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Some are well formed already. The "Lost Cause" of the US South is a century-plus-long propaganda campaign cleaning up Southern motives, as if their desire for

Some are well formed already. The "Lost Cause" of the US South is a century-plus-long propaganda campaign cleaning up Southern motives, as if their desire for legal independence somehow justifies firing the first shots at Fort Sumter, the evil of slavery, or the holocaust at Andersonville. For the Southern heroes like General Lee, the mythologized opinion is the common one: https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee https://getpocket.com/explore/item/the-myth-of-the-kindly-ge...

pdonis 7y ago
If one is trying to pick a Southern hero to de-mythologize, Lee is a poor choice. Charles Francis Adams explained why in his famous oration, "Shall Cromwell Have A Statue?" [1] In it, he describes how Lee, by ordering his troops to surrender to Grant at Appomatox and telling them that they had lost fair and square and they should now go home, put away their guns, and be good citizens, prevented what otherwise would very likely have been years of guerilla war in the South that would have been much worse for the country than what actually happened. [1] https://archive.org/details/shallcromwellhav00adam/page/n5 https://archive.org/details/shallcromwellhav00adam/page/n5
- labster 7y ago
  Lee could have done that at any point in the four years prior (or held to his oath and not killed fellow citizens at all). Surrendering gracefully in a war in which you had been thoroughly beaten the year before, so you can live out your life in comfort is an awfully low bar. The violence didn't quite go away, either. It just moved out West.
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > Lee could have done that at any point in the four years prior (or held to his oath and not killed fellow citizens at all). You could say the same about Grant or any of the Union generals. Since the Union refused to accept that the Confederate states had seceded, all of the Confederate soldiers killed were fellow citizens. And if we're going to talk about what could have been done, we should also talk about why the US didn't just pay off the slaveholders, the way Great Britain did, and end slavery peacefully. Why did it have to cost a million lives? Or we could ask why the North didn't secede from the Union, as many abolitionists were advocating, in order to free itself from any obligation to uphold the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution? If we're going to de-mythologize, we should do it impartially, not just to one side.
    - evgen 7y ago
      Slaveholders were a tiny portion of the UK economy by the time of the 1833 abolition act and were effectively non-existent in the UK itself so there was no voting constituency to oppose it, the slave trade act almost 25 years earlier had seen to that. The southern US, on the other hand, depended completely on slavery and its influence was pervasive throughout the economy and society. The federal government simply did not have the funds to buy off slaveholders. As to why the North did not secede I would probably say that when you have the majority of the votes you don't need to be the one to leave. The slave states were already losing ground in the legislature and after the 1860 census they would fall even further behind. The North could just wait them out and then impose its will, and the South knew this...
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > Slaveholders were a tiny portion of the UK economy by the time of the 1833 abolition act The payments to slaveholders were 40% of the British Treasury's annual income and about 5% of British GDP at that time. Hardly negligible.
      - pdonis 7y ago
        > As to why the North did not secede I would probably say that when you have the majority of the votes you don't need to be the one to leave. This was certainly true in 1860 and arguably for the better part of the decade before that. But abolitionists had been advocating for secession much earlier. They were a major factor in the Hartford Convention in 1815. Also, abolitionism as a movement had the unfortunate but entirely predictable effect of making the South harden its own position. In 1831, the Virginia legislature was considering a bill to abolish slavery in the state, and it had a good chance of passing. Then word came that William Lloyd Garrison had started publishing an abolitionist pamphlet in Boston, and the bill failed.
- evgen 7y ago
  I will have to disagree and state that I think that years of guerilla war in the South would have been preferable to the actual outcome. It would have kept federal troops in the South for a generation at least and enforced structural changes upon southern society and its economy that would have probably lessened the unpleasant costs and consequences of southern racism for the next century. A simmering rebellion in the South would have also tied Johnson's hands and enabled the legislature to fully enact its desires (or at the very least ensured Johnson's conviction by the Senate.)
  - pdonis 7y ago
    > I will have to disagree and state that I think that years of guerilla war in the South would have been preferable to the actual outcome. This is an interesting hypothetical. I don't agree that it would have been preferable to what actually happened, because I'm not as much of a fan of the radical Republicans and the impeachment of Johnson as you seem to be. But these are judgment calls about which I think reasonable people can disagree.

