Lincoln tread very carefully with McClellan as a result, eventually firing him for incompetence only to have him run against him on a proslavery platform in 1864.
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The main takeaway is that if we're talking abt the legacy of West Point in the Civil War, what we really need to grapple with as a country is that even its graduates who remained faithful to the Union overwhelmingly positioned themselves as enemies of emancipation & civil rights.
aug 29, 2025, 2:54 pm • 54 12 • view
The other main Civil War history takeaway is that the triumphalist nationalism stuff is almost always bullshit.
aug 29, 2025, 2:57 pm • 37 1 • view
Bingo! This was an overwhelmingly reactionary institution & pearl-clutching over whether to honor those graduates who committed literal treason glosses over the ways that so many of those who remained hated democracy & equality, & fought vigorously to suppress it.
aug 29, 2025, 3:03 pm • 21 4 • view
Sorry I should have been clearer in the OP; the McClellan quote above is from his correspondence, not from the article, which I think kinda misses the point of the actual role that West Point played in the Civil War. Tried to squeeze too much into too small a space.
aug 29, 2025, 4:07 pm • 9 0 • view