Didn’t find a good window to drop this earlier, but given recent news, there’s probably not a rigid freshness date for a little anti-RWNJ rant. In Pando, the War Nerd at his finest:
KUWAIT CITY, Nov. 20th — There are times when the sheer ignorance and ingratitude of the American public makes you sick.
This week marks the 150th anniversary of Sherman’s March from Atlanta to the Sea, which set off on November 16, 1864—the most remarkable military campaign on the 19th century, the campaign which got Lincoln reelected, broke the back of the Confederacy, and slapped most of Dixie’s insane diehards into the realization they were defeated.
You’d think our newspaper of record, the New York Times, would find an appropriate way to mark the occasion, but the best the old Confederate-gray lady could come up with was a churlish, venomous little screed by an obscure neo-Confederate diehard named Phil Leigh. Leigh poses a stupid question: “Who Burned Atlanta?” and comes up with a stupider answer: “Sherman, that bad, bad man!”
Leigh actually thinks he’s fixing blame—blame!—for Sherman’s perfectly sensible, conventional action, the burning of a major rail center in his rear before setting out unsupported across enemy territory.
What next? Will the NYT dig up some crusty tenth-generation Tory sulking in the suburbs of Toronto to ask, “Who Killed All Those Innocent Redcoats on Bunker Hill?” Or a sob story by the Imperial Japanese Navy’s last surviving sailor asking, “Who Sank All Our Carriers?”
Leigh’s silly article could only work on totally ignorant readers, or on his fellow tenth-generation sulkers brooding about what went wrong circa 1863. And the funny side of that is that Sherman, more than anyone else in U.S. history, devoted his life to trying to slap these Dixie dreamers into waking up and thinking like grown-ups…
What Southern romanticists like Leigh will never get—because it’s their very nature not to get it, just as a paranoid schizophrenic can never get that no one is persecuting him—is that Sherman’s whole military enterprise was an attempt to stop the slaughter by slapping the South into adulthood. From way before the war, when Sherman was a professor at a military academy in Louisiana, his attitude toward the South’s Planter culture was like a fond uncle watching his idiot nephew stumbling into a fast car, planning to drive drunk into the nearest tree.
Sherman tried to tell these idiots, over and over, that they were stupid and deluded. He wasn’t even going to debate the non-existent justice of their cause like Grant, who rightly called the Confederacy “the worst cause for which men ever fought.” Sherman, who was a much more analytical, intellectual man than Grant, focused on the fact that the South—the white, wealthy South, that is; the only one that mattered—was wrong. About everything. Every damn thing in the world. But most of all about its childishly romantic notions about war…
Mnemosyne
Another good read (and accompanying video) that I found via a post at Wonkette:
When Youth Violence Spurred ‘Superpredator’ Fear
Short version: in 1995, a Princeton sociologist predicted that there would be a sudden surge of teenage “superpredators” with no conscience. Laws were changed (to allow children to be charged as adults) and the media freaked out, but the opposite happened: youth crime dropped dramatically. The sociologist has now recanted his theory, but it’s alive and well in the media and, apparently, in police forces across the country, including Ferguson, MO.
2liberal
off topic: thanksgiving meal at HP Lovecrafts house:
http://gothamist.com/2013/12/16/cthuken.php#photo-1
West of the Cascades
Sherman was not right. He didn’t slap Georgia and South Carolina hard enough.
mikej
What was that slogan nat review and their ilk used of Iraq a few years ago? More rubble, less trouble?
BlueDWarrior
@West of the Cascades: Honestly, with the way some of ‘us’ here in the south, nothing short of a pogrom to kill all the natives (like what we ended up doing to the Native Americans, by and large) would have worked.
For some, there is no measure of defeat conclusive enough to cause them to back down. So long as they draw breath and have the ability to convey a sense of righteous indignation, the proverbial dream will never die. Just because a lot of good people will never give up on a dream, doesn’t mean a lot of bad people wouldn’t either.
