you a bit more about Jefferson Davis. I don’t understand the invective which Unionists have expressed towards him from 1861 to the present day. Obviously he was a traitor from your point of view, which is fair enough. But so were thousands of other Southern politicians. All that seems to set him apart from the rest of the crowd is the fact that he was elected President….a job he didn’t want. And in terms of his personal integrity – judged as a man of his times, and not by the standards of 2005 – I am not aware that anything in particular can be held against him. Certainly he had his faults, both personally and professionally, but I challenge you to produce any evidence to impute his character.

You characterise yourself as a cynic. Which, again, is fair enough. But then you complain about broken oaths and keeping your word, which is a painfully idealistic point of view. A cynic would never bleat about broken oaths. Do you see my problem? Which are you? The hard-bitten cynic, or the person with sentimental attachments to oaths and “Old Glory” and “the last, best hope on earth”, and all the rest of that bollocks? You can’t be both.

Bill

[unionblue]

Bill,

I submit to you that we human beings are at once simple yet complex things, cynics and idealistic, all at the same time. Maybe that is why you can never really predict what a man/woman is going to do in a given situation, ever when 'logic' and 'reason' would dictate another, safer path.

And I must take sides with Shane on this one, but as you indicate, I would expand the side of the traitors in the South to include a lot more of the political and military leadership. Frankly, I am glad that I did not have to make the choice of who would be tried for treason and who would not as history would have read a lot more differently if I had been.

It is fortunate that Lincoln had a side to him that wanted to 'let'em up easy' for I frankly think that would not have been my first choice. I am glad that Grant and Sherman offered generous terms to the defeated armies of the South, as I tend to think I would not have. I hope that I would, but living here inside this skin all of my life, I have my doubts on that.

Dear Thea, thank you for your understanding and your patience with me and my occassional sermons. While I do not agree with your stance on the idea that Northern boys would not have marched in the cause of their Union if they had known the destruction that would result from war, I say by way of explanation that war is a fast and harsh teacher. As for 'winners' up here in the 21st of the Civil War, I also submit there are no such persons. I, and no one else on this board or alive at this time, took part in the fighting or the dying of that time. What we have are 'opinions' and lots of them based on our poor efforts to understand the times and feelings of those who did pay the price. Our passion is real at times, but also at times sorely missplaced, as our debates and arguments here have little bearing on those who paid the ultimate price for their 'loss' or 'win.'

I am much more concerned today with the friends I have made here at this board from around the country and across the seas far more than I am at some concept of being on the 'winning' side. How cheap of me it would be to claim such over the bodies and souls of those who did pay that price.

Dear friend, I am more than happy to share 'blueberry muffins' with you on this board than any other poor concept.

Sincerely,
Unionblue

[johan_steele]

Bill, I do believe that all CS politicians and much of the upper leadership in the field was guilty of a treason so base as to be unforgivable. The worst offenders were those who forsook (correct word?) their oathes. A mans word was/is his bond, a 19th century concept that was supposedly part of the Southern Gentelemans repetoire, part of what made him a gentleman. Apparently, it wasn't binding if it was given to a black man, woman, or an allegience to the United States. that may well be the crux of the contempt I hold men like Jefferson Davis and his ilk. And I view his ilk as his fellow Confederate politicians, his generals who had to resign so that they might do their best to kill men they had commanded etc.

I have more respect for those men who had the courage of their convictions to serve on the sharp end and defend their convictions with their lives. I can at least respect a man like that. A man who has broke his word and has the spine to stand up and defend his reasoning. I may not like the mans position, but I can respect him. Hence the difference between a soldier and a civilian.

I am well aware that many Northern Politicains were no better and deserve every bit as much contempt as Davis. I will freely admit that they were no better, but I cannot see a more contemptable crime than betrayal. It is not a noble or admirable attribute and no matter how it is spun I canot see a man who has betrayed his nation and broken his oath with anything but contempt and disgust.

