Common Misconceptions/Myths

[leftyhunter]

Don't believe the myth.

So it was the Confedrate Army that freed the slaves?
Leftyhunter

 

[Lost Cause]

So it was the Confedrate Army that freed the slaves?
Leftyhunter

I prefer you reread the postings.

 

[leftyhunter]

I prefer you reread the postings.

Well if it wasn't the Confedrate Army that freed the slaves then I open to other suggestions.
Leftyhunter

 

[Lost Cause]

Well if it wasn't the Confedrate Army that freed the slaves then I open to other suggestions.
Leftyhunter

Again, Reread post 80. Your reply is irrelevant to the discussion.

 

[GwilymT]

Don't believe the myth.

The only thing you've done is post evidence it isn't a myth.

 

[Lost Cause]

The only thing you've done is post evidence it isn't a myth.

Based on unidentified "recent scholarship."

 

[GwilymT]

The master of the one liner strikes again... you claimed there was a myth. I questioned it. You then produced an article arguing that what you think is a myth may not actually be a myth at all. Very curious... I'd like to see what other scholarship you can find to argue that the EP started to become very popular in the north.

 

[GwilymT]

I hear a lot about fraternization among opposing soldiers, is that more myth or reality?

 

[Lost Cause]

The master of the one liner strikes again... you claimed there was a myth. I questioned it. You then produced an article arguing that what you think is a myth may not actually be a myth at all. Very curious... I'd like to see what other scholarship you can find to argue that the EP started to become very popular in the north.

Why do you consider the website to be factual, because it is on the Internet? Read some threads in the forum here instead. You might find what you are looking for.

 

[GwilymT]

Why do you consider the website to be factual, because it is on the Internet? Read some threads in the forum here instead. You might find what you are looking for.

I'm not looking for anything. You claimed something was a myth and then posted an article arguing against your myth. I'm fine leaving it. I was always under the impression that the EP was unpopular up north. I didn't know that there were a lot of people behind it and that it's popularity grew. The article you posted showed that maybe it wasn't so unpopular- especially as time went on.

 

[GwilymT]

I'm not sure if it's a myth or not but there seems to be a notion that Ewell should've or could've taken that hill. I'm not sure he should've and am pretty convinced he couldn't have.

 

[CowCavalry]

I'm not sure if it's a myth or not but there seems to be a notion that Ewell should've or could've taken that hill. I'm not sure he should've and am pretty convinced he couldn't have.

Apparently, he was convinced as well.

 

[GwilymT]

Apparently, he was convinced as well.

Do you disagree?

 

[CowCavalry]

Do you disagree?

No, I don't really, his troops were exhausted by that time.

 

[Saphroneth]

This makes a lot of sense. You use the example of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. I wonder whether this idea also applies to Grant's direction of repeated frontal assaults at Cold Harbor. In other words, Cold Harbor wasn't just an isolated clash of armies, but it was part of a campaign and a strategy of attrition and continuous contact, which over time bottled up the enemy?

I think we should distinguish between deliberate and accidental. I think Grant's manoeuvres and statements make sense if he was trying to win in "one fight", and it's a command pattern of Grant to underrate entrenchments (stretching as far back as Shiloh).

To clarify - if what Grant was trying to do was to wear down his opponent in attrition, there's no real reason for him to have moved south of Spotsylvania and in fact at least one advantage to staying there, which is that the greater distance from Richmond enhances the distraction effect of Butler's subsidiary campaign; when Grant manoeuvres he is, pretty clearly to me, trying to fight or turn Lee out of entrenchments instead of keep up pressure. Grant is after all the one who initiates all the movements.
Grant's view on entrenchments was that they were bad for the men and a sign of low morale (hence why he didn't entrench at Shiloh, and his prompt attacks on positions at Vicksburg, Champion Hill etc). Within that constraint, what Grant seems to be doing is trying to find the right combination to break through the "low morale" Army of Northern Virginia each time his attempt to outmanoeuvre them is frustrated; it's certainly aggressive, but I think the manoeuvres of the campaign (a series of movements around the flank to work closer to Richmond) aren't necessarily joined directly to the assaults of the campaign (which are genuine attempts to win the campaign against a heavily outnumbered opponent, in the new situation the manoeuvres have created).

 

[CSA Today]

Not Southern whites who didn't own slaves or owned slaves and rightly determined the secessionists were stupid. It would be more accurate to say based on actual enlistment rates of Confedrate soldiers that does who owned slaves or supported the interests of slave owners favored secession not that they were " defending their homes". Certainly Southeners of color didn't feel their homes were being threatened.
Leftyhunter

They did when they discovered the invading Yankee hordes were frequently more brutal to them than they were to Southern whites.

 

[MackCW]

Also @Harms88 ,
All wars are based on politics and no civil war in any nation starts in a vacuem and by no means are political issues solved once the fighting ends. Very few nations are politically united and the USA was never in the catagory of a nations that didn't have sharp political and racial divides. Or has Falkner said " the past is not even past".
Leftyhunter

I get that, but it doesn't mean that I have to participate in it.

 

[leftyhunter]

They did when they discovered the invading Yankee hordes were frequently more brutal to them than they were to Southern whites.

Yankee horses didn't lunch Southern people of color so they couldn't vote and have seperate but unequal education and public facilities. Quite a few Southeners of color left to emigrate to live in the North. General Wheelers men massacred freed slaves attempting to follow Sherman's Army in Georgia so I doubt that Yankees were meaner to African Americans then the kindly Confedrate Army.
Leftyhunter

 

[johan_steele]

No one has mentioned the myth of the ragged rebel? Well that is my absolute favorite Myth right alongside tens of thousands of Black Confederate soldiers fighting the evil US.

 

[CSA Today]

Yankee horses didn't lunch Southern people of color so they couldn't vote and have seperate but unequal education and public facilities. Quite a few Southeners of color left to emigrate to live in the North. General Wheelers men massacred freed slaves attempting to follow Sherman's Army in Georgia so I doubt that Yankees were meaner to African Americans then the kindly Confedrate Army.
Leftyhunter

What?