Should Lee have surrendered after Lincoln's Re-election?

Should Lee have surrendered?

  • Yes

    Votes: 81 76.4%
  • No

    Votes: 25 23.6%

  • Total voters
    106
I think the proper question should be whether Jefferson Davis, not Lee, should have surrendered.

But yes, the South should have thrown in the towel after Lincoln's reelection, for that event made clear that the Confederacy had absolutely no chance left. Interestingly, when John C. Breckinridge was brought in as Secretary of War in January of 1865, he made it his mission to prepare for the surrender he saw as inevitable and to persuade Davis (a man not very open to persuasion) that he should give up the fight and flee the country. When Breckinridge sent a circular around to the main military commanders and department bureau chiefs, Lee responded to Breckinridge by saying that they needed to seek terms with the enemy as quickly as possible.

This was why after the war was over Davis was so reviled North & South as the villain of the war. Getting caught wearing his wife's shawl (though not her dress, as Northern newspapers and their cartoonists thrilled to report) didn't help.:rolleyes: Davis never knew when to say enough was enough. We can be thankful that Lee did not share Davis' attitude regarding surrender.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
This was why after the war was over Davis was so reviled North & South as the villain of the war. Getting caught wearing his wife's shawl (though not her dress, as Northern newspapers and their cartoonists thrilled to report) didn't help.:rolleyes: Davis never knew when to say enough was enough. We can be thankful that Lee did not share Davis' attitude regarding surrender.

For a little while, this was true. But after Davis had been kept confined in Fort Monroe for two years, even chained up in his cell, without any charges being brought against him, opinion in both the North and South began to change. Soon the South began looking upon him as a great martyr for the cause, while many in the North saw his treatment as cruel and unfair.
 
When you have a viable army in the field you do not surrender. Sure, nations make peace with each other when this is the case, but one of the belligerents is not set on the annihilation of the independence of the other. So, France can throw in the towel and make a loser's peace with Britain because it can come back. But it would have been thought tremendously dishonourable to surrender utterly your independence while you still had an army that could fight

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
When you have a viable army in the field you do not surrender. Sure, nations make peace with each other when this is the case, but one of the belligerents is not set on the annihilation of the independence of the other. So, France can throw in the towel and make a loser's peace with Britain because it can come back. But it would have been thought tremendously dishonourable to surrender utterly your independence while you still had an army that could fight

Best Regards
Grey Wolf

After Lincoln's election, at the latest, the CSA Army wasn't really viable any more. It was in the same shape as Germany and Japan in 1945. It couldn't win, it could only increase the death toll.
 
After Lincoln's election, at the latest, the CSA Army wasn't really viable any more. It was in the same shape as Germany and Japan in 1945. It couldn't win, it could only increase the death toll.

I think the issue is that as far as Robert E. Lee and his counterparts in the Confederate Army were concerned, the Confederacy was a legitimate government; and they certainly believed in civil control of the military. Lee wasn't the civil leader of the Confederacy; therefore ending the war wasn't his decision to make. After all, when he did surrender it was because his army was in a literally untenable position.

Now, should Jefferson Davis have begun surrender negotiations after Lincoln's re-election? Yes.
 
For a little while, this was true. But after Davis had been kept confined in Fort Monroe for two years, even chained up in his cell, without any charges being brought against him, opinion in both the North and South began to change. Soon the South began looking upon him as a great martyr for the cause, while many in the North saw his treatment as cruel and unfair.

Damn right it was unfair. Traitor should have been shot, the only good case against it was the South needed to be reintegrated (but of course it should have been done more harshly since obviously letting former slave owners run their own affairs was going to end badly race wise) frankly him being charged with treason and imprisoned for a decade or two or maybe even for life would have been a better outcome.
 
Damn right it was unfair. Traitor should have been shot, the only good case against it was the South needed to be reintegrated (but of course it should have been done more harshly since obviously letting former slave owners run their own affairs was going to end badly race wise) frankly him being charged with treason and imprisoned for a decade or two or maybe even for life would have been a better outcome.

Agreed, I would have shot Davis or at the very least imprisoned him for life for treason.
 
He did. But it always came back to Confederate Independence. Davis would never give that up.

Well in Davis's mind he was seeking peace negotiations, on the basis of Confederate independence (if he wasn't just trying to discredit Southern peace supporters by making it clear what the North's peace terms were). When I say seek negotiations for surrender, I mean Davis should have known that independence was out of the question, and focused on concessions like amnesty, compensation, and home rule.
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
Damn right it was unfair. Traitor should have been shot, the only good case against it was the South needed to be reintegrated (but of course it should have been done more harshly since obviously letting former slave owners run their own affairs was going to end badly race wise) frankly him being charged with treason and imprisoned for a decade or two or maybe even for life would have been a better outcome.

So Abraham Lincoln was an idiot?
 
Reconciliation requires compromise with man's urge to hurt and humiliate his enemy, just as in Northern Ireland

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 

TFSmith121

Banned
Actually, to give the Italians credit:

It's much easier if the cause is truly discredited. The Italians didn't have much trouble with the surrender in 1943.

The Italian royal army, navy, and air force all fought on, and fairly effectively, given the circumstances. More so than the "bitter end" Fascist equivalents...

By VE Day, the Italian (cobelligerant) Army had four divisions (eight brigades total) in the line, with two more preparing, plus various and sundry security and communications zone troops; the only European allies with larger forces in the field in the west were the British, French, and Poles, and the Polish ground forces were just slightly larger than the Italians, in terms of divisions/brigades in action.

The USVs (ie galvanized Yankees) numbered six battalion equivalents, plus; the equivalent of two brigades, perhaps...

If Lee had brought the ANV over to the US side in 1863 or so, that would have been interesting.

Best,
 
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