"Lee Surrendered, But His Lieutenants Kept Fighting" Topic

""If the programme which our people saw set on foot at Appomattox Court-House had been carried out … we would have no disturbance in the South," testified the former Confederate general (and future senator) John Brown Gordon in 1871. Speaking before a congressional committee investigating the widespread anti-black violence in the former Confederacy, Gordon was accusing Radical Republicans of bad faith – specifically, of breaking the "Appomattox Compact."

Some Northerners might have been surprised by the idea that anything resembling a "compact" came out of Robert E. Lee's surrender to Ulysses S. Grant in April 1865. But Gordon, along with other prominent veterans of Lee's army, believed that the agreement at Appomattox was more two-sided than many in the North believed…"

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Armand

The South was nothing if not arrogant. After the end of the war Southern former senators and congressmen showed up in Washington assuming they'd get their old seats back. They start a war costing 600,000 lives and they just assume they could go back to business as if nothing had happened.

Clausewitz got it backwards. Politics is war by other means.

The Southern aristocracy certainly could be arrogant, but Scott there is more to the story than that. This particular "was" started before the ACW ended, and it was the Republicans in Congress who were taking the first shot. Virginia maintained a government recognized as legitimate through the War. That loyal government has two senators and three representatives in the U.S. Congress in 1861. Beginning in 1862 the Republicans began kicking out Virginia representatives, even though they were loyal Unionists. In 1864 they refused to seat a Unionist Senator, leaving Virginia with only 1 Senator in Congress. When that Senator left office in 1865 the Congress refused to seat the Unionist elected to succeed him.

Thanks.

Armand

And interesting read, thank you for posting.