Hence, if an enlisted, non commisioned officer or officer of the Union army at the time of the war I do not doubt I would have volunteered for the firing party or gladly asked to be the hangman for Jeff Davis, the politicians of the CS and oficers of the US that had chosen to serve against the US. Though, I would have refused and done everything in my power to prevent the punishment of a single man who carried a musket in rebellion.

In short, being raised in the lands of the "Old West" and spending much of my formative years among the Lakota, a people who still believe that a mans word is priceless, I believe that once a mans word is given he is bound by it. If a man has nothing else, t least he still has the value of his word. I view those men who broke their various oathes to the nation as below contempt. I suppose this view can be blamed upon my upbringing. If my belief that a man should stand behind his word and fess up when wrong makes me an Idealist, then so be it. Though, I have never looked upon it that way.

I am a cynic through and through, I have never met a lawyer worth his weight in Cat Litter, used Cat Litter in point of fact. In my estimation their place in society is barely above that of a child molestor or rapist. Yet I hold the average Politician well above a lawyer (despite the fact that many are lawyers) perhaps because of the ideal that they serve for the greater good. I admit I will likely be forced to revise my opinion of lawyers in the next few years as two people I respect highly are both well upon the way to becoming lawyers. I do believe there were/are honest politicians though I think they are few and far between.

As to my drawn and quartered remarks... I admit the concept has been based heavily upon a point two of my University Professors made. They made it quite clear what the founders of our nation would have expected if they had failed. If this theorum is incorrect, my apologies. Though I can guarantee you that if they had failed, their status as wealthy planters/landowners etc would have been well and truly over as well as the very real chance that their lives wouldn't have been worth the paper wrapped around a brown bess musket cartridge.

[bill_torrens]

Neil,

You suggest that you might have been harder on the Confederate leadership than Lincoln and his generals were. Well, I wonder.

The men who served the C.S.A. were, in the main, men of conscience; but their consciences told them something quite different to what you would have liked. What would have been the point of draconian punishment? Would you really have wanted to create a country where following one’s conscience leads to a noose? And what kind of sad apologies for men would have been intimidated by this message when you broadcast it? Not the men who followed a forlorn hope every bitter step to Appomattox.

Shane,

As you say, a man’s word was his bond. And when someone like Davis or Lee took an oath of allegiance to the United States they would (in their own minds) have been making a commitment which was entirely dependent on their own countries remaining part of that (as they saw it) relatively loose association of sovereign states. Your interpretation of the relationship between the various states and the federal government is completely different from theirs, and so is your definition of “nationality”, but that does not make them perjurers.

As for George W. ending up in four places (sorry, five if you include the head) if the colonies had been defeated…..none of us will ever know for sure whether that would have happened. But what I do know is that sympathy with the insurgents was sufficiently widespread in Parliament to have made such savagery improbable. I don’t suppose that this is taught in your schools because it takes a little bit of the gloss off the idea that you fought an imperial power utterly determined to crush you, and with the British people 100% in favour of that imperial effort. No matter: every nation needs its myths.

Bill

[dawna]

I've been following this thread with interest and I'm in wonder at the diligence with which people have referred to Jefferson Davis as a "treacherous bastard." I don't believe that Davis was a particularly great man and the South probably could have done with a better President, but Davis remained true to his ideals and the Southern cause until the day he died. That is at least worth consideration and after all, Davis was no more than a man who believed in his country.

More than ten years after the war, opposition prevented Davis from speaking anywhere in the North and in 1880 a man who cheered for Davis in Madison, Indiana was shot. It seems that 25 years later, freedom of speech and expression were still a sensitive issue in the North.

On the other hand, "dictator" I think aptly describes President Lincoln's actions throughout his administration. Even historian Clinton Rossiter (Constitutional Dictatorship) referred to Lincoln as a "great dictator" who had an "amazing disregard for the Constitution." For the thousands of innocent civilians who were killed in the South during the war, I don't think it's a stretch to refer to "mass murder."

The truth is...I think it's unbecoming to refer to anyone as a 'treacherous bastard' on these Boards and I think that the South has been given yet another undeserving slap in the face.

