{⋆★⋆} GEN Lee, Robert E.

Andersonh1 · Jan 23, 2020

unionblue said:
@Andersonh1 ,

A bit more from For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War, by James M. Mcpherson, chapter 8, The Cause of Liberty, pages 109-110:

"...It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern "rights" and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, none at all dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation."

Context seems to give further details and which details one wishes to acknowledge from their point of view.

Unionblue

I'd recommend the book for those who want to get inside the head of the common soldier. "Reluctant Rebels" by Kenneth Noe is also a good exploration of this topic.

19thGeorgia · Jan 23, 2020

unionblue said:
@Andersonh1 ,

A bit more from For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War, by James M. Mcpherson, chapter 8, The Cause of Liberty, pages 109-110:

"...It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern "rights" and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, none at all dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation."

Context seems to give further details and which details one wishes to acknowledge from their point of view.

Unionblue

McPherson admits in his book that letters of soldiers from slaveholding families are over-represented by 100%.

Viper21 · Jan 23, 2020

unionblue said:
@Andersonh1 ,

A bit more from For Cause & Comrades: Why Men Fought In The Civil War, by James M. Mcpherson, chapter 8, The Cause of Liberty, pages 109-110:

"...It would be wrong, however, to assume that Confederate soldiers were constantly preoccupied with this matter. In fact, only 20 percent of the sample of 429 Southern soldiers explicitly voiced proslavery convictions in their letters or diaries. As one might expect, a much higher percentage of soldiers from slaveholding families than from nonslaveholding families expressed such a purpose: 33 percent, compared with 12 percent. Ironically the proportion of Union soldiers who wrote about the slavery question was greater, as the next chapter will show. There is a ready explanation for this apparent paradox. Emancipation was a salient issue for Union soldiers because it was controversial. Slavery was less salient for most Confederate soldiers because it was not controversial. They took slavery for granted as one of the Southern "rights" and institutions for which they fought, and did not feel compelled to discuss it. Although only 20 percent of the soldiers avowed explicit proslavery purposes in their letters and diaries, none at all dissented from that view. But even those who owned slaves and fought consciously to defend the institution preferred to discourse upon liberty, rights, and the horrors of subjugation."

Context seems to give further details and which details one wishes to acknowledge from their point of view.

Unionblue

I have copies of approx 30 letters that a pair of my Confederate ancestors (brothers), wrote during the war. No mention of fighting for slavery at all. They only speak of the hardships of war, as well as their love, & affection for their families, friends, & neighbors.

A handful of them are available online for viewing. Their are a few errors in the transcription but, appear minor. This pair of Virginia sons, were from Spotsylvania county. William was in the 47th VA Infantry, fought in numerous battles to include Gettysburg. He was captured on the retreat from Gettysburg, & served 7 months at Point Lookout. His brother Robert, was in the 24th VA Cavalry.

Hart Brothers | Private Voices

altchive.org

Hopefully at some point all of the letters will be online, & transcribed. I haven't had time to transcribe them all myself. Some are very difficult to decipher.

19thGeorgia · Jan 23, 2020

"By the time of the Civil War, the belief in the constitutional protection of states' rights was ingrained in the South's political creed. Every southern state, in seceding from the Union, invoked the doctrine of states' rights, including that of secession. Even those southern political spokesmen and journalists who opposed secession at the time freely conceded that states possessed the constitutional right to secede in an extremity. Countless individuals, in making a choice to join the Confederacy, explained it in terms of defending constitutional rights. Congressman William Preston of Kentucky, for example, wrote his wife that he would never support secession out of a desire to preserve slavery, but that he believed it his duty to do so in defense of the constitutional rights of the states. Confederate soldiers' letters affirm overwhelmingly that they fought not to preserve slavery, but out of a sense of honor and duty in defense of their states and homes."
-Charles P. Roland, History Teaches Us to Hope: Reflections on the Civil War and Southern History, 104-105.

unionblue · Jan 23, 2020

Well, let's see.

