Wow. That's All I Can Say.

I believe Lincoln sent warships to resupply Fort Sumter. This was after South Carolina seceded. Charleston was the South's biggest port. The export of Cotton was essential to the South's economy. What would you have done? The warships converging on Charleston was the first aggression!

Heck, with good enough intelligence, the meeting may have been in London/Berlin/Moscow, or any number of other places based on wars that went as they went in the past....

So, for the Hon. [?] Sen. Chambliss [a Republican, need I add?], "we" is the Confederacy? "If we had better intelligence in the Civil War we'd be quoting Jefferson Davis, not Lincoln."

Thanks for the pointer. Makes me feel better about referring to the Civil War as the War of Southern Treason whenever a neo-confederate student objects to my saying "Civil War."

...and if your aunt were a man she'd be your uncle.

A spokesperson for Chambliss said the story wasn't correct and that what the Senator actually said said was, "If Gen. JEB Stuart had had better intelligence, we'd all be meeting in Richmond right now."

I think this is even a tad confused. JEB Stuart was responsible for obtaining the intelligence in the first place. If he didn't have it, it was his own fault! He was only a cavalry commander and had no powers to command an army regardless of intelligence. I think the spokesman meant to say Robert E. Lee (as it's generally agreed that Lee's failure at Gettysburg was due in part to a lack of intelligence, which was blamed on Stuart). Even then, the statement is rather vacuous. You could say that of pretty much any defeated army.

Makes me feel better about referring to the Civil War as the War of Southern Treason whenever a neo-confederate student objects to my saying "Civil War."

As any well-bred Southerner can tell you, the war between the states is most properly referred to as, "The War of Northern Aggression." ;)

Bill:

When T. Harry Williams was teaching at LSU and the subject of the proper term to describe what happened 1861-65 came up, he used to tell us that to avoid disagreement, he was going to call it "the late unpleasantness."

Funny how Republicans bang on about Democrats and leftists being traitors and disrespecting the flag, only to publicly wish that the South had succeeded in seceding from the Union.

Actually, the true irony there is that he's actually saying that if the United States had had less good intelligence, the Union would have lost the Civil War.

"They say: 'Its Communists like you,
That freed the slaves.
And they're right."

Phil Okes, 1965

Isn't "What if the South won the Civil War?" a perennial subject of alternate history fiction? How is Shambliss' comment not simply an example of that genre?

Saxby Chambliss knows nothing about war. He was a DRAFT-DODGER!!!

Well see, all they'd have to do is win at Appomatox Courthouse ... oh no wait, at Cold Harbor ... oh no wait, Atlanta, Vicksburg, Gettysburg? Antietam?

One could argue that Antietam could have decided the war, if the South had taken Washington before the Emancipation Proclamtion then maybe, MAYBE, England and France would have recognized the Confederacy. Even then the Union had a better than even chance of winning. Union commerce raiders would have done to the British merchant fleet what Confederate commerce raiders did to the Union merchant fleet. The American iron clads were more than powerful enough to protect the shores (albeit in limited numbers). Canada had fewer troops than the Union had guarding railroads and depots.

The Confederacy was doomed as long as the Union had the will to continue fighting. Once the Union had 100,000 casualties, they would have continued fighting until beaten down ... just like the Confederacy did.

It's not heritage, it's celebrating treason and racism.

If the South had had more intelligent people, they never would have gotten into the War of Northern Aggression (/sarcasm) at all.

Aside from the fact that slavery was not only morally reprehensible and it was also economically inefficient, it was the South that fired the opening shots of the WoNA on Ft. Sumter off Charleston SC, a Federal installation. Maybe the WoNA should be renamed the WoSA--the War of Southern Aggression, since they were the initial aggressors.

I'm going to have to nick the term "War of Southern Treason", because it deflates the long-running 'WoNA' prattle. Plus, the acronym for it, WoST, reminds me of someone crying into their beer about "it's not our fault we WoST, honest. It was those wascally yankees, weally it was!"

Come now, what's so bad about what he said? To see the Civil War as something other than "the war to free the slaves" was exactly how most Northerners saw the was as well. In fact, the way that most Northerners saw the war was exactly how His Majesty's loyal subjects saw the "treason" of the colonies.

Regarding the Civil War with the righteous smugness of freedom that we tend to today is about as accurate as viewing WWII as a battle waged to free the Jews. Neither are accurate.

mnuez