Civil War: John Kelly Praises Robert E.Lee and Won't Blame the Slave-Owning Confederacy for the Conflict (accuse, death)
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
I agree and it turned out their pardons are causing 100's of years of misery which STILL shows signs of going on for a couple more generations. Gen. Sherman wrote a letter to Abe saying that killing EVERY Confederate was the only way to truly solve the problem. He was a smart man. It wasn't that he had bloodlust (he actually killed very few in his campaign)...but he could see clearly enough that the South was NOT sorry about buying and selling and whipping and hanging people and that unless you made criminals of those people and actions, we were doomed.
And so it may end up turning out that way. As it stands the South has already held itself back for many decades when it comes to health, industry, etc.
The question is when they are going to accept than all men are created equal and stop their games with the "lost cause". Personally, I don't think they will come around...they'd rather pair up with the Russians or others who are more like them (authoritarian).
When the day comes that the apologies start I'll think maybe we are getting somewhere.
Many of them go on and on about this great great grandpappy that fought at so and so and how much their honor their memory. Ugh. They should be ashamed of what they did. They didn't fight for their state out of some sense of defense against invasion, that is the lost cause myth. They fought for Dixies way of life and they openly admitted it. And also they had a deep hatred of northerners. People don't even know the real truth of what they did. Do hyper patriotic southerners today realize that in Charleston and Savannah they tore down US flags and stomped on them and ripped them apart? I doubt it. Every single one of them were vile traitors and should have paid dearly.
Kelly's remarks are disgusting. Any "compromise" with the Confederate scumbags would have required keeping HUMAN BEINGS in bondage subject to beatings, torture, rape and murder at the whim of their owners. How long were people supposed to be forced into a life of slavery to avoid hurting the feelings and inducing the temper tantrum of the southern white supremacists?
The huge mistake that the US made was letting scum like Robert E Lee remain alive after the war. We should have shot or hanged each and every Confederate officer and imprisoned every enlisted man that took up arms against the US government. Letting these scumbags stay alive and spread their poisonous Lost Cause BS to future generations was a horrible decision.
If this had occurred, a great many contemporary patriotic Americans (including Democrats who are absolutely appalled by Trump and his administration, and who thoroughly support the ongoing Mueller investigation) would not be here.
I'm one of them. Most Americans with Southern background also descend from or are related to those who fought for the Confederacy.
My g-g-grandfather was a Confederate major who fought with Pickett and his men at Gettysburg; my great grandfather was a Confederate chaplain (who was also ranked as a major) and a Methodist minister of considerable stature both before and after the war, while two of my great uncles, brothers, also were Civil War soldiers.
Of course, one of those great uncles fought for the Confederacy - and the other for the Union.
My great grandparents and their children were refugees during the war - forced from their rural home and farm in NW Arkansas by bushwhackers - criminals with no loyalty to either side, just sociopaths taking advantage of the situation - during the terrible winter of 1864-65, after assisting the survivors of a battle fought within half a mile of their home during the previous late summer.
Their sons included those two brothers. The young man, my great uncle, who enlisted in the Union Army died of disease, in camp, at age 19. On the same day Lincoln was murdered, an atrocity my family grieved.
Would you further punish such a family by imprisoning the surviving soldier-son, who walked home from Alabama at the war's end?
And how about Isaac? On the other side of my family, Isaac accompanied my Confederate major g-g-grandfather to war. He fought alongside him for four years, was with him at Gettysburg and Appomattox (and many other battles before and in between), and later drew a Confederate pension. Isaac was a black man, born in slavery, who took my g-g-grandfather's surname after he was freed. He later was elected to and served in the legislature of his state, having been supported by both black and white constituents of his district.
Would you have Isaac shot or hanged or imprisoned as well?
You cannot judge the past and its people by the standards and insights of today. I am thankful that Lincoln and other US government officials had more wisdom, insight and compassion and were more focused on reunification and healing the wounds of four long years of tragic civil war than in self-righteousness, vindictiveness and punishment.
Do you have any idea how many prisons would have had to have been constructed to house the entire Confederate armed forces? Do you have any idea how many Confederate officers there were, ranging from lowly lieutenants, often in their teens, to major generals? Who would have fed their civilian families, with them executed and all the other surviving former Confederate enlistees imprisoned? Should they have starved as payback?
We didn't even do that to Nazi Germany, yet you would have supported doing this to fellow Americans, thus ensuring additional generations of hatred for such Draconian measures. I am glad you are alive today and not 150 years ago - and I hope you will educate yourself more thoroughly about the complexities and nuances of 19th century life in America, both north and south.
Last edited by CraigCreek; 10-31-2017 at 08:57 PM..
Many of them go on and on about this great great grandpappy that fought at so and so and how much their honor their memory. Ugh. They should be ashamed of what they did. They didn't fight for their state out of some sense of defense against invasion, that is the lost cause myth. They fought for Dixies way of life and they openly admitted it. And also they had a deep hatred of northerners. People don't even know the real truth of what they did. Do hyper patriotic southerners today realize that in Charleston and Savannah they tore down US flags and stomped on them and ripped them apart? I doubt it. Every single one of them were vile traitors and should have paid dearly.
Actually...in my family's case, that's exactly why they fought.
When a battle takes place half a mile from your rural home, and your fourteen and seventeen year old kids wind up burying the dead and you wind up nursing the survivors, you do tend to take it kinda personally, you know?
