Thank Robert E. Lee.

Robert E. Lee is easily one of the most historically underrated figures in having preserved American stability in the books today.

Let's look at his career decisions and their impacts on society today.

1. Robert E. Lee captured John Brown and prevented him from creating and armed slave revolt at Harper's Ferry. Why is this important for the longterm stability of the US? Robert E. Lee at Harper's Ferry prevented a slave revolt in the US from becoming an armed race war. And the history of race wars in the western hemisphere has not been a positive one. Had Brown succeeded, had a less capable commander been too late to the scene or allowed Brown to escape with munitions through gross incompetance, slaves in Virginia would have been armed and hunting down white slave-owners in Virginia with guns. One of three outcomes would likely have come about. First outcome: federal troops would have come into the area to put down the revolt, leading to mass reprisals against the black populations and resulting in the needless deaths of thousands of blacks. Furthermore, the psychological stigma in the midwest against freeing the slaves would have made the US Civil War all of impossible to wage as a war to free the blacks. Memories of the terrible ethnic uprising would sabotage any union effort to suppress the Confederacy, forever dissolving the union. Second outcome, federal troops arrive and defeat John Brown's uprising, but the charismatic leader commands the loyalty of black partisans, and they take to the hills leading guerilla raids from the countryside, engaging in attrocities for years. Northern sentiment against the black man is sealed as the newspapers print photographs of whites executed in the guerilla raids. Abolition is drown out of the political scene for years. Third outcome: federal troops under hapless and incompetant commanders arrive to suppress John Brown's inssurection, but Brown is miraculously successful and defeats them on the battlefield. With no army to oppose him, brown continues to sweep through the Virginia countryside, his armies growing as he marches, and with battle-tested veterans to drill his men. Brown forms an army from scratch, and it is free of the Napoleonic dogma that shapes Civil War tactics years later. Abolitionist press supports the uprising, but the mainstream of the union is repulsed by the ethnic cleansing Brown and his black armies engage in. Brown himself, already under the impression that he is the expression of God's will, assumes a theo-monarchical role over a proto-state forming in Virginia. The seeds of black seperatism are now permanantly sown into American culture, and win or lose this immediate fight, the conflict is destined to be fought until the independance of a black American state is achieved.

Lee caught John Brown at Harper's Ferry and executed him, preventing an armed slave revolt in America, a potentially disasterous one.

2. Robert E. Lee surrendered his forces at Appomatox. Why is this important? Robert E. Lee was disobeying a direct order from Jefferson Davis. Those of you familiar with the current situation in Iraq will find this order familiar. Jefferson Davis had ordered Lee to disperse his forces and take to the hills, and wage a guerilla struggle against the Union. The loyalty of Lee's men was beyond absolute, and the liklihood of a successful guerilla campaign under his leadership was high. Lee, however, opted for surrender, despising the notion of a guerilla war, and secretly hoping for something unexpected, the successful reunion of the northern and southern states under one nation. Lee openly defied a direct order from the civilian head of state of his new country, and had he not, the nations would have faced a Vietnam-like situation in the south. Perhaps, even, the Union would have eventually seen political support for a continued occupation of the south dissipate, much like it did during Vietnam, and the south may even have achieved independance in this fashion. Robert E. Lee, however, refused to put the nation through those horrors.

3. Robert E. Lee called on the Confederacy to lay down arms. Even after his surrender, the south still had major armies in the field under Johnston in the Carolinas, Forrest, and Hill in Texas. The political situation was not looking too well in the north at this point either. Lincoln had been assasinated, and there were calls for blood and payback for the Civil War against the south. But Lee, as the most heroic figure of the south, used his prestige and his dignity to call on the south to give up their arms and admit defeat. Lee's influence and prestige helped convince the south to call it quits, and convinced men like Johnston to surrender to Sherman, and Forrest to disband his forces and go home. It also helped convince the Confederate Secretary of War to issue a formal surrender for the Confederacy, something that also helped end the conflict. The rapid surrender was good, because had the war dragged on much longer the political conditions under which a gentle peace was offered to the Confederacy would have passed, and we likely would have seen an orderly Reconstruction turn into an orgy of backlash against the wayward states. Attrocities would have been the order of the day, and likely we would have seen irreconcileable wounds open up in this country. Lee used his influence to end the bloodshed, and in the north the political conditions were sustained for an enlightened peace between the two.

