This Sounds Weird; Army War College Erasing Lee & Jackson?

[T19]

When I took American history In Ontario in Grade 13 back in 1976. Our teacher. asked us what was the reason for te civil war. Everyone said to end slavery

 

He told us we were wrong. He said it was Economic friction. The industrialized north had pushed for protectist tariffs to protect it from the industrial powers in Europe The EU reacted with tariffs that hurt the south. The south did not feel its interests where being protected within the USA as it was as Rocky said agrarian

 

Ending slavery was a means to preserve or restore the union as an after thought. The pc crowed in the 50 and 60,s started the myth of the war to end slavery with the rise of MLK

 

In the last 40 years I have seen and read nothing to change my mind over what that teacher had taught me. Damn and he was a well known large L Canadian Liberal and Trudeau idolidizer

[Richard Lindquist]

Slavery was certainly a cause of friction between the northern and southern states.

 

There were also economic issues:

1. Northerners generally preferred to have government support of infrastructure improvements (canals, railroads, turnpikes). The south was generally against that.

2. The north was for protective tariffs to support domestic industries.. The south felt that increased the cost of their imports and hurt their exports by retaliatory tariffs.

3. The south was practicing "scorched earth agriculture" and the soils were deteriorating. They felt that they needed to expand slave culture into the west to survive.

 

The immediate cause of secession was the election of Lincoln on a platform against expansion of slavery into the territories.

[Tony Evans]

I hate to have to say this to some of my very good friends, but the Constitutional analysis of the pro-secession faction here is pretty weak. As pointed out multiple times past discussions, there in fact is a provision in the Constitution that pretty effectively prevents legal secession. Article VI. Paragraph 3:

 

"The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States."

 

That means that any governor, judge, official, or legislator who called for, organized, or officially countenanced any act or convention of secession was acting in direct violation of his oath of office, that is to say, illegally. Whatever they thought the Constitution did or didn't say about secession, it was illegal for them to, by any official act, advocate or enact the removal of Constitutional authority over any given region. Any such act would be a failure to support the Constitution, which they were in fact sworn to support. Yet such a removal of authority would be an inevitable consequence of secession.

 

Now, I'm not saying it's impossible or even a bad thing for rebels to be foresworn. But let's be clear that that's exactly the legal situation that the secessionists found themselves in, and no other.

[Rocky Davis]

Not held up on court, Tony. Not even brought up in court, Tony. Settled at the point of a bayonet.

 

I would have to add, Tony, that not even the most professional Legal Beagles have ever tried your approach on Constitutional Law . . . maybe for good reason . . . they are the Pros and you and I are not. Your "extending" and "interpretation" of the Constitution is a stretch. Mine is not - nothing written pro or con (that's my position - the legal position). Until something is specifically prohibited by law, it is legal.

 

Secession was not specifically outlawed or admitted as law ever - still is not, regardless of White vs. Texas which MOST law students are taught was a totally personal opinion very vaguely derived from one court case not even directly trying to decide on the Constitutional legality or illegality of secession.

 

In short, a state can still secede because it is still not Constitutionally prohibited from doing so. BUT, said seceding state has been shown that if its citizens and government decide to secede, the full might of the US military will pound them into submission not unlike the world governments that the US lambasted for doing the same ( the USSR, Germany etc.).

 

But the US will always be right in pounding their so-called "enemies" and the US will always be right in verbally or economically pounding those other nations that do the same (as the US) to smaller dominions in their own part of the world. And those other non-US nations that do the pounding (like the US does and has done) and point back to us for having done the same thing - except (of course) when the US did it, it was "justified" but when somebody else did it (whose political lines was opposite of the US) did it, it was "naked aggression" etc.

 

And that's the way it is with the US - hypocrisy . . . from way back.

 

Then again, this is not the FFZ and not the topic. Please create a new discussion elsewhere.

[toysoldier]

When I took American history In Ontario in Grade 13 back in 1976. Our teacher. asked us what was the reason for te civil war. Everyone said to end slavery

 

He told us we were wrong. He said it was Economic friction. The industrialized north had pushed for protectist tariffs to protect it from the industrial powers in Europe The EU reacted with tariffs that hurt the south. The south did not feel its interests where being protected within the USA as it was as Rocky said agrarian

 

Ending slavery was a means to preserve or restore the union as an after thought. The pc crowed in the 50 and 60,s started the myth of the war to end slavery with the rise of MLK

 

In the last 40 years I have seen and read nothing to change my mind over what that teacher had taught me. Damn and he was a well known large L Canadian Liberal and Trudeau idolidizer

 

Something like that, in Cuba. I was told the industrialized North wanted to turn the slaves into wage workers because thats more profitable, blacks were more convenient as a free workforce and as consumers.

