That’s a meaningless distinction. He was an active officer in March of 1861. If one can resign one’s commission when about to take up arms against one’s own country, and that absolves him of the charge of traitor, then the oath one takes upon accepting a commission is meaningless.
I’d like to add on to this discussion that while everyone thinks Lee fought to continue slavery, in the North the Union forces, except for the strong abolitionists, were NOT fighting to end it either. In truth they wore the blue uniform 1. because they were drafted, 2. they were fighting to preserve the union and thought of confederates as rebels.
Grant’s problem was cronyism. He appointed people to positions because they knew the right person rather than because they would do a good job.
In Grant’s defense, that had been normal practice. He was just unfortunate to be President when that spoils system was getting out of hand.
Another factor was his sense of loyalty. Most politicians appointed people to a government job with the implied deal that they better not make the boss look bad. So people could be corrupt but if they got caught, the politician would express his shock and outrage and publicly denounce his former follower as he fired him.
Grant had a misplaced sense of loyalty. If one of his appointees got caught doing something wrong, Grant would attempt to defend him. This just made Grant look like he was sharing in the guilt. Which was unfair because all the evidence is that Grant never shared in any of the corruption going on in his administration.
JFTR, the draft wasn’t instituted until 1863. All Union soldiers for the first 2+ years of the war were volunteers.
I think this is stating that the Civil War was mainly about Federalism vs. State’s Rights. Which means that for a general like Lee, the position would be akin to Free Speech: I may not agree with what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it. Noble in intent.
In this case, Lee’s position would therefore be: I may not agree with slavery, but I will defend to the death a state’s rights to allow slavery even if the Federal government abolishes it.
Interesting if so - but still wrong at its core.
By today’s values, that would be a heinous reason to engage in war. For history’s sake, the Rebs did the North a huge favor by firing first.
Self-determination is supposed to be a basic human right. Fighting breakaway states because they’re ‘renegades’ is frowned upon these days. Now had the Norths initial reasoning had been to end slavery, that would look much better.
That wasn’t the southern position. They wanted a strong national government that enforced slavery - even in states that didn’t want it.
That was the Republican position in 1860. They repeatedly said they had no intention of banning slavery in any state that chose to have it. All they said was that the states that chose to prohibit slavery should be allowed to do so. And the southern states opposed that position.
They sort of had a point… The tide was clearly rising against them, as more and more free states were joining the Union, but no more slave states. If that went on, the numbers would rise to the point of making Constitutional Amendments possible. The south, not entirely unreasonably, didn’t like this obvious trend.
If they could have maintained a permanent equality of sides in the Senate, balancing free states and slave states, they might not have felt it necessary to resort of secession. But with the numbers going the way they were, slavery was destined (manifest destiny!) to end. Their only resort, to perpetuate it, was an extreme one.
But realistically the best the slave states could have hoped for was a national mood of letting each state decide for itself. That was the way most people felt - the free states were willing to ignore slavery as long as it kept its distance. Various abolitionist groups never gained any major popular support until the decade before the war.
That’s when the slave states decided they needed to get aggressive. They weren’t content to defend slavery at home. They began pushing slavery outwards. They wanted the federal government to protect slavery in places where the local populations had decided to be free.
This was a disastrously bad decision. The slave states created widespread opposition to slavery where there had mostly been indifference.
The issue was over being taxed without representation, to see to it that the taxes had anything to do with the needs of the Colonies.
The theories of inherent human rights were in vogue at the time, similar to how Socialism spread in the early 20th Century, and lead to a wave of revolution and/or diminishment of non-elective government bodies. Fortunately, John Locke was a lot smarter man than Karl Marx.
One should also not forget that many of the Americans were people who had serious grievances with the British crown and royalty in general. I’m talking Irish, Scots, Welsh,and just about anyone who either they or their ancestors had been a servant under an english nobleman. Not to mention Dutch, French, Spanish, and other colonists. Also by 1776 their were books like “Common Man” which said the average man is just as good as the king himself and one didnt need to bow down whenever a prince walked by or to accept there lot in life. AND then throw in that many people had started to identify themselves as say Virginians or Marylanders more than Englishmen by then so really their was a strong feeling of “seperateness” that boiled over in rebellion.
Let’s keep in mind also that ‘The South’ wasn’t millions of slave-owners defending their vile institution. As with most wars, it was started by the rich to defend their money.
Referendums were skipped or riddled with fraud. A bunch of rich politicians caught War Fever and dragged millions with them.
After the first couple of months, any sane man would have called for a cease-fire and tried to sit down and hash things out, but even had Lincoln or Davis wanted to do such a thing…the paper pushers behind them, who saw casualties as just random numbers wouldn’t have allowed it.
There’s already this thread and the one I started on the Reb flag, so rather than start a third Civil War thread, I’ll ask here: Why didn’t France and England recognize the South? Wouldn’t they want the US fractured? It serves them no interest at the time for the US to be strong. Fracture them enough and you can tell them to take their Monroe Doctrine and shove it. It can’t be because the South had slavery. France and England had no problem buying cotton from slave states.
The whole buying cotton issue led to some serious weirdness. We have a great story here about a husband and wife team who ran an Underground Railroad stop in their home. Hubby was also the owner of a cotton mill, buying tons of slave grown cotton. I have yet to find any explanation how they could compartmentalize their brains like that.
But that’s the reality. People want to go back and rewrite history but nobody in the 1860’s had any illusions about the issue. The Confederate States of America had been founded to protect slavery. That was its keystone.
So if London had announced it was recognizing the CSA, it would have been seen as an endorsement of slavery. And that would have been politically difficult.
Some attempts were made to argue that the United States also had slavery - so this was a war between two countries that both allowed slavery and neither side had the moral high ground. But everyone saw that was a weak argument. It was clear that the Confederacy was the side that was pushing for slavery while slavery in the United States was a declining remnant.
I agree and call that “Presentism” but as The Hamster King pointed out, adherence to Slavery was already out of date then.
I’d give any 19th century man a pass on some degree of racism, but not fighting for Slavery, especially as practiced in the South.
Yeah, and the custom license plates make them very easy to spot on the road.