Why did PGT Beauregard join the Confederacy? Was he like Robert E. Lee, where he joined the Confederates because his home state seceeded?
I imagine it was like Lee, though more in the sense of "supported what was being done" and less "my state right or wrong".
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 know its impossible to be invaded when you belong to said nation.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.![]()
You know its impossible to be invaded when you belong to said nation.
You know its impossible to be invaded when you belong to said nation.
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.![]()
So if the government decides to roll tanks over your house one day, you won't consider that an invasion?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?
a country he had sworn to defend
a state based upon slavery one of the greatest evils in human history.
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.
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.
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.
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.