USA Today
USA Today is crowing about it … fortunately, Mitt Romney will stop this after he wins the presidential election in November:
“The number of nearly all-white communities has plummeted since 1980, dramatic evidence that the nation’s growing racial and ethnic diversity has spread far beyond large metropolitan centers into smaller towns and rural parts of the heartland, new research shows.”
The Union, what a dreadful, deadly, curse it has been on Anglo Saxons in ‘Murica and to the white people of the world.
Kentucky declared Confederate but was occupied. I’m not sure Missouri ever got to declare formally, but it was definitely Dixie. West Virginia seceded from Virginia and those traitors could fairly be classified as “Union”.
I agree that failure to install Patrick Cleburne as Commander of the Army of the Tennessee and Nathan Forrest as Commander of Confederate Cavalry was a blunder of historical proportions- they would have ground up Rosecrans, Grant and all the rest of the Union trash in short order – it was the incompetence of Jeff Davis that failed to recognize military genius. Instead we got Bragg, A.S. Johnston, John Bell Hood, Buckner, Pillow. Floyd – all grossly incompetent. That’s the one thing I will grant the swine Lincoln, he sought and promoted military talent, such as the Union possessed.
Two conversations I’d have enjoyed. Stalin and Lincoln. Who the hell did they manage it?
“That’s the one thing I will grant the swine Lincoln, he sought and promoted military talent, such as the Union possessed.”
About a block from the White House there is a huge statue of General Sherman mounted on his horse overlooking the Mall. A more loathsome sight is not to be found anywhere in the city (at least they keep Lincoln hidden inside a building.)
http://www.civilwaralbum.com/misc2/2008/08sherman1.jpg
“That’s the one thing I will grant the swine Lincoln, he sought and promoted military talent, such as the Union possessed.”
You seem to forget how many untalented others he chose before he won the “general lottery.” You know, McDowell, McClellan, Pope, Burnsides, Hooker, Buell, Rosecrans, Butler, Banks, etc…
Hardly the choices of a good judge of military talent. Spare us the Lincoln mythology, please.
Deo Vindice
“Hardly the choices of a good judge of military talent. Spare us the Lincoln mythology, please.”
Unlike Jefferson Davis and his incompetent cronies in Richmond, Lincoln at least had enough sense to eventually fire the generals that didn’t perform.
Jefferson Davis really screwed the South by leaving Bragg in as long as he did, even after sending Johnston out with vague orders to deal with the chaos in the Army of Tennessee.
Later, he placed the broken, double amputee Hood in charge of the army. But then who could foresee that Hood would destroy the army completely at Franklin and Nashville?
Still the point, Rudel. Just because Davis made some really bad decisions doesn’t mean Lincoln was any sort of military genius. Like I said, he only won the “general lottery.” If you have the resources to play long enough, which the north did, you will eventually turn up with a “winner”, which the north did, at a terrible cost.
Deo Vindice
I’ve always admired Joseph E. Johnston who is unfairly maligned but was a first rate tactician who knew how to effectively defend and preserve his Armies while under fierce attack by numerically superior forces both during the Peninsula Campaign and in his brilliant retreat from Chattanooga to Atlanta where he consistently thwarted Sherman’s efforts to outflank and destroy him even though Hood did let him down severely at Cassville when he failed to attack as ordered.
Nevertheless there is no denying that Grant, Sherman, and Sheridan were ruthless winners in the end.
Joe Johnston was more competent, but a chronic retreater and intimidated by numbers. If he hadn’t been blown off his horse during McClellan s march up the peninsula he would have abandoned Richmond and that would have been the end. Lee got command by a fluke. Although Johnston fought a credible retreating campaign before mad dog Sherman he just was not aggressive, I recall a comment by a member of the Confederate Congress that if Johnston remained in command he would retreat to the tip of Florida and request boats to evacuate to Cuba. The swine Lincoln made a conscious effort to find a general that might be capable of winning – the damned drunk Grant really fell into it – right place right time – Russian attrition tactics – but Jeff Davis NEVER made any effort to discern quality, so the genius’ in the West, Cleburne and Forrest were never given the command their talents warranted. How we yet pay for that disaster today.
“Joe Johnston was more competent, but a chronic retreater and intimidated by numbers.”
If he hadn’t made a fighting retreat then there would have been no Army for Lee to assume command of.
“Although Johnston fought a credible retreating campaign before mad dog Sherman he just was not aggressive”
Though vastly outnumbered he was aggressive enough to engage the enemy in a brilliant series of battles at Dalton, Cassville (where Hood let him down,) New Hope Church, Pickett’s Mill, Dallas, Kolb’s Farm, and Kennesaw Mountain, which prevented Sherman from flanking him and destroying his Army.
