Confederate Defeat Quotes
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.
For years after the Civil War, many Southerners blamed the negative manifestations of the war on the wicked Yankees, rather than look to their own actions of starting the war and prosecuting it long after it was clear that they could not win.
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.