Bill, one cannot spend three hours at The Tower of London and not down a warm pint at The Hung, Drawn and Quartered...great atmosphere and interesting architecture:-)

Dawna

[johan_steele]

Dawna, I am sorry that you take exception at my opinion of Mr Davis and his ilk. I have spent much time looking at dictators throughout history and I find it quite difficult to compare Abraham Lincoln to men the likes of Hitler, Mussolini, Stalin, Mao or any of the Emperors of Rome. I have heard the repeated accusations of Lincoln as a War Criminal, having seen the aftermath of real War Criminals, I have to grit my teeth. I have traveled the South, lived there (though some do not think my living there for five years counts). Yet the only mass graves I have seen contained slaves that were murdered so that they might not bear the burden of freedom. I have never read of purges, death squads, mass murders, torture chambers, systematic extermination of the southern way of life or seen the constant degradation of the Southern culture spoken of so frequently by some.

The pro Confederate lobby takes everything the Copperhead movement ever said or did as gospel, defending every action of the CS and highlighting every negative aspect of the Lincoln administration while ignoring their own. It becomes frustrating to see so much hatred and while I agree that there is a strong bias against the CS in history much, but not all, of it was well earned.

As a note 25 years after the CW was over a black man could not vote safely anywhere in the south and God forbid that he might speak his mind... you are quite correct about the selective enforcement of the freedom of speech. And the North was no less guilty than the South. Twenty years after it would take an absolute lack of intelligence to cheer Jeff Davis next to a GAR crowd, many of whom had lost comrades to the War. Perhaps the first Darwin Award winner of the US.

Differences of opinion, especially when kept civil are what keep this board enjoyable and I appreciate the educated debate.

[johan_steele]

Bill,

I agree that my view of integrity and a mans word almost certainly differs from that of Jeff Davis or most of the Southern gentry... then again knowing full well that as a northerner their word to my country, my wife or myself would have an unofficial attachment stating "unless inconvenient" lacks the commitment you speak so glowingly of.

I didn't realize that there were rally's in the streets of London in support of the colonies and their quest for independence. I give a LOT of credit to the men who did the fighting; perserverence in the face of almost certain defeat takes a kind of integrity and... stones that boggle the mind. But as the US learned during the Vietnam yers a vocal minority w/ the support of the media can derail any war effort and if the war is being micromanaged by inept politicians it's that much easier.

Perhaps that is why I hold such a high respect for fighting men across history, regardless of their political leanings they perservered even when "supported" by incompetant leaders.

Well, I'm not sure it can be treason by the soldiers. Lincoln did not have them rewrite the soldiers oath so many times for nothing.

Besides, A country is not static. It changes. Personally If I give my word to this country it is only good for as long as the president and various leaders I give my oath to are still in office. I will not give an oath to whom I despise nor will I sell my honor so cheap as to do what I despise. That is how bad wars start. And stay fought.

As an example of my feeling, my favorite line in the movie "The Wild Bunch" is what Ernest Borgnine as Dutch said to William Holden’s Pike. When responding to Borgnine's fury at why old friend Robert Ryan is hunting them on behalf of the railroad Holden responds. The shouting exchange is like this:
Pike Bishop: He gave his word.
Dutch Engstrom: He gave his word to a railroad.
Pike Bishop: It's his word.
Dutch Engstrom: That ain't what counts. It's who you give it to.

But regardless of how I felt about whether it is treason or not for a united people to attempt to peaceably leave a nation and create a new nation, I can call them traitors I suppose (I can't since it is not treason to leave a nation) but to speak of them as traitors with contempt and vitriolic language I would be honor bound to treat our founding fathers and this very nation with the exact same such contempt. The nation itself would be ill-gotten gain. But then again, I do not say oh, that was different.

As to mass graves of Southerners. There are those in Shiloh. But not of Union soldiers. The locals were forced to dig up the Union dead and bury then in individual graves but such honor was refused the Southern dead. To this day in fact.






(Message edited by aphillbilly on January 31, 2005)