In the mid-1990s the Clinton Administration called for a revised set of history standards that was more politically correct. The new history standards would have completely wiped out Robert E. Lee from high school history teaching. I daresay this could only have been the product of history-writers who have never bothered to open a text on the subject of the mid-1800s.

I have a problem with one. Its not like there weren't slave revolts before, hell armed slave revolts. Some quite bloody and kill every white man they came along except iirc Quakers and another sect that didn't like slavery. Theres nothing special about Lee for preventing yet another.

Second for the most part in the north, even after the emacipation proclomation, the war was about preserving the Union, freeing the slaves was just an means to an end for future stability. In their eyes.


2 and 3 I compleatly agree with.

Lee does indeed get a bad rap, while others(Lincoln) are practically canonized.

I've allways had respect for Lee. I've never really heard much bad about him...


He joined the south ouf of loyalty to his state, not because he wanted to separate from the union or preserve slavery. Not to meantion that, he was possibly the greatest general in the civil war, and one of the most skilled American generals ever.

This post has been edited by Gengari: May 10 2005, 12:28 PM

Robert E Lee was a traitor. He fought against the United States Army under a rebel flag. He also fought for a state that supported slavery. He also executed a man for attempting to free slaves.

He was a good general, but he was a despicable pos as a man.

How did he betray the country? The states believed, at the time, that they had a right to leave the union.

Leaving a group doesn't make you a traitor.

This post has been edited by Gengari: May 10 2005, 11:31 PM

If you want some one to hate try the guy that held twenty-thousand political prisoners w/o trial.

Leto, you don't seem to understand what Harper's Ferry was, it was a major federal arsenal. Previous slave revolts had only limited access to weaponry, and never had a strong, charismatic central leader with guerilla experiance. John Brown cut his teeth on the raids of "bleeding Kansas," so he had experiance. If he had escaped from Harper's Ferry before federal troops arrived, it would have been with state of the art rifles for the time, artillery pieces, provisions, etc. Comparing the previous slave revolts to this would have been like camparing an urban gang with pistols and sawed off shotguns to one that comes upon M-16s and hand grenades. They didn't dispatch federal troops to catch John Brown for nothing. Every prior slave revolt had been put down with state militias, this was big time business. Also, prior slave revolts did not have a remarkably high body count, or systematic ethnic clensing. John Brown was a fanatical race-hustler, and believed he was on a mission from God to free the slaves and punish the sinners. He was particularly big on punishing the sinners, having personally executed pro-slavers. This man in charge of state of the art federal weaponry and newly freed slaves was going to take the bloodshed to unprecedented levels.

As to your assessment of Union attitudes, you're very off base. Anti-slavery attitudes were particularly strong in New England, and making the war a war to end slavery was not a problem there. Indeed, in state's like Massachusetts ending slavery as a war aim was not a dirty little secret. Where this was not a popular idea, and where Lincoln had to consistantly stress preservation of the Union as a war aim, was in the border states and states of the west (the west, then, meaning places like Indiana and Illinois). In New England, there was little danger of an enormous influx of freed blacks across the border. In states like Illinois and Indiana, right on the border of a slave state like Kentucky, the fear was more tangible and the notion of a war to free the slaves was actually problematic. While I'll conceed that the traditionalist view of the Civil War as a war to end slavery is reductive, so to is the revisionist view that it was strictly a war to preserve the Union. Some sections dearly wanted the slaves freed, and embraced proto-egalitarian views between the races. It is, after all, no coincidence that the first black regiments formally comissioned in the Civil War were organized by Massachusetts.

I understand what Harpers Ferry was and what he intended to do. I also understand that he failed not because of Fedral troops but because he was a nut job and even those Abolitionists who suggested insurrection were against his move to take Harpers Ferry. And even when he did take it, no slaves to join the cause materlized(except for maybe two slaves of men Brown took hostage). What did materlize was the local Milita which were more then capable of containing Brown and his force of 22 men. By the time Lee arrived 8 of Browns men were already dead.

I also belive you over estimate how bloody "Bleeding Kansas" really was. One contemporary source states that from Nov. 1 1855 to Dec. 1 1856 there were no more then 200 deaths in "Bleeding Kansas." Another source states that "Approxamitly 50 percent died violently(for political reasons) during the territorial period." The "Battles" sometimes had casulties of 5 people, sometimes. This was hardly a 'war' of any kind, except for mabye a gang war played out over the frontier of Kansas.

