Lee’s failure at Gettysburg consisted of far more than ordering Pickett’s Charge.
He mismanaged the battle from the start, had no control over a significant part of his forces (J.E.B. Stuart’s cavalry, resulting in Lee not knowing where the opposition forces were), allowed the Union forces to choose the field of battle and occupy the commanding positions.
He was not present during the opening engagements and was presented with a situation in which his forces were not in control. What he should have done, after arriving and surveying the situation was to decline battle and relocate to a position in which the Union forces had to come to him. This is what had worked for him prior to Gettysburg. Most, if not all, of Lee’s successful battles were so because he chose the field of battle and made the Union forces come to him.
He also failed to take Union leadership into account. Many of his previous victories had been against forces which had leadership which was tentative at best. At Gettysburg, the Union forces were under the newly appointed Meade, who turned out to be the fighting general that Lincoln had been looking for.
It’s easy to say, “well it’s just one battle”, but it was the decisive battle in a campaign in which he specifically set out to bring the Union to its’ knees by invading the North and threatening, if not capturing, Washington. Seems to me that somewhere closer to the Capital, on ground Lee had chosen, would have been a better choice for the decisive battle.
To be fair, I have read (The cardiac illness of General Robert E. Lee - PubMed) that Lee may have been seriously ill with a heart condition at the time of Gettysburg, so he may not have been at his best. Still, the fact remains that he failed in the most important battle of his career.
Sure, but a small minority. Other than a few scattered religious thinkers, abolitionists werent organized for quite some time.
The first abolitionist organization was in Britain, by Quakers in 1783. The Clapham Sect wasnt active until the 1780’s.
It didnt take hold until after 1800. Not Illegal in the Empire until 1833.
Pennsylvania was the first state to ban slavery in 1780.
Note that Thomas Jefferson made the international slave trade illegal in 1806-8. So, yes, he led the fight vs slavery, despite being a slaveholder himself. Jefferson was in favor of gradual manumission, not a sudden freeing of all slaves.
So, In 1776, there wasnt much in the way of organized abolitionist movements.
You do acknowledge though that John & Abigail Adams were openly against it and wanted it abolished in 1776? There were other important leaders with them. Franklin by that point was against slavery but acknowledge the compromise was needed to get all 13 colonies to sign.
Yes, some religious sects and a few leaders, but it wasnt really organized, yet.
Jefferson was starting to see slavery as evil, but his hands were tied, he couldn’t free his slaves. (He couldnt afford to, in fact he was badly in debt) .
And there were also lots of people who thought slavery was wrong, but also weren’t abolitionists, because that’s a lot of work. There are people who think abortion is wrong who aren’t pro-life activists, they’re just against abortion.
Lots of people thought slavery was wrong, not just a tiny minority. Even plenty of slaveowners. Take Jefferson for example. He was clearly able to understand that slavery was wrong and contrary to the values that the United States was founded upon, even while he owned slaves himself.
He just didn’t know what to do about it, and didn’t want to bankrupt himself by freeing his slaves. He thought the evil of slavery would have to end eventually somehow, but he didn’t fight to end it himself.
It’s fair to say that he was complicated, and did some good things and some bad things. Having slaves, which included brutalization (as well as power-imbalanced non-consensual sex) and terrorizing to ensure the slaves were terrified to try and escape, was a very bad thing that he was involved in.
Slaveholder Jefferson included an attack on slavery in the first draft of the Declaration of Independence. So, yeah.
Admittedly the attack was indirect in parts: [INDENT] He has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. This piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the Christian King of Great Britain. Determined to keep open a market where Men should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. And that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people on whom he has obtruded them: thus paying off former crimes committed again the Liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.[/INDENT] (1776) The Deleted Passage of the Declaration of Independence •
He had lots of choices. He could have made the same choices Ben Franklin and John Adams did, but he chose differently. It’s fair to include those choices in our moral judgment of him, even by the standards of the time (which includes Franklin and Adams).
Franklin inherited six household slaves. Quite easy to free them, which he didnt do until 1781, mind you.
Jefferson inherited 187 slaves, most of them fieldworkers. If he had freed them, he’d have gone broke and lost his farm, his land, everything. He would never have been in Congress, never wrote the Declaration, etc. He fought hard against slavery all his political life. If he had freed his slaves in 1773 he never would have passed the ban on the international slave trade.
That’s awfully convenient that in order to do so much good he had to keep dozens of people in brutal bondage (and a few in sexual slavery). If he hadn’t raped Sally Hemings, the USA wouldn’t exist today!
And from your cite:
If he hadn’t ordered so many slaves to be brutalized and tortured, America wouldn’t be what it was today! Thank God Jefferson raped and brutalized human beings!