--- Bryon Daly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:Oddly, the guy wasn't at all racist, as far as I could tell, and he was from Wisconsin, so I don't think it was about him protecting his southern pride. The only thing I can think of is that some favorite teacher taught him that the Civil War wasn't about slavery, and he'd latched into it and refused to let go despite the facts.
The racism is in the past now, fortunately enough, but it's effects linger, of course. I would blame (and it is _blame_) the claim that the Civil War was not about race on the "Lost Cause" school of Southern historians, who were desperate to redeem their (genuinely) valiant struggle in an equally (genuinely) bad cause, and so decided to claim that it was about something other than slavery, and deified Robert E. Lee (surely the most overrated General in American history, much to the detriment of the truly extraordinary Grant, who can surely make a case for greatest non-Washington general in American history).
I completely agree with you about Grant.
My List of Great American Generals (in order): Washington Grant Sherman Marshall Vandergrift Gray
Feel free to agree or not.
Grant came from hardscrabble circumstances and personal failure to lead the greatest army of its time to complete victory.
john
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