150th Anniversary of the Civil War

I don't know if idiot is the word I'd use. I think cautious to a fault is the best way to describe his leadership. It also didn't help that Pinkerton and the people he had feeding him intelligence grossly overestimated the South's forces. While Hooker definitely made some mistakes while in charge, having George Sharpe start the BMI finally gave the Northern commanders solid numbers and intelligence on the South.

 

Look, an intelligent conversation about the events of what actually happened when the polarizing views are left out of it.

 

Agreed. "Idiot" might be too strong.

"Inept" fits better. Though it's hard to pick out any Union generals beyond Grant who weren't. (Clarification: I'm talking about those who were in charge of the entire Army here -- there were some very good generals farther down the chain of command.)

None of them had the panache of Lee and Jackson, though.

 

The generals of this war, of whatever level of military ability, faced the same problem. The defense had overwhelming technological advantages making offensive actions subject to unbelievably high and in most cases intolerable casualties. A fortified army on the defense was well-nigh invulnerable. Lee went on the strategic offensive twice and wound up retreating after horrific casualties to his outnumbered army each time. Grant, a fine strategist, won his biggest victories as sieges, where starvation was the offense's primary weapon.
In fact, one way to look at the war is one long siege, with the North using its superior resources and the blockade to destroy the economic ability of the South to wage war, or by the end, to even function as an organized political entity.

 

Bull. Shit.

One cause ABSOLUTELY stands out above the others: slavery. It was the issue underlying nearly everything else. If not for slavery, the other alleged causes would not have been.

Slavery was the issue driving the secessionist movement, was THE political issue driving the 1860 election, the results of which promptly sparked secession. And when people claim that it was really about "state's rights" they ignore the fact that the state's rights the South was fighting for was their right to maintain a feudalistic slave societly, much like a century later the "state's rights" they were screaming about was their right to maintain a segregationist apartheid society. God only knows how different the South would be today if it didn't always have that goddamed Federal Govt interfering with their "right" to their way of life.

And you're confusing the issue with the famous Lincoln quote. The fact that Lincoln was at one point willing to end the war without ending slavery (a position he CHANGED shortly after that letter, btw) doesn't change the fact that slavery was the war's underlying cause. And, regardless, what the war meant to Lincoln is hardly determinative of it's cause because, frankly, he ain't the one who chose to secede, and he ain't the one who chose to fire the first shot on Sumter.

 

James Loewen wrote a great deal on the subject of Sherman's alleged cruelty and he found a lot of instances where events didn't happen like we thought they did.

I also like Gary "The War Nerd" Brecher's take on things:

http://exiledonline.com/war-nerd-blog-day-14-four-blessed-years-without-dixie/

 

Well, looks like some Rebs made a strong advance into PA yesterday:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20110411/ap_on_bi_ge/us_flowers_foods_tasty_baking_3

 

I've visited virtually every major CW battlefield in the east, but never went to Appomatox Court House. I watched the final chapter of "The Civil War" last night that spent a lot of time on the surrender and it looks like a pretty peaceful place.

Strangely enough I never visited the Crater either, even though I spent four years of my life within 25 miles of the place. And I've been to Gettysburg about 30 times; the new Visitor's Center is outstanding, and I'd recommend hiring one of those NPS private tour guides for a great explanation of the battle from day 1-3.

I was at the 100-year re-enactment of the first battle of Manassas ... about all I remember is it was ungodly hot. And I can't imagine 150,000 or so troops on a battlefield as small as Antietam, no wonder it was a slaughter. And McClellan could have ended tghe war in May 1862 as the Seven Days, had he been bold instead of a chickenshit micromanager.

And your trivia fact for the day, the son of one of the three Union soldiers who discovered Lee's Special Orders 191 was the first football coach at Oregon State.

 

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/magazine/mag-03CivilWar-t.html?ref=magazine

Very good book excerpt in NYT Magazine last week titled "How Slavery Really Ended in America," based on how Major Gen. Benjamin Franklin Butler handled a request to return three escaped slaves across the river in Fort Union, Va. Butler chose not to return them, at least partly because they held valuable intelligence about the South's defenses. The humanitarian aspect appealed to some in the Union but was not the driving force; in fact he declared them "contraband" seized against a foreign nation. This seemingly small matter eventually guided Union policy on the matter and led to the Emancipation Proclamation.

So even if protecting slavery was the goal of the South, abolishing it was not exactly the goal of the North.

 

I think it would be most accurate to say that while the North and the U.S. government would not have gone to war for slavery and did not start by declaring it a cause of war, once the war began, abolition became an inevitable goal, precisely because it was regarded as why the South had chosen secession and rebellion. Therefore, removing said cause of further rebellion became a war aim.