McPherson's book, For Cause & Comrades, was published in 1997.

Now let's look at another view from another book, published in 2008.

"...There was broad support for the war in all economic strata of Confederate society. It was hardly a rich man's war and a poor man's fight. Three of every four households in the slaveholding states did not own slaves in 1860, yet four of every nine soldiers in Lee's army came from slaveholding households. Over 37 percent either owned slaves themselves, or the parents or family members with whom they resided in 1860 owned slaves. There certainly were poor people in Lee's army. Nearly 20 percent had no appreciable wealth, according to the 1860 census, but 20 percent of the soldiers in the army, or their family with whom they lived, were worth more than $10,000, a very substantial sum. Fewer than one in every twenty farmers in Lee's army owned no land. It was, in short, a rich, poor, and middle-class war. Rich and poor tended to be overrepresented, because skilled workers were kept at their jobs by design. All social classes supported the institution of slavery for racial, familial, friendship, and economic reasons. Once the war broke out, all those groups rallied around the flag..."

Source: General Lee's Army: From Victory To Collapse, by Joseph T. Glattharr, chapter 35, The Final Days, pg. 468.

Unionblue

BuckeyeWarrior · Jan 23, 2020

CSA Today said:
The above has to be one of the most inane commentaries I've seen here and there have been some over the years.

Do you seriously think King George III or Abraham Lincoln cared a whit what the rebel colonists or Southerners claimed or didn't claim,who they appealed to or didn't apealed to, what either set of patriots called their struggle for independence or whether the rebels thought they did or didn't think had a national right to a revolution?

I would say King George didn't, but Lincoln certainly did. That's why in his first inaugral address he explained why the Union was perpetual and that the constitution gave him no power to fix terms for the seperation of the states. He did this to counter the southern rebels claim that they had some mythical legal right to secede. He also did it to explain to the people of the United States why the Union must be held together.

He went even further and said this,"I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary." Telling the American people, and congress, that if they believed he was wrong about his position on secession and disunion that they could stop him.

President Jackson also thought the why was important and proclaimed in no uncertain terms that secession was treason.

Because the rebels said that the constitution gave them a legal right to leave, both in 1832 and 1860, it was important for both Presidents to explain why this wasn't so to the American people. King George did not have to explain anything to anybody. If the southern rebels had said they were invoking their natural right of revolution then there would have been no need for either President to address it. The constitution clearly gives congress the right to quell insurrections. Congress, through the Militia Act, has given the President the authority to call out troops to quell insurrections.

With all do respect I see nothing ignorant about the point I made.

Tom Hughes · Jan 23, 2020

One of the things that I always found fascinating was the intense brotherly love and affection that many Union and Confederate soldiers displayed for one another after the war. I guess that's why it was called a civil war.
It was almost as if their love for humanity gripped them in Hindsight. Because the civil war was a very costly war in terms of human casualties. It makes for a strange reunion.
That's why it's good to explore our civil war through the eyes of many historians and history buffs on these threads. We can learn so much about the many angles of war, their causes and effects.

BuckeyeWarrior · Jan 23, 2020

Tom Hughes said:
One of the things that I always found fascinating was the intense brotherly love and affection that many Union and Confederate soldiers displayed for one another after the war. I guess that's why it was called a civil war.
It was almost as if their love for humanity gripped them in Hindsight. Because the civil war was a very costly war in terms of human casualties. It makes for a strange reunion.
That's why it's good to explore our civil war through the eyes of many historians and history buffs on these threads. We can learn so much about the many angles of war, their causes and effects.

Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the brotherly affection was purchased by abandoning black Americans to the southern rebels.

Tom Hughes · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the brotherly affection was purchased by abandoning black Americans to the southern rebels.

?

