What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Barrister]

I find it interesting that Fox News personalities are praising Lee's views on Reconstruction, when in reality Lee expressed concerns over the fact that black voting power might overcome white conservative votes, and when in the present day, Fox News personalities and much of the GOP are expressing concern that black voting power might be overcoming white conservative votes.

plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose




(board Frenchies, I expect your grudging respect that I actually went out to make sure I got the accents right on this one)

[The Minsky Moment]

Exactly, and hence my suspicion of claims that the backlash is about concerns over historical preservation in the abstract as opposed to ideological identification and sympathy.

[The Brain]

No, he shouldn't have been hanged, I agree.  Making martyrs out of Lee, Davis, etc. would have been a terrible decision.

I don't see it. Worse than a century of Jim Crow, and the Civil War and slavery still being an open wound in 2021 (rhetorical)?

[garbon]

No, he shouldn't have been hanged, I agree.  Making martyrs out of Lee, Davis, etc. would have been a terrible decision.

I don't see it. Worse than a century of Jim Crow, and the Civil War and slavery still being an open wound in 2021 (rhetorical)?

Agreed, how much lower could we have gone?

[Caliga]

Well what positive effect(s) do you guys think would have happened had we hanged all of those guys?

[Razgovory]

The Confederates, Lee included, certainly could have refused to surrender and fight a guerilla war (and some urged him to do just that).   Instead though Lee did surrender, and encouraged other confederates to surrender.  That certainly spared further bloodshed both to southerners and to union troops.

As I understand it Lee did not support succession himself.  It was only after Virginia voted to secede that he resigned his union commission and picked up arms.  He certainly did own slaves, although his personal support for the institution is uncertain and more ambiguous than other confederate leaders.

Trump's veneration of the man is of course complete nonsense.  How Lee is such a hero, when he called John McCain a "loser" shows what a hypocrite Trump is.  But I don't think it's fair to just say "eh, he was a rebel and a traitor, he should have been hanged".

What happens to the statue is of course up to the people of Richmond.  Personally though I'm more in support of relocating / put into historical context when it comes to these historic but now controversial statues.

But they did fight a guerilla war.  That's what all those assholes wearing white hoods were doing.

[Valmy]

The Confederates, Lee included, certainly could have refused to surrender and fight a guerilla war (and some urged him to do just that).   Instead though Lee did surrender, and encouraged other confederates to surrender.  That certainly spared further bloodshed both to southerners and to union troops.

As I understand it Lee did not support succession himself.  It was only after Virginia voted to secede that he resigned his union commission and picked up arms.  He certainly did own slaves, although his personal support for the institution is uncertain and more ambiguous than other confederate leaders.

His personal support for the institution was every bit as certain and not ambiguous as the other confederate leaders, unfortunately. He did come from a family which was very much uncertain and ambiguous on the issue though, and had slide into aristocratic poverty because of it. This was George Washington's fault for setting his slaves free on his death, the economic standing of the Washington-Custis-Lee clan really struggled after that...well along with all the drunkenness and gambling of some of its black sheep members.

Lee had aggressively restored his family's fortune through aggressive slave trading to the Cotton States. And his utter rage and contempt for abolitionists is hardly indicative of somebody with ambiguous feelings. He inherited enslaved people from his father-in-law on the condition he free those people in five years. Lee Attempted to fight this to retain them in court but ultimately failed and thus ended up having to free them in accordance to his father-in-law's will in 1862 and man do the neo-confederates have a field day with this one saying that HE FREED SLAVES BEFORE LINCOLN'S EMANCIPATION PROCLAMATION!!!111 But of course you can see what a pathetic spin job that is. He was legally required to set those people free due to what his Father-in-law wanted, not him.

And of course there was this statement he made about that Emancipation Proclamation:

"The Union government liberates the enemy's slaves as it would the enemy's cattle, simply to weaken them in the conflict. The principle is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."

And oh my God do neo-Confederates love this one as well. Slaves were freed cynically, you see, to weaken the Confederacy, not because the Republican Party (a party whose entire existence was about opposing the institution of slavery) actually opposed slavery. Just more about how the abolitionists were the cynical ones and the noble slavers were the ones with the pure principles. And boy Lee is a great source of that as he calls out anybody opposed to the Southern planter class as hypocrites.

His army was surrounded in 1865. I guess he could have said hey everybody scatter and let the Federals burn down everything but he and 95% of his force would have been captured anyway. And he was not the only Confederate general to surrender in 1865, Joe Jonston's army was about to surrender as well and he had a similar lack of desire to fight it out...especially after an incident where Johnston had watched his teenage reservists drown in a swollen river during his retreat. And I supposed I should also mention most of both Confederate Armies had already deserted.

