April 14, 1865
- Thread starter SkyRider
- Start date
The Confederate army surrendered on April 9th, 1865.
Walt Whitman penned this poem -- a moving tribute and mourning for A.L.
1 O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Walt Whitman penned this poem -- a moving tribute and mourning for A.L.
1 O CAPTAIN! my Captain! our fearful trip is done;
The ship has weather’d every rack, the prize we sought is won;
The port is near, the bells I hear, the people all exulting,
While follow eyes the steady keel, the vessel grim and daring:
But O heart! heart! heart!
O the bleeding drops of red,
Where on the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
2 O Captain! my Captain! rise up and hear the bells;
Rise up—for you the flag is flung—for you the bugle trills;
For you bouquets and ribbon’d wreaths—for you the shores a-crowding;
For you they call, the swaying mass, their eager faces turning;
Here Captain! dear father!
This arm beneath your head;
It is some dream that on the deck,
You’ve fallen cold and dead.
3 My Captain does not answer, his lips are pale and still;
My father does not feel my arm, he has no pulse nor will;
The ship is anchor’d safe and sound, its voyage closed and done;
From fearful trip, the victor ship, comes in with object won;
Exult, O shores, and ring, O bells!
But I, with mournful tread,
Walk the deck my Captain lies,
Fallen cold and dead.
Indeed he was shot on the 14th, however he actually died on the 15th.
You beat me to starting a thread.
http://www.philly.com/philly/news/nation_world/20150415_ap_44c4048481504516b7cb23b7a269b56c.html
His predecessor Andrew Jackson was more controversial, but absolutely Van Buren was not a popular president.Martin Van Buren?
Ironic isn't it considering that his torpedoing of the Second Bank of the United States was a major cause of the Panic of 1837.
As long as we're slinging easy calumnies, I'm curious how many who took up arms to overthrow their country's lawful government wound up hanged as the traitors they were.
War crime or not southerners' celebration of Lincoln's assassination
at the time of his death shouldn't come as any surprise. Of the many
atrocities committed by the Union army Sherman's Savannah campaign
was the most devastating.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Savannah Campaign
This campaign is more popularly known as Sherman’s March to the Sea. It is dated from 15 November, in the aftermath of General John Bell Hood’s accidental razing of much of Atlanta, Georgia, to 21 December 1864. Hood’s intent was to burn military supplies lest they fall into General William Sherman’s hands, but most of the city was made of wood and the winds were high.
Sherman ordered his army of 62,000 men with 64 cannons to march from Atlanta 300 miles southeast to Savannah, Georgia and destroy absolutely everything in their path, especially the railroads. They ripped apart the ties, heated and wrapped the rails around trees, dynamited factories, and burned down towns, farms, banks and courthouses. Sherman had given orders that the civilian population was not to be harmed personally unless they resisted, and that his intent was to break the South’s back, physically and psychologically, and put an end to its stubbornness.
Whether the march itself constitutes a war crime is still a fiercely contended subject. It is effectively the same form of warfare as dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was understood in both cases that the civilians, not just the military, would suffer terribly, and civilian outcry would help put an end to the war. But Sherman had no intention of deliberately killing civilians and the march must be left open to debate because of this.
Nevertheless, Sherman knew that civilian deaths would be unavoidable and explained himself in a speech after the war with the statement, “War is Hell.” Uncorroborated reports exist of a massacre of 200 civilians north of Columbia, South Carolina a few months before the march commenced, so Sherman knew full well what his men would do whenever no responsible eyes watched them. Three days after Atlanta was fully evacuated, Sherman ordered the city’s unburned sections shelled to ruins. One shell passed down through a house and blew off the legs of a man named Warner. The same shell cut his daughter in half.
Sherman personally saw his men rape and murder unyielding slaves throughout the march and gave no order to stop this. Those slaves who accepted the offer to enlist were given unarmed porter duties and treated comparatively well, but could only rely on food and water provisions when they were in surplus after the army was satisfied. Sherman also ordered the execution by firing squad of a 50-year-old man accused of espionage. He was most likely not guilty but was given no trial. All crops were either consumed or burned, as were all livestock slaughtered. It is surmised that 50,000 civilians were killed during the war, and possibly 1,000 of them died during the Savannah Campaign at the hands of soldiers unlawfully entering their houses to pillage. The 3rd and 4th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit this.
http://listverse.com/2013/03/17/10-war-crimes-of-the-us-civil-war/
at the time of his death shouldn't come as any surprise. Of the many
atrocities committed by the Union army Sherman's Savannah campaign
was the most devastating.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Savannah Campaign
This campaign is more popularly known as Sherman’s March to the Sea. It is dated from 15 November, in the aftermath of General John Bell Hood’s accidental razing of much of Atlanta, Georgia, to 21 December 1864. Hood’s intent was to burn military supplies lest they fall into General William Sherman’s hands, but most of the city was made of wood and the winds were high.
