Finally an intelligent point that disagrees with me! I’ll grant you Sherman was at least as influential as Grant, with one proviso. Sherman was Grant’s no. 1 assistant, and without Grant Sherman would probably have remained an obscure division commander; perhaps he would have been given a Corps in 1864. Grant and he trusted one another as few soldiers then or since have. But you’re right: Sherman had a great influence on the outcome of the war. So, for that matter, did Sheridan (who won Cedar Creek and sparked a small legend, that added to the mystique of the Lincoln administration and the war effort) and Thomas, who remains the only Civil War general to have annihilated an enemy army on the battlefield, at Nashville in the winter of ’64. I was just trying to make the point as simply as possible: Chamberlain was merely a cog in the machine, but Grant was the guy who designed the whole thing. For what it’s worth, my bad.

I disagree on one point with you it was not Grant but Sherman who won the war. First by taking Atlanta thus ensuring Lincoln’s reelection. Without it there is a definite possibility that the Copperhead candidate would have been elected and accepted Secession. After that it was Sherman’s March to the sea who broke South’s back even if you can argue that food shortages and the crumbling of its economy would have ended bringing sooner or later the South to its knees but at a heavier price in blood and treasure.

Anyway the theory that Lincoln was a a half black is simply ridiculous. Even people who are only 25% or 12.5% black have enough negroid features they can’t pass for “real” whites. These features are conspicuously absent in Lincoln. For half blacks they look definitely like Blacks.

If you want to put it that way, Chamberlain didn’t win the war, Grant did. Grant’s the boogeyman of the Civil War, according to Southerners, because he was the bearer of the message that while Lee was a brilliant tactician, he was only a mediocre strategist. Grant wasn’t the tactician Lee was, but his strategic wisdom made that irrelevant. He wound up pinning Lee’s army down, and then crushing it while it was robbed of its mobility. Relative casualty figures, discussions of honor and courage and so forth, and tactical brilliance are all irrelevant: Grant’s strategy worked, and Lee’s army surrendered.

As to the silliness of Lincoln being black: a few “knowledgeable” people think this one is proven. It’s not. It’s not even a possibility. Lincoln’s family was dirt poor; his father was illiterate, and thought his son learning to read a waste of time. No one who knew him thought him black; he married into a socially prominent Kentucky family which owned slaves. Do you think Mary Todd’s father, the Colonel, would have tolerated his little girl marrying a black man? You racist dingbats always have to cherry-pick the facts in order to make them fit your silly theories. And the idiot from Howard you used to drink beer with had probably had a few too many. Sorry, but half this country arrived her after slavery, and isn’t of African descent.

All of this being said, if your stupidity were to prove correct, SO WHAT?!? If Lincoln was indeed black, what does that prove, other than you dislike black people and are determined to smear him because of the supposed color of his skin? Actually, I can’t believe I’m arguing with you about this: people like you are rarely confused by logic or facts.

http://www.geocities.com/cureworks1/5blkpres.htm

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“If one considers the fact that European men far outnumbered European women during the founding of this country, and that the rape and impregnation of an African female slave was not considered a crime, it is even more surprising that these two authors could not document Black ancestors among an ever larger number of former presidents. The president’s names include Thomas Jefferson, Andrew Jackson, Abraham Lincoln, Warren Harding, and Calvin Coolidge.”
I used to play chess and drink berer with a Professor of Africian Studies at Howard University. He told me that if you used the one drop rule, all the pure white men in America would fit on the same bus. I asked him when was the last time he visited West “By God” Virginia.

Propaganda. The FACTS are that in 1860, there was no Constitutional law AGAINST secession. It was perfectly legal for any State to secede from the Union and form it’s own nation. Once that happened it was incumbent on the United states to remove it’s troops from what is now a foreign nation. Lincoln didn’t even though he knew it would mean war. Instead he sent reinforcements to certain military outposts in what was a new nation.
If Mexico had troops in Houston and the USA told them to leave and Mexico sent reinforcements which led the USA to start shooting at the Mexicans, who started the war?
No, Lincoln started that war.
As far as Slavery, it was NOT the Major issue for the South. For the South, the war was about the ability to write their own laws and run their own lives. Slavery would have ended anyway, just thru economics. It is cheaper to pay a man a low wage and let him pay for his own food shelter, etc then it is to support that same man. Sharecropping is always more profitable for the owner then slavery.
That was part of the propaganda campaign Lincoln’s minions put together. Lincoln started the war because he thought he had ALL the advantages. He didn’t, which is why the war lasted as long as it did.
The North had many advantages but the South had better leaders.
As Lincoln said after a guerrilla raid on a rear area supply depot that captured 1200 horses, tons of powder, hundreds of rifles and one General, ‘I can create a new General and buy more rifles, but how will I replace those horses?’
Despite it’s advantages the North won because of Chamberlain and Melcher, men you have probably never hear of.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Round_Top

Simply put, Little round Top falls, the Union flank is turned, there is no Pickets charge and the Union Army is defeated again. Lee Marches thru Pennsylvania to Philadelphia and the war is over. At that time the Union’s ONLY field army available was the one facing Lee. The other Union Armies were to far away to help or get between Lee and the Industrial North. Yes, they had more men, but Lee could have marched to New York before those men reached the battlefield.

“People never lie so much as after a hunt, during a war or before an election.”
-Otto Von Bismarck

Here is the question I want you to answer;
If Slavery was enough to make the North invade the South, why does the USA accept the Slavery practiced today in Saudia Arabis, the Sudan, etc.

http://www.infoplease.com/spot/slavery1.html

If the North went to war over Slavery, why aren’t they fighting it today? You would think maybe a 1/2 black President would be interested, wouldn’t you.
No the FACT that America turned a blind eye to slavery as soon as the South surrendered should tell you there was another motive.