The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [304]
[137] For reasons unknown, Robert E. Lee never wrote a book about the war; thus, many of his decisions go unexplained. This is a great loss to history. Grant’s memoirs are highly useful because we get to look into the mind of the man making the decisions.
[138] The Union cannons had rifling, and the Confederate cannons did not. Rifling makes a projectile fly straighter.
[139] Compare this to George Washington at Boston. He had wanted to assault the city but listened to his fellow commanders when they told him they were against it, which was excellent advice. Lee did not listen to his fellow senior commanders and his men, and his cause, paid dearly.
[140] At Waterloo, the total losses were about fort-seven thousand men killed and wounded between all three armies (English, Prussian, and French). After more than 3 years fighting in Iraq the US lost about 5,000 men and the public wanted an end to it. Time does change things.
[141] More proof of how incompetent they were.
[142] This would have forced Sherman to attack well-prepared Confederate positions blocking his supply lines, thereby costing him dearly in men.
[143] Sherman’s march to the sea. This was truly modern war. The target was the civilian population of the South. After this operation, there would be no such thing as civilians in war. Everyone was now a target. In spite of treaties and other documents trying to say otherwise, the fact is that every member of the opposing state is now a valid target for death and destruction. The bombing of civilians in WWII by both the Axis and the Allies, the atrocities of the Japanese, Germans, Soviets involving not only soldiers in uniform but civilians as well, and the latest terrorists attacks of the 21st Century, clearly show there are no civilians. The slaughter of Christians by Muslims, the slaughter of everything and everyone by the Mongols, the complete destruction of ancient cities by the Assyrians, show that this has long been the case, but somehow people cannot accept this blatant fact.
[144] The Carpetbaggers were northerners who moved south during Reconstruction for economic and political advantage. They bought plantations, became wealthy landowners, and managed, with the help of Freedmen in the state legislatures, to buy up southern railroads. By 1870, the Carpetbaggers controlled 21 percent of southern RR by mileage. By 1890, they controlled 88 percent of the RR by mileage and held an average of 47 percent on the boards of directors for the southern RR.
[145] P. 184 et seq, The Stakes of Power, 18945-1877, Nichols & Berwanger, 1982
[146] Women are not a “minority” because they outnumber men; however, the US Supreme Court classified them as a minority (granting them the status of a protected class) because they have traditionally been treated as a minority. Once again, we have a court imposing a total fiction on the people through the use of its power to tell the nation what the Constitution means.
[147] “Only” one war, the Spanish American War in 1898 . . . oh . . . and a small invasion of Mexico when Pershing was chasing Poncho Villa.
[148] For example, the Illinois legislature passed laws controlling railroad rate setting because railroads favored large terminals over smaller ones, and either would not service small terminals or would charge a lot more to service them. These kinds of practices favored larger shippers over small ones, and effectively gave the large city merchants a decided advantage over the small merchants due to the price of transporting goods to market. See p. 210-226 et seq, The Stakes of Power 1845-1877, Nichols & Berwanger, 1982.
[149] US battleships were named after states.
[150] Note that the internal combustion engine is still the mainstay of automobile transportation in the twenty-first century (2010), and it was invented in the eighteenth century. It seems that we managed to perfect the mechanical dinosaur.
[151] Notice that the Rose Bowl was being played before the invention of powered flight!
[152] In 1903 the first powered aircraft