You didn’t even wait for our resident rabid libs to post about how this proves that we are all a bunch of racist, warmongering, fascists before posting actual facts to completely shut them down.

Where’s the fun in that??

A most well reasoned and thoughtful post. The way the Union handled the whole succession issue forms the basis for the overly rigid, and powerful, central federal government we’ve all grown to dislike and distrust (at least us conservatives). The three presidents that did the most to pervert the course of US government away from the original intent were, IMO, Lincoln, FDR, and LBJ. Lincoln gave us an overweaning central govt, FDR legitimized socialism with the New Deal (and prolonged the Depression), and LBJ took it to it’s extremes with his New Society. This sure ain’t the government our forefathers signed up for.

This staunch Yankee and Unionist has the greatest respect for Nathan Bedford Forrest, Robert E. Lee, Longstreet, Jackson, and the rest–and the South’s treatment after the Civil War was indeed pretty horrendous.

Of course, with our so-sophisticated, so-tolerant 20/20 hindsight, we can damn Forrest for founding the KKK; we can damn Lee for being a ‘defender of slavery’; we can thrice damn Jackson for being a Christian, a ruthlessly capable defender of his home, AND for ‘defending slavery’. And we can insist that the South refuse to honor her heroes, that she remove all reference to the Stainless Banner or the Battle Flag, and that she essentially obliterate a proud heritage in service to political correctness.

It’s odd, because those who actually fought against the South–people like Joshua Chamberlain, Winfield Hancock, George Custer, Grant, Sherman, and all the rest–Lincoln not least–held their opponents in high esteem, though they felt that the South fought for a deeply flawed cause. If those men, who killed, and were killed by, Southerners, could extend wartime respect, admiration and post-war friendship, then why do we, their distant descendants, feel it obligatory to traduce the South’s heroes?

Shame on us; and this Yank says, ‘I’m so very sorry–some of us Northerners recognize valor and honor in our long-ago opponents, and refuse to traduce their memory’.

Okay, no more ranting….

Also, in the above, I meant seize Southerner’s property, obviously they didn’t seize and sell “them,” the Southerner’s themselves.

But let’s review history shall we? I know, I know, history is not a strong suit of liberals, but we all know how often it provides illumination and insight.

Nathan Bedford Forrest did indeed found the KKK after the War Between The States, but it was founded to counter the radicalist Union Leagues that rabid, fanatical, anti-Southern nutjobs (sound vaguely like modern liberals?) set up in the South. They did such lovely things as help make it illegal for Southerners to vote, stuff local governments with Pro-Union types who then raised taxes, knowing the poor, distressed Southerners couldn’t pay them, so they could seize them and sell them for pennies to their political allies and friends, encourage racial tension, stage the odd riot, etc. All the totalitarian, hypocritical, unethical things the modern liberal just looooves to this day.

Forrest started the Klan with that in mind. He was not a bigot, unlike Sherman. When the Klan began to veer off from the organization he had envisioned and founded, he sought to rein it in, when he proved unsuccessful, he quit it and “officially” disbanded it in 1869, less than 4 years after it was founded. It continued on, but as a radically different organization than he intended, and he had no part in it, had disowned it, and sought to stifle it. And was invited to speak at the founding of one of the first all black schools in the South, an invitation he said he was honored to accept, and gave a moving and sincere speech of encouragement and support to the school. An honorable man who was capable of changing his mind and working towards the betterment of the country, and a damned sharp military mind.

But, never let the facts of history get in the way of a good accusation of bigotry or racism eh lefties? You have to keep wailing about other people’s alleged racism to divert attention from the endemic racism and anti-Semitism in the modern liberal movement.