I don’t see why this matters. It was very wise for him to mobilize troops – the South was preparing to attack, and did attack.
For fuck’s sake get your facts straight. For the umpenth time, Lincoln did not call upon 75,000 volunteers until after the South had fired upon Fort Sumter. Who fired first is rather material to that fact.
Here, cite, bolding mine:
Had England won, it would be a different case. For example, there would probably be statutes of Benedict Arnold all over these colonies. But that isn’t the case.
On the other hand, how many things does this country have named after Jefferson Davis? Highways, monuments, parks, schools… we’re lousy with things named after him. How does that make sense?
I see. By that reasoning, the United States was the aggressor in the war against Japan. Do you agree?
Lincoln was inaugurated March 4th, 1861. The bombardment began on April 12th, 1861. 5 weeks is a quick time to sneak in a quick mobilization even by modern standards.
The reality is that the South had been mobilizing since February, expecting (hoping) a fight. They’d already seized most Federal installations - Ft. Sumter was the last (or next to last, I forget). Capping it off with an assault on a US Military post, the South asked for a fight, got their asses kicked, and their apologists now paint them as aggrieved victims.
Your disgust with Lincoln is somewhat unfair, seeing as how Lincoln was suffering from a serious case of being dead at the time. The war wasn’t really over when Lincoln was shot.
That said, this is one of those things where two things are true:
- The South’s leaders and generals deserved to hang. They were traitors.
- NOT hanging them was unquestionably the right thing to do.
Just because someone deserves punishment does not mean that punishment is best meted out. Mass hangings would have made the post-war period much more difficult. Having leading Confederates involved in reuniting the country was a stroke of genius.
The deification of Confederates, and (pun intended) whitewashing of their agenda took decades to happen and didn’t really pick up steam until the 20th century. In the period immediately following the Civil War there wasn’t a rush to fly Confederate flags and name fucking everything after Jefferson Davis. All this “northern aggression” nonsense is a recent invention. In the post-war period the Confederates were beaten and accepted they were beaten, and Northern leadership decided that forgiveness and decency, rather than blood and anger, was the best way to reunite the country. For the most part it was the right move.
I think the romanticizing of the antebellum South began with “Gone With The Wind”. People started thinking that the pre-war South was some kind of Tara-like wonderland. It wasn’t-it was poor, dirty, and violent. The only people who lived well were the rich plantation owners-and there were not many of them. The mortality rate among the slaves and poor whites was staggering-there were almost no hospitals, and few schools.
Yeh, slavery would have ended a couple of decades earlier.
Oh, my apologies. I was working under the obviously mistaken impression that Lincoln ordered Fort Sumter restocked over the objections of the South (this after restocking Fort Pickens with troops).
You might want to pick up a history book and read it. Yeah, the South “fired first”, but don’t act like it was out of the blue with no lead up (and don’t act as if the North wasn’t preparing for war with the South, either). Remember, Lincoln refused to hear the South’s anti war proposal.
The South had no intentions of invading the North. Again, to argue against this is to deny history.
The “Lost Cause” myth began just after war ended. Because of various reasons, it didn’t really get going until just before the turn of the century. The Georgian Encyclopedia’s article on the Lost Cause Religion is quite illuminating.
Margaret Mitchell grew up in the state where the most common inscription on Confederate monuments was “No nation rose so white and fair: None fell so pure of crime.” But she was also a fine story teller whose great heroine gave not one fuck about The Cause.
The South (or its leaders) had every intention of attacking Union property/territory and Union soldiers, and that’s what they did.
Like how Japan didn’t want to take over California, eh?
It was a federal installation and Lincoln had every right to order it resupplied. Just as if Obama has the right to send supplies to Ft Hood no matter what Texas thinks.
There’s no need to choose!
Which was?
IIRC “We keep the slaves”?
In other news, Mein Kampf is a best seller in Turkey.
Good points…in 1900, there were plenty of Civil war vets around; no doubt they enjoyed the acclaim that the myth gave to them. Even as late as 1930, there were thousands of vets around, only to happy to tell stories. “Gone With The Wind” really sealed the deal-besides being a great novel, it fitted in nicely with the mythos.
That’s enough, right there. No more attacking the poster.
First, I’m not a Southerner. I live in the South now, but was born and raised in New York. The Stars and Bars mean nothing to me, and anyone who cares to search through archives here will see I’ve been on record as wanting the Confederate flag removed from state houses and capital buildings in any Southern state that still flies them.
That said… why is this a huge deal NOW? Because of Dylann Roof? Sorry, that makes no sense. He was NOT motivated by a Confederate flag flying (NOT on any important South Carolina government building but merely) on a Civil War memorial. Taking the flag down is all well and good, but it has absolutely NOTHING to do with Dylann Roof’s murder spree, and it’s just silly to connect the two things.
I don’t even want to get into this kettle of fish. But I do wonder, if the South had won, would we still be a slave nation today? Would there just be a nation to the south that held black slaves and held all other races other than white in contempt?