Gah! I missed Confederate Surrender Day!!!

Yep, and when you match that with the fact that his presidential administration was one of the most corrupt in American history...

...if, by "walk away", you mean shell Fort Sumter then yes, all the Confederacy did was "walk away."

Even if you think that amounts to "walking away," the idea that an independent Confederacy and the United States wouldn't have been at constant war is absurd. Every inch of the West would have been fought over, every fugitive slave would have been a new casus belli. That's why Lincoln thought preserving the Union was so important. He didn't give a fuck about the South being part of the Union; he just realized that the alternative to a few years of civil war was 50 years of war between sovereign nations.

So the Vicksburg Campaign never happened?

That's absurd. People moved back and forth across the lines all during the war. Each side had relatives living on the other side. There might be a DMZ in Korea, but there wouldn't have been one here.

With the protective tariffs out of the way, Northen goods would probably have become more afforable and competitive. The 2 countries could easily have been trading partners. It depends. It was largely the mercantilism of the Whigs and then the Republicans that created alot of the troubles.

It was more of a siege than a campaign.

There's was a lot more to the Vicksburg Campaign than just the siege that ended it. The Vicksburg campaign was one of the finest pieces of Strategic and Tactical planning of the whole of that century this side of Napoleon.

You. are. insane. The Confederates during the war decided they wanted Kentucky and Maryland. After all when Lee invaded Maryland the first time around his dispatches to the locals proclaims he was there to liberate them. To think they wouldn't go to war over the Western territories is a delusion worthy of your Confederate worship.

Mayland. Liberate.

Oh, you mean the state where Lincoln suspended habias corpus and arrested the state legislature to prevent them from considering secession.

Yeah, I don't know why they would be offered liberation.

Yeah, those first 2 assaults on May 19 and May 22 that were repulsed were awesome. Grant said his only regret was that they failed.

So they laid seige to the city and eventually starved the Confederates into surrender.

Sorry, but the war all boils down to that slavery issue and there's no getting away from it.

No, slavery-centricity ignores the other elements. It's a much bigger story.

Not really, no, because every argument about states' rights goes back to the states being able to determine whether slaves could be owned in that state or not, which is the ultimate hypocrisy considering that the south wanted new territories/states to be forced to be slave-owning whether they wanted it or not.

You said it: whether slaves could be owned in that state or not. There were more abolitionist societies in the South than there were in the North. Slavery was legal under the US Constitution and Southern abolitionists wanted the states to abolish it, and that it was not the Federal's right to impose it.

Think about it: from 1800-1860, 20-some European nations and their colonies abolished slavery without a war. Why couldn't we? And no, it wasn't those stingy slaveholders not wanting to give up their slaves. There's more to the story. Read about it.

And the South didn't really have any designs on the west; they were looking south more at conquering Mexico, which in retrospect might not have been such a bad idea.

Probably because there were more slaves in the south.

Except when it came to forcing new states to be slave states.

I did, and it was about the economic dependence the south's agricultural industry had on the cheap labor to be had from slavery. Human rights issues aside, it's not hard to see why southern states would be reluctant to give up that cheap labor.

There were all kinds of fights that broke out over the issue of whether an adjacent territory or a territory that was about to become a state would be a slave state or not. It wasn't about the south wanting territory so much as it was feeling threatened by the idea that any new states to the west wouldn't allow slavery, which might have the effect of isolating the slave-owning states.

Man you are so dense sometimes. Once again, there was a lot more to that whole campaign than just the action/siege right at Vicksburg. That Grant managed to corner and trap a Confederate army while confusing the shit out of another was sheer brilliance. Not to mention he cut his own supply lines for most of the campaign and was outnumbered by the two Confederate armies opposing him in and around Vicksburg. But yah, in your Confederate fellating go ahead and ignore the campaign that current American generals cream their pants when studying.

Thank you for proving my point. No doubt the Confederates would have come up with other reasons to "liberate" other parts of the USA that wanted nothing of it. Yes, nothing of it, because how did the people of Maryland treat ole Bobby Lee when he invaded the first time around? Like an invader.

^Well, in all fairness, Maryland was occupied territory during the beginning of the war.

And to that point, Jefferson Davis arrested several thousand people in Tennessee when they professed loyalty to Washington. Good thing they were liberated so early in the war.

The Border States are an interesting study. Missouri and Kentucky sent a delegation to the Confederate Congress, Maryland would've if Lincoln hadn't did catch them napping. Arizona (the Gasden Purchase anyway) was pro-Confederate, as they owed their existence to the Southern states, the Indian Territory fought amongst itself, only Delaware was truly loyal.

Interesting point, Southern California was to become a separate state from Northern California, which was filled with pro-Confederate, pro-slavery sympathizers. But by the time it came to Washington for Congressional approval, the war was already on.

Where were they winning? They weren't winning in the far west, where the Confederates got turned back during their invasion of New Mexico. They certainly weren't winning in the Trans-Mississippi, what with losing New Orleans and then Grant slowly making his way down the Mississippi River. They weren't winning at sea, other than a few blockade runners getting by Federal pickets and burning some whalers. They weren't winning on the diplomatic front, what with the zero nations anywhere recognizing the Confederacy.

