Robert Edward Lee

Near the end of that month he read to his cabinet the draft of a proclamation of emancipation, but he laid it aside until a military achievement would make it something more than an idle gesture.

In September, the severe check administered to Lee at Antietam seemed to offer the golden opportunity.

On the 22nd, the immortal document was given to the world, announcing that, unless the States-in-Arms returned to the Union by January 1, 1863, the fatal blow at their peculiar institution would be delivered southern leaders treated it with slight regard and so on the date set the promise was fulfilled the proclamation was issued as a war measure adopted by the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces on grounds of military necessity it did not abolish slavery it simply emancipated slaves in places than in arms against federal authority everywhere else slavery as far as the proclamation was concerned remained lawful to seal forever the proclamation of emancipation and to extend freedom to the whole country congress in january eighteen sixty five on the urgent recommendation of lincoln transmitted to the states the thirteenth amendment abolishing slavery throughout the union by the end of eighteen sixty five the amendment was ratified the house was not divided against itself it did not fall it was all free the restraint of civil liberty as in all great wars particularly those in the nature of a civil strife it was found necessary to use strong measures to sustain opinion favorable to the administration's military policies and to frustrate the designs of those who sought to hamper its action Within two weeks of his first call for volunteers, Lincoln empowered General Scott to suspend the writ of habeas corpus along the line of march between Philadelphia and Washington, and thus to arrest and hold without interference from civil courts any one whom he deemed a menace to the Union.

At a later date the area thus ruled by military officers was extended by executive proclamation.

General after general, McClellan, Pope, Burnside, Hooker, and Meade, was tried and found wanting.

None of them could administer a crushing defeat to the Confederate troops, and more than once the Union soldiers were beaten in a fair battle.

They did succeed, however, in delivering a severe check to advancing Confederates under General Robert E. Lee, first at Antietam in September 1862, and then at Gettysburg in July 1863, checks reckoned as victories, though in each instance the Confederates escaped without demoralization.

Not until the beginning of the next year, when General Grant, supplied with almost unlimited men and munitions, began his irresistible hammering at Lee's army, did the final phase of the war commence.

For

the first six months of 1863, Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson had carried out one of the most extraordinary military campaigns in history.

Smashing huge federal armies at Fred...

my birthday was yesterday right and uh so 47 by the way happy

The Confederate Army was starving, literally starving.

Lee's men were eating their horses.

Foraging for corn meant for livestock.

Writing letters home that described, in polite 19th century language, a situation that was an absolute shitshow.

The union had them surrounded at Petersburg, Virginia, a nine-month siege that had ground the Confederate forces into dust.

When the lines finally broke on April 2nd, Lee had one move left, run.

Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy, fled Richmond so fast he left his breakfast on the table.

The Confederate capital was burning, set on fire by Confederates themselves to keep supplies from the Union.

Grant wanted the Confederacy hit everywhere at once.

He did not want thousands of veteran soldiers tied up indefinitely in western Louisiana while the main Union armies prepared to move against Robert E. Lee in Virginia.

And then you had Joseph E. Johnston in Georgia.

And Nathaniel Banks, he was ordered to make sure that Smith's men were returned by the middle of April, even if that meant abandoning the advance before Shreveport was even taken.

It was reported this week that Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth wants to spend $10 million out of the Army budget to move the Daughters of the Confederacy monument created in 1914 back to Arlington Cemetery, since people are now looking at a basically a piece of wood plaque and an empty platform.

Now, this was done in 2023, back when bases were being renamed with the same mindset that caused the Robert E. Lee statue to be covered in spray paint in Charlottesville, Virginia.

So for these whiners of historical background, I have an edification called a Bonus Baby Bible Verse of Romans 1219.

I think if you don't want me to look it up.

You've got this very tangible event happening in the midst of the Civil War.

It's not Robert E. Lee did this or Lincoln did that.

This is the everyday man tunneling out of Libby, embarrassing the Confederates, and showing them the fight will go on all the way to the end, all the way to freedom.

Those men look like Yankees.

Two years into the war, it was apparent that the last card I had to play to win this war, because we were losing miserably.

We were not defeating Robert E. Lee in the South.

So I brought my cabinet members in together and I said, for some time now, I've been thinking about freeing the slaves.

And many of them were abolitionists, but they said, it won't work like it wouldn't work when you first became president.

I was hearing about him winning in the Western Theater.

You see, there was a Western Theater and an Eastern Theater.

Robert E. Lee was in the Eastern Theater.

Mm-hmm.

... it's also wounded, and it was also the bloodiest battle of the war.

It was also a major turning point as Confederate General Robert E. Lee's invasion of the North was stopped by the Union victory at Gettysburg.

Lincoln gave the Gettysburg Address at a cemetery dedication at Gettysburg in November.

The speech lasted only about two minutes, but became one of the most important speeches in American history.

Photography became an important part of the war, with the Civil War being the first major conflict to be extensively photographed.

Photographers such as Mathew Brady and Alexander Gardner documented soldiers, battlefields, and the terrible consequences of combat.

The war produced America's most famous military cemetery, as Arlington National Cemetery was established during the Civil War on land that had belonged to the family of Confederate General Robert E. Lee.

It was actually from his wife's family, but-