Civil War History - "What if..." DiscussionsWhat if they had attacked instead of digging in...? What if he was in charge of the army instead...? Did you ever have a "What if..." question, and you weren't sure where to post it? Here's the place to ask these speculative questions!
In any other nation they probably would all have been hanged.
That might easily be so. Americans of the day would not have far to look for historical examples: what the Duke of Cumberland ("The Butcher") did in Scotland in 1745, what the French did in 1792-1815 during the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars; the fate of various peoples in Europe during the revolutions of the mid-Nineteenth century; the descendants of various British repressions of Irish uprisings. In 1860, many new US citizens had personal experience with some of these events in Europe. Put against that background, US treatment of the South after the war looks mild.
The term treason is an interesting one. Certainly Davis could have been considered to have waged war against the United States. Looked that way to me. I'm not so sure that was true of many Confederate soldiers, who were fighting for survival, perhaps against what they perceived to be an invading army with respect to their homeland and their very barns and domiciles and families? Civil war would be a better term. An unfortunate fact of the times. The fact that the nation was able to quickly (relatively) mend and re-assemble itself is testiment to the fact that not all folks tangled up in the war from the Confederate perspective were alien to the United States. Many a southern man served long and hard in the U.S. Army. His ancestors had much to do with the forming of the nation. Not something to be thrown away haphazardly. While serving in the Confederate army, many a soldier must have prayed for his country to survive and peace return to the farm. By the way, Beauvoir could use YOUR help financially.
__________________ Ancestors in US Army: 13th TN Cav; 10th TN Cav; 3rd NC Inf
Ancestors in CSA Army: 48th VA; 63rd VA, 5th NC Cav; 37th NC
Wife and Grandson's CSA: 15th AL, 51st GA, 41st TN; 36th TN; GA Mil 1197 Dist
The term treason is an interesting one. Certainly Davis could have been considered to have waged war against the United States. Looked that way to me. I'm not so sure that was true of many Confederate soldiers, who were fighting for survival, perhaps against what they perceived to be an invading army with respect to their homeland and their very barns and domiciles and families? Civil war would be a better term. An unfortunate fact of the times. ...
Treason under the US Constitution is very difficult to prove and extremely limited in its definition. The men who wrote it wanted to make sure that it could not be a catch-all way for the powers-that-be to silence opposition. Wise men, IMHO, who knew well how kings, rulers, and governments had acted in Europe.
As long as Davis or any other serving Confederate soldier or official is considered a citizen of the United States, they can certainly be charged and probably be convicted of Treason under this definition. This is true certainly in a "civil war" description of the event. Only success in establishing the Confederacy as an independent nation (including recognition of that as fact by the US) would free them from a charge of Treason under US law.
At the end of the Civil War, most regarded all of this as settled de facto. No sensible Federal official should have wanted to open it all up to judicial review at that point, just on the off-chance there might be some bizarre legal decision attempting to undo all or part of what had happened. Davis and a few Southern partisans would have welcomed the chance for a showy trial, but I doubt they could have succeeded. Some Radical Republicans and other fanatics might have welcomed the chance to punish the Southerners even more than Reconstruction did. But overall, the most of the people of the nation had the sense to move on and allow the bitterness to fade.
It might not quite have been Lincoln's "Let'em up easy". It might not have been perfect. It was, when viewed against the way such events were handled historically by other nations, relatively milder treatment for a rebellious people.
I remember talking to a good friend about a huge business problem with another close friend years ago. I had got to the point where I was telling him how I understood that other people had difficulties that were much bigger than mine, but that this was just the biggest problem I had ever known and filled me with anger. My friend, who happens to be a very experienced and knowledgeable person, chuckled and said: "Of course you see it that way. This is *your* problem, not some stranger's."
I think the Civil War and Reconstruction is like that for many people. They see it as having been a horror that happened to their family, their people, and it seems far worse, far more unfair than anything else could be. Trying to rank it against other events elsewhere seems insulting to them, I think, as if you were trying to pooh-pooh what happened to their great-great-grandparents.
My friend, who happens to be a very experienced and knowledgeable person, chuckled and said: "Of course you see it that way. This is *your* problem, not some stranger's."
Somebody Else's Troubles
(Steve Goodman)
Yesterday I went downtown and saw an old-time picture show
And the hero got a pie in the face;
He didn't like that, and he stormed around the screen.
Everybody else was laughin' in that place.
Chorus:
That's 'cause it ain't hard
To get along with somebody else's troubles,
And they don't make you lose any sleep at night.
Just as long as fate is there bustin' somebody else's bubbles,
Everything's gonna be all right.
Everything's gonna be all right.
Tell me, Did you ever have to pay for something that you didn't do,
Did you ever figure out the reason why?
When the doctor says this is gonna hurt me a lot more than this hurts you
Did you ever figure out that, that's a lie?
Chorus:
And I saw the boss come a-walking down along that factory line,
He said, "We all have to tighten up our belts."
But he didn't look any thinner than he did a year ago,
And I wonder just how hungry that man felt.
Chorus:
Now, I asked that undertaker what it took to make him laugh
When all he ever saw is people crying,
First he hands me a bunch of flowers that he'd received on my behalf,
And said, "Steve, business just gets better all the time."
Chorus:
That's 'cause it ain't hard
To get along with somebody else's troubles,
And they don't make you lose any sleep at night.
Just as long as fate is there bustin' somebody else's bubbles,
Everything's gonna be all right.
Everything's gonna be all right.