[Tony Evans]

Not held up on court, Tony. Not even brought up in court, Tony. Settled at the point of a bayonet.

 

It's the kind of thing that would never get to court, unless the secession movement was seriously promoted and countenanced by officials acting under oath of office, yet that movement failed before it came to open warfare.

 

Also, I was addressing the assertion that there's nothing in the Constitution that forbids secession. That's true in terms of no explicit statement. But Article 6 makes if functionally impossible to secede without those in state governments who aid the process engaging in criminal acts.Simply put, secession is an official act. Yet officials are bound by oath to support the Constitution. Yet, in turn, acts to remove the Constitution's legal authority from a region of the United States is not supporting the Constitution. So officials, acting in the direction of secession, are not supporting the Constitution and not discharging their offices in accordance with their oaths of office. That's malfeasance of office, which is a crime.

 

Secession itself might not be prohibited, but performing acts of secession is illegal, making secession extrinsically -- though not intrinsically -- illegal.

Edited December 21, 2013 by Tony Evans

[BansheeOne]

The EU reacted with tariffs that hurt the south.

 

I knew it were them Eurocommies who was at fault! Bloody Jacques Delors!

 

Seriously, it's quite correct there were state rights and economic issues driving secession. The thing is, AFAICS all those issues referred to slavery, so citing that as the underlying reason is also correct.

[Archie Pellagio]

"It wasn't the fire that burnt down the house, it was the relationship between the wood and the oxygen at high temperatures"

[Richard Lindquist]

Not held up on court, Tony. Not even brought up in court, Tony. Settled at the point of a bayonet.

 

And a state wishing to secede never took the case to court to have the legality decided. They seceded first and, at the point of a bayonet, began to appropriate forts, arsenals, and other property within their borders that was owned by the United States. The federal armies didn't invade the seceding states until the seceding states fired first (Ft Sumter). If the seceding states had left the federal forts and arsenals alone (with future disposition subject to negotiation), would Lincoln have been able to marshal the political and economic will for such a struggle?

[Michael Eastes]

When I took American history In Ontario in Grade 13 back in 1976. Our teacher. asked us what was the reason for te civil war. Everyone said to end slavery

 

He told us we were wrong. He said it was Economic friction. The industrialized north had pushed for protectist tariffs to protect it from the industrial powers in Europe The EU reacted with tariffs that hurt the south. The south did not feel its interests where being protected within the USA as it was as Rocky said agrarian

 

Ending slavery was a means to preserve or restore the union as an after thought. The pc crowed in the 50 and 60,s started the myth of the war to end slavery with the rise of MLK

 

In the last 40 years I have seen and read nothing to change my mind over what that teacher had taught me. Damn and he was a well known large L Canadian Liberal and Trudeau idolidizer

Thank you; that has long been my opinion, also, as a long-time student of that conflict. I had ancestors on both sides, but, growing up in Texas, the yankees in the woodpile were not discussed. ( I found them later. ) Like many who grew up in the former Confederate States, I have a life-long sympathy for "The Lost Cause", and the men who fought honourably and skillfully for, as they believed, their families, homes and way of life. I do not, cannot, and will not see those men as traitors. They fought and died for what they held dear, and their valour is well documented, even by their enemies.

 

I will say that I don't think that it would have come to open warfare except for the cause of slavery, although most of Lincoln's administration, as has been demonstrated, didn't care nearly as much about that as the fact that southron states took Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence seriously, and acted on them. Manifest Destiny wouldn't have worked as well with two ( or maybe three ) countries within what now constitutes CONUS. Slavery was the issue that the real hotheads on each side focused on. Still, northern policies impacted the southern states enough that it still might have led to open hostilities given time to fester and intransigence on either side.

 

History is written by the victors. If Johnston had driven Grant into the river on the first day at Shiloh/Pittsburg Landing; if Lee had outflanked Meade at Gettysburg and broken the Army of the Potomac, driving them back to Washington in disorder...would the outcome have been different, or would the North, as Shelby Foote suggested, have "merely taken the other hand from behind their back" and crushed the South with even more of a sense of vengeance? If victorious, would the South have done away with slavery anyway within 10-20 years, as some have postulated? Or would a victorious and re-invigorated C.S.A. have become an imperialist power in their own right, pushing ever further south and west?

 

USians of various stripes have been debating the rights and wrongs of that decade since it ended. As demonstrated here, opinions are still sharply divided, and it certainly won't end any time soon. I see heroes and villains on both sides. Human nature being what it is, I often see a hero and a villain within the same person.