And you have to admit, there are a few among us that sees the Antebellum South and look at it as a model to emulate; and all of us telling them they are stupid just makes them stubbornly, or one would say bitterly, cling to these notions.
The best thing society can do is to minimize the number and marginalize them so that all they have are their little sick fantasies.
BillinGlendaleCA
The whole article is a good read. I also read some of the comments, I feel the need for a bath.
West of the Cascades
@BlueDWarrior: True this.
Mnemosyne
@BillinGlendaleCA:
On that NYT article I linked to above, there were 7 comments total and 2 of them were incoherent derp.
Probably a better than average proportion, actually.
tsquared2001
Goddamn. That was some brilliant shit.
“the old Confederate-gray lady” – quite a favorite
“Sherman tried to tell these idiots, over and over, that they were stupid and deluded.” – this one is cool too.
“focused on the fact that the South—the white, wealthy South, that is; the only one that mattered—was wrong. About everything.” – this one, though. That takes the cake like the cake stole something.
Mike E
Yep, Southerners suck. As do Northerners, Midwesterners, Westerners, Northeasterners and Mid Atlantickers. Yous all stink.
You Northwesterners tho are pretty awesome…not really, you suck too.
Tree With Water
Sherman was indeed a friend of the south, and long before 1860. He first admired it as a recently minted West Point cadet. As the secession dominos began to fall decades later, he was left no choice but to resign his dream job as the first president of the newly established University of Louisiana (a post for which he was recruited). Friends at the university later recalled him shedding tears that duty forced him north. In tears that night he damned all the politicians, and with anguish explained to his southern colleagues that the south’s agrarian economy and people could not vanquish the industrial north and its people. After Appomattox, he single handedly spared Raleigh, NC, from being razed to the ground by Union troops after Lincoln’s assassination- he confined them to camp, and ordered them to maintain discipline. But you don’t see any plaques or statues commemorating his act of forbearance anywhere in Raleigh, do you?
tsquared2001
@Mike E: I believe the lesson is that war sucks but when you fight a war, don’t bitch when you get your ass handed to you. Or, when you try to rewrite history, please believe, you will be called on it.
And, yes, Southerners suck. Sherman and Grant took it easy on their asses.
The Bobs
@Mike E: Actually, westerners rock. I can say that without refutation as we are the only ones still awake.
Ned Ludd
Awesome rant. Hard to lionize Sherman though when you consider his role in Native American genocide after the civil war.
tsquared2001
@Tree With Water: Or any tears of gratitude from the Plains Indians.
jl
The Confederate government went all Scott when it replaced Johnston with Hood, who rode out with an inadequate force to face Sherman on the glorious field of battle and lost. Maybe just in time to influence the election. I think I remember that right.
jl
Forget where I read it, but maybe shortest conference two generals ever had, after first day of Shiloh.
Sherman: We had the devil’s own day didn’t we, Grant?
Grant: Whup ’em tomorrow, though.
I guess for a chaser for the War Nerd, can read some of Ambrose Bierce’s nasty reminiscences of the Civil War.
Tree With Water
@tsquared2001: No doubt about the infamous role he played in the destruction of the tribes and their cultures. That said, had it not been him, another soldier would have been charged with the same mission. The resulting destruction of the tribes by the onslaught of European masses was centuries in the making– Sherman just happened to be in command near the culmination.
Draylon Hogg
Surely everyone knows Quakers make the best ambulance drivers. No?
jl
@Tree With Water: Several Union Generals made themselves infamous in the wars against indigenous people in the West. Philip Sheridan comes to mind. If it were not for the until recently lost legacy of US Grant as president, and his role in restraining them, it would have been much worse.
tsquared2001
@Tree With Water: I am not gonna celebrate a guy for keeping general order to save Raleigh, NC after Appomattox. No way, no how. As an officer, that is what he is supposed to do. No plaques involved. He could have shown more courage by fighting back against the genocide the US government decided to embark on but I can’t fault a career soldier for doing what soldiers do.
