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I think that's a rational position. Benedict Arnold may have been a traitor. Aaron Burr, too.
But Lee could no more be called a traitor than a Vietnam opponent who went to Canada rather than serve.
The other historical fact that people need to realize and keep in mind is that secession was very much an open question at the time of the Civil War, and was a mainstream political idea, not some crazy fringe notion. The Constitution does not say one way or another that states cannot exit from the Union. It certainly provides no legal mechanism for so doing, but at the same time it does not explicitly forbid it either. Until the mid 18th century, it was very much up for debate. Indeed, the first time in our history that secession was seriously discussed, it was not the Southern states, but rather the New England states that were strongly considering seceding from the Union due to opposition to the War of 1812, which was economically devastating to that region.
It is quite reasonable for Lee to have believed that Virginia had seceded from the Union legally. Lee was most certainly a resident of Virginia. Therefore, by the standards of the day, Lee was legally a citizen of the CSA, not the USA. With that point of view in mind, it would have been people like Andrew Johnson and George Thomas (who was a Union general from Virginia) who could have legally been considered to be traitors to their nation, not Lee. That point of view is certainly foreign to us now, but to judge Lee a traitor is to impose our own legal standard upon his actions, and is tantamount to begging the question. The whole point of the Civil War was to establish whether secession from the Union was a legally permissible action or not. To simply assume prior to the actual war that it was not, that Lee should have known it was not, and should have acted accordingly is highly unfair to Lee.
It is quite reasonable for Lee to have believed that Virginia had seceded from the Union legally .
I agree that the legalities of secession are impossible to determine, leaving all to decide which side to fight for with a reasonable legal argument as backing. What is left to us is to judge secession on its moral basis alone.
But I am still waiting your response on exactly how many secessionists you thought needed to be hanged/executed at the end of the civil war: 2,000? 20,000? 200,000? Every man, woman, and child living in the south?
See thread #148.
Wait no longer then. I missed your question else I’d have answered you:
Jefferson Davis, Lee and any general officers who served in the US Army prior to defecting would have been a good start.
I agree that the legalities of secession are impossible to determine, leaving all to decide which side to fight for with a reasonable legal argument as backing. What is left to us is to judge secession on its moral basis alone.
So what's immoral about secession per se? Is it immoral for Britain to leave the EU? Admittedly, slavery was the issue that caused the South to seceded, and slavery is undeniably immoral. That does NOT imply that secession itself was, though. Indeed, it could well be argued (and at the time was so argued by many in the North) that fighting a war that resulted in hundreds of thousands of deaths in order to prevent a group of states from seceding was the immoral action, and the moral action would have been to allow those states to secede peacefully. If Germany and France declare war on the UK over Brexit, would you really think it was the UK that was morally culpable?
Lee felt a moral compunction to defend his home state first and foremost. In my example of the previous paragraph, if France and Germany declared war on Britain over Brexit, would you condemn as a traitor a British general who refused to fight on the side of the EU powers? That's a fairly good analogy; people at the time really did not hold allegiance to the United States, but rather to the state in which they lived. Lee would have considered himself a Virginian moreso than an American. Once Virginia seceded, he felt morally obliged to fight to defend Virginia, especially once troops that he considered to be foreign enemies invaded the state. I find it hard to criticize Lee for his decision to fight for his state against what he believed to be a foreign invader.
1) The Southern states were happy to abide by the results of national elections...until they lost one. Then they kicked the chess table over and stomped out. If this was you playing a game of chess and your opponent knocked the table over when he or she realized that they were losing..would you view that as morally admirable?
2. The founding of the United States was done in an atmosphere of European predictions of doom. They insisted that this great experiment in democracy would not work because handing influence to "the mob" would result in selfishness and ultimately in fragmentation. Secession was a screaming message to Europe's monarchs and aristocrats that they had been right, that self government by the people was a failure. It could not survive because people would decide to ignore the results of elections which they did not like.
3. While there was indeed a legitimate threat to southern prosperity as a consequence of the GOP gaining power, at bottom secession was about defending the institution of slavery, which the rest of the world had finally condemned.
I find it difficult to believe that you were unaware of these arguments and needed me to introduce them to you.
Wait no longer then. I missed your question else I’d have answered you:
Jefferson Davis, Lee and any general officers who served in the US Army prior to defecting would have been a good start.
OK so perhaps we are down to only the 100s, so you wish for the murder, I mean execution, of 400 or so.
Another question, being that our terms of surrender, at Appomattox at least was "each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by United States Authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside", was your intention to withhold this clause from the terms of surrender? (which in that case, as naturally the generals would not voluntarily give themselves up for execution, would result in the war dragging on for years more as a guerilla campaign)...OR...would you have broken the terms of agreement thus bringing shame to the US for generations afterwards?
How would you also have handled the resistance from, not the south, but the Union military who saw these confederate generals as respected foes in most cases, equals, sometimes former Westpoint classmates and personal friends?
this is just for starts...we can then continue on the long term impact to the reconciliation and recovery from the horrors of the civil war...
Dishonest Abe was also not quite the sainted virgin as he's presented almost everywhere. More like a tyrant. Check out the book by that title for the nasty details of Tyrant Abe.
Dishonest Abe was also not quite the sainted virgin as he's presented almost everywhere. More like a tyrant. Check out the book by that title for the nasty details of Tyrant Abe.
Well, is it "Dishonest Abe" or "Tyrant Abe"? Use one name, getting confused here.
There have been many threads here on Lincoln, most of us that post here frequently have to deal with these threads that post "but Lincoln did this...., Lincoln was a racist, Lincoln was a tyrant", again we have to be careful about taking a person out of the context of his time and the extraordinary events he found himself in. I've read it all about Lincoln, all of it....In contrast to Lee, who was a great military leader but not a visionary or a leader of change, I would classify Lincoln as an exceptional visionary and certainly one of the greatest leaders, if not the greatest, that this country ever had.
OK so perhaps we are down to only the 100s, so you wish for the murder, I mean execution, of 400 or so.
Another question, being that our terms of surrender, at Appomattox at least was "each officer and man will be allowed to return to his home, not to be disturbed by United States Authority so long as they observe their paroles and the laws in force where they may reside", was your intention to withhold this clause from the terms of surrender? (which in that case, as naturally the generals would not voluntarily give themselves up for execution, would result in the war dragging on for years more as a guerilla campaign)...OR...would you have broken the terms of agreement thus bringing shame to the US for generations afterwards?
How would you also have handled the resistance from, not the south, but the Union military who saw these confederate generals as respected foes in most cases, equals, sometimes former Westpoint classmates and personal friends?
this is just for starts...we can then continue on the long term impact to the reconciliation and recovery from the horrors of the civil war...
The terms of surrender would have read much differently had I been in either Grant or Lincoln’s position.
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