[Rocky Davis]

Just for you, Richard:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/house-divided/post/brag-bowling-by-resupplying-ft-sumter-did-lincoln-purposely-provoke-war/2011/04/07/AFFfoqLD_blog.html

[Richard Lindquist]

Just for you, Richard:

 

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/house-divided/post/brag-bowling-by-resupplying-ft-sumter-did-lincoln-purposely-provoke-war/2011/04/07/AFFfoqLD_blog.html

"Bowling is an idiot - perpetuating the long discounted myth that Lincoln "conned" the South into war, while ignoring the ACTUAL CON that took place. "

 

The first comment to Bowling's blog which is hardly an authoritative source. I quit reading when he talked about the "flotilla of ships" going to Ft Sumter as it was one ship, Queen of the West.

 

If you want to read a good book on how secession occurred, try "Clash of Extremes: The Economic Origins of the Civil War" by Marc Egnal, 2009, Hill and Wagnal

[Delta tank 6]

To get this back on topic a little bit. . The Commandant of the Army War College stated that the article is completely false. I had his response to the article a couple of days after the article was published but I deleted it from my e-mail account. This is all a hoax! Lee, Jackson and all the others are not being removed.

 

Mike

[Ken Estes]

Given the response on this thread, it must have been fun at Carlisle.

[Delta tank 6]

Given the response on this thread, it must have been fun at Carlisle.

The guy that sent me the e-mail lives on Guardhouse Lane, on Carlisle Barracks and I think everyone was a little shocked that the article was written because there is absolutely no truth to it. I sent him an e-mail to get another copy of the response made by the Commandant. When I get it I will post it, if he did not delete it from his account.

 

Mike

[Delta tank 6]

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

From the Commandant...

A sincere note to our Alumni, friends, and all concerned, from Major General Tony Cucolo, Commandant of the US Army War College: I'd like to address an issue that has come up based on a Washington Times web posting and article about Confederate art at the Army War College.

Even though last night's posting had a photo at the top of that article showing a picture of one of our entry gates with huge statues of Robert E. Lee and Thomas J. Jackson mounted on horseback on either side of the sign, and today's posting showed a dignified photo of Robert E. Lee at the top of the article, it might be misleading as to what is in question. For what it is worth, I must tell you there is only one outside statue on Carlisle Barracks and that is of Frederick the Great. There is no statue of Lee, there is no statue of Jackson; that picture is photo-shopped - I assume to attract attention to the article. We do however have many small monuments, mostly stone with bronze plaques, but those are for a variety of reasons. There are small memorials to the service of British units (during the French and Indian War), memorials of Army schools that had been based at Carlisle Barracks over the last two-plus centuries, memorials to Carlisle Indian Industrial School students and significant personalities of that period from 1879 - 1918, a memorial for US Army War College graduates killed in action since 2001 and more. We do not have any public memorials to the Confederacy, but we do have signs on the walking tour of the base that will tell you for a few days during the Civil War, three North Carolina Brigades camped on the parade ground and then burned down the post (save one building) as they departed on July 1st, 1863, to rejoin Lee's forces at Gettysburg. We also do not have any large stand-alone portraits of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson.

So, no statues or big portraits, but a recent event here sparked the reporter's and other public interest in the topic of the article, which I find makes a good point - for topics like this, have a thoughtful conversation before making a decision.

Here is what happened: a few weeks ago, while relocating his office to a new floor in our main school building over the weekend, one of my leaders looked outside his new office location and simply decided to change the look of the hallway. He took down, off the wall, a number of framed Civil War prints that depicted Confederate States of America forces in action against Union forces or depicted famous Confederate leaders. He did this on his own. There was no directive to "remove all traces of the CSA." Since this is a public hallway with seminar rooms and offices, the sudden new look drew attention the following week. And since there was no public explanation of my leader's action, some of my folks jumped to conclusions, even to the point of sending anonymous notes to local media. We have since attempted to clarify the action within our own ranks.

If it matters to any of you, you could walk into this building today, and see ornately framed paintings and even a few prints similar to the ones that came down off that hallway wall of Confederate forces and leaders mixed in an among countless other paintings and prints of the Army (and the other services) in action from the Revolutionary War through the current fight in Afghanistan. I must admit, there are in fact a large number of Civil War paintings, depicting both North and South. I can only assume one of the reasons there are so many is that we are barely 30 minutes from Gettysburg, home to many renowned artists, a few of whom have been commissioned by US Army War College classes of the past to capture some iconic scene of that conflict.

