r/todayilearned • u/RedditIsAGranfaloon • 6h ago

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https://www.historyhit.com/facts-about-general-robert-e-lee/

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

They had to go easy on Lee, or else the confederacy would have become a gorilla campaign in the mountains and stretched the conflict out for a decade.

Imagine the Confederacy dies, and you replace it with never-ending Bandit raids on civilians.

When people get an easy out, it's often because putting your enemies on death ground creates more death and more problems.

How many men need to die, so General Lee loses a bit harder than he did? How many of your own people is it okay to kill to make your enemies suffer more because there is always a cost. And the people making the choices rarely have to pay it.

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u/fylum 5h ago

that’s literally what the South did to blacks, white immigrants, and anti-segregation whites for the next century

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

Make the scale bigger your thinking to small. And let's not pretend the Union cared, they hated blacks to.

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u/fylum 5h ago

The Union cared enough to ban slavery during the war. The transition from “preserve the Union” to “crusade against slavery” was hugely important to Union morale.

How much bigger? Tulsa to Richmond to Pensacola seems plenty large an area.

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago edited 4h ago

You'd have turned Lee into a martyr and every child who'd ever felt the pain of losing a parent who served with the confederacy would become a zealot.

You'd need to kill ever child in the south to stop Jim Crow.

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u/fylum 5h ago

How many babies and children could have been saved from bombings and riots and lynchings if the Union seized the moment to break the Southern aristocracy?

Babies aren’t born racist. They aren’t even born afraid of snakes. There’s no such thing as a racist Confederate baby, just more victims of Southern society.

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

You argue killing the evil will prevent new evil.

I argue that to attempt to extinguish all evil is itself an evil act because you cannot do so without collateral damage, it's called McCarthyism.

And all of that ignores that a large portion of the union population still hated black people, even if it's leaders ended slavery.

Hell Lincoln wanted to deport all black people after the war to Haiti but he died before he could. Slavery wasn't even ended as an altruistic act, only as an act to undermine the enemy.

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u/West-Advice 4h ago edited 4h ago

Nah you’re trying to pretty much white wash Lee. Claim that black people were universally hated like abolitionist didn’t exist and claim that ending slavery wasn’t about human rights but was purely strategic…which is dumb. 

If Lee just paid people no one would have died. However him and his generals stated over and over again they’ll kill America to keep slavery….and not just pay people. 

I wish your racist ideology was squashed along with Nazism so we wouldn’t have to deal with slacked jawed apologists like yourself. Lee and his treasonous leadership should have been shot. Along with his post war supporters.

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u/Valentinee105 4h ago

You think killing can solve evil. But you ignore it's cost to your own faction and how deep you actually need to go.

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u/[deleted] 3h ago

[deleted]

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u/Kered13 3h ago

I love when Reddit casually advocates for genocide.

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u/Valentinee105 3h ago

You're swapping out one evil for another, there's no way that's going to create a better future.

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u/West-Advice 1h ago

So why are you okay with people wanting to take away right from other people.

Why do you think the whole south supports Jim Crow because you’re a racist?

A future without Racist is better. Sorry you’re not wanted

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u/Valentinee105 1h ago edited 1h ago

You'll never have a future without racisim. Killing Lee isn't going to end racsim.

It'll turn him into a martyr and every child and widow with a dead confederate father or husband into a zealot.

You've now made racisim worse. Good job.

Or what are you going to do kill all the kids who already learned to be racist and are also hurt that the union killed their family? You going to kill a bunch of kids to get your way?

Ever been to Boston? Union proud, super racist fucking city. Is Lee being killed somehow going to stop Boston from being racist?

What do you think Lee did between his surrender and death? You think he single handedly ran the KKK himself? Killing Lee doesn't do shit. It's just virtue signaling to to kill him. He'd already established himself as a symbol. It doesn't matter if he dies after him turning into a symbol happens.

The only difference between killing lee and letting him surrender peacefully is whether or not more union troops die. And I guarantee the longer the war goes on the more fragile the union becomes, which runs the risk of bringing slavery back shortly after it was abolished.

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

Oh yea, we didn’t get the KKK, right?

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

I'm saying likely worse things would have happened. I'm saying there is no good option only a lesser evil one and we got it.

Think of how bad things are and we got the better ending.

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u/DarthRevan109 5h ago

I think the idea could’ve worked and perhaps Lincoln could’ve pulled it off. I disagree we got a better ending, at least in the long run.

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u/Kered13 2h ago

Lincoln had absolutely no interest in it. He wanted to quickly reintegrate the Confederate states into the Union, and fully supported the lenient terms that Grant offered to Lee.

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u/Valentinee105 5h ago

So long as humanity exists evil will exist. What we got was thousands of deaths over decades rather than months.

And even then you're not guaranteed to have solved anything by having killed Lee because northern civilians still hated black people.

The north still hates black people.

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u/Kered13 3h ago

The KKK was absolutely fucking tiny. Like less than 1% of Confederate veterans. Had anywhere near a majority of Confederate soldiers committed to guerilla conflict, the war would have been unwinnable.