"And if Gen. Lee hadn't surrendered at Appomattox ..." Topic

"There was a time in the not so distant past when Americans could safely assume that the Civil War, which claimed 620,000 Northern and Southern lives, resulted in two immutable outcomes: It forever settled the issue that secession was illegal, and it forever abolished the institution of slavery.

Lately, though, those truisms seem not to have been written in stone.

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Armand

Eeek, can believe someone imagines it, but can't believe it could have happened that way. And besides, how long would it have really lasted in the view of how the world has developed. It just doesn't make any sense.

Clearly no bias in that article…

Total BS article.

This isn't a Civil War article, it's modern political.

This isn't a Civil War article, it's modern political.

Agreed

It isn't just political, it is fantasy too.

How could significant numbers of Lee's army have escaped the ring of Federal armies around them – with their arms and sufficient ammo to allow them to fight for enough time before they could re-supply.

Does any sane person really think the Federal forces would be so cowed by a handful of starving rebels in the hills that they would admit defeat. No, they would have done what most forces of the times did and starved them out and moved any supporters away from their bases to make that easier.

I for one have no interest in doing this again, here, with the usual suspects. Tango, whatever your intent, this is asking for trouble.

Agreed – in the 19th century guerilla movements like that proposed had one outcome – defeat

The fact that Lee did not order his army to take to the hills and drag the country through decades of misery is very much to his credit. This is a legit conversion on the general history board. I don't understand why we have to politicize everything.

Thanks.

Armand

This isn't a Civil War article, it's modern political.

If you read the actual article, after some political comments in the introduction, he does provide an 'alternative history' for what might have happened if Lee had encouraged continued resistance.

Doc, you are right. No energy for this kind of far out fiction.

The most interesting thing about the article is the premise that history will always bend back to a certain course. By 2010 (when the article was written) the situation is roughly identical to the actual developments of history. It theorizes a form of historical imperative that will always return to a certain norm. History is not a railroad track where a single event can switch the train to a completely seperate track and outcome, but a river that will gradually flow back to conform to its established course. A clever idea that offers a counterpoint to the "Butterfly theory."

As for the howling about political statements in the first few paragraphs, one can only point out that they are all factually true statements, if uncomfortable to some readers. The amazing thing is that over ten years later they still have currency.

Reading this I can see how he took ideas from the 1960's book "If the South had won the Civil War", and essentially made them his own. I also see how he wanted certain historical results to happen (and by his own admission), so he wrote the story to fit his narrative for wanting this.

I don't see a lot of this even happening IF the South had been able to achieve it's own independent nation. There's nothing to show that the CSA would've expanded further, much less add Oklahoma, Nevada, Arizona, and Utah. In fact the author gets Nevada being part of the CSA completely wrong.

A waste of time article written by a College Professor that needed to write and publish something to keep his tenure it seems.

It appears that Dr. Lafantasie is now, some 10 years later, a very well respected authority on Civil War History, and the author of several published works that have garnered notice. A graduate of Brown University he has received several grants and awards for his works. He writes frequently for several civil war history journals and hosts a respected round table on civil war history at Western Kentucky. He also writes think pieces for a number of publications and web magazines, including Salon.

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He was an early critic of the 1619 Report, which should endear him to some.

This was a conjecture piece, written more to mildly parody and critique several conjectural pieces by Harry Turtledove and McKinley Kantor. It's main point being that changing the flow of history is very difficult and many a person trying to hold back change, or redirect history, will ultimately lose.

I read the article, it was TOTALLY irrational,more than 15(!) yrs of guerrilla warfare in the south? Here in Southern Italy, after 1860's reunification, there was a long, bloody campaign fought by a mix of Bourbons' nostalgics,peasants deluded by the new state and papal state supporters'.But the italian army was able to subdue it in less than 10 yrs, also less, and with Rome's conquest in 1870, any velletaism of revanche had been crushed. Yes, the method employed against the rebels were too often inhumane. How the south could've won against the superior numbers of the North? Almost one able male every four had been killed or maimed in the war, the land had been scorced and deprived of resources. And you can add the MORE important factor: lack of external support, don't forget that without a foreign power to support it, ANY guerrilla movement id doomed to die. Imagine all these "liberators" of the 20th century without Russia's support.

Uhh…What do you call the Klan and other night riders? They not only survived attempts by the U.S. Army to quell their guerilla/terrorist actions but rebuilt Southern Political and social structures to mimic the Ante-Bellum South in many regards save for the actual slavery, substituting share cropping, chain gangs, White Citizens Councils, mock trials, and voter suppression for its functions. They essentially maintained their black population in servitude by blatant coercion by force and the well attended lynching.

In a sense, the South turned its abject defeat to a form of victory. Within 20 years of the end of the Civil War their Jim Crow remodel was operating without Federal restraint, and then rewrote the history of the war and its aftermath for 100 years with some aspects still in effect( Many a Law originally intended to quell slave rebellions and give legal force to slave patrols still exists on the books in Southern States).

Far from 15 years of rebellion, we have seen over 100!

Their main complaint at the moment seems to be that their hard won "Victory" seems to be crumbling, their invented Lost Cause history, and its statuary, may be finally overcome by the "Enemy", and blacks are re-acquiring the political clout that they lost during reconstruction.

It is notable that the historians that are getting back to facts are frequently from Southern and border state colleges and universities. Dr. LaFantasie, joins professors such as Gary Gallagher, Keith Bohannon,and others that are rapidly documenting a truer history of the war and its aftermath.

Glup!….

Armand

The argument that the South lost the war and won the peace isn't a recent one. I think it is as much the North won the war and lost the peace though. In an intellectual debate making this argument would be a good way to make enemies and alienate people. When considering counterfactuals though, it matters. If faced with a guerilla war being waged by Confederate nationalists it is not fair to assume that the U.S. Government and military and the people of the north would have behaved the same way and would have made the same decisions as they actually did. Operations like the Klan were able to have an impact because in the aftermath of the War, former Confederates were allowed to melt back into general society. Compare that to how the suspected pro-Confederate population of western Missouri was treated during the War when the U.S. was dealing with a guerilla conflict there.

The tactic that worked for the South for many years was to never direct any violence against the Federal Goverment, but only against blacks and, occasionally, against their own dissenters, especially if they were non Christian. This coupled with expansive displays of patriotism and their own Christian beliefs, and a hyperbolic "hospitality" toward white Christian outsiders from the North or Europe, insured that the government looked the other way on any domestic abuses in the South. That is as much a critique of Northern indifference as of the South.

That guerilla tactic began to fail in the late 40s, was upended in the 60s, and is now looking like a loser.

if Gen. Lee hadn't surrendered at Appomattox …

There would have been a blood-bath at Appomattox, and he, or his successor, would still have had to surrender at some point.

People might wish to study the "Reconstruction" era a bit more closely before drawing conclusions.

It was an "interesting" time in the post-war Southern states.

B