Ye Cavaliers of Dixie!

I think we can all agree, Lost-Cause loons aside, that every Southern officer was a traitor who’d earned the right to dangle. But alas, if you go hanging every single officer of a defeated army, you can very easily end up with a nasty insurgency on your hands. Those men had brothers and cousins, quite a lot of them. In the 19th-century Anglo world, wealthy families had lots of kids, and their brats tended to survive at a higher rate than starved poor kids. Take the ex-Confederates I’m going to talk about here: Jubal Early and Porter Alexander each had nine brothers and sisters, and Nathan Bedford Forrest had 11 siblings. Kill the twenty-something son who served with the Confederacy, and you have to deal with four or five kid brothers swearing revenge.

At the same time, it’s clear that the policy the Union actually pursued—not hanging any Southern officers except the miserable wretch who commanded Andersonville POW camp—failed miserably. A decade after we defeated the Confederacy at the cost of 300,000 loyal Union soldiers’ lives, the same planter oligarchy was running the South again, terrorizing the Freedmen and women who were our only loyal allies during the war, making sure black people never got a chance to vote, running them off their farms, doing their best to recreate slavery without the name.

And it might have been possible to prevent that disaster by hanging key ex-Confederate officers in the spring of 1865. All the leaders of the post-war terrorist fascist gangs that disenfranchised African-Americans in the South were former Confederate officers. If we’d thinned their ranks in an intelligent way, Reconstruction might have been something other than a grotesque and bloody farce.

There are some obvious guidelines for thinning the ranks of a dangerous group:

>You don’t kill the top, the figureheads. They’ve got enough name recognition to become martyrs quickly, and they’ve usually passed their peak by the time of their defeat.
>You don’t kill incompetents. Keep those incompetents alive as long as possible.
>You don’t kill the corrupt. You buy them and use them to turn your former enemies against each other.
>You kill the exceptional, the most ruthless, fearless, unkillable leaders in the defeated army. If you don’t kill them now, at their weakest point, you’ll regret it.

I’m not talking about justice here. Justice would have demanded hanging every Confederate with a rank of colonel or higher. But often the higher the rank, the older the man, the more tired and harmless he was by the time of the Surrender. Jefferson Davis, for example; justice says he should have hanged, if not tortured to death, but Davis was such a disaster as a Confederate symbol that he wasn’t one of the more dangerous post-war figures. Better to let losers like Davis live on as buffoons rather than kill them and start the songs and poems going.

No, I’m talking about practical killing. Who were the most dangerous ex-Confederates in 1865? Could they have been identified and killed before they neutralized all the gains of America’s most costly war?

You can assume that in a group as big, as tough, and as dispersed as the Confederate officer corps and its core civilian elite, there will be a huge range of reactions to surrender. Some will commit suicide, like the South Carolina long-haired fanatic Edmund Ruffin did in June, 1865. (He’d planned to do it on April 9, but he had company that day, and as a polite Southern host, he was forced to live on another two months before putting the barrel of a rifle in his mouth.)

What Southern romanticists like Leigh will never get—because it’s their very nature not to get it, just as a paranoid schizophrenic can never get that no one is persecuting him—is that Sherman’s whole military enterprise was an attempt to stop the slaughter by slapping the South into adulthood. From way before the war, when Sherman was a professor at a military academy in Louisiana, his attitude toward the South’s Planter culture was like a fond uncle watching his idiot nephew stumbling into a fast car, planning to drive drunk into the nearest tree.

Sherman tried to tell these idiots, over and over, that they were stupid and deluded. He wasn’t even going to debate the non-existent justice of their cause like Grant, who rightly called the Confederacy “the worst cause for which men ever fought.” Sherman, who was a much more analytical, intellectual man than Grant, focused on the fact that the South—the white, wealthy South, that is; the only one that mattered—was wrong. About everything. Every damn thing in the world. But most of all about its childishly romantic notions about war. Here’s what he said to his Southern friends before the war:

>“You people of the South don't know what you are doing. This country will be drenched in blood, and God only knows how it will end. It is all folly, madness, a crime against civilization! You people speak so lightly of war; you don't know what you're talking about. War is a terrible thing! You mistake, too, the people of the North. They are a peaceable people but an earnest people, and they will fight, too. They are not going to let this country be destroyed without a mighty effort to save it … Besides, where are your men and appliances of war to contend against them? The North can make a steam engine, locomotive, or railway car; hardly a yard of cloth or pair of shoes can you make. You are rushing into war with one of the most powerful, ingeniously mechanical, and determined people on Earth — right at your doors. You are bound to fail. Only in your spirit and determination are you prepared for war. In all else you are totally unprepared, with a bad cause to start with. At first you will make headway, but as your limited resources begin to fail, shut out from the markets of Europe as you will be, your cause will begin to wane. If your people will but stop and think, they must see in the end that you will surely fail.”