CSA Today · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
I would say King George didn't, but Lincoln certainly did. That's why in his first inaugral address he explained why the Union was perpetual and that the constitution gave him no power to fix terms for the seperation of the states. He did this to counter the southern rebels claim that they had some mythical legal right to secede. He also did it to explain to the people of the United States why the Union must be held together.

He went even further and said this,"I shall perform it so far as practicable unless my rightful masters, the American people, shall withhold the requisite means or in some authoritative manner direct the contrary." Telling the American people, and congress, that if they believed he was wrong about his position on secession and disunion that they could stop him.

President Jackson also thought the why was important and proclaimed in no uncertain terms that secession was treason.

Because the rebels said that the constitution gave them a legal right to leave, both in 1832 and 1860, it was important for both Presidents to explain why this wasn't so to the American people. King George did not have to explain anything to anybody. If the southern rebels had said they were invoking their natural right of revolution then there would have been no need for either President to address it. The constitution clearly gives congress the right to quell insurrections. Congress, through the Militia Act, has given the President the authority to call out troops to quell insurrections.

With all do respect I see nothing ignorant about the point I made.

In the 15th century, there was the War of the Roses, in the 18th Century the War of Jenkin's ear, and by cracky, by the 1860s in the 19th century, we had the War of Semantics. King George didn't have a legal right to prevent secession but Abraham Lincoln did? The South would have been better off with another King George III or by 1860 a Queen Victoria.

Paul Yancey · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the brotherly affection was purchased by abandoning black Americans to the southern rebels.

Not sure what you mean when you state "that the brotherly affection was purchased by abandoning black Americans to the Southern rebels". If you are inferring that most Northerners were apathetic to the plight of the black man I would agree with you. Of course there more than a few Northerners who cried out for the freedom of slaves as long as they didn't have to deal with them in "their backyard".

As to the motivation of the Confederate soldier I like what James McPherson had to say - "The concepts of southern nationalism, liberty, self-government, resistance to tyranny, and other ideological purposes . . . all have a rather abstract quality. But for many Confederate soldiers these abstractions took a concrete, visceral form: the defense of home and hearth against an invading enemy."

CowCavalry · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the brotherly affection was purchased by abandoning black Americans to the southern rebels.

I fully understand your point here but you have to remember, slavery aside, there was no great gulf between the sections on their basic views of race relations.

CSA Today · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
Yes, but you have to keep in mind that the brotherly affection was purchased by abandoning black Americans to the southern rebels.

It had less to do with brotherly affection than it did with a Democratic president in 1877 if they didn't.

BuckeyeWarrior · Jan 23, 2020

CSA Today said:
In the 15th century, there was the War of the Roses, in the 18th Century the War of Jenkin's, and by cracky, by the 1860s in the 19th century, we had the War of Semantics. King George didn't a legal right to prevent secession but Abraham Lincoln did? the South would have been better off with another King George III or by 1860 a Queen Victoria.

It seems my argument was not understood. What the founding fathers did was not secession, it was revolution. This is not semantics, the words mean two different things.

I never said that King George did not have the right to try to defeat the American rebellion. He had both a natural, and under English law, a legal right to keep his country and its colonies together. Countries, like people l, have a natural right to self-defense. The founders knew they were rebelling and had no legal right to do so. They had no illusion that they would probably be hung as traitors if they failed. It's why Benjamin Franklin famously said, "we must,indeed, all hang together or, most assuredly, all hang apart."

Compare that to the southern rebels who appealed to some mythical right of secession and claimed the United States should just let them go. In fact they were warned 30 years prior by President Jackson that secession was treason.

There are four different concepts involved here-

1)natural right to rebellion(appeal to force or war) what the founders did and what the southern rebels did.(though they wouldn't have admitted it). Both groups, lawfully, could have been hung as traitors if or when they lost.

2)natural right of self-defense-what both England and the United States did.

3)lawful right to suppress insurrection and rebellion- both English common law and our constitution makes it lawful to suppress insurrections and rebellions.