Sherman is my boy ONLY because he broke the spine of the Confederacy.
opiejeanne
That churlish Tory is only 6 generations away, and he’s my 5th cousin. He is essentially a Tea Bagger, except he’s a Canadian. He’s still damned mad about the Revolutionary War.
opiejeanne
@Tree With Water: The Indian School in Riverside California was named for Sherman. 40 years after encountering that I am still shaking my head.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@tsquared2001:
Only the Army of Northern Virginia surrendered at Appomattox. The war wasn’t over on Sherman’s front until Joe Johnston surrendered his army on April 26, 1865, 17 days after Lee’s surrender, and 11 days after Lincoln died. Hell, Kirby Smith didn’t surrender in Texas until May 26, and the Cherokee Confederates didn’t surrender until June 23.
tsquared2001
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): You need to take that issue up with @Tree With Water.
Snarki, child of Loki
Is it time for Zombie Sherman With Nukes yet?
John Weiss
@tsquared2001: If only Sherman had broken the spine of the Confederacy. Killed it right and proper. ‘Cause it’s still acting very much alive, still floppin’.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@tsquared2001:
There’s nothing to take up with Tree With Water, whose timeline is correct. Sherman was still facing Johnston’s hostile army when Lincoln was assassinated. The thoughts going through the heads of many of Sheman’s soldiers encamped at Raleigh at the time must have been something like, ‘Richmond was captured, and you didn’t surrender, Lee surrendered but you didn’t surrender. Since I’m stuck here waiting to get shot at by you, and one of your compatriots assassinated our President, we’ll teach you a goddamned lesson by burning Raleigh to the ground!’
Anne Sarah Rubin did some good research on the March to the Sea (you can watch her discussing it here), and has come to the conclusion, based on what was written at the time by those who encountered Sherman’s armies at the time- that the horror stories of that campaign are nothing more than revisionist Lost Cause imaginations. The tales of destruction during the North Carolina leg of Sherman’s Carolinas Campaign differ little from those of the Savannah Campaign. It was only in South Carolina that there’s real proof that Sherman’s men went haywire, and Sherman himself wasn’t pleased with his men’s actions there. With Columbia as a lesson, he made sure to keep the men in check at Raleigh.
And just to get it out there- I’m not a big fan of Sherman. He was a horrible tactician. He is the person most responsible for the near defeat at Shiloh (he didn’t prepare any defensive works). He didn’t do enough intelligence work to familiarize himself with the terrain at Chattanooga. Thomas carried the load during the Atlanta Campaign, and Thomas- lost in a logistical nightmare when Sherman split his armies after Atlanta- worked miracles to prepare a fighting force that wiped out Hoods Army of Tennessee at Nashville. Had a lesser man been in Thomas’ position, both Sherman and Grant would have borne the brunt of the blame for allowing Hood to approach the Ohio River. And Sherman was a pretty horrible racist, too. But the strategy of the
Savannah and Carolinas Campaigns worked themselves out with relatively few casualties on either side, civilian population included, and he deserves a lot of credit for that.
Citizen Alan
As a lifelong Mississippian, may I reiterate my admiration for Gen. Sherman, as well as my deeply held belief that we should have hanged every member of the Confederate legislature and executive branch and every officer above the rank of lieutenant. America would be a better place today if the North had had the foresight to treat the South as the victorious Allies did the Nazis.
redshirt
Too late. And now the South has won. In parts.
raven
raven
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): And you know how close the Union came to losing the Battle of Atlanta on July 22, 1864? Had they lost the fight for Legget’s Hill it is likely Lincoln would have lost the election and some kind of accommodation would have been reached.
SRW1
@jl:
It’s in Sherman’s autobiography. Except that Sherman quoted Grant as replying ‘Lick’em’ tomorrow’ not ‘Whup’em tomorrow’.