That was Sherman’s advice to the South before the war even began. And he was, as usual, absolutely right. But he was talking like a grown-up to people who didn’t want to think like adults. Their whole society was based on horrible lies—“a bad cause to start with”—which gave them a deep aversion to cold truths. So they stuffed themselves, as Mark Twain said, with copious doses of the worst “chivalrous” nonsense they could find, like Walter Scott’s pseudo-medieval novels, and went off to cause the biggest slaughter of their fellow Americans in history, a body-count far higher than the sum total of all Americans killed in all wars with other countries.

>“If [the Confederates] want eternal war, well and good; we accept the issue, and will dispossess them and put our friends in their place. I know thousands and millions of good people who at simple notice would come to North Alabama and accept the elegant houses and plantations there. If the people of Huntsville think different, let them persist in war three years longer, and then they will not be consulted. Three years ago by a little reflection and patience they could have had a hundred years of peace and prosperity, but they preferred war; very well. Last year they could have saved their slaves, but now it is too late. All the powers of earth cannot restore to them their slaves, any more than their dead grandfathers. Next year their lands will be taken, for in war we can take them, and rightfully, too, and in another year they may beg in vain for their lives. A people who will persevere in war beyond a certain limit ought to know the consequences. Many, many peoples with less pertinacity have been wiped out of national existence.”

Sherman was trying, in everything he did, to wake these idiots from their delusion. That’s why they hate Sherman so much, 150 years after his campaign ended in total success: Because he interrupted their silly and sadistic dreams, humiliated them in the most vulnerable part of their weird anatomy, their sense of valorous superiority. Sherman didn’t wipe out the white South, though he could easily have done so; he was, in fact, very mild toward a treasonous population that regularly sniped at and ambushed his troops. But what he did was demonstrate the impotence of the South’s Planter males.

The taking and burning of Atlanta were just one more chance to slap the South awake, as Sherman saw it. When he was scolded—by people who were in the habit of whipping slaves half to death for trivial lapses—for his severity toward the (white, landowning) people of Atlanta, he replied, in his “Letter to Atlanta,” in a way that shows how patiently he kept trying to talk grown-up sense to an insane population:

>"You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country…

Sherman saw clearly that the craziness of the white South was bone-deep, and could never fully be eradicated. What Sherman did hope—and it was a realistic hope, fulfilled by history—was to suppress the South’s craziness for a few generations:

>"We can make war so terrible and make [the South] so sick of war that generations pass away before they again appeal to it."

It wasn’t until the past decade or so that these neo-Confederate vermin dared to raise their heads and start hissing their crazy nonsense in public. So Sherman’s alleged brutality was not a matter of blame, or a regrettable side-effect of his campaign. It was the point of his campaign. Sherman began with the goal of humiliating a Southern white elite consumed by delusions of superiority, and the plumes of smoke his bummers sent up as they burned the mansions in their sixty-mile wide swath were meant as a form of advertising: “See? See what we can do if we want to? Now will you fucking wake up?”

Sherman burned Atlanta for two reasons, both perfectly sound:

Because no sane general, planning to send an army of more than 60,000 men across the enemy’s heartland with no supply line or hope of reinforcement, would leave a major rail/supply center like Atlanta intact in his rear. Any commander would have done the same, but very few would have dared undertake the march from Atlanta to the Sea at all. It was so radical a plan that British military historian B. H. Liddell Hart claimed it marked Sherman as “the first modern general” and placed him alongside Napoleon and Belisarius as one of the greatest commanders of all time.

Because every column of smoke rising from a burning mansion, barn, or granary was intended by Sherman as a signal to a psychotically stubborn, deluded Confederate (white, landowning) population that they had lost, and that every additional life lost was, as he kept trying to tell them, an atrocity, a crime far greater than property destruction.