4)Secession-A mythical get out of the Union free card that southern rebels said they were using. Though the word appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Claimed that this was the same thing our founding fathers did and that the United States should just let them go. Though the founding fathers never claimed or expected England to let them go and state many times they were rebelling not seceding.

19thGeorgia · Jan 23, 2020

Jefferson Davis in a message to Congress:
"The bill does not save the rights of aliens who were domiciled in the Confederate States at the beginning of this revolution and had already commenced the proceedings necessary to their naturalization. It would be manifest injustice to such aliens as have remained among us and have sympathized with and aided us in our struggle to cut them off from these rights, at least inchoate, and deprive them of the boon held out to them by laws to which we were assenting parties at the time they immigrated to the Confederacy."

Howell Cobb:
"In truth, gentlemen, I must refer to one remarkable characteristic of this revolution which distinguishes it from all others recorded in history. It can not be too prominently set forth, or too often considered--I mean its conservatism. Usually revolutions are the result of the excited passions of the people whose patience is exhausted, and hence their popular tendencies have too frequently degraded them into anarchy and discord. But here the people at the ballot box deliberately vote a revolution to escape from the very anarchy which they see impending and to preserve those conservative principles of the fathers of the Republic, which were fast being overwhelmed by popular fanaticism."

19thGeorgia · Jan 23, 2020

The "secession" of Tennessee:

"We, the people of the State of Tennessee, waiving any expression of opinion as to the abstract doctrine of secession, but asserting the right, as a free and independent people, to alter, reform, or abolish our form of government in such manner as we think proper, do ordain and declare that all the laws and ordinances by which the State of Tennessee became a member of the Federal Union of the United States of America are hereby abrogated and annulled, and that all the rights, functions, and powers which by any of said laws and ordinances were conveyed to the Government of the United States, and to absolve ourselves from all the obligations, restraints, and duties incurred thereto; and do hereby henceforth become a free, sovereign, and independent State."

Viper21 · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
It seems my argument was not understood. What the founding fathers did was not secession, it was revolution.

Had the South been successful, their quest for independence, would be referred to as a Revolution as well.

byron ed · Jan 23, 2020

Viper21 said:
Had the South been successful, their quest for independence, would be referred to as a Revolution as well.

Rather, had the Confederacy been successful...you don't get to claim "the South."

For the rest of the South, nearly half of it, the the war was successful.

CowCavalry · Jan 23, 2020

BuckeyeWarrior said:
4)Secession-A mythical get out of the Union free card that southern rebels said they were using. Though the word appears nowhere in the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution. Claimed that this was the same thing our founding fathers did and that the United States should just let them go. Though the founding fathers never claimed or expected England to let them go and state many times they were rebelling not seceding.

Secession was not "mythical"; it was an unsettled concept that was not unique to the South, hence the Hartford Convention of 1814. As a political solution never came about, the issue was decided militarily, as Clauswitz stated, "War is only the continuation of politics by other means".

BuckeyeWarrior · Jan 23, 2020

CowCavalry said:
Secession was not "mythical"; it was an unsettled concept that was not unique to the South, hence the Hartford Convention of 1814. As a political solution never came about, the issue was decided militarily, as Clauswitz stated, "War is only the continuation of politics by other means".

It was not unsettled. You had the Constitution, the writings of the founding fathers, Supreme Court decisions, and a proclamation from the President of the United States prior to 1860 saying the nation was formed by all the people and was a national government, not a compact between the states.

James Madison would have been well within the powers of the Presidency to order the Army to suppress a rebellion in Connecticut if they had declared themselves independent.

Who advocated for this "secession theory". A small group of individuals or congressman who did not have any force of law behind them.

As I said in a previous post if you can provide evidence that this compact theory was supported by founding fathers, Presidents, or supremes court decisions prior to 1860 I would be willing to look at it. Do not, however, give quotes from individual congressman, politicians, or citizens (besides founding fathers) that have no force of law in our system and can set no precedence.

{⋆★⋆} GEN Lee, Robert E.

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