Re: What kind of person was Stonewall Jackson?

On Jun 29, 9:42=EF=BF=BDam, Ulysses at Olympus Mons
<davidholi...@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>=

wrote:
>
> Please know that the War killed off the finest and most courageous
> sons
> and daughters of the Confederacy. =EF=BF=BDWhat was left in the era of
pos=
t-
> Lincoln
> Reconstruction were the white officials and leaders who were
> sycophant,
> lazy, corrupt, cowardly and selfish.



Surely a teeny bit of an exaggeration.

ACW casualties were indeed high, but far outnumbered by survivors.
Postwar Southern governors included names like Wade Hampton, John B
Gordon and Zebulon Vance. Lucius QC Lamar became a Senator and later
Supreme Court Justice. Alexander H Stephens was in the HoR for a
decade, and the list could no doubt be greatly extended. Iirc, when
the Democrats regained the Senate in 1879, Republicans complained that
every Committee charmanshp was held by a Rebel Brigadier.

Nor is there any reason to suppose that things were much different at
lower levels. As far as I can see, the men who ran the South after the
War (and certainly once Reconstruction had been disposed of) were
pretty much the same men who ran it before, or the sons and younger
brothers of those who fell. In fact, the Southern =EF=BF=BDlite seems to
hav=
e
survived the ACW about as well as the British ruling class survived
WW1. In both cases, the class concened tended to lose its grip over
the next generation or two, but there is little evidence that war
casualties were the main reason for this.


--

Mike Stone - Peterborough, England


Q) In the Roman Civil Wars, why did all the bachelors fight for
Sulla?


A) Because they weren't the Marian kind.