Guess all the dixiefags got triggered and had to go relieve the stress by busting a nut in their sisters.

It's weird to think that Southerners loved niggers so much that they sacrificed hundreds of thousands of lives and millions of dollars worth of infrastructure to keep them in this country. Even Jefferson Davis married a Quadroon just so he could make sure his babies had some nice little nigger blood in them, too!

Look at the Y*nk heroes. Liars, thieves, rapists, drunkards and murderers, the southern heroes on the other hand are the exact opposite of this, they're honorable, courageous and diligent God fearing men. It truly shows the subhumanity of the Y*nkee race, who can barely be called human.

The Y*nkoids are a rabid, thieving race. And now they have found a new Y*nkee criminal to latch onto, W*ll**m T*ch*ms*h Sh*rm*n, i will enlighten my fellow Dixon brethren on this hilarious trope of the Y*nkoid subhuman thought process. Oh god where do i even begin, it is glorious. I remember it clear as day, The day that the Y*nkoid race started looking back at an old white dead man as their hero, it was pathetic, but at the same time hilarious, i must recount this event.

The day, oh god the day, it fills my Dixon heart with ecstasy just thinking about it, was November 2nd 2004, yes, that very day, the day that spills terror into the heart of every Y*nkoid and fills the heart of every southron with insurmountable joy. George W Bush, God bless his name, the greatest southerner since Bobby Lee himself, had just destroyed the great Y*nkoid satan, J*hn *K*rry. This my southron brothers, was the day that the Y*nk subhumans became obsessed with a dead war criminal, and gained a momentous rabid hatred for the south. I remember it clear as day. The Y*nkee subhumans were so arrogant, much like how they said the War of Northern Aggression would be over in 1 day. It only made their defeat so much better. When *h** was finally called for our great W, the Y*nkees knew they had been defeated, they were seething with hatred. In their penis envy, they looked to a long dead y*nkee war criminal and drew out their homo erotic fantasies of him nuking the great city of Dallas.

Truly it shows the depravity of the y*nkoid race. That they had to start a homosexual relationship with a dead man to spite a living southern hero ruling over them.

You cannot qualify war in harsher terms than I will. War is cruelty, and you cannot refine it; and those who brought war into our country deserve all the curses and maledictions a people can pour out. I know I had no hand in making this war, and I know I will make more sacrifices to-day than any of you to secure peace. But you cannot have peace and a division of our country. If the United States submits to a division now, it will not stop, but will go on until we reap the fate of Mexico, which is eternal war. The United States does and must assert its authority, wherever it once had power; for, if it relaxes one bit to pressure, it is gone, and I believe that such is the national feeling. This feeling assumes various shapes, but always comes back to that of Union. Once admit the Union, once more acknowledge the authority of the national Government, and, instead of devoting your houses and streets and roads to the dread uses of war, I and this army become at once your protectors and supporters, shielding you from danger, let it come from what quarter it may. I know that a few individuals cannot resist a torrent of error and passion, such as swept the South into rebellion, but you can point out, so that we may know those who desire a government, and those who insist on war and its desolation.

You might as well appeal against the thunder-storm as against these terrible hardships of war. They are inevitable, and the only way the people of Atlanta can hope once more to live in peace and quiet at home, is to stop the war, which can only be done by admitting that it began in error and is perpetuated in pride.

We don't want your Negroes, or your horses, or your lands, or any thing you have, but we do want and will have a just obedience to the laws of the United States. That we will have, and if it involved the destruction of your improvements, we cannot help it.

The Y*nkoid knows he has been defeated, he has been shaken, he has been exposed, much like a demon being called by his true name. In his last act of desperation, he has resorted to replying with a quote by his long dead hero, who he looks up to with a homo erotic fascination.

>the Freedmen and women who were our only loyal allies during the war
Lincoln wanted to send them to Africa

But he didnt. Instead he supported the underground railroad.

