Opinion of Robert E. Lee

[useful idiot]

Not an FF, but a man I admire greatly and who yes, made the right decision. The Civil War was going to take place whether he liked it or not, to fight against the citizens of his home state would have been monstrous.

Slavery was a moral crime, but don't for a minute act like it played into the mind of Lee(or Jackson, or most of the generals for that matter) or the leaders in the North who weren't hardcore abolitionists. The blame rests on the political establishment in the South for slavery, and the blame for the war rests on the shoulders of both sides.

This "traitor" nonsense that the Dems in this thread have been spouting off is retarded. It was often said in the North that they would consider seceding themselves if Breckenridge won. Would the Northerners have been traitors then in your minds?

[useful idiot]

One man's traitor is another's patriot.  It is nationalistic and ignorant to call Lee a traitor.  States have (or rather, had) the right to secede, and he was defending the right of his state, as well as others, to do so.

He was defending slavery.

That's like saying everyone in the current U.S. military is fighting for the interests of multinational corporations. It's true, and in a sense we enslave the world, but that doesn't really play into the minds of most enlisted guys and officers. They think they're protecting America and that they're necessary to do so; both are wrong, but whatever.

Slavery played no part in Lee's decision to fight for the South, period.

[useful idiot]

It doesn't matter what he was thinking, the point is that he fought for the side that supported slavery of other human beings, and that makes him an awful person.

Right, and the Union states of West Virginia, Missouri, Kentucky, Delaware, and Maryland so totally didn't allow slavery at all!
I don't have a fond memory of the Confederation or what it stood for, but to act like only they were guilty of supporting slavery is being ignorant of history.

Ok, so the Northern victory over the backwards South totally didn't bring an end to slavery, got it. Thanks for clearing that up.

You can't have it both ways, which is what you're trying to do. The South was "backwards" yet Kentucky, Maryland, West Virginia, Delaware, and Missouri weren't? You say he fought for the "side that supported slavery of other human beings", well states in the North supported the slavery of other human beings too. Those who supported slavery in the Union states weren't fighting to end slavery, they were fighting to bring the South under Northern domination.

If you're only going to support elements in the North whose goal in the war was to abolish slavery, then you're going to end up supporting a limited number of people, and in which case what they "were thinking" means everything. It's either black and white, or it isn't. I think the historical record shows that nothing about either side was simple.

I tend to support the Thaddeus Stevens position on the war; the South had the right to secede, but it was the North's right to go to war to end slavery. I'm not going to blast guys who decided to fight for their country, which was the CSA, and was no longer the United States. If you're going to attack the political establishment in the South, have at it, they bear most of the responsibility for the war itself. Don't pretend for a second though, that choosing not to fight against your own people and state is the absolute morally wrong position to take because your country had atrocious policies.

[useful idiot]

Not an FF, but a man I admire greatly and who yes, made the right decision. The Civil War was going to take place whether he liked it or not, to fight against the citizens of his home state would have been monstrous.

Slavery was a moral crime, but don't for a minute act like it played into the mind of Lee

On the contrary, it clearly did play into the mind of Lee.

Ok, provide me with some sort of evidence that Lee chose to fight for Virginia to preserve slavery. I'd love to see it, and I'm sure most historians and the history department at my school would too.

[useful idiot]

Don't pretend for a second though, that choosing not to fight against your own people and state is the absolute morally wrong position to take because your country had atrocious policies.

Sure it is. If some teabaggers took power in Minnesota and tried to seceed, I sure as hell wouldn't fight for my state. Hell I'd enjoy being treasonous and blowing up and putting bullets into teabagging filth, just like slaveowners.

Alfred Jodl pretty much chose just to stand by his country and its atrocious policies and never joined the Nazi Party. And he was executed for it regardless.

Yeah, you'd enjoy putting bullets into Tea Partiers, not burning down your neighborhood and watching your soldiers lay waste to the place and people you love. This wasn't like a modern war where two groups of volunteer soldiers fight each other for political reasons. Two sets of politicians decided they couldn't work out a solution, and Southern politicians were stubborn and were willing to give up the lives of the non-slaveholding class so they could keep their "property", and the entire populace of the South became target practice for an invading army.

You say you'd like putting bullets into slave owners, well guess what? The VAST MAJORITY of guys fighting for the Confederacy were not slaveowners, and plenty of officers from the North owned slaves themselves.

This is the equivalent of you saying in 2003 that you wouldn't mind putting bullets into Iraqi goat famers and street vendors because their government was whacked. Did you except them to join up with the Americans to help bomb their cities, killing hundreds of thousands of their neighbours, friends, and countrymen?

Your distorted black and white thinking is more than slightly similar to that of Republicans...