Joel
This calls for some “Battle Hymn of the Republic”
p.a.
Mr. Peabody was the real brains of the operation.
Marc
Yes, the march to the sea slapped the South so hard that it got Lincoln reelected on November 8, 1864, more than a week before the campaign even began.
J R in WV
Many years ago Ms J was covering the Legislative session, and wrote a piece that a Delegate’s bill was passing through the legislature like Sherman marched through Georgia. The desk editor, a new hire with a graduate degree from Columbia University, wrote Ms J back that they didn’t understand the remark about Sherman’s march.
Ms J wrote back with more details of the March to the Sea, and the desk editor still expressed confusion. So Ms J wrote (going for lowest common denominator) “Remember the burning of Atlanta in ‘Gone with the Wind’? That was the beginning of Sherman’s March to the Sea, which broke the back of the confederacy!”
The highly educated editor on the desk wrote back “Well, I’m from New York, and we didn’t have anything to do with the Civil War, so we didn’t study it much…” which is so wrong on so many levels. But it explains how the NY Times could make the kind of mistake they evidently did make, writing about Gen. Sherman.
I agree that elected officials and senior officers of the Confederate Government and Army should have all been hung, and add that freed blacks should have had support from the US Army until long after every confederate army veteran died of old age. As well as 40 acres and a mule, neither of which could have ever been sold to or otherwise stolen by a white man. As well as a requirement that state legislatures have equal representation for the black community of each state.
Of course, in the real world, the blacks of the deep south were forced back into civil slavery immediately after federal troops were withdrawn, with legal requirements that blacks were required to have a work certificate showing that they were fully employed by a white man to avoid being imprisoned and put to work for a white man without pay.
The horror of the civil war and the force of constitutional amendments requiring equality weren’t enough to push southern “gentlemen” into ending their disgusting treatment of the black population. Murder, rape and torture still being committed into the 1960s to try to keep black folk down!
The evil of southern slavery lingers today, even in states that weren’t part of the confederacy. Is it possible to reverse the tendency of people to push other people into subservience?
Some obviously need to force black people into subservience, even at the cost of human lives. Obviously the bravery shown by black people in the civil rights movement proves they are equal to average white folk, and far superior to the white “southern gentlemen” attempting to hold black people down.
Frankensteinbeck
A) The folks we call neoconfederates are seething bags of resentment at anything and everything. Trust me, I’ve lived most of my life surrounded by them. They want to be entitled assholes, and are angry that they’re not.
B) People they assume are their ancestors or were their side somehow lost. Most of them have no actual connection to this, but because of the resentment they will fight to defend the Confederacy any time it comes up. That makes anything Sherman burned ‘theirs’, and thus attacking it is a horrible crime.
C) At best, they don’t see any virtue in liberating the blacks, because that does not stoke their resentment in any way. A lot of them resent blacks for not being inferior and having it too easy (a belief they make up because they resent everything). A lot of them are flat-out racists who hate and fear blacks for being different.
D) They don’t see preventing the useless deaths of soldiers as a virtue. They just don’t. The idea of war vents a little of their anger and resentment at the world.
All together, yeah, they hate Sherman and they’re self-righteous about it.
greennotGreen
As a person born and raised in the South, who grew up mostly in Chattanooga where artillery is still in place, I have felt the civil war around me my whole life. It was a tragedy of our own making – so much needless death. I used to think that it had been preventable if only the North had been willing to negotiate, give the South more time to adapt…but then I had some actually good history teachers who used original documents, and I realized it wasn’t preventable because the representatives of the South were CRAZY.
Unfortunately, I think the only way to have stopped that type of irrational thought process from being perpetuated would have required a level of destruction even the North would have found untenable. It’s in the culture. They would have had to kill everyone except children too small to remember. And then they would have had to write the history books to say there had been a terrible plague.