Just like you might if two different armies plus bushwhackers took all your corn and wheat and the contents of the smokehouse and all your farm animals and horses, and you have nine little kids still at home who need to eat three times a day, and you've hunted the nearby ridge clean of squirrels and rabbits and other critters and you don't know where the next bite is coming from...
Slavery? No slaves in that part of my family. None at all, just respectable small farmers and teachers with a lot of kids, three of whom they lost during the war: a young married daughter with a small child who died of complications of the measles epidemic, a baby who was likely too malnourished to survive being forced to refugee all the way to southern Illinois (the only child this large family lost in infancy), and a Union Army private, who died in camp at age 19.
About a year and a half after he'd helped bury the dead after that little battle back home.
My family was and is Southern. But as I just noted to another fire-eating poster here, you absolutely cannot judge our ancestors by the standards of today.
My family never hated Northerners, btw. They had New Jerseyite, Pennsylvanian, and New Yorker roots, as well as ancestors from Virginia, Maryland, North Carolina and Georgia (at the time of the Civil War - we're even more diverse now).
Geography does not endow those who live in certain places with either halos or pitchforks.
Exactly, this is just like someone saying that war with the Nazis could have been avoided if the Jews had just stayed in their lane.
Interesting. I didn't realize that the Jews comprised the Red Army. However, I realize the problem is that you might know very little about actual history.
Do you really believe that what Hitler and the Nazis did to the Jews and other Holocaust victims was worse than what the slaveholding southerners did to their "property"?
Many of them go on and on about this great great grandpappy that fought at so and so and how much their honor their memory. Ugh. They should be ashamed of what they did. They didn't fight for their state out of some sense of defense against invasion, that is the lost cause myth. They fought for Dixies way of life and they openly admitted it. And also they had a deep hatred of northerners. People don't even know the real truth of what they did. Do hyper patriotic southerners today realize that in Charleston and Savannah they tore down US flags and stomped on them and ripped them apart? I doubt it. Every single one of them were vile traitors and should have paid dearly.
By your reasoning Americans will be "traitors" when they resist a hypothetical North American Union, or perhaps the United Nations, who wishes to exert control over the United States.
Federalism is federalism, wherever it begins. You cannot justify the growth of it in one arena, no matter how much or little of a foothold it has, and credibly stand against it in another. You will either be a federalist, and thus an internationalist, or you will be for self-determination. You cannot be for both and, moreover, the term "traitor" has nationalist overtones that increasingly resists categorization under a rising federalism.
Slavery is still very widespread and mainstream in the nations of some of our most crucial allies. In fact, their leaders often bring slaves here with them when they visit. If you don't know or care about world politics and culture enough to care about and rail against this hypocrisy, then perhaps you aren't suited to the conversation. After all, this is present day slavery that goes un-critiqued. The issue is present, and affects people who are alive. However, here you are wagging a finger over slaves that have been dead for 125 years with no comment, if you are even aware, of present slavery that is imported here. Is your morality self-interested and thus malleable, or is it actual? I would think that you, and the media who represents your views, would be up in arms against present day slavery if you actually cared about the issue and not merely the self-interested advancement of a racial group.
He has revealed himself to be nothing more than a low rent a***hole who just happens to be a 4 star general. To glorify Robert E Lee who was fighting to uphold a system of slavery, rape and the wanton killing and lynching of black men women and children is beyond despicable, and he would be asked to resign in any other normal or moral Presidential administration!
We didn't even do that to Nazi Germany, yet you would have supported doing this to fellow Americans, thus ensuring additional generations of hatred for such Draconian measures. ...
I usually agree with your positions, but you are off the mark here.
You may want to read about the Nuremberg trials and the ratlines, the escape routes for Nazis heading to Argentina and elsewhere where they lived under aliases and didn't go around bragging about being Nazis.
Travel to Germany. Find the monuments to Hitler, Hiss, Goebbels, etc. See how many swastikas you see waving in the breeze.
Davis, Lee, ... none of them stood trial for their treason. These traitors lived out their lives, sans slaves of course, without paying the penalty for all the lives lost and ruined, the dreadful damage they did to the nation.
Despite Lincoln and the rest of the nation trying their best to let bygones be bygones, we've still had generations of hatred.
And now we have Kelly carrying from the WH about Lee being honorable. Disgusting.
He has revealed himself to be nothing more than a low rent a***hole who just happens to be a 4 star general. To glorify Robert E Lee who was fighting to uphold a system of slavery, rape and the wanton killing and lynching of black men women and children is beyond despicable, and he would be asked to resign in any other normal or moral Presidential administration!
Making America Racist Again!
Goes back to what Kelly said " “I think we make a mistake as a society, and certainly as individuals, when we take what is accepted as right and wrong, and go back 100, 200, 300 years or more and say, ‘What Christopher Columbus did was wrong.’”
We can not judge the past by the present anymore than we can judge the present by the past. Our laws, codes of conduct, morals and social mores are too divergent.
If you believe that the entirety of the civil war was about slaves, rape and lynching of black men, women and children you really need to educate yourself. The civil war was probably one of the most complex wars of all time. As well concluding someone as a low rent ahole for stating their opinion, an opinion I see no untruth in (by the way he was not glorifying Lee), speaks more to your character than anyone else.
For Kelly to be a 4 Star General with that thought process. It will make you wonder what things he did while on active duty that may have had some effect on minorities serving.
What is it exactly that you find offensive about what he said?
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