Brown couldn't lead an issurection, whether he had hacked up people in Kansas or not(indeed, the only Brown action in Kansas I could find was his murder of 5 pro-slavery men), his actions(waiting for the slaves to come to him) show this. The only serious threat Brown posed in the end was a precived threat to the southern way of life from Abolitionists. Harpers Ferry is important and often credited with hastening the Civil War but any military threat posed by a army of 22 men is negligable at best.



As for my comment on northern/union attitudes. Yes I was off base. I shouldn't have been so general and/or restrictive.

This post has been edited by LordLeto: May 11 2005, 02:20 AM

Lee was trained in the US Army, he was a general in the US army, when a section of the United States attacked federal forces at Fort Sumter, he chose to side with the Rebels. That makes him a traitor. You can argue he was not a traitor, thats fine, I disagree, but hey it is a legitimate point. You cannot argue that there is no logical base to consider him a traitor. To me, it is an open and shut case if it went to trial. Put it in todays context, Texas, being told that guns are now illegal, secedes from the Union and attacks a US army base in Texas. The General at that base surrenders and joins the Texans. Would he be a traitor? Id have to say yes. It gets even worse with Lee, though. He chose to follow a false president, Jefferson Davis, and defected based solely on two factors; slavery and Lincoln's election. He should have fought for the US army and its democratically elected President whom he turned his back on to support a president who favored slavery. If Lee was so respected, perhaps he could have booted Davis out of Virgina and led Virginia under the US flag. Lee's excuse for joining the confederacy was weak.



How many black slaves were given life sentences from birth? I bet easily more than 20,000. Lee fought to continue that 'tradition'. No offense to you guys, but Ive been to the South, and spoken with people who value their 'southern heritage' and who speak highly of Robert E. Lee. To a man, they were racist. Not saying you are racist, but previous experience has taught me to be skeptical of southern heritage.

It could also be just that Im from a state that wasnt a state during the Civil war and we have no tradition, no monuments, nothing from that time. During that time in Arizona the only battles going on was against Apaches, Navajos, and of course the infamously stupid Lee Valley war between free range cattle ranchers and sheep farmers...

Lee was as legitamate as our own founding fathers.

If he's a traitor, being a traitor is not a bad thing, simple as that.

Might as well use the tried and true method.


Are you saying all the founding fathers are traitors? And the ends justify the means? :D

This post has been edited by LordLeto: May 11 2005, 04:36 PM

Founding fathers faced a completely different situation, a unique situation in my mind. I would say that some would consider them traitors(british), but I would not.

Being part of a settlement that had little interaction with their homeland, they were more or less independent for several decades. It wasnt until they felt they were being treated unfairly that they declared independence.

You dont believe that choosing to fight for a rebel government rebeling for no other reason than to continue slavery is a good thing?

If put in the same situation, do you side with Davis or Lincoln?

Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it.

What was unique about their situation? Paying Unreasonable taxes and tarrifs? The south did that. In fact it was writen into their constitution for a ban on high protective tarrifs.

Its hardly unique and it is hardly becomming to call one a traitor to one group when they fight for what they hold dearest(In Lees instance, Virginia, in the Founding fathers, well their state of choice). Something they feel is being threatened by forces beyond their control(high tarrifs and levys by the british government w/o repenstantion for the founding fathers. High protective tarrifs over the repensentation of the southern representitives/electing a man identifyed as a radical during the debates).



Indipendant for several decades? Tarrifs and baring of trade was hardly something new. No the colonies were hardly indipendant from Britain. Specially with British troops on the frontier blocking expansion and then british troops in Boston in their houses.


Article 1, Section 9, Clause 2: The Privilege of the Writ of Habeas Corpus shall not be suspended, unless when in Cases of Rebellion or Invasion the public Safety may require it. [QUOTE]


Legality hardly equals morality.

I disagree that htat was the only reason.

There were economic reasons, the government policies severely favored the north, etc.

I don't side with either of them.

This post has been edited by Gengari: May 12 2005, 01:34 PM

Name the policies and how they favored the North. Also tell me why then that EVERY state in the confederacy allowed slavery. Tell me why every major political battle of the mid-1800s concerned slavery. Tell me why the catalyst for secession was the election of a radical abolitionist.

All signs point to slavery. Tell me what the real reasons where.

Rediculosuly high protective tarrifs(I belive Lincoln got into office by promissing even high tarrifs). Im talking about 45%. Which was a great boone for the Northern Industries, but not for the Southern Cotton growers.



Tell me why 5 states in the Union had slaves(Missouri, Kentucky, W. Virginia, Maryland, Delaware).



