It's very interesting to see the reconsideration of Grant in the last few years. There are 3 or 4 new biographies on Grant out in the last 5 years or so, with Chernow's new book being the latest. I've been interested in American Ulysses since I heard about it but haven't had time to read it. Sounds like I should clear some time.

It's great that you're reading Grant's memoirs in conjunction with the biography. They really might be the best in a long, distinguished history of military memoirs. Obviously any autobiography has to be taken with a grain of salt, but he's a gifted writer and remarkably frank and forthcoming.

His commitment to the Union and similar sentiments among the others led to he war that made him famous. Had the north let the south go a lot of dead people would have been avoided. President Buchanan had the right idea: depart, wayward brothers in peace. No such idea ever permeated the brains of Lincoln et al.

It is laughable to consider that Grant and others thought the war decided whether the southerners wanted to be governed by people of their own choosing. When the first elections were held and the southerners elected a boatload of ex Confederate generals and colonels to represent them in DC and in the state houses the northerners went berserk. And so you got that delightful period called reconstruction.

His memoirs are an excellent read and the best thing ever written by a President except for Lincoln's speeches.

huisachel said:

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His commitment to the Union and similar sentiments among the others led to he war that made him famous. Had the north let the south go a lot of dead people would have been avoided. President Buchanan had the right idea: depart, wayward brothers in peace. No such idea ever permeated the brains of Lincoln et al.

It is laughable to consider that Grant and others thought the war decided whether the southerners wanted to be governed by people of their own choosing. When the first elections were held and the southerners elected a boatload of ex Confederate generals and colonels to represent them in DC and in the state houses the northerners went berserk. And so you got that delightful period called reconstruction.

His memoirs are an excellent read and the best thing ever written by a President except for Lincoln's speeches.

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Buchanan failed in his role as chief executive of the United States. Pure and simple. To flip your statement, if the south decided holding slaves wasn't more important than lives, the war could have been avoided.

As for Reconstruction, the white South lost the war and their first response was to put the same people in charge as caused the war in the first place and put newly freed slaves into a position identical to slavery. Over 330,000 Union soldiers died and white Southerners wanted to pretend nothing had changed?

It all depends on what you think the role of President should be: should it be to preserve the boundaries of the country at all costs or to respect the wishes of one portion of the country that wishes to dissolve the bonds that have tied it to another? Slavery was the issue that led to secession, as is clear from reading the Texas secession ordinance or any other southern diatribes of the time.

But secession did not automatically mean war. Buchanan decided he did not have the constitutional authority to make war to force the south to stay in the disunited states. He thought the war would be costly in extreme. He was right as to the latter at least.

As to whether he was correct in thinking that it was the south's right to leave, I would make the following suggestion: No country lasts forever. Rome didn't, the greatness that was Athens did not, etc. All countries or empires or what have you have end dates. It is just a matter of when and what causes it. The US will not last forever. I don't know when it will dissolve or be dissolved but it is as certain as the sun making an appearance tomorrow morning.

The north and south had reached a point where they were not on the same page any more and both were fed up with each other. The south was stunned when John Brown was celebrated as a hero by the north. Stunned. He had tried to raise a slave revolt which would have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people who had no slaves as well as those who did. Read up on Nat Turner or Haiti and you will get an idea of how the south looked on that possibility. And their countrymen to the north were celebrating Brown's effort and turned him into a pop hero. Sort of like Che Guevara. The southerners decided they should not wait around for the next episode, especially considering that the north was getting to the point of demographic certainty to politically overwhelm them. Get out while the getting is possible.

Lincoln, in his certainty of his own convictions, thought he could force them back in easily. He asked for troops in a number under 100,000 for six months. He completely misread the depths of the resistance and the willingness to fight by the southerners, who believed his election was an existential threat---and they were right. I am not defending their determination to defend their labor system, merely pointing out that they thought it necessary.

The war came because the man who was elected president was an old Whig who worshiped Henry Clay and believed the Union was a mystical body that could not be rendered. So he waged war to force the southerners to stay against their wishes and half a million people got killed

When the war ended and the states were allowed to conduct elections the southerners elected the people who they thought best represented their interests. Just like we do now. I don't care for Abbott or Patrick or Paxton but I acknowledge that they were the choices of the electorate--and for the reasons why I don't like them. They won, my guys did not. So the obvious solution to that problem is to dissolve the state government and install a new one more to my liking, right?

A majority of southerners were unreconstructed. They thought they lost the war and had to be part of the US again; they did not think they lost the argument that led to the war. I think they made a mistake and should have embraced the idea of educating the freedmen and helped them find ways to sustain themselves----forty acres and a mule or a Kardashian or whatever it would take. This was not the path the southerners chose,

huisachel said:

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It all depends on what you think the role of President should be: should it be to preserve the boundaries of the country at all costs or to respect the wishes of one portion of the country that wishes to dissolve the bonds that have tied it to another? Slavery was the issue that led to secession, as is clear from reading the Texas secession ordinance or any other southern diatribes of the time.

But secession did not automatically mean war. Buchanan decided he did not have the constitutional authority to make war to force the south to stay in the disunited states. He thought the war would be costly in extreme. He was right as to the latter at least.