Somebody screencap this

You can help end an abomination without wanting to victims in your country

6 paragraphs of yankee butthurt BTFO by one southern copypasta

i love it

t. the guy that posted it

Muh "states rights"
>Constantly complain when northern states exercise states rights to not treat humans like cattle
>Constantly try to make federal laws to impede in a state's ability to make slavery illegal
>Send men from other states to free territories to force them to be slave states
>Chimp out the moment the federal government is no longer beholden to you
Yea, sure, the war was for "states rights". Keep on drinking the cool-aid, Cletus

Gettysburg
>93k US
>72k CS
Despite repeated CS attacking of fortified position:
>23k US casualties
>23k CS casualties

>Send men from other states to free territories to force them to be slave states
I think you forgot something
>This happened after Yanks did this first
Then reason a lot of the border states ended up joining the good old boys of the CSA was because of Yankee autism

Spotsylvania Courthouse
100k US
52k CS
1.92 US for every CS
>18.5k CS casualties
>12.5k CS casualties

Chancellorsville
>133k US
>66k CS
US has the advantage of being on the defensive with 2:1 forces, outmaneuvered and hmiliated
>17k US casualties
>13k CS casualties

The Wilderness
101k US
61k CS
Northern scum burns their own wounded to death in a forest fire
17.5k US casualties
>11k CS casualties

>thinking an incoherent paragraph of /pol/tard gibberish is a counter argument

>armies constantly on the offensive take more casulties
woah buddy you might be on to something

reminder that the CSA tried to have Grant's minor son kidnapped from an aunt's house.

Russians

Siege of Vicksburg

Union suffer 4,800 casualties

30,000 Confederates surrender

well written.

Battle of Ezra Church

13,266 US
18,450 CS

642 US casualties
~3000 CS casualties

Battle of Franklin

27,000 US/CS

2,326 US casualties
4,500 CS casualties

is this copy pasta from an essay?

Battle of Nashville

55,000 US
30,000 CS

3,061 US casualties
6,000 CS casualties, Army of Tennessee destroyed as a coherent fighting force.

holy fuck Y*nkoids can't fight kek

not my fault big W is southern hero that Y*nkoids get butthurt at

im not the butthurt cuckservative who can't even spell "yankoids" without getting triggered like a tumblrina

SEETHING

Y*nKoids are subhuman rats. To even utter the name would be a curse. I cannot risk it.

I always thought the disproportionate US-CSA casualties were because most of the officer corps of the peacetime US army fucked off into the CSA, the epitome of this being Lee, so essentially they had to remake the entire officer corps and had to gain years of built up strategic and tactical experience entirely on the field. Am I wrong?

Why are there so may Union apologists on this website? Is it just people trying to be edgy and cool?

Yes, you are.

*Ahem*

Shiloh
>67k US
>44.5k CS
Federal retards refuse to entrench their position, somehow nobody is court martialed for this
>13k US casualties
>10k CS casualties

Antietam
>75k US
>38k CS
Lincoln apologists, to this day, think McClellan is removed because he doesn't pursue. In reality his army was unorganized and relatively green because of terrible decisions made by the Lincoln administration and the war department. He actually does pursue Lee after getting his ducks in a row in the wake of the battle, but Lee makes a very good retreat. McClellan fired because he won't be a puppet for republican tyrants.
>12k US casualties
>10k CS casualties

Fredericksburg
>114k US
>72.5k CS
KEK
12.5k US casualties
5.5k CS casualties

...

>the virgin skirmish vs. the chad grand battle

No, that wasn't really the case. Both sides had similar numbers of peacetime officers. It was mostly the superior generalship of the AoNV in and the Union's insistence on attacking trenches in the late phases. That(and the navy) is why the western theatre doesn't follow that trend. The generals in the west were about equally matched, probably slightly tilted in favor of the Union, and it never devolved into trench warfare to the extent of the east. Honestly, the death of AS Johnston at Shiloh was a potentially big "what if" moment. If he turned out to be the kind of commander many thought he could, the war might have been different, maybe stalling the Union out in the west until the 1864 election, etc.

>*ahem*
nice to see dixieboos have no counter arguments other than acting like pretentious mutts on a vietnamese sewing chatboard

Cold Harbor
>108k US
>59k CS
"Lee was the real butcher"
>13k US casualties
>4.5k CS casualties

>take less casualties
>still get BTFO
>be the shittiest part of the US to this day

There are people that unironically support yankee imperialist scum?

>there are people who don't have sex with their cousins?

I didn't know the south was Muslim user