__________________ -
"It was a very peculiar time." - Franklin D. Cossitt
Ancestors in USA Army: 6th IA Inf, 11th IL Cav, 1st AL Cav; 122nd NY Inf; 6th MI Cav; 35th MA Inf; 100th IL Inf; 1st CO Inf/Cav; 22nd IN Inf
Yesterday I went downtown and saw an old-time picture show
And the hero got a pie in the face;
He didn't like that, and he stormed around the screen.
Everybody else was laughin' in that place.
Chorus:
That's 'cause it ain't hard
To get along with somebody else's troubles,
And they don't make you lose any sleep at night.
Just as long as fate is there bustin' somebody else's bubbles,
Everything's gonna be all right.
Everything's gonna be all right.
...
That might easily be so. Americans of the day would not have far to look for historical examples: what the Duke of Cumberland ("The Butcher") did in Scotland in 1745, what the French did in 1792-1815 during the Revolution and Napoleonic Wars; the fate of various peoples in Europe during the revolutions of the mid-Nineteenth century; the descendants of various British repressions of Irish uprisings. In 1860, many new US citizens had personal experience with some of these events in Europe. Put against that background, US treatment of the South after the war looks mild.
Regards,
Tim
Cullodun was over a hundred years before. By the standards of the time that was the price of failure, they knew that before they started trying to put a Catholic on the throne.
The French revolution was a social issue, not regional and heck, 'British repression of Irish uprisings'........yawn.........
Which uprisings? Surely not Cromwell 200 years earlier? That'd be relavent!
Progress made by society would have been a factor. Isn't that what makes us civilised?
And finally, a plea, can ya stop blaming the Brits for everything? I mean, to do something in 1866 claiming that's ok, the British did it in 1745...........
oh good grief.
__________________ Long Live The Special Relationship!
Cullodun was over a hundred years before. By the standards of the time that was the price of failure, they knew that before they started trying to put a Catholic on the throne.
The same standards still existed in Europe in 1860. Things like Culloden were very real to Americans in that day, even if not to Americans today. Events like that had inspired Ben Franklin to say "We must all hang together, or we shall surely hang separately" as the Founding Fathers signed the Declaration of Independence. They occurred routinely thereafter in Europe, say every generation, from then to the time of the Civil War.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiritofPickett
The French revolution was a social issue, not regional
I would point out that Southerners in 1860 saw their issues as social as well, whether we might agree or not, and in any case the point is the reaction of the powers that be to violent social unrest, which is what the South was fomenting in 1860.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiritofPickett
and heck, 'British repression of Irish uprisings'........yawn.........
Which uprisings? Surely not Cromwell 200 years earlier? That'd be relavent!
If you want to talk about the Cromwells, about 1/3rd of the population seems to have vanished (the outright killed, the slaves sent to the Carribean, those who starved, etc.) while whole counties were suddenly owned lock, stock, and barrel by Protestants as the Catholics were displaced by law. A friend of Cromwell invented the science of demographics to record the changes. A clear example of what happens to those the rulers want to repress.
Ireland from that point had a long and unruly history. The Rebellion of 1798 really got going around 1793, peaked in 1798 with French intervention and the battle at Ballinamuck, and was followed by several years of guerrilla warfare and by the Emmet Rebellion in 1803. About 15-30,000 seem to have died in the 3 months of the 1798 Rebellion; about 2500 on the British side. Attrocities abounded.
Things slowly improved. By 1829 most of the Penal Laws had been repealed, but the Tithe Laws were not (mandatory payments to the Anglican Church by Catholics). From 1829-1831, there was a passive-resistance effort that encouraged people to not pay (default) on their tithes. In 1831 the Constabulatory (the militia) was given a list of about 30,000 Defaulters and sent to collect, leading to the what are called Tithe Wars (1831-1836). These included 242 homicides, 1,179 robberies, 401 burglaries, 568 burnings, 280 cases of cattle-maiming, 161 assaults, 203 riots and 723 attacks on property according to historians. At Buncloddy in 1831, the Constabulary fired into a crowd, killing 12; at Carrickshock in 1831, 19 of 40 policeman were killed attempting to collect a tithe. In 1835 at the Rathcormock Massacre, police killed 17 and wounded some 30 collecting a tithe of 40 shillings from a widow. Tithing continued until 1869.
To a people with strong connections to the British Isles, as Southerners surely had, these and stories like them were recent history and current events. This, for example, was the Ireland that Pat Cleburne, Confederate general, came from.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiritofPickett
Progress made by society would have been a factor. Isn't that what makes us civilised?
That depends on what we mean by progress. The US immigration waves of the 1830-1860 period were fueled by people fleeing failed rebellions and repression in Europe. By the 1850s, European professional troops had become expert in street-fighting techniques because of the frequent use of them to break up riots/rebellions/revolutions in the cities. Many of the "german" immigrants had military experience on one side or the other of those wars of rebellion. Again, this was recent history and current events to the people of America in 1860.
Quote:
Originally Posted by SpiritofPickett
And finally, a plea, can ya stop blaming the Brits for everything? I mean, to do something in 1866 claiming that's ok, the British did it in 1745...........
oh good grief.
Would you rather I talk of the Austrian general who had a convent of nuns stripped and whipped by his troops during one of the rebellions around 1848 because he thought they were concealing information? Or why the French were maintaining a place like Devil's Island? Or what happened to people who rebelled against the Tsar of All the Russias ...
These types of events were normal in the world of the 1850s. They happened consistently in nation after nation where people rebelled against authority. By the existing standards of the day, what happened in America was on the mild side.
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