“I recall a comment by a member of the Confederate Congress that if Johnston remained in command he would retreat to the tip of Florida and request boats to evacuate to Cuba.”
Those lilly livered politicians would have said that wouldn’t they? The fools instead re-instated that abject failure, petty tyrant, and greasy sycophant Braxton Bragg who had gotten the Confederacy into such a mess militarily in the first place.
“intimidated by numbers.”
Robert E. Lee would have been well served at Gettysburg if he had taken Meade’s numbers into greater account both when choosing his ground and in giving instructions to his corps commanders.
Lee should have avoided direct engagement and spent his time there burning the place down. The biggest problem for the South was being double minded. On the one hand our leaders wanted a defensive war only because they thought it was moral and that the yankees would just go home. On the other hand they thought offensive action would bring in European aide and they had no clear overall plan.
We made other mistakes, like thinking yankees still believed in State sovereignty after their various flirtations with secessionist and what have you, but the mishmash of offensive vs defensive was the biggest. In my opinion. Lots of other folks disagree with good solid arguments
Don’t forget the mistake of attacking Ft Sumter in the first place. 🙂
“Don’t forget the mistake of attacking Ft Sumter in the first place.”
The Union troops at the fort were blockading Charleston Harbor, a clear cut act of war. How is it a “mistake” to successfully remove them by force of arms?
How could a single, incompleted, island fort, with a garrison of only 120 soldiers, and less than half of it’s cannons installed, successfully blockade an entire harbor in the middle of enemy territory?
President Lincoln ordered a fleet of ships, under the command of Gustavus V. Fox, to attempt entry into Charleston Harbor and supply Fort Sumter. The ships assigned were the steam sloop-of-war USS Pawnee, steam sloop-of-war USS Powhatan, transporting motorized launches and about 300 sailors (secretly removed from the Charleston fleet to join in the forced reinforcement of Fort Pickens, Pensacola, Fla.), armed screw steamer USS Pocahontas, Revenue Cutter USRC Harriet Lane, steamer Baltic transporting about 200 troops, composed of companies C and D of the 2nd U.S. Artillery, and three hired tug boats with added protection against small arms fire to be used to tow troop and supply barges directly to Fort Sumter.
It was no mistake to attack Sumter, it was a blunder not to have taken Washington, and possibly capturing that genetic defect Lincoln after the rout of the US Army in First Bull Run.
As for Joe Johnston he dallied with an Army of 58000 men before Vicksburg with his Army of Relief and never advanced on Grant, whose scattered forces only had 51000 mustered around Vicksburg – Johnston in fact abandoned Jackson and retreated from Vicksburg. Grant doubled his army in the interim.
As far as the Peninsula Campaign, if Lee had been in charge from the beginning McClellan would have never advanced as far inland as he did – Lee was a fighter, not a retreater.
how many cannons does it take to stop commercial traffic? Probably not very many
Sumpter was being used by the Lincoln Regime as a beachhead/blockade for the Charleston harbour. Occupying it was militarily provokative. Reinforcing it with the fleet and troops Lincoln sent in was an act of war. Firing on Sumpter was good strategy.
The fleet that Lincoln was known to have sent would have plugged the harbour good. Charleston would have been invaded and subjugated in the next wave.
I sometimes get bogged down in War Between The States arguments and trivia. (Not that these events were in any way trivial to the participants.) This stems from my coming of age during the Centennial observance of the War and all the surrounding hoopla in the early 1960’s. One gets sidetracked by reading Lee’s Lieutenants and all the what-if and if-only scenarios and the general re-hashing of events.
One conclusion that I have reached as an adult is a very economically deterministic one. The South and its culture was doomed to defeat by the Industrial Revolution in general and nothing could have stopped that in the long run.
I also believe that the United States of America is doomed to disintegration and diminution by unsound money, universal suffrage, and open borders and nothing can stop that in the long run either. Big Capital has been liberated from control by government. It now does the controlling. That genie will not go back in the bottle.
That’s the one arm tied behind tbe back argument. Tbe Union may not have even gotten warmed up. I also think the two cultures were also doomed to clash at some point. The Aristocrat v the Industrialist.
What is going to happen now is pure balkanization.
If niggers weren’t in the picture, everything would be fine.
The black vote is not critical. They live contained in the south for the most part. The whites there cancel them out.
“That genie will not go back in the bottle.”
Rudel
None of these genies are going back into the bottle with out some civilization shaking events.
“That genie will not go back in the bottle.”
Rudel
“None of these genies are going back into the bottle with out some civilization shaking events.”
Stonelifter
Most assuredly true. The rot has set in and is very extensive.
Deo Vindice