Civil War question

I imagine it was like Lee, though more in the sense of "supported what was being done" and less "my state right or wrong". :mad:

He had after all expressed "Southern sympathies" in his (extremely) brief tenure as Superintendent of West Point, which seems to indicate he wasn't even professedly torn up about it. (Source: Generals in Gray)

The angry face is at the Virginia general...and any other examples of "Southern sympathy" by those who had taken an oath to serve their country.
 
I think it was more his preferences were for the Confederacy and he'd side with that over opposing it.

"Southern sympathies" is unclear, however, so you could easily write him as my state right or wrong.
 
I imagine it was like Lee, though more in the sense of "supported what was being done" and less "my state right or wrong". :mad:

He had after all expressed "Southern sympathies" in his (extremely) brief tenure as Superintendent of West Point, which seems to indicate he wasn't even professedly torn up about it. (Source: Generals in Gray)

The angry face is at the Virginia general...and any other examples of "Southern sympathy" by those who had taken an oath to serve their country.

You're taking a very small statement in GENERALS IN GRAY and blowing it up all out of proportion. It was not wrong, nor was it illegal, for a Southerner, even an officer in the US military, to express "Southern sympathies" in January 1861. There was no war at that time, nor did it look at that time like one was on the horizon. The New York newspapers which Beauregard would have been reading in his office at West Point were running editorials at that time urging that the Union should allow the "erring sisters to go in peace." It was not even clear at that time that the Federal Government would actively oppose secession.

In Beauregard's case, he may well not have taken the course he did if he had not been shabbily treated by the Federal government. He had taken the post at West Point on January 23, 1861. Louisiana seceded on January 26, and two days later, the Buchanan Administration revoked Beauregard's orders and removed him as Superintendent of West Point. Beauregard had not done anything to indicate disloyalty up to that point, and he quite justifiably took this removal as an insult upon his integrity as an officer and a gentleman, and lodged a formal protest with the War Department. When that was ignored, he resigned his commission and went South.
 
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Beauregard was born into a family of Planters with a capital P. This is a very good predictor of whether or not one's fate was likely to side with the Confederacy.
 
Yeah because someone isn't willing to be part of an army invading their home, or heaven forbid defend it against an invading force, that makes them a traitor. :mad:
 
You know its impossible to be invaded when you belong to said nation.

So if the government decides to roll tanks over your house one day, you won't consider that an invasion? :rolleyes: If the government sends troops into a State to make war against it, that's an invasion. We may dispute whether its a "foreign" invasion or not. But an invasion it most definitely would be.
 
Beauregard was born into a family of Planters with a capital P. This is a very good predictor of whether or not one's fate was likely to side with the Confederacy.

Funny, so was this guy. Somehow or another, he ended up on the other side. So while it may be a "good predictor," whatever that means, it's by no means a perfect one.

And it should be remembered that Beauregard supported civil rights and voting for free blacks after the war, another indicator that Old Borry wasn't the stereotypical Confederate planter-aristocrat you are attempting to portray him as.
 
Yeah because someone isn't willing to be part of an army invading their home, or heaven forbid defend it against an invading force, that makes them a traitor. :mad:

And sympathizing with a side which held as its key tenet that a third of the populace was cattle completely incapable of proving itself human is a right and just thing.

And I know you will complain that I brought slavery into this but its more or less impossible to separate the confederacy and Slavery. Beauregard betrayed a country he had sworn to defend for a state based upon slavery one of the greatest evils in human history.
 

MrP

Banned
So if the government decides to roll tanks over your house one day, you won't consider that an invasion? :rolleyes: If the government sends troops into a State to make war against it, that's an invasion. We may dispute whether its a "foreign" invasion or not. But an invasion it most definitely would be.

In the sense of a "home invasion" used nowadays to mean burglary and similar? I suppose so. I'd say my view would depend, given the conflict which the thread mentions, on whether I had first seceded. If I had and I believed that my secession was valid, I should consider an invasion an invasion, while acknowledging that, despite my own feelings, the "despicable and illegitimate parliament at Westminster" would probably regard such as an internal police action, not an invasion. But then I should be amazed if my secession took away about half the land area of the country, and might get rather more philosophically irritated by the actions of Westminster. Then, of course, we get into the question of whether I have a right to secede. Does anyone else feel we should be watching Passport to Pimlicoe?
 
In the sense of a "home invasion" used nowadays to mean burglary and similar? I suppose so. I'd say my view would depend, given the conflict which the thread mentions, on whether I had first seceded. If I had and I believed that my secession was valid, I should consider an invasion an invasion, while acknowledging that, despite my own feelings, the "despicable and illegitimate parliament at Westminster" would probably regard such as an internal police action, not an invasion. But then I should be amazed if my secession took away about half the land area of the country, and might get rather more philosophically irritated by the actions of Westminster. Then, of course, we get into the question of whether I have a right to secede. Does anyone else feel we should be watching Passport to Pimlicoe?

Regardless of the "legalities" of the thing, which are debatable ad nauseam, the people on the receiving end of it are going to consider it an invasion, and that perception will influence their actions, as it did in Beauregard's (or Lee's, since he's been brought up here) case.
 

MrP

Banned
Regardless of the "legalities" of the thing, which are debatable ad nauseam, the people on the receiving end of it are going to consider it an invasion, and that perception will influence their actions, as it did in Beauregard's (or Lee's, since he's been brought up here) case.

Would that not be best decided on a person-by-person basis? We've noted here two Southern generals, but I'm sure you're aware of Southerners who would not have regarded it as the invasion of a new country, since they themselves didn't want it to be one. To return to my earlier example, I might regard my newly seceded country as legitimate, but my neighbour, whose views I refused to hear, would regard that as bollocks. EDIT: Yet both of us would be in it when the previous/correct/national/despicably evil government's forces turned up. So while I might consider it an invasion, he would not.
 
More than just a planter, Beauregarde was a Creole. He spoke French (well, sort of French) at home, his family didn't get to the big city of New Orleans very often because it had too many Anglos for their taste, and he understands himself to be part of an oppressed minority. He probably feels little emotional connection to any government involved, but since he has to pick one, the smaller the better - because a smaller government is more likely to leave the Creoles alone, whether that's the State of Louisiana or the CSA.
 
Funny, so was this guy. Somehow or another, he ended up on the other side. So while it may be a "good predictor," whatever that means, it's by no means a perfect one.

And it should be remembered that Beauregard supported civil rights and voting for free blacks after the war, another indicator that Old Borry wasn't the stereotypical Confederate planter-aristocrat you are attempting to portray him as.

Key words "good predictor of." There would, of course, be exceptions in any case. For that matter, there were a whole 300,000 Southern white people who saw that "invasion" as suppressing a Taliban/PKK-type movement that was a bit more complex than most. I might note that so did James Longstreet, and look what that got Marse Robert's Old Warhorse....

Regardless of the "legalities" of the thing, which are debatable ad nauseam, the people on the receiving end of it are going to consider it an invasion, and that perception will influence their actions, as it did in Beauregard's (or Lee's, since he's been brought up here) case.

And there would be just as many who would see it as a PKK writ large. Including all those black Southerners who took up arms to fight for their freedom only to be killed with no quarter by Secesh armies.
 
I think it was more his preferences were for the Confederacy and he'd side with that over opposing it.

"Southern sympathies" is unclear, however, so you could easily write him as my state right or wrong.

I might note that Robert Anderson also sided with the South in the 1861 period, which didn't stop him from doing his duty as an officer of the US Army.
 
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