What does a TRUMP presidency look like?

[Valmy]

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

Let's just say it evolved organically. The North was all in in reconstruction for a few years but quickly lost interest particularly after the stock market crash in 1873 nuked the economy. Sort of like the Financial Crisis in 2007 and the War on Terror.

[Barrister]

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

Let's just say it evolved organically. The North was all in in reconstruction for a few years but quickly lost interest particularly after the stock market crash in 1873 nuked the economy. Sort of like the Financial Crisis in 2007 and the War on Terror.

That's an interesting comparison.

[Caliga]

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

Neither do I, which is why I don't think executing Confederate leadership would have suited their goals very well.  Impossible to know for sure how that would have played out but I think reconciliation between the North and South would have taken a lot longer and been a lot more difficult.

Note that I agree with you guys that the Confederate leaders were traitors and that hanging them would have been just.  I just don't think it would have served the country at large to have done so.

[The Brain]

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

Neither do I, which is why I don't think executing Confederate leadership would have suited their goals very well.  Impossible to know for sure how that would have played out but I think reconciliation between the North and South would have taken a lot longer and been a lot more difficult.

Note that I agree with you guys that the Confederate leaders were traitors and that hanging them would have been just.  I just don't think it would have served the country at large to have done so.

I think reconciliation with the South should have been a lower priority than achieving a good, lasting peace. What were the South gonna do if their feelings were hurt? Secede and fight a civil war?

My position that it would have been better if they hanged has nothing to do with just or not. It is merely politics, I think hanging them would have served the country better than what took place historically (which is obviously not the same thing as serving the political goals of leaders in Washington at the time, if it had been they would have likely hanged).

[alfred russel]

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

Neither do I, which is why I don't think executing Confederate leadership would have suited their goals very well.  Impossible to know for sure how that would have played out but I think reconciliation between the North and South would have taken a lot longer and been a lot more difficult.

Note that I agree with you guys that the Confederate leaders were traitors and that hanging them would have been just.  I just don't think it would have served the country at large to have done so.

For the officers, it would have arguably violated the terms of surrender. As the idea of charging officers was being discussed at some point, Lee wrote to Grant asking him to clarify on this and Grant said his belief was that they wouldn't be subject to charges. That is my memory at least and could be wrong (if it is I'm sure I'll quickly be corrected ).

That didn't apply to political leaders like Jefferson Davis.

[viper37]

I mean, Lee was a traitor, so of course Trump and his basket of deplorables love him.

so was George Washington.  But he won, while Lee lost.  Same thing, same mentality 100 years apart, but one is a hero, the other is a traitor.  You guys have this weird thing about what is being loyal or not.
He was no more a traitor than Papineau, Riel, Robespierre, Cromwell, or so many others who fought against an established government they thought of as unfair.

It's not like the North waged war to free the slaves, it only happened gradually after they saw some of them fighting in Manassas and many more helping (not by choice for most of them, but stil helping instead of fleeing) the South in later battles.
We shouldn't judge people of a different time by our own, current morality standards.  Slavery was a vital institution for the South at the time, and for a deeply conservative people, being forced to change is never welcomed.

[viper37]

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)

[viper37]

Agreed, how much lower could we have gone?

So, what you're saying is people of the time should have known that the South's legacy would still live on 150 years later?
Do you really think it would have changed anything to what happened if all the Confederate Generals had been executed? Including those who worked on reconstruction with the North?  For having dared defending their country when their army marched in their respective states?  C'mon.  If Canada had invaded Quebec in 1995, I would have joined the resistance too.  And a lot more than 49,5% of the population would have joined too.

[alfred russel]

I think reconciliation with the South should have been a lower priority than achieving a good, lasting peace. What were the South gonna do if their feelings were hurt? Secede and fight a civil war?

There were a few concerns with not achieving some kind of resolution to reconstruction, probably the most pressing was that it was requiring a continued military presence and there was consistent violence.

My position that it would have been better if they hanged has nothing to do with just or not. It is merely politics, I think hanging them would have served the country better than what took place historically (which is obviously not the same thing as serving the political goals of leaders in Washington at the time, if it had been they would have likely hanged).

Are you sure that hanging them wouldn't have resulted in former confederate majors and colonels taking over the governors offices of southern states in the 70s, rather than generals, with an attitude of belligerence rather than the attitude of reconciliation that the historical generals had?

You seem to think that the outcome was bad because blacks ended up oppressed in a segregated society. And I agree that it was bad. There were also northerners of the era that thought it was bad. But it was a deeply racist time and place -- I'm not sure another outcome was really on the table. Racial equality also wasn't really the point of the war, as it was understood from 1861-1865.

[The Brain]

You have to be very firm with rebels, while simultaneosuly stretching out a genuinely positive hand to those who reject rebellion. If you coexist with rebels you will never resolve the issues. You have to kill the sons of Brutus.

I think the late 1860s was a time of strong racism in America and many other places. Like I said earlier I think getting African-Americans to approach being equals would have been a slow process. But I think it's extremely unlikely that what occurred historically in the South was the best the US could do. You have to remember that hanging the leaders wouldn't just have sent a message in the late 1860s, but in every decade since, up to and including the present day. I think Lee and others being in the history books as losers hanging from a rope would have helped. And made the bizarre 20th century naming of military stuff after pro-slavery rebels less likely.

FWIW my impression is that the educated view in the 19th and 20th centuries of the long aftermath of the Civil War and what was good for the country or not (as expressed in books etc) implicitly, and I don't doubt in many cases subconsciously, was of African-Americans in the South as kind of a special interest group and not as an integral part of what must be considered when trying to determine what was good for the country or not. My impression is that there has been a focus on Washington and, like in many countries, a tendency to look at what's good for the state (meaning good for the politicians leading the central government) and not what's good for the country. For a hundred years after the war it was expedient for the leaders in Washington to cozy up to the Southern leadership. If you were black in the South? Well you're shit out of luck.