You can't even seriously argue the eastern theater was a win considering that all the ANV did was hold the federals out of most of Virginia. Western Virginia was held by the Union from April 1861 with no chance of ever being retaken. The two attempts to invade the North both ended in abject failue. The only reason northern efforts in Virginia hadn't succeeded was because they were led by generals that ranged from timid (McClellan) to stupid (Burnside).

Realistically, the Eastern theater, while getting all the press, was the sideshow. The real moving and shaking was going down in the Trans-Mississippi, which is where the war was decided. The Anaconda plan played out exactly like Winfield Scott said it would. All the war in the east did was suck up troops the south needed to counter the likes of Grant and Sherman.

The west and the Trans-Mississippi were certainly having trouble, but the ANV was kicking ass and taking names. So much so that Lincoln was losing popular support in the North for the war and had to change his justification from "saving the Union" to abolition to get the support of that movement.

And here's the South Carolina Declaration of Independence. Mentions of tarrifs are blue. Mentions of slavery is red. Note which is highlighted more.

Note the lack of blue text from the people saying why they were trying to leave the union.

Try the same exercise with the other Southern states. They don't mention tarriffs anywhere near as much as they mention slavery. Johnny Reb might not have been fighting for slavery, but his leaders sure were.

Lincoln was losing popular support because the press was highlighting the eastern theater and how Lee was beating the likes of McClellan and Burnside, which really only shows how the media can manipulate how a war is perceived. The Confederacy was nowhere close to a victory in the grans scheme of things and people that could read a map and understood how the war was really progressing could see that. Go back and look at the election results from soldiers in the 1862 mid-terms. Soldiers in the Trans-Mississippi overwhelmingly were pro-continuing the war compared to their eastern counterparts, simply because they could see how the war was progressing. In the West, the war was chugging along and progress was being made. In the east, both sides were dug in. The was was being fought to conclusion in the west, while all the east had going for it was headlines.

Not that Lee had a decisive victory at Antietam or his phyrric victory (at best) at Chancellorsville. Lee's successes came when he was on the defensive and fighting generals that shouldn't have been in command. When he had to go on the offensive he ended up in a draw or a loss or a win but had to trade Jackson for it. He still ended up no closer to winning the war than before he fought those battles.

Every time I try to defend Lee, my mind comes back to how he executed the Gettysburg campaign.

How many states currently have lawsuits in progress against the Federal gubmint over Obamacare as opposed to how many states have lawsuits against the Feds for budgets, deficit spending, Federal debt, bailouts, TARP, stimulus projects, cancellation of the manned space program, the postal service, the general socialist trends of the current president and congress, etc., etc., etc.?

I guarantee you that 150 years from now, the issues will be simplified and the history books will say we were pissed off about Obamacare. How many of us today really understand the complexities, attitudes, and all of the little things of the Great Depression? How many people today understand and can explain what people did to survive during the Great Depression? That was just within the last 100 years. Many of us have parents or grandparents who lived during that era.

You're making the mistake of thinking that I dismiss the issue of slavery or underestimate it's role and importance in the conflict and you couldn't be more wrong. IMHO slavery was wrong and should never have been a part of this nation's history, but it was. What I'm saying is that there was more to the subject that should not be dismissed. It was a complex era, as most are. The South had a lot of legitimate reasons to be pissed off about, just as we have plenty of legitimate issues today besides Obamacare.

I think Lee was feeling the loss of Jackson and his grief made him a bit wreckless. Add to that the fact that Lee was not in good health and there is some evidence that indicates that Lee may have had a mild heart attack on the way up to Gettysburg. He would die of congestive heart failure in about 7 years.

Lets face it a lot of southern legislatures at the time were guilty of rape at the time.

Read Scharra's "The Killer Angels." Yes, its fiction, but it is pretty good. Gettysburg was a lot like the sinking of the Titanic stories: If they'd had binoculars in the watch station, if they had blah-blah-blah.

They were just a bit too slow in hitting the Union left. Then they got delayed hitting the right or they would've taken Little Round Top unopposed. As it stood they very nearly succeeded but Chamberlain happened to be an outstanding commander. If the Confederate artillery bombardment had hit where it was supposed to instead of shooting too high on the last day even Pickett's Charge might've worked.

That's the thing with war. Looking back at it it is really easy to criticize the person who gambled and lost. Just about as easy as it is to criticize the person who got bluffed and folded.

That said, Lee was much better at tactics than strategy and that's why Grant beat him.

Nobody's claiming that slavery was the only reason the southern states tried to leave. Nobody is claiming that there weren't legitimate grievences that had ben building up for years between regions of the nation or between the Federal government and the states. But the simple truth is the primary source documentation, the very words written by the people that tried to seceed, state that the primary reason for trying to leave the union was over the preservation of slavery. You have South Carolina's own words in front of you. Go look up the Declaration of Independence from Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina, Texas, or Virginia and tell me how they are markedly different than South Carolina's. There may very well have been other background issues, but at the end of the day the Civil War was fought by the North to keep the southern states in the Union and the primary reason the southern states wanted out was the fear of losing slavery. Their own words say so.

If Lee had avoided giving conflicting orders to Stuart, the Confederate cavalry might have run into the union army and Lee wouldn't have known what was what.

You don't tell your cavalry that they have to A) remain mobile and B) steal everything not nailed down and bring it back to us. Supply trains just aren't swift or manueverable like cavalry units are, especially on the narrow roads of Pennsylvania.