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!
It must rankle that you can't escape the truth. No matter how hard you try or what site you post on it's always the same; your distortions come out and are pointed out. And like I have said I enjoy your posts, they show how deceptive and dishonest the Lost Cause and its proponents are and always have been. All anyone has to do is point it out. It's a pretty weak position when it's proponents have to distort history to present it.
"Same old BS..." well you're right and it's evident whenever you post. Long ago I learned not to expect the whole story from you, nor the undistorted one. Instead look at the link, track it back to the document and wonder in awe how anyone can purposefully omit so much just to cherry pick one snippet. We all have been treated to new and interesting ways of distortion from an individual incapable and unwilling to admit a mistake. Or in your case a distortion or dishonest representation. In short the Lost Causes's most effective proponent on this site is a man who quotes from Amazon Book Reviews.
I think the laugh I see is the nervous laugh of an Iwishiwas hoping to cover up what he knows he's been busted for... repeatedly.
So what if Lincoln hadn't died? Would this be a better nation today? I would like to think so. Perhaps, just perhaps Reconstruction would not have led to Redemption and a century of Jim Crow and the benevolant race relations of the US. Perhaps, just perhaps the old CS would have been let up easy. And if I had my druthers men like Davis, Stephens and others would have become men w/out a country. Interred forever upon US ships of war. Never allowed to again step foot upon dry land. Instead men like Davis wrote their memoirs in the first vestigaes of the Lost Cause with the same intent they had as CS officials; to damage the US all they could.
__________________
Shane Christen
American Legion Post 352
SUVCW Camp Abernethy# 48
Lifetime NRA member
3rd MN VI
For in much wisdom is much grief: and he that increaseth knowledge increaseth sorrow. Eccl 1:18
I think that if Lincoln had survived, the period we know as Reconstruction would have been alot different. As has been said by others, it would have beem more a period of reconciliation, not reconstruction. Lincoln was more for the idea of letting men like Davis go to Europe then trying them or hanging them. He wanted to bring the states back together and reconcile differences. He would still enforce the EP, and I am not saying that there wouldn't be problems, but it would have turned out a heckuva lot different than it did.
Unfortunately, this is all conjecture. We will never know if Reconstruction would have ended up different and if the wounds of a torn nations would have healed better than they did. We can only guess. We can compare and contrast the did happens to the did nots, but in the end, we still only have the dids.
I'd agree with this. Lincoln would have had the power of prestige in the days after the war, and both Grant and Sherman were fully on-board with his ideas for letting the South down easy to rebuild the country. It is hard to believe he would not have had more success at it than the Johnson administration did.
But that just points to a period that would have been easier than it was. It doesn't mean all problems vanish in mid-1865. Lincoln might have had more success in reining in the Radicals, but he would not have been able to make the hard feelings of war vanish in an instant.
Also, Lincoln would have finished his term in 1868. I don't think he would have run for a third, and I don't think Reconstruction would have been over by then. It seems likely that Grant would still have succeeded him, and that might be the most interesting thing: Lincoln was trusted by Grant and, if Lincoln still lived, might have been a guru to lead Grant through the maze of politics, extending Lincoln's influence well into the 1870s. Or not.
As you say, all of this is conjecture.
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
Don't forget that Johnson was a Democrat and his actions after Lincoln's death were called a betrayal of Lincoln's war by the abolishists.
They may very well may have been, but the end result was the South went Democrat and racial lynching began shortly afterwards.
It is ironic that today Blacks in the U.S. support Democrats when Democrats brought about segregation, supported lynching, when Truman joined the KKK it was because that was what Democrats had to do to start their political career, decades of police neglect and abuse- I would suggest we may just see the real fissures at the next Democratic Convention!
Lincoln would have to have overcome the lyrics to this old Southern song:
GOOD OL' REBEL SOLDIER by Major Innes Randolph, C.S.A.
Oh, I'm a good old Rebel soldier, now that's just what I am;
For this "Fair Land of Freedom" I do not give a ****!
I'm glad I fit against it, I only wish we'd won,
And I don't want no pardon for anything I done.
I hates the Constitution, this "Great Republic," too!
I hates the Freedman's Bureau and uniforms of blue!
I hates the nasty eagle with all its brags and fuss,
And the lying, thieving Yankees, I hates 'em wuss and wuss!
I hates the Yankee nation and everything they do,
I hates the Declaration of Independence, too!
I hates the "Glorious Union" -- 'tis dripping with our blood,
And I hates their striped banner, and I fit it all I could.
I followed old Marse Robert for four years, near about,
Got wounded in three places, and starved at Point Lookout.
I cotched the "roomatism" a'campin' in the snow,
But I killed a chance o' Yankees, and I'd like to kill some mo'!
Three hundred thousand Yankees is stiff in Southern dust!
We got three hundred thousand before they conquered us.
They died of Southern fever and Southern steel and shot,
But I wish we'd got three million instead of what we got.
I can't take up my musket and fight 'em now no more,
But I ain't a'gonna love 'em, now that's for sartain sure!