It’s part of Southern culture, along with friendliness and hospitality and good cooking. It’s a belief in individual liberty that’s at the level of a ten year old saying to an older sibling, “You can’t tell me what to do!” It’s a self-righteousness borne of a narrow-minded reading of their own religion. It’s a lack of connection between cause and effect that’s very much in evidence in our state legislatures. Short of an actual plague, there are only two ways to solve the problem that I can see: a federal takeover of the school systems so that we can graduate people who are less appallingly ignorant, and building thousands of factories in rural areas of the South and importing at least 3/4 of the workers from the North. That way, over time, you’d dilute the negative aspects of the culture. I hope.
I don’t know. Maybe it’s in the water.
Frankensteinbeck
@greennotGreen:
I agree with the ‘You can’t tell me what to do!’ but that ‘moral’ foundation creates a lot of anger, entitlement, and a desire to hurt others because hurting others is what they’re stopped from doing most.
henqiguai
@greennotGreen#39):
Yeah, no! That was the same crap still being pushed during the civil rights upheavals in the 1950s and ’60s. “Give us time to adjust”; fine, adjust while you burn in hell, but don’t ask a population to give you more time while you are busily stomping that population into the dirt by any means available. Yeah, I remember that crap…
shelley
Surprised Leigh didn’t find a way to blame Sherman’s March on Obama.
To all those Neo-Confederates whining over the ‘War of Northern Aggression,’ who was it exactly that fired the first shot of the war? You know, that whole Fort Sumter thing?
Ol'Froth
Not to take anything away from Sherman, but George Thomas had a bit to do with things too, when he effectivly destroyed Hood’s army in Tennessee.
Hunter
@BlueDWarrior: It’s the same mind set we find in contemporary culture warriors: they’ll never give up, because they’re right, dammit.
Lurking Canadian
@shelley: I am always prepared to grant that the South had a right to secede. That’s a complicated legal argument.
Then, however, being led by delusional morons, they picked a fight with their much Steiger neighbour who proceeded to kick their ass up between their ears. In accordance with international law, as practiced at the the time (cf Prussia), the victor then annexed the defeated enemy back inside its territory.
The victor was even magnanimous enough to grant full citizenship to all residents of the defeated territory, including (and this was a mistake) full membership at antebellum levels in the national parliament.
We’d have a lot fewer problems today if the South had been turned into…three states, say, with a total of six Senators.
Jasmine Bleach
@greennotGreen:
I dunno. It seems to be an attitude everywhere now. The kind of attitude you describe seems to be prevalent in portions of Wisconsin, for example, in Waukesha and suburbian areas around Milwaukee–to the extent that statewide the attitude has ushered in a racist and autocratic government with a supermajority.
Blame the south if you want, but these people are –everywhere– now. I think it has more to do with Rush Limpblaagh brainwashing over decades and government being sold to the highest bidder and screwing the poor and middle class more than anything else.
Smiling Mortician
@Mike E:
Damn. Missed it by this much.
Ruckus
@Jasmine Bleach:
Movement, communications/media, that and the fact that a lot of humans are selfish(it’s sort of built in as a part of that survival instinct) and have not learned to live in a larger society. They can do a small town where everyone is the same, put them in a society that is bigger and their nature comes out. Learning that you don’t have to be the last one standing to survive and prosper is against their nature. You can see it in that they don’t like nor will accept any other culture than their own. Over time they will sort of change/adapt to the slow changes in their culture but any abrupt change triggers them. These people are conservatives. What they really don’t want to change is themselves. They are afraid of change, it is the unknown. They don’t have the capacity to be curious, to see who and what is over the hill, across the ocean. They don’t even necessarily like what they know but it’s acceptance is comforting. Anything more is not.
