Comments by "Pyromania101" (@pyromania1018) on "Ulysses S. Grant: Victor of the American Civil War" video.

I'm from the south, and the "Lost Cause" can kiss my ass.* Sadly, while the rest of my family doesn't espouse it completely, they certainly are reluctant to admit that the Confederacy started the war to maintain and expand slavery, with some of them trying to make excuses. * Admittedly, it did take me a while to wake up to the facts, though I always expressed relief that the Union won the war. I guess I just didn't want to believe that the South's motivation was really that simple.
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From that point on, Lee forbade ANYONE from saying anything bad about Grant in his presence.
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By contrast, Lee was a brutal slave master who altered his dying father-in-law's will, which specified that his slaves were to be freed upon his death, so he could keep them for 5 more years, but really planned to keep them forever. To his astonishment, when the fifth year was close to ending, in 1862, fellow Southerners expected him to honor it. Instead, he took the matter to court and tried to extend it, but the (Confederate, pro-slavery) judge refuted his excuses and ordered him to abide by it. He refused to give an explicit answer, then deliberately stalled after the deadline had passed, to the disgust of his peers. Fed up, one of the slaves ran away, but was recaptured. Brought before Lee, he bluntly said he considered himself a free man, so Lee decided to "teach [him] a lesson" by having him brutally flogged before pouring salt water on the wounds to make it hurt more. Naturally, the Lost Cause tried to pretend this never happened, but a book published earlier this year "Robert E. Lee & Me", written by a disillusioned former Brigadier-General, called attention to it.
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I just started re-reading his memoirs.
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@Ladey Babey Reconstruction and industrialization dealt with both problems, but they were too busy whining about the fact that they couldn't own slaves anymore to appreciate that. And frankly, it was also that little fact that made the war unwinnable, among other things: they grew so much cotton that they neglected to grow enough food.
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Yeah. While I support most of Sherman's actions during his infamous march*, his treatment of Native Americans was truly appalling; though, whenever a tribe submitted without a fight, he'd try to ensure said tribe was well cared for. * His abandoning those slaves at a river crossing was just nasty... but he didn't have the resources to feed them, and he'd warned them of this beforehand, and that they followed him at their own peril. So, yeah, it was a cruel move, but I can't entirely deny the practicality of it.
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Modern historians have begun to reexamine his presidency and concluded he was actually a lot better than earlier "historians" claimed. It must be kept in mind that the early records of him were written by extremely biased "Lost Cause" sympathizers who hated his guts for conquering the South and taking away their slaves. He enforced abolition at gunpoint, tried to introduce civil rights to the newly freed slaves, and while it was during his presidency that the Native American tribes were subjugated, he did try to keep them from being slaughtered and oppressed.
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@The Big Kiwi I'll give you points for honesty, but I can't "like" your comment given what you're saying.
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@kenownbey I'm from Texas and my teachers skated around the slavery topic in regards to causes, though they never explicitly said anything about the "Lost Cause". And yeah, that book is AWESOME. It warms my heart to know that Grant was able to posthumously save his family from starving by writing it.
