LogFAQs > #885084793

Zeus posted...

Actually, you're not looking at it the right way. Had the US not provided so much support to the Allies in WWI, there may not have been a WWII where a genocidal madman ruled Germany because the harsh terms imposed on Germany may have been greatly curtailed had the war ended in something closer to a truce than a defeat. Plus the existence of the CSA -- which may have instead favored the other side -- could have served to deter the initial conflict. Given that it's impossible to know what the CSA might have done differently, predicting a new course of history -- given changes at every step along the way -- is tenuous at best.

Agreed, it's pretty difficult to speculate 100 years of alternate history. I just think the "if America hadn't participated in WW2, the Allies would have lost!" line of thinking is simply wrong. If America hadn't participated and everything else proceeded as it did, an Allied victory was still all but inevitable, just on a delayed timeline (and with a different look at its conclusion - the Soviets likely would have captured most or all of Germany and likely large swathes of Japan and East Asia as well).

TheCyborgNinja posted...

Lee was an abolitionist himself from what I understand

You understand incorrectly, then. There are people who claim that he was an abolitionist based on a letter he wrote in 1856, where he described slavery as "a moral and political evil" - which is nice, but if you read the full text of the letter, he goes on to explain that it's mostly an evil to white people, not blacks, since the white people are ones who have to actually take care of these helpless slaves and he also considered it a lesser evil than the alternative (that being allowing blacks to be free and, thus, deprive them of the "discipline" and "education" they were receiving at the hands of whites).

Lee was an ardent supporter of slavery and was well-known to be especially cruel to his slaves. When he caught escaped slaves, he had them whipped mercilessly and, since that apparently wasn't good enough, then proceeded to have brine washed into the tattered flesh of their backs. Most slave owners generally did not break up slave families, as that was seen as unnecessarily cruel; Lee did it deliberately, selling off family members to other plantations. When units under his command invaded Pennsylvania, they took every free black they could find and brought them back to the South as property.

Even in the aftermath of the Civil War, Lee did all he could to subjugate blacks. He advised southerners to hire white labourers instead of freed black slaves, claimed that blacks were bent on overthrowing white rule, and resisted all efforts towards black enfranchisement (claiming that blacks were too stupid to vote) and the enforcement of racial equality. He generally overlooked or downplayed racist attacks and abductions while he was president of Washington College, including two attempts at lynchings.

About the best you can say about Lee is that he was a firm believer in The White Man's Burden, seeing slavery as a way to "civilize the black savages" and save their souls by spreading Christianity amongst them, but in light of how he treated freed black men even that seems to be a convenient excuse he used to justify his flagrant hatred of blacks.
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