Lee also possessed an extraordinary talent for talking out of both sides of his mouth. So every once in a while you do find quotes seemingly calling for peace and hand wringing about slavery. But then he has other quotes showing fury at black equality in reconstruction and disgusted by the abolitionist hypocrites. And again he had it both ways as he very secretly signed the loyalty oath to the Union which languished in the archives until around WWII I think. It would have been really nice if he had let it be known to all his unreconstructed supporters that he signed the oath. Instead they got fed a bunch of statements that seemed to them to indicate he supported them.

Lee is a tricky figure. I had a hard time coming to terms with him just because from a distance he does seem like this tragic man of honor. He has kind of charming wit and self-seriousness about him. You can feel like oh it was just this historical tragedy that forced this great principled man into supporting this horrible cause...but no he was actually kind of in favor of the horrible cause and instead of being this one noble example of a good planter he seems to actually be one of them in almost every respect.

[Razgovory]

Well what positive effect(s) do you guys think would have happened had we hanged all of those guys?

it may have broken the Redeemer movement.  We wouldn't have guys like Jubal Early to create longstanding myths about the Lost Cause that live on in today.  We should have destroyed the planter class and given the land to poor white and black farmers.

[Valmy]

Well what positive effect(s) do you guys think would have happened had we hanged all of those guys?

I think it would have entirely depended on how fast it happened. In 1865 with the North weary and pissed and radicalized and the South broken and demoralized everybody kind of expected it. But what would it have looked like? Just the key political leaders? All the politicians and military officers? And this being a nation of lawyers we would have needed some kind of tribunal and at least a fig leaf of legality. So maybe if it was quick and efficient and just happened to a small clique of leaders ok maybe...

But would the long term impacts have been much different? Instead of having former generals like Wade Hampton and Forrest leading the redemption movement maybe it is younger officers and junior politicians. The impact might still be the same.

[The Brain]

Well what positive effect(s) do you guys think would have happened had we hanged all of those guys?

Well like I said it would just have been a first step. But I think an important one.

You'd have showed that rebellion is unacceptable, and that the rebels lost. That killing Americans for the right to own slaves is beyond the pale of any acceptable American conduct. That the rebels weren't noble heroes fighting for an honorable cause, but criminal scum that belong in the cesspit of history. It would have laid the foundation for actually making an effort to make African-Americans equal to other Americans (this would even in the best case I think have been a slow process, but letting racism be enshrined in law and treating Confederate leaders like gentlemen was NOT the way to do it).

[Barrister]

But they did fight a guerilla war.  That's what all those assholes wearing white hoods were doing.

That didn't get started up until a couple of years later.

[Barrister]

But would the long term impacts have been much different? Instead of having former generals like Wade Hampton and Forrest leading the redemption movement maybe it is younger officers and junior politicians. The impact might still be the same.

I mean Hitler was just a corporal in WWI...

[alfred russel]

No, he shouldn't have been hanged, I agree.  Making martyrs out of Lee, Davis, etc. would have been a terrible decision.

I don't see it. Worse than a century of Jim Crow, and the Civil War and slavery still being an open wound in 2021 (rhetorical)?

The war was fought by the north with twin goals of preserving the union and (at least in the later parts of the conflict) ending slavery. The former goal was seen as important of the United States was ever to join the great nations of the world, as it couldn't do so if it subdivided every time some region got pissed off at the results of an election.

The end of the war left the open problem that the US is organized as a democracy with self determination, and the two groups in the south were former confederates and former slaves. Wouldn't it have been awesome if they formed multiracial parties and governed together? LOL grow up that wasn't happening in the mid to late 18th century (even if the Readjuster Party in Virginia indicate it might not have been totally far fetched).

The end of reconstruction had a grand national bargain: white former confederates back in charge, but they swore off slavery and secession. Everyone would more or less agree the confederate army was awesome, which at least some of the Union army veterans appreciated because they looked better if they beat a strong army versus a numerically inferior underequipped half starved band full of teenagers and old men eager to desert (at the end). Robert E. Lee embodied that national bargain as much as anyone--even before the war he was arguably lukewarm on slavery and opposed secession.

The south stayed a cultural and economic ruin for a century but the country had a unity and vitality that quickly let the US join the ranks of world powers.

[Valmy]

Yeah everybody agreeing to honor Robert E Lee was definitely part of that bargain. And he did, along with Jubal Early and others, oppose secession at least prior to Fort Sumpter.

[The Brain]

I don't doubt that US leaders chose their post-Civil War strategy based on their political goals.