Finally, and with ironic timing, I also must tell you that I am in the midst of planning a more meaningful approach to the imagery and artwork that currently adorn the public areas on the three primary floors of The War College. There will be change: over the years very fine artwork has been hung with care - but little rationale or overall purpose. Just today, I left the "George S. Patton Jr. Room", walked by the "Peyton March Room" and nearby hung a picture of a sharp fight in Iraq, 2003, right next to a Civil War print, which was near a series of prints honoring Army Engineers, and a few feet further hung a painting of the Battle of Cowpens. We can do better; we'd like our students, staff, and faculty to walk through a historical narrative that sends a message of service, valor, sacrifice, and courageous leadership at the strategic level.

But I will also approach our historical narrative with keen awareness and adherence to the seriousness of several things: accurate capture of US military history, good, bad and ugly; a Soldier's life of selfless service to our Nation; and our collective solemn oath to defend the Constitution of the United States (not a person or a symbol, but a body of ideals). Those are the things I will be looking to reinforce with any changes to the artwork.

Much more information than perhaps you wished to know, but this topic has the ability to bring out the extremes of opinion and discourse, and I at least wanted the facts of our own activities to be known.

Respectfully,

Tony Cucolo
Major General, US Army

Classification: UNCLASSIFIED
Caveats: NONE

[Ken Estes]

Fair enough, but I was musing over what the AWC students might have been discussing at the time they noticed the sweepout of that corridor in question, and whether it reflected the same discourse of our members, above.

[Delta tank 6]

Fair enough, but I was musing over what the AWC students might have been discussing at the time they noticed the sweepout of that corridor in question, and whether it reflected the same discourse of our members, above.

 

Don't know, if I can remember I will ask, going to Carlisle Barracks today for a visit. Now, to start a shit storm, the problem is in the North most people would have difficulty placing the war in the correct century if they even remember that there was such a war. In the South, well they are still fighting the war and reliving "Pickett's Charge" on a weekly if not daily basis!! I was introduced to a poem, not too long ago, about the "High Water Mark of the Confederacy" or something like that, amazing!!

 

Mike

[Delta tank 6]

Fair enough, but I was musing over what the AWC students might have been discussing at the time they noticed the sweepout of that corridor in question, and whether it reflected the same discourse of our members, above.

 

I sent your question and this is the response: "Ha! Be assured that they were not discussing the Civil War."

 

Mike

[BP]

Small world. I worked for him briefly when he was a major many moons ago.

[Dave Clark]

one of my leaders looked outside his new office location and simply decided to change the look of the hallway.

 

 

What, pray, is a "leader" - it's not a military rank or appointment that I recognise. Obviously, though, as a "leader" he can, off his own bat, rearrange the look of an area of the Army War College as he wishes.

[Richard Lindquist]

 

one of my leaders looked outside his new office location and simply decided to change the look of the hallway.

 

What, pray, is a "leader" - it's not a military rank or appointment that I recognise. Obviously, though, as a "leader" he can, off his own bat, rearrange the look of an area of the Army War College as he wishes.

 

The term "leader" is often used derisively to designate a superior officer as in "guess what our leader wants today?".

[Ken Estes]

Has attended Militaerische Fuehrernachwuchs?

 

My greater fear is that this forms part of the warrior/gunfighter lingo that replaced standard military terminology. The troops or students are the warriors, the leaders are some sort of samurai, dedicated to their master, in this case a commandant of AWC. He did say, 'one of my leaders' didn't he? So, we must also have his AWC, not the army's, and so forth.

 

At worst case it's just informal chatter but shows lack of precision, maybe some haughtiness. Was the leader in question a department head or one of the tenured faculty? There is a certain arrogance of power to sweep all the pics way in favor of some whimsy.

 

This one does make me shiver a bit:

 

I also must tell you that I am in the midst of planning a more meaningful approach to the imagery and artwork that currently adorn the public areas on the three primary floors of The War College. There will be change:

 

 

It may well be that this guy will no longer resemble the major BP once knew. It happens so much.

Edited January 5, 2014 by Ken Estes

[Panzermann]

From the following lines it reads like he wants to sort the accumulated random mess that the hallways seem to be. Probably he will sort it chronologically.

 

I think that is boring. Imho having all the artwork in its naturally grown randomness along the hallways has a quality to itself by contrasting the past with the now or near past. But then I am not in the US Army nor at its war college.

[RETAC21]

 

one of my leaders looked outside his new office location and simply decided to change the look of the hallway.

 

 

What, pray, is a "leader" - it's not a military rank or appointment that I recognise. Obviously, though, as a "leader" he can, off his own bat, rearrange the look of an area of the Army War College as he wishes.