As to whether he was correct in thinking that it was the south's right to leave, I would make the following suggestion: No country lasts forever. Rome didn't, the greatness that was Athens did not, etc. All countries or empires or what have you have end dates. It is just a matter of when and what causes it. The US will not last forever. I don't know when it will dissolve or be dissolved but it is as certain as the sun making an appearance tomorrow morning.

The north and south had reached a point where they were not on the same page any more and both were fed up with each other. The south was stunned when John Brown was celebrated as a hero by the north. Stunned. He had tried to raise a slave revolt which would have resulted in the deaths of thousands of people who had no slaves as well as those who did. Read up on Nat Turner or Haiti and you will get an idea of how the south looked on that possibility. And their countrymen to the north were celebrating Brown's effort and turned him into a pop hero. Sort of like Che Guevara. The southerners decided they should not wait around for the next episode, especially considering that the north was getting to the point of demographic certainty to politically overwhelm them. Get out while the getting is possible.

Lincoln, in his certainty of his own convictions, thought he could force them back in easily. He asked for troops in a number under 100,000 for six months. He completely misread the depths of the resistance and the willingness to fight by the southerners, who believed his election was an existential threat---and they were right. I am not defending their determination to defend their labor system, merely pointing out that they thought it necessary.

The war came because the man who was elected president was an old Whig who worshiped Henry Clay and believed the Union was a mystical body that could not be rendered. So he waged war to force the southerners to stay against their wishes and half a million people got killed

When the war ended and the states were allowed to conduct elections the southerners elected the people who they thought best represented their interests. Just like we do now. I don't care for Abbott or Patrick or Paxton but I acknowledge that they were the choices of the electorate--and for the reasons why I don't like them. They won, my guys did not. So the obvious solution to that problem is to dissolve the state government and install a new one more to my liking, right?

A majority of southerners were unreconstructed. They thought they lost the war and had to be part of the US again; they did not think they lost the argument that led to the war. I think they made a mistake and should have embraced the idea of educating the freedmen and helped them find ways to sustain themselves----forty acres and a mule or a Kardashian or whatever it would take. This was not the path the southerners chose,

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An intrguing reply, well-formed. How do you understand the argument that secession was the equivalent of having the enemy inside the gates? Surely those who favor Lincoln's view of the Union would argue that the southern states leaving the Union was itself an existential threat to the remaining Union, almost by definition, and that once the South was "out" there was nothing to stop them from allying themselves with Great Britain or Mexico or another country that would threaten the soft underbelly of the remaining Union. Does that threat hold any water for you?

Thanks.

None: the south had designs on the Gulf and Caribbean and a larger slave empire. Go to the TSHA's Handbook of Texas Online and look up William Walker, the Knights of the Golden Circle and Henry Kinney (founder of Corpus Christi) for some info on what was in store for the south. The idea that Texas would let the Confederacy cut any deals with Mexico is not tenable and the Mexicans hated Texas and slavery. The slavery issue would also prohibit England from doing anything but tolerate the south for business reasons.

Had the French invaded Mexico in 1862 and set up Maximilian the Confederacy would have cut off the Rio Grande as a trade route for Juarez and he would have died on the vine. Lincoln bailed him out by leaving that one southern port open during the war.

The larger problem would have been the south's. How do you deal with the fact that you have no outlet to the Pacific unless you make nice with the Yankees? Who takes care of the Comanches for you?

And what do you do the first time the Texans are unhappy? They will secede you know.

So I don't think the north has any threat it could not deal with from the south (and with all the Democrats gone, the GOP would have a free hand to enact the Whig platform with all its internal improvements and high tariffs, etc.) and the south has a lot of problems it would have troubles solving.

Also, no war over Cuba with the US but rather an attempt by the Confederacy to grab it.

Mistaken frown face. Should have been a ?

huisachel said:

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None: the south had designs on the Gulf and Caribbean and a larger slave empire. Go to the TSHA's Handbook of Texas Online and look up William Walker, the Knights of the Golden Circle and Henry Kinney (founder of Corpus Christi) for some info on what was in store for the south. The idea that Texas would let the Confederacy cut any deals with Mexico is not tenable and the Mexicans hated Texas and slavery. The slavery issue would also prohibit England from doing anything but tolerate the south for business reasons.

Had the French invaded Mexico in 1862 and set up Maximilian the Confederacy would have cut off the Rio Grande as a trade route for Juarez and he would have died on the vine. Lincoln bailed him out by leaving that one southern port open during the war.

The larger problem would have been the south's. How do you deal with the fact that you have no outlet to the Pacific unless you make nice with the Yankees? Who takes care of the Comanches for you?

And what do you do the first time the Texans are unhappy? They will secede you know.

So I don't think the north has any threat it could not deal with from the south (and with all the Democrats gone, the GOP would have a free hand to enact the Whig platform with all its internal improvements and high tariffs, etc.) and the south has a lot of problems it would have troubles solving.

Also, no war over Cuba with the US but rather an attempt by the Confederacy to grab it.

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Thanks. You have definitely given me something to think about. The only Constitutional argument against secession that has ever carried any weight with me is the argument that the south seceding was an existential threat to the remaining Union and therefore Lincoln was within his powers as CinC to use the military to stop it.

If I am reading you correctly, you don't see any constitutional basis for using the military to stop the secession?

Just my opinion

But he thought he did

And we are where we are

Still working on the kinks in a very twisted rope