You can see this in their fighting education. You can see this in their fighting other races/cultures. You can see this in their fighting minority issues. You can see this in their fighting immigration. And…..
dww44
@Jasmine Bleach: I think you are altogether right. and the spread of the vicious and racist and resentful Southern id is largely due to the hegemony of the Limbaughs and Fox News’ in our media outlets. By golly, that Regan era FCC has a lot to answer for, i
Trentrunner
Southern Lost Cause Culture?
Nuke it from space. It’s the only way to be sure.
Mohagan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again):
Yes, I’ve never understood why the “March to the Sea” and “Marching Through Georgia” are so famous, and “Destroying South Carolina” never caught on (maybe it’s the cadence), because it’s true that SC was where the Union troops REALLY took revenge. They considered (quite rightly) that SC was the heart of the secession movement (first state to secede, firing on Fort Sumter, etc.) and the most to blame for the terrible war. It was also a congressman from SC (of course) who beat Charles Sumner bloody in the US Senate chamber, and then returned home to a hero’s welcome. The troop’s motto apparently was “South Carolina must be destroyed” and they did their best.
Mike G
@dww44:
Almost like they planned it that way. “Deregulate” the airwaves to open the way for a horde of right-wing propaganda nutjobs to stoke the rubes into voting Republican.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mohagan:
What I find ironic is that no matter whether you’re talking about Atlanta or the Savannah Campaign, South Carolina or North Carolina, it’s all about- at least from Lost Causers- “honor”. Bring up the fact that Jubal Early had Chambersburg, PA burned to the ground (on 7/30/1864) because the town wouldn’t pay a $500K ransom, you get crickets chirping.
Mohagan
@Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again): Yeah, I keep reading about how the North had to be polite after the war about the causes (SLAVERY cough) of the war, since we wanted to have one country again, but it’s hard to be polite about folks talking about honor when it was about enslaving other humans for money and then quoting scripture to justify it. Basing your economy on a truly moral evil and then talking about honor … my mother’s family is from Virginia but thank FSM she and my grandmother moved to San Francisco in 1938 and I am born and raised in N CA. Lincoln, Grant, and Sherman are my heroes of the Civil War and I don’t have much use for Robert E. Lee, except he was sensible enough not to encourage guerrilla fighting after the surrender in 1865 and he did lead an honorable life post war.
Temporarily Max McGee (soon enough to be Andy K again)
@Mohagan:
Funny how Grant still gets, from some quarters, the title “The Butcher”, when Lee’s own offensives were awfully goddamned costly, too. Antietam was no rearguard action, the third day at Gettysburg was just plain foolish, and it was Lee who attacked Grant in the Wilderness.
Lee should have surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia earlier in 1865, or maybe even by late December of 1864. Once Lincoln had been re-elected, the writing was on the wall; when Lee’s starving soldiers started deserting en masse, it was written large: IT’S OVER!
Bobby Thomson
That is a huge audience.
M.C. Simon Milligan
I think Zombie Napoleon might argue the “most remarkable military campaign on the 19th century” bit. Ever heard of a neo-Holy Roman Imperialist? Old romantic Germans pining for the House of Hapsburg-Lorraine? Didn’t think so. That idea died a deserved death at Austerlitz.
BobS
@Citizen Alan: You’re apparently not aware of the systematic recruitment and relocation of Nazi mass-murderers by the US after WWII.
redshirt
@BobS: Yeah but that was for rockets!
Joe Falco
I probably have ancestors that fought for the Confederate side, but none of my family ever admitted to such or tried to instill in me pride for some pathetic “Lost Cause”. I have had to deal with numerous people over the years who still fly that loathsome flag whether on their home, their clothing and, perhaps most sacred to them all, their truck. Every time I go out to Stone Mountain and see the massive stone carvings of the Confederate “heroes”, all I can of think is that natural marvel was defaced. Just imagine an Independence Day laser show on that side of the mountain while old favorites like “Sweet Home Alabama” and “The Devil went down to Georgia” are being played. That’s a lot of cruel irony to appreciate there.
