Debate! major confederate leaders should not be hanged, but instead, forgiven?

Question

yea...major confederate leaders should not be hanged, but instead forgiven. can someone give me some arguments that backs this up? this is set in around the american civil war times from 1860s - 1865 mostly

Answer 1

Many Confederate leaders were West Point graduates, commissioned Army officers, former members of Congress. They had sworn solemn oaths of loyalty to the United States. Then they committed treason by making war against the country they had sworn to serve and defend.

When the war was over, many Northern politicians wanted to treat the vanquished traitors with maximum harshness. They wanted an orgy of revenge, including hundreds, maybe even thousands, of trials and executions. But Lincoln insisted on a course of mercy and reconciliation. The country had just gone through one bloodbath; it didn't need another. The Confederate armies had surrendered. The South had abandoned its claim that it had the right to break away and set up a separate nation. The slaves were free in the former Confederate states on the basis of the Emancipation Proclamation, and would soon be free throughout the country on the basis of the 13th Amendment. Lincoln wanted to focus on healing the nation's wounds, not on vengeance and punishment. He wanted to make it relatively easy for former Confederates to regain their citizenship and rejoin the life of the reunited nation.

Lincoln's murder made it possible for more vengeful Northerners to make Reconstruction more of an ordeal for Southerners than it would otherwise have been, but Lincoln's vision of a peaceful, reconciled nation did nevertheless come to pass. In the decades after the Civil War, Union and Confederate veterans shook hands in brotherhood at numerous reunions. When Ulysses Grant died, former enemies paid their respects at his funeral. You still hear some diehards today mouthing silly "South gonna rise again" rhetoric, but for the most part Southerners are happy to be citizens of the nation their forebears tried to tear apart. We owe that in no small part to Lincoln's determination to pursue a policy of "malice toward none" and "charity for all."

Answer 2

When, on this Earth, are some people going to realize that the "War of Northern Aggression" is OVER?!?
The South started an ill-advised War and hundreds of thousands died to preserve the greatest Country on the planet - The Last, Best Hope. Then, now, they have the nerve to re-write history and keep asking ridiculous questions?
They should not have been hanged - maybe some from both sides should have - for War Crimes which definitely occurred on both sides. But Officers and men should never, in war time, be hanged for doing their duty to their Country. Only in criminal situations should this be a consideration. Those men thought they were doing what they had to do.
This in no way should be used to justify such actions as that which occurred at prison camps on both sides - that sort of thing. Hanging was too good.
The only man hanged after the War for so-called war crimes was the Commandant of Andersonville Prison, which, although an absolutely awful embodiment of hell on earth, was not the worst example of human depravity which occurred during the War. Right idea, wrong man.
This Continent would still be at War had the Northerners not had the dignity to allow the Southerners to retain that dignity they still had. Seems as if some folks want just that.
Fortunately cooler heads prevailed at the time and followed Lincoln's directives that the Southerners were not to be punished and the Country had to be rebuilt from the ground up. Because there was no 1865 Treaty of Versailles - we were allowed to heal and form the somewhat perfect Union we have today. Had we beaten the South into the mud, there would have been Civil War II 20 years hence.

Answer 3

Definitely forgiven! The Union's objective was to reunite the country, and whether or not secsession was an act of treason, harsh treatment of the Confederate leaders would only have hardened opposition throughout the South and possibly led to the kind of insurgent activity that's happening in Iraq today. Instead, the right thing to do was to apply Lincoln's way of destroying enemies--by making them friends. Besides, forgiving one's enemies is always the decent thing to do!

Answer 4

Forgiven for what?? All we wanted was to separate from the Union, which was perfectly legal, and then we get attacked. It's the Union that needs forgiving, or hanging. Read "The Politically Incorrect Guide to the South: And Why It Will Rise Again" by a man named Clinton (no relation to the perverted couple who have occupied the White House and are still trying to do it again.) God Bless you.

Answer 5

LOL KEVIN LOL