I do not want no pardon for what I was and am,
And I won't be reconstructed, and I do not care a ****!
...
Lincoln would have to have overcome the lyrics to this old Southern song:
GOOD OL' REBEL SOLDIER by Major Innes Randolph, C.S.A.
...
James Innes Randolph was a Southern poet of some note -- but this song was published for the first time well after his 1877 death, in 1914. Even if Lincoln had not died at Booth's hand, I think we can safely consider that he would have been dead by the publication date.
So please explain why "Lincoln would have to have overcome the lyrics" of a song that was unknown.
While you are at it: you do understand that Randolph wrote this as a satire about unreconstructed rebels, and that his original meaning was exactly the opposite of what you think it was?
Tim
__________________ "Let us, then, consider all attempts to weaken this Union, by maintaining that each state is separately and individually independent, as a species of political heresy, which can never benefit us, but may bring on us the most serious distresses."
Charles Cotesworth Pinckney of South Carolina, 1740-1824, Revolutionary War soldier, one of the authors of the US Constitution in 1787, speaking at the South Carolina Ratifying Convention in 1788.
I didn't realize that the song was written that long after the war! By this time the South would have been insulated from the North and still licking wounds!
New Orleans fell WHILE LINCOLN WAS ALIVE. Let's see what actions might have caused problems based on what was done, not the political rhetoric that was used:
Butler was nicknamed "The Beast," or "Spoons Butler" (the latter arising from silverware looted from local homes by some Union troops, though there was no evidence that Butler himself was personally involved in such thievery). Butler ordered the inscription "The Union Must and Shall Be Preserved" to be carved into the base of the celebrated equestrian statue of General Andrew Jackson, the hero of the Battle of New Orleans, in Jackson Square.
Most notorious to city residents was Butler's General Order No. 28 of May 15, issued after some provocation, that if any woman should insult or show contempt for any Federal officer or soldier, she shall be regarded and shall be held liable to be treated as a "woman of the town plying her avocation," i.e., a common prostitute. This order provoked storms of protests abroad, particularly in England and France.
Was going to edit that post to leave only a semi-colon, but I think I should have a nap first.
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
If Lincoln would have lived I doubt he would have a Hollywood Moment where he saw the errors of his ways and embraced the Constitution.
He was the only President with nothing to say about the Bill of Rights! Free speech? A free press? Never did he think of them, write of them or speak on thier importance. Why would they suddenly cross his mind?
He had no plan for the South. The chaos would have remained.
If Lincoln would have lived I doubt he would have a Hollywood Moment where he saw the errors of his ways and embraced the Constitution.
He was the only President with nothing to say about the Bill of Rights! Free speech? A free press? Never did he think of them, write of them or speak on thier importance. Why would they suddenly cross his mind?
He had no plan for the South. The chaos would have remained.
Lincoln had a plan. We just never saw it put into action, and therefore it isn't clear exactly how it would have gone. But he had a plan. It just wasn't fully materialized yet. The following is from D.H. Donald's Lincoln:
"How the Southern states were to be governed during the transition from disunion to loyalty remained to be settled. Lincoln had now given up the idea of temporarily working with the rebel legislatures, admitting to the cabinet that he 'had perhaps been to fast in his desires for early reconstruction.' But he felt stronly that the reorganization of these states could not be directed from Washington. 'We can't undertake to run State governments in all these Southern State,' he told the cabinet. 'Their people must do that,--though I reckon that at first some of them may do it badly.'
"Stanton brought up a plan for the appointment of military governors, who would rule under martial law in the South until civilian rule could be reestablished. Under his proposal, which he had submitted to the President the previous day [April 13, 1865] and had also discussed with Grant, the military authorities would preserve order and enforce the laws while the several executive departments resumed their normal functions in the South...This was, Lincoln noted approvingly, 'substantially, in its general scope, the plan which we had sometimes talked over in Cabinet meetings,' and it would bear further study."
Lincoln had a plan. He was going to leave it up to the states. He would put a military government in place until the states could get their governments up and running again, and then he would lift martial law and leave it up to them. And he wanted to do this free of Congress, due, most likely, to the radicals who were so prevalent in that body. Donald quotes Welles, who was writing down what Lincoln said: "There were men in Congress, who, if their motives were good, were nevertheless impracticable, and who possessed feelings of hate and vindictiveness in which he did not sympathize and oould not participate."
Lincoln had a plan. However, he died before it could ever be implemented. Johnson wanted to follow his plan, but Reconstruction was hijacked by the Radicals in Congress, and it became what it became. I don't think Lincoln would have ordered the capture of Davis and his cabinet. He was of the opinion of letting them go. He said that he would "not be sorry to have them out of the country" and that he was for "following them up pretty closely to make sure of their going." Basically, let them go into exile. But, with his assassination, Stanton sent the cavalry after them. He wanted retribution, thinking that there was a vast conspiracy behind the assassination.
