Douglas Brinkley Quotes
The myth-making about Appomattox started from the moment Lee left the courthouse on his horse to travel to Richmond.
Brinkley, Douglas. "The Meaning of Appomattox." CNN, Turner Broadcasting System, 9 Apr. 2015.
On his deathbed he claimed to Kelly that he had been offered command of the Army of the Potomac but was not willing to "pay the price" which he claimed was to accept the terms. Pleasonton, always more of a bureaucrat than an ideologue or strong leader, like many Union officers, only wanted to defang the South so that they could not threaten the rest of the states but was not convinced that "crushing" the rebels was worth the cost or that slavery or the reelection of Lincoln was worth it. There is no independent verification of his receiving the offer, but what is more likely was as the Cavalry Commander of the Army of the Potomac he was "sounded out" on the subject.
The slavery issue also split the Cherokee. A number of the wealthier old families had and worked Black Slaves and they supported the South officially and militarily. Waite, the recipient of the letter, was a Confederate General.
Wade was one of the Radical Republicans who advocated a much more vigorous prosecution of the Civil War effort in the North. It is important for two reasons: First, it illustrates the position of the “Hawks” who constantly pressured Lincoln to counter the Democrat lack of enthusiasm for the fighting. Many believed that the South would come to its senses and end the rebellion. Second and more important, this is one of the quotations that apologists for the South during the Jim Crow segregation issue use to show that there was a strong desire to impoverish the South. This is partly true. Wade and the other radicals did argue to impoverish the South only so long as they were continuing the war and rebellion. They did not argue that the South should be impoverished after the war was over. However, the reality was that the Southern economy had become so dependent on slave labor, that after Emancipation, it was very difficult to rebuild the Southern Economy. With Slavery Southern Cotton sold to England was cheaper than Egyptian Cotton. If labor had to be paid, the Egyptian cotton became cheaper. The South had squandered almost all of their capital resources on financing the war and had no capital to finance modern manufacturing enterprises. And they so resented Northerners that it was very difficult for Northern businessmen who did have capital to start and finance enterprises in the South. There also was little money for good public schools after the war, and the inferior education of the South made the situation very hard to change.
He had is slightly wrong. He also printed another error—that Lee and Defeated Grant in a Battle. Seward, although very badly wounded, survived.
When he referred to "the noose" he was connoting one of the major ways the Southern Segregationists and racists maintained white supremacy and Jim Crowe after the Civil War: Lynching. They terrorized blacks and whites who had different views by kidnapping their victims, torturing them, hanging them, and often mutilating their bodies after the murder. They never were convicted because the Southern law enforcement officers were often part of the lynch mob, the judges were usually themselves racist segregationists, and if jurors voted to convict in the few cases that went to trial, they themselves were risking lynching. From 1882-1968, 4,743 lynchings occurred in the United States. Of these people that were lynched, 3,446 were black.
Two days later Lee surrendered at Richmond, and the Civil War was over. On April 14, Lincoln was assassinated. He died the next day.
Committee of the Congress. This was the prevailing Congressional and public view except for the South which had coalesced around an intellectual rationalization. See {618013}.
After the Presidential years of James Buchanan who protected the South from slavery reform and abolition as the North was gaining political power and the abolitionists were having a greater and greater effect on public opinion in the North. While Southerners did not believe Lincoln would emancipate the slaves, they realized that the majority of the growing nation was opposed to slavery, and more and more Northern states were passimg laws making any slave who sets foot in the State a free person. Slaves coud not only have more reason to run away, but slave owners would not be able to get their “property” back. Lincoln would not help the South as Buchanan did, and the Southerners realized that over time, slavery would no longer be feasible or profitable. Cobb, very experienced at Washington politics, realized the changes that would come and thought that they would be “certain and speedy.” The irony was that if the South had not seceded and simply dragged its feet legislatively, it would have taken two or three decades for slavery to end. However, by seceding and initially fighting so hard and well while poor Union generals were in command, Lincoln was forced to try more drastic measures and issued the Emancipation Proclamation after only a few years. The Civil War and seccession was not only a tactical and strategic error for the South, but rapidly brought about just what the Southerners were fighting to prevent.
While this assessment was true up until the 1980s. By the 21st century there were almost no serious historians who thought that the motivation of the Confederate States for the Civil War was anything but slavery and the economic impact that abolition might bring. However, one of your advantages having this collection of historical quotations is that you can see for yourself why the Southern states say they were seceding. This following are four of the official secession resolution documents. Read these and you will see that all the claims that there were other major reasons for secession are just attempts to make the Confederacy a little less brutal and greedy. See {621371}, {619793}, {621372}, {621375}
Douglas Brinkley is an American author, Katherine Tsanoff Brown Chair in Humanities and professor of history at Rice University. Brinkley is the history commentator for CNN, Presidential Historian for the New York Historical Society, and a contributing editor to the magazine Vanity Fair. He is a public spokesperson on conservation issues. He joined the faculty of Rice University as a professor of history in 2007.