Sherman ordered his army of 62,000 men with 64 cannons to march from Atlanta 300 miles southeast to Savannah, Georgia and destroy absolutely everything in their path, especially the railroads. They ripped apart the ties, heated and wrapped the rails around trees, dynamited factories, and burned down towns, farms, banks and courthouses. Sherman had given orders that the civilian population was not to be harmed personally unless they resisted, and that his intent was to break the South’s back, physically and psychologically, and put an end to its stubbornness.
Whether the march itself constitutes a war crime is still a fiercely contended subject. It is effectively the same form of warfare as dropping atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It was understood in both cases that the civilians, not just the military, would suffer terribly, and civilian outcry would help put an end to the war. But Sherman had no intention of deliberately killing civilians and the march must be left open to debate because of this.
Nevertheless, Sherman knew that civilian deaths would be unavoidable and explained himself in a speech after the war with the statement, “War is Hell.” Uncorroborated reports exist of a massacre of 200 civilians north of Columbia, South Carolina a few months before the march commenced, so Sherman knew full well what his men would do whenever no responsible eyes watched them. Three days after Atlanta was fully evacuated, Sherman ordered the city’s unburned sections shelled to ruins. One shell passed down through a house and blew off the legs of a man named Warner. The same shell cut his daughter in half.
Sherman personally saw his men rape and murder unyielding slaves throughout the march and gave no order to stop this. Those slaves who accepted the offer to enlist were given unarmed porter duties and treated comparatively well, but could only rely on food and water provisions when they were in surplus after the army was satisfied. Sherman also ordered the execution by firing squad of a 50-year-old man accused of espionage. He was most likely not guilty but was given no trial. All crops were either consumed or burned, as were all livestock slaughtered. It is surmised that 50,000 civilians were killed during the war, and possibly 1,000 of them died during the Savannah Campaign at the hands of soldiers unlawfully entering their houses to pillage. The 3rd and 4th Amendments to the Constitution prohibit this.
http://listverse.com/2013/03/17/10-war-crimes-of-the-us-civil-war/
As Major Henry Hitchcock, one of Sherman's staff officers, wrote "it is a terrible thing to consume and destroy the sustenance of thousands of people," but if the scorched earth strategy served "to paralyze their husbands and fathers who are fighting ... it is mercy in the end."
Or as David J. Eicher has written in the present day "Sherman. . . destroyed much of the South's potential and psychology to wage war."
Or as David J. Eicher has written in the present day "Sherman. . . destroyed much of the South's potential and psychology to wage war."
Anytime you enslave entire class of people, you have no claims on freedom, just hypocrisy. Yes the American revolution was based on hypocrisy as well.
Nor does enslaving others excuse crimes against you and your people. Both just ensure we're racing each other to the bottom.
And SkyRider, those peace-loving Southerners of yours shot first, in the name of secession, not succession.
(Is it now impossible to modify a post after it has been posted? Anyways I ended up deleting the original post.)
Slavery would have disappeared in no more than 20 years in any case. The war was about imposing the will of the North against a smaller and weaker South.
So you say; who promised that to the enslaved in what law? What comfort would freedom—maybe—be to a mother whose children were sold? Or a buck past his prime and sold down-river to be worked to death?
All wars are about imposing will by force; within a single country smart folks accept their weaker numbers mean they must accede to that will, while a wise majority does what it can to keep outright imposition to a peaceable minimum. As the anti-slavery folks, mostly in the North did for almost a hundred years. But there wasn't a lot of ground in the middle of an issue like that. Which had the unfortunate result of increasing Southern paranoia and obstinacy, as they became ever-more convinced that slavery was essential to their very existence and under threat. To the point that they opted to attack and destroy the entire country to preserve that peculiar institution.
And by doing so brought about both Sherman's March and Emanciption.
----------
PS: Perhaps your browser defeats the Edit Post function. I'd be lost without it. Used it just now. And again.