There was a plan. It just didn't get implemented. Lincoln wanted the wounds to heal, not become an open, festering sore, like they became. Reconciliation, not reconstruction.
__________________ "The unity of government which constitutes you one people is also now dear to you. It is justly so, for it is a main pillar in the edifice of your real independence, the support of your tranquility at home, your peace abroad; of your safety; of your prosperity; of that very liberty which you so highly prize." George Washington, Farewell Address, 1796
If Lincoln was so great, I wonder why that wasn't noticed while he was alive? Interesting article:
LINCOLN AND HIS LEGACY
by Joe Sobran
At this point it is probably futile to try to
reverse the deification of Abraham Lincoln. Next year, if
I know my countrymen, the bicentennial of his birth will
be marked by stupendously cloying anniversary
observances, all of them affirming, if not his literal
divinity, at least something mighty close to it.
No doubt we will hear from the high priests and
priestesses of the Lincoln cult: Doris Kearns Goodwin,
Garry Wills, Harry V. Jaffa, and all the rest of the
tireless hagiographers of academia, who regularly rate
Honest Abe one of our two greatest presidents, right up
there with Stalin's buddy Franklin D. Roosevelt, father
of the nuclear age and defiler of the U.S. Constitution.
Such, we are told, is the Verdict of History.
But if Lincoln was so great, we must ask why nobody
seems to have realized it while he was still alive. The
abolitionists considered him unprincipled, Southerners
hated him, and most Northerners opposed his war on the
South. Only when the war ended and he was shot did people
begin to transform him into a hero and martyr of the
Union cause. But that cause was badly flawed.
The Declaration of Independence, which Lincoln
always quoted selectively, says that the American
colonies of Great Britain had become "free and
independent states" -- separate states, mind you, not the
monolithic "new nation" he proclaimed at Gettysburg. The
U.S. Constitution refers constantly to the states, but
never to a "nation"; and this is a fact we should ponder.
Alas, it appears that Lincoln seldom thought about
it. For him the Union was somehow prior to its members,
except in his younger days, when, oddly enough, he had
been a passionate advocate of the "most sacred right" of
secession -- in other countries. When and why he changed
his mind, or the reason he never applied this principle
to his native country, we do not know; but Gore Vidal,
among other keen observers, has called attention to this
most striking inconsistency of his career. What he called
"saving the Union" simply meant the denial of this most
sacred right, and he was willing to pay any price in
blood to achieve it.
No wonder his favorite play was MACBETH. He may have
seen himself in the tyrant who had waded too far into a
river of gore to turn back. Far more Americans died in
his war than in any other in our history.
A few books have told the dark story of Lincoln's
suppression of liberty in the North, including the
thousands of arbitrary arrests and hundreds of closings
of newspapers; his war on the South required a war on the
Bill of Rights in the North as well. All in the name of
freedom, of course.
Despite his symbolic importance, most Americans know
little about Lincoln. He was very secretive about himself
and his family, and he remains something of an enigma to
his biographers. One fact is clear, though: he was poorly
educated. He made up for this with his rare rhetorical
and political genius; his eloquence continues to create
the illusion of greatness.
Maybe it would have happened anyway, but since
Lincoln the Constitution has meant not what it says, but
whatever the U.S. Government decides it shall mean. The
very meaning of constitutionality has become entirely
fluid, so that the law itself has become exactly what law
should never be: unpredictable.
Today's United States of America would be
constitutionally unrecognizable to the authors of the
original Constitution, because today the government has
become the wolf at the door. Do I exaggerate? A
television commercial asks, "Is the IRS ruining your
life?"
Imagine what Washington and Jefferson would have
said about that question! They never dreamed that their
countrymen would live in dread of the government created
to secure their liberty. But that is what has happened to
this country, and much of this is Abraham Lincoln's
legacy.
Some people are not seeking greatness and aren't seen openly as being great yet, once dead and nothing can compare to the man--regardless if Lincoln, Longstreet, Lee, Grant, Chamberlain, T. J. Jackson, W.S. Hancock, L. Armistead, R. Garnett, John Buford, JEB Stuart, Col. Mosby and a host of others--were not seeking 'fame.' They were doing their job as best as possible with what they had. In the post-Civil War did their 'fame' come to the surface. Most times the fame was inter-military, soldiers judging soldiers.
Most fame is after a person has died and there is no replacement and or someone to compare with and or that person's accomplishments, especially the truthful accomplishments. Some people look for instant fame, which is never long lasting. The long term fame has always been due much more for the 'person' behind the accomplishments--the 'good' that was done.
Men who put their Generals in such high esteem, usually found that that General earned the men's respect.
The same can be said for President Lincoln. Nobody is without faults and or sin--however, it is being a realist, doing the best one can, doing an honest day's labor, giving to others and not really expecting anything in return.
Not one person in the Civil War went through it without some flaw(s). Nobody is perfect.
Just some thoughts.
Respectfully submitted for consideration,
M. E. Wolf
CivilWarTalk.com -
A free and friendly Civil War community. 
Linear Mode