Whatever chance the Yankees had to reform the South was lost when they abandoned it in the end and allowed all those resentments and hurt pride to fester and grow over the generations. We are all reaping the whirlwind that was sown when the traitors were left alive and allowed to be lionized by the defeated population. To this day, you can’t go across the South without passing by a local monument to those brave, brave soldiers in just about every backwater.
The culture was bred into a large portion of the population. I’m just glad none of my immediate family bought into it or tried to pass that shit down to me.
liberal
@redshirt: would that it were only for rockets.
low-tech cyclist
@tsquared2001:
Sometimes it takes awhile. I just finished re-reading Gone With the Wind, 40 years after reading it the first time. And it really breaks down into two books: the part about Scarlett, Rhett, Ashley, and Melanie, and the part that’s a comforting fable for Lost Causers about the evils of Reconstruction. (And Sherman’s March, too.)
It’s also been 40 years since I’ve seen the movie, but IIRC, both parts are present there too. Considering how many people have read the book and seen the movie, it was one hell of a propaganda tool to get America in general to buy into that fable.
But Margaret Mitchell’s plaint can be summed up as follows: “we fought a war to make the Yankees leave us alone. We lost. Now why the hell don’t they go away and leave us alone?”
Jose Padilla
Jeff Davis and Bobbie Lee should’ve been tried and convicted of treason, executed, decapitated, and their heads paraded on spikes throughout the South, so the populous could see what happens to traitors.
Instead, it was Lincoln who ended up dead.
coin operated
@Jasmine Bleach:
This X1000. I used to live in Oregon. Portland and Eugene are liberal enclaves, but the rest of the state is as ignorant and as redneck (do I repeat myself?) as anyplace you’d find in the Antebellum South. They’re not going to die off, as many here think will happen, because they are breeding a whole new generation of young white folks who listen to *nothing* but Faux News and other wingnut media telling them how bad they have it compared to all those other freeloading folk *wink wink*
It pisses me off something fierce when people on this site talk about that old Southern class dying off. Wake up…they’re creating a brand-new generation of hate to fill the gap.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@West of the Cascades:
Two posts and some chest thumper misses Sherman’s whole point.
Take it away Warnerd
So unless you are willing to go threw houses of people who look like your family, talk like your own family and be willing to shoot everyone you find in their in ways that made the SS disgusted during WWII, you’re just talking shit.
Paul in KY
@Ol’Froth: The Rock of Chickamauga! One of our most underrated Generals.
Peter Akuleyev
@M.C. Simon Milligan: The idea of Germans pining for the House of Habsburg-Lorraine was killed at Königgratz in 1866 by the Prussians. Napoleon helped it along some, but it was Bismarck who put the final nail in the coffin. Even so, Germans arguably would have been better off under Habsburg rule rather than Hohenzollern.
John M. Burt
Well, since we’re all offering alternate history scenarios, and since I have been known to do so professionally [http://www.amazon.com/The-Christmas-Mutiny-John-Burt-ebook/dp/B007DMX0C8], here’s mine:
1) The eleven traitor states should have been divided into four territories, borders drawn so that no former state was within the boundaries of a territory, to be admitted to the Union only after they had demonstrated for a period of years good character of internal self-governance (as for instance, that any perpetrators of lynching or other forms of terrorism be promptly tried and punished).
2) Any man who bore arms for the Confederacy or held an office of trust be stripped permanently of citizenship, with no pardons or exceptions. Forbidden to vote, forbidden to hold elected or appointed office and (ahem) forbidden to own firearms.
3) The Bill of Rights and the 13th, 14th and 15th Amendments to be strictly enforced by the Justice Department, through a new agency . . . let’s call it the Office of the Federal Ombudsman.
4) The creation of a public works agency to employ displaced Southerners working on the railroads and canals out west. There will be many benefits to putting former Confederate Privates, former Confederate Colonels and former slaves in the same work battalions.