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After reading through all this, I might as well get some things off my chest. First, I voted for Trump both times, but I don't think that necessarily makes me a racist. Second, much as I hate to say it, I have some prejudices--everyone does, to a degree: I think Christian scientists are murderers, and I'm not too fond of Islam because of the sexism. That doesn't mean I think they should be butchered or anything like that, though I do think the children of Christian scientists should be put in foster care before their parents get them killed. Third, time to address some things here: 1. Yes, slavery existed in one form or another for millennia, but what people who preach that in an attempt to lessen how evil the CSA was tend to ignore is just how the system worked before then. In early days, one side enslaved the other because they won a war. In Rome, that principle applied, but laws were gradually passed to make it less unbearable, and they did not give a rat's ass about skin color. It was even expected to free a few slaves every now and then, and any children they had afterwards would have full citizenship. I'm not saying any of this excuses slavery as a system, but comparing slavery in the antebellum South to other forms of it misses the point. Honestly, the best comparison would be to the Jews enslaved by the Egyptians in the Book of Exodus, which really demonstrates the thorough hypocrisy that the South reveled in. 2. The North as a whole did not care about abolishing slavery (though some generals and politicians did, and tried to go further*), but the South DID care about maintaining and expanding it. It's a simple case of black-and-grey morality: the Northerners weren't trying to be heroes, but the Southerners were going out of their way to be villains. The right thing being done for less-than altruistic reasons is still the right thing being done. Just like in WWII: many Allied soldiers were anti-Semitic to a degree, but they were shocked by the death camps and didn't hesitate to liberate them. 3. I noticed Jan Brady pointing out that African Americans didn't complain about all those Confederate statues. To that, I say: do you really think they could've stopped those statues from being built? Do you think the cities gave a damn whether or not they felt insulted by the glorification of a "culture" that kept them in bondage? Of course not. They had no say, so if they complained, they'd have been beaten down. 4. The tearing down of those statues isn't erasing history: it's acknowledging that some bits of history should not be lionized. * Men like Thaddeus Stevens and General Rufus Saxton were fervent abolitionists and civil rights activists; and one Union commander befriended Harriet Tubman and allowed her to accompany him on his campaign, during which he burned a Confederate city down after discovering how its residents treated their slaves.
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@briansheehan5256 Sherman did have to get Grant's blessing to conduct his March, though, as a lot of people thought it too risky, and Grant was inclined to agree with them. But he trusted Sherman so much that he assented: "Go as you propose."
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@TRC2002 I'm aware that it was a rich man's war and that reconstruction was cancelled. However, even the poorest southern white man was considered above a slave and believed in maintaining and expanding slavery, even if that particular southerner did not own a slave. Reconstruction was cancelled in exchange for Rutherford B. Hayes becoming president, and without federal troops occupying the South, the former Confederates viciously instituted the Jim Crow laws in order to push the former slaves as close to slavery as possible, while also inventing the "Lost Cause" BS to make themselves look good on the eyes of the world. So what's your point, exactly?
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@fateagle4life Keeping it from spreading would have led to abolition, as the movement was gaining ground in free states for one reason or another. As for their reasons, in all honesty, they don't really matter. Abolishing slavery was the right thing to do, even when the motives weren't moral. When has a politician ever done the right thing out of a feeling of moral obligation? The rare ones that do have to disguise it, or they'll never accomplish their goals.
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He already did one.
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While there was an attempt on 15 July, the famous incident took place on 20 July.
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@TRC2002 Exactly. They even issued a law saying that if you owned a certain number of slaves, you didn't have to actually fight. 1 family member for every 10 slaves, I think.
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Little would have changed: Lincoln wanted to show undeserved leniency to the South (it's why so many Southerners were actually pissed off about his assassination), which was met with disgust by Congress, who wanted to give the South everything they deserved. The arguments likely would have been more genial since Lincoln was less vulgar than Johnson and had embraced abolitionism (and had even flirted with granting African-Americans full citizenship rights nationwide), but things likely would have played out as they did.
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@trexasaurus5322 Yup, though conversely, I don't respect Lee all that much.
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@jeremystewert4303 "In general, I preferred the days before my presidency." ~Ulysses S. Grant
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@onerandomdude4015 I think he just wants attention.
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You forgot to mention Order No. 11, an anti-Semitic order that his dad manipulated him into issuing, and was almost immediately repudiated by an indignant Lincoln. To his credit, Grant expressed remorse and embarrassment over it and bent over backwards to make up for his actions, so I'll give him credit for that, at least.
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@marknecker1996 Bzzt! Wrong! Lee was just as brutal and aristocratic as the other rich slave owners, and he even argued that slavery was needed to "discipline" black people so they could survive better when they were shipped back to Africa--despite never giving a date for when that should happen. He also ordered his troops to ransack a town for the express purpose of abducting and enslaving all the black people who lived therein. He was a contemptible man whose mistakes were swept under the rug by "Lost Cause" propaganda, or were blamed on others.
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