[viper37]

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.

I believe most of the slaves belonged to his wife, and he had to take custody of them as they were an asset guaranteeing loans.  It's like selling your house when there's a mortgage on it, it can't be done unless the bank is repaid.

Lee had aggressively restored his family's fortune through aggressive slave trading to the Cotton States.

Lee was named executor of his father in law's will in 1857. He tried to hire a competent overseer, failed to find one, managed the plantation himself.  The will said the slaves should be freed by 1862 and that's what he did, after selling most of them to pay the debts.

And his utter rage and contempt for abolitionists is hardly indicative of somebody with ambiguous feelings.

He had contempt for abolitionists for the same reasons Washington never spoked publicly against slavery.
He was not very much in favor of slavery, but mostly because he believed it was evil for the white race.  Just like the majority of Americans at the time, and most like the majority of Europeans too, he considered black folks to be a distinct and inferior species to white people.  It's not like Abe Lincoln and the majority of Union Generals were supportive of racial equality, you know.  Even good old Abe said he would keep the slaves chained if that helped preserve the Union.

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.

He did not think he would be able to repay his debts by 1862.  It's kinda hard to operate a plantation without slaves in 1862 when you have no money to pay workers, black or white.

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 that is wrong... how, exactly?  You think the North freed the slaves 3 years into the war from the goodness of the heart?  They finally saw the light and realized that "negroes" as they were called back then were human beings too?
Don't be ridiculous.  I know you hate nationalists of all kind, but you're entering alt-history here.

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.

It is mostly true.  The Republican party wanted to limit slavery, not end it in the South.  But above all, they wanted to punish the South for seceding.  Their hatred of the Southerners was greater then their love of the Black Man.  Otherwise, it would be hard to explain why they didn't recognize Liberia right away and only waited 2 years into their own Civil War.  It was another good way to piss off the South.  It would also be hard to explain why Lincoln did not believe the Whites and Blacks people should mix.  It would be hard to explain why so many Union Generals expressed dismay about the thought of having free Blacks mingle with good, White People.  Despite their own abolitionist tendancies.

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...

Jonston wanted to merge his army with a part of Lee's army to counter attack the Union forces of Shermann than attack Grant.  Hardly the move a desperate officer on the verge of surrender would think of.
However, Lee rejected the plan. I don't know if it was the right call, on paper, Johnston's idea souds great, but I lack knowledge to make an informed opinion on the matter and will defer on further discussions between you, Berkut and Dorsey to make such an opinion.
Anyhow, he tried to fight off Shermann but couldn't break through due to the superior numbers of the northerners.  Again, hardly indicative of a dude who's just itching to surrender.  But once Lee surrendered, he knew there was no way to escape his situation: he could not break through, he could not flee, all that was left was dying of starvation of being killed in battle, so he negotiated with Shermann.  A dude who was also against abolition of slavery, btw.  A pretty common thing back then... Yet, he's a hero.  Go figure.

As for Lee's decision, he was in the same spot of JEJ, unable to escape, unable to fight.  Sure, he may have thought retrospectively that he should have died with all his men.  But most of his officers were urging him to surrender, IIRC.  I am not convinced that at this point in time that near totality of Confederate soldiers under Lee's command would have willingly dug their graves to make a last stand, without food and ammunitions.

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.

Kinda like George Washington expressing his opposition to slavery in very private letters, giving moral support for abolitionist projects but always refused to speak publicly about it...  It would seem some people were keen on preserving their social status back then.


[quoote]
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.
How about this: He was a man of his time.  He was lukewarm about slavery but believed it to be too divisive a subject to be discussed and thought (rightly so) that political discussions of this would only leed to radicalization of his fellow Southerners. 

Was he wrong?  Had the South pushed for unionization of workers in norhtern plants and an improvement in their working conditions and wages, the North would have declared independance...  Promoting the pure abolition of slavery was an economic threat to the southern's states economy.  Limiting the expansion of slavery met limiting the opportunity of growth for southern planters.  Back then, I figure things were kinda similar to how it was in Quebec's agricultural community, by tradition, the eldest son inherited his father's lands and the others either found work elsewhere or bought some other land with the help of their father.
Since all the Americans were busy taking indian lands before the war, preventing the use of slaves in an area meant that it would be very difficult to produce tobacco or cotton in these new lands.  Only mechanization solved the manpower problem of the South and that was much later.  They relied on sharecropping and other measures really similar to slavery to exploit their lands after the war.  And it's not like anyone wanted to waged war over that or even publicly protested in the North...

[viper37]

We should have destroyed the planter class and given the land to poor white and black farmers.

Nothing prevented the US from doing it with these officers alive.  Yet, the country didn't.

[viper37]

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).

Basically, the North should have acted like the Talebans act today.  Got it.  Can't be clearer. No mercy for those who have differing opinions, do it the European way: kill 'em all, let God sort 'em all.

[The Brain]

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).

Basically, the North should have acted like the Talebans act today.  Got it.  Can't be clearer. No mercy for those who have differing opinions, do it the European way: kill 'em all, let God sort 'em all.

I don't get the impression that you've read what I've written.

[viper37]

What were the South gonna do if their feelings were hurt? Secede and fight a civil war?

wage a low level war of insurgency, which is harder to fight than a conventional battle, as the British learnt a century earlier.

The fear was unrealistic though.  But northerners felt it posed a credible threat to Union, so if Blacks had to be sacrificed for "lasting unity", it was a small price to pay.  Kinda like letting the Kurds and the Afghanis die after withdrawing your troops is seen as small price to pay today for peace by many.  We'll see in a few years how that goes too.