Tell me why you're ignorant. Yes slavery was a stank that permiated the time, but not every major political battle delt with it.



And a Tariff President. A man against slavery and for impossing unreasonable tarriffs. Both of which helped the North at the expense of the south.




I belive he said Slavery wasn't the ONLY reason. He never said it wasn't a factor, just not the only factor.

This post has been edited by LordLeto: May 12 2005, 05:25 PM

Thank you for saving me the effort.

Lincoln was elected after the Moriff Tariff bill passed, though he did promise to get it passed if it wasnt already. Prior to 1860, US had some of the lowest tariffs in the world, pursuing a free trade policy. There was still quite a bit of dissent between the North and South prior to the Tarriff passing. While it is true the tariff might hurt the South, it was not the big point of contention between them.

When the southern states announced their secession, only one even mentioned the Tariff, Georgia.


EDIT: Kentucky seceded, BTW...

This post has been edited by Dakyron: May 12 2005, 06:13 PM

No it didn't.....


I'll argue you're other points later. Sposta be working.

Work? On a thursday... bah...

Kentucky did not secede after further investigation, though I seem to remember Kentucky troops fighting for the south...

Seems in both Kentucky and tennesee, there were quite a few volunteers who went to both sides.

Kentucky declared neutrality in the war, though Lincoln declared several counties in Kentucky to be in rebellion.

Yes and there were german immigrants in Texas who refused to fight for the south. The sides wern't as homogenious as some put forth. Thats "to complicated" for our public school system it seems.

Again, gotta work. U-P is gonna get me in trouble. :lol:

I'd like some proof of this.


I believe he had retired from the US army by that point. Also his citizenship was to Virginia not to the US so which does he hold a greater obligation to?


Absolute bullshit. South Carolina, the first state to suceed cited the tariffs as a primary reason for their desire to leave the union.

http://www.patriotist.com/miscarch/ms20030428.htm

In 1828 and 1832 Congress passed what have been called the Tariffs of Abomination, which were a prosperity boon to the North and an economic hardship on the South, especially South Carolina. This led to the Nullification Crisis of 1832 when South Carolina called a state convention and 'nullified' the tariffs as unjust and unconstitutional. The resulting constitutional crisis came very near provoking armed conflict at that time. Through the efforts of former U. S. Vice President and U. S. Senator from South Carolina, John C. Calhoun, a compromise was effected in 1833 which over a few years reduced the tariff back to a normal level of about 15%. Henry Clay and the Whigs were not happy, however, to have been forced into a compromise by Calhoun and South Carolina's Nullification threat. The tariff, however, remained at a level near 15% until 1860.

Dakyron: After the Morill tariff bill passed, the rate was raised to about 37%.

http://www.answers.com/topic/morrill-tariff

The immediate effect of the Morrill Tariff was to more than double the tax collected on most dutiable items entering the United States. In 1860 American tariff rates were among the lowest in the world and also at historical lows by 19th century standards, the average rate being around 18% ad valorem. The Morrill Tariff immediately raised this average to 37%, and in subsequent years was revised upward until in 1864 (when it could only be collected from states under Union control) the average rate stood at 47%.

Seems pretty obvious to me.



Citizenship to Virgina? It was a rebelling state, his first duty was to the United States, not Virginia. He also was supporting slavery by supporting Virgina.



Id like some proof of this.

By our standards? Maybe. By theirs? Not so much.



Among other things.



http://history.hanover.edu/courses/excerpts/111sc.html




Though in the actual declaration of succession, violations of the constitution were the main reason given for the move to succed.

This post has been edited by LordLeto: May 13 2005, 09:38 PM

Which is what I said.

When they announced their secession, only one state cited the tariff. A case of overzealousness? This is not semantics, I made a valid point and immediately 'Bullshit' was yelled. Dont try to change the argument, I never said they were not upset by th tariff, only that they didnt cite it as a reason(which quite good evidence supporting my idea that the tariff played a minor role).

On the election issue I'm afraid Daky is correct on this. It's not that the flashpoint issue was the election of an abolitionist president seeking to end slavery in the south, but the major hotbutton issue was the expansion of slavery into the territories captured from the Mexican-American war. The major constitutional dispute was whether or not the federal government could decide that issue for them (it could, the Constitution's clauses allow for this manner of territorial regulation). It's no suprise that the south's major candidate, John Breckenridge, openly supported the expansion of slavery into these territories. This was also the cause of a fissure within the Democratic party, with Stephen Douglas oposing the expansion and dividing the Democratic party at the polls.