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Pastimes : Don't Ask Rambi -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: jhild who wrote (58407)	2/3/2001 6:46:28 PM
From: nihil	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 71178

I have misrepresented nothing. Instead of bitching, you might cite some data. You might also look into the definition of a just war. I understand it is bullshit, but when a leader undertakes to start a war he is obligated by morality to have justice on his side, to have a reasonable chance of winning it, and knowing some way to end it. This is a weak form of Powell Doctrine. The fools who fired on Fort Sumter knew full well they were starting a bloody civil war. Those of them with a shred of political sense, understood that the South could not win (especially since at the time they started it, there were only 7 pitiful little rural states in that gimcrack confederacy.) They hadn't a clue as to how they could end the war. Poor, pitiful, bloody, immoral, evil fools. I cannot see into the hearts of men. I can only judge them by their acts, not their yawping. Anyone who rushes joyfully into war without counting the cost is a fool. I assure you any of the professional soldiers who joined the Southern cause knew that they were joining a cause that could not be expected to win. Defeat was not inevitable. A bullet might have killed Lincoln and replaced him with a lesser man. A fool might have ruled in England and rescued his Southern friends. All kinds of weird things could have happened, but where one can win a war only by luck, it is best to take a bromide and sleep the anger and the fury off. I say again -- it is immoral and evil to start a war that one cannot expect to win. Those who started the civil war had no law or justice on their side. "States Rights" was, and is today, merely "Slavery -- Now and Forever." There is nothing original in my arguments about the Civil War and nothing wrong. You may examine Carl Sandburg's Abraham Lincoln in six magnificent volumes, or Bruce Catton's Cenmtennial History of the Civil War in three volumes if you want to see the facts that I have most recently perused. It would do you good to learn something about the Civil War and about American Constitutional History. I have never seen any positive evidence that you know anything about these subjects. You are simply a loud mouth with no substance. You should read every line of the fugitive slave act, and every word of the Dred Scott Decision. You should read about John Brown to have some idea of what real radicals were ready to die for. You should read, if you have the time, the collected papers of Abraham Lincoln, paying special attention to his little campaign to gain support for the preliminary emancipation proclamation starting July 22, 1862. As for me, it is all summed up in John Sherman's speech to the veterans --- "War is Hell!" Contrast that to Lee's evil remarks at Fredericksberg as he watched his troops slaughter yankees by the thousand: "It is well that war is so terrible, lest we should grow too fond of it." He was obviously a blood thirsty man who was determined to fight an unjust, losing war, until he was crushed and defeated. It think it is too bad that he was not tried for treason, convicted, hanged, drawn and quartered and his severed quarters exhibited in the places that he caused thousands of men to die in a useless and immoral struggle. It is easy to see why General Pickett despised him for killing his division. No decent man could have sent those troops across the field into the guns and certain death. It is known that Lee was suffering from high blood pressure and atheroschlerosis which was to kill him a few years later. He had aged terribly during the war. I suspect his brain was seriously damaged. I think it is particularly pitiful and cowardly that he did not draw his sword and march in front of his troops in that futile and deadly charge. Maybe then he would deserve some respect. I usually admire people who are willing to die for what they believe in. I never respect a man who sends others to die for no good purpose.