pdonis 7y ago

If one is trying to pick a Southern hero to de-mythologize, Lee is a poor choice. Charles Francis Adams explained why in his famous oration, "Shall Cromwell Have A Statue?" [1] In it, he describes how Lee, by ordering his troops to surrender to Grant at Appomatox and telling them that they had lost fair and square and they should now go home, put away their guns, and be good citizens, prevented what otherwise would very likely have been years of guerilla war in the South that would have been much worse for the country than what actually happened. [1] https://archive.org/details/shallcromwellhav00adam/page/n5 https://archive.org/details/shallcromwellhav00adam/page/n5

labster 7y ago
Lee could have done that at any point in the four years prior (or held to his oath and not killed fellow citizens at all). Surrendering gracefully in a war in which you had been thoroughly beaten the year before, so you can live out your life in comfort is an awfully low bar. The violence didn't quite go away, either. It just moved out West.
- pdonis 7y ago
  > Lee could have done that at any point in the four years prior (or held to his oath and not killed fellow citizens at all). You could say the same about Grant or any of the Union generals. Since the Union refused to accept that the Confederate states had seceded, all of the Confederate soldiers killed were fellow citizens. And if we're going to talk about what could have been done, we should also talk about why the US didn't just pay off the slaveholders, the way Great Britain did, and end slavery peacefully. Why did it have to cost a million lives? Or we could ask why the North didn't secede from the Union, as many abolitionists were advocating, in order to free itself from any obligation to uphold the fugitive slave clause in the Constitution? If we're going to de-mythologize, we should do it impartially, not just to one side.
  - evgen 7y ago
    Slaveholders were a tiny portion of the UK economy by the time of the 1833 abolition act and were effectively non-existent in the UK itself so there was no voting constituency to oppose it, the slave trade act almost 25 years earlier had seen to that. The southern US, on the other hand, depended completely on slavery and its influence was pervasive throughout the economy and society. The federal government simply did not have the funds to buy off slaveholders. As to why the North did not secede I would probably say that when you have the majority of the votes you don't need to be the one to leave. The slave states were already losing ground in the legislature and after the 1860 census they would fall even further behind. The North could just wait them out and then impose its will, and the South knew this...
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > Slaveholders were a tiny portion of the UK economy by the time of the 1833 abolition act The payments to slaveholders were 40% of the British Treasury's annual income and about 5% of British GDP at that time. Hardly negligible.
    - pdonis 7y ago
      > As to why the North did not secede I would probably say that when you have the majority of the votes you don't need to be the one to leave. This was certainly true in 1860 and arguably for the better part of the decade before that. But abolitionists had been advocating for secession much earlier. They were a major factor in the Hartford Convention in 1815. Also, abolitionism as a movement had the unfortunate but entirely predictable effect of making the South harden its own position. In 1831, the Virginia legislature was considering a bill to abolish slavery in the state, and it had a good chance of passing. Then word came that William Lloyd Garrison had started publishing an abolitionist pamphlet in Boston, and the bill failed.
evgen 7y ago
I will have to disagree and state that I think that years of guerilla war in the South would have been preferable to the actual outcome. It would have kept federal troops in the South for a generation at least and enforced structural changes upon southern society and its economy that would have probably lessened the unpleasant costs and consequences of southern racism for the next century. A simmering rebellion in the South would have also tied Johnson's hands and enabled the legislature to fully enact its desires (or at the very least ensured Johnson's conviction by the Senate.)
- pdonis 7y ago
  > I will have to disagree and state that I think that years of guerilla war in the South would have been preferable to the actual outcome. This is an interesting hypothetical. I don't agree that it would have been preferable to what actually happened, because I'm not as much of a fan of the radical Republicans and the impeachment of Johnson as you seem to be. But these are judgment calls about which I think reasonable people can disagree.