Does anyone share a birthday with a president, and if so who? What are your thoughts(if any) of said president? While I don't, my mom shares the same birthday as Martin Van Buren
Like other lists that take the short form I would obviously suggest you take it with a grain of salt. Frankly I found more interesting to point out battles most folks forgot about and read about them separately. Some were definitely new to me others I knew about.
edited 30th May '18 8:21:19 AM by TuefelHundenIV
Who watches the watchmen?Grant's red-haired Badass Beard was just so intimidating that the press criticized it and recommended that it be trimmed during the Civil War when all other generals on both sides of Potomac had intense facial hair.
All this praise is made funnier by the fact that, when he was alive, Grant had such a generic face that nobody would recognize him. He walked right past a welcome committee in DC waiting for him at the train stop with them none the wiser. He checked into a crummy hotel room because the clerk told him there weren't any more rooms available, then he read the name Grant signed in with and suddenly remembered they had a suite available. Some random dude he was talking to on the street whined about President Grant, never realizing who he was talking to.
Grant has the eyes of someone who has seen too much. Sherman has the eyes of someone who has gleefully done too much. Or not enough.
I'm reminded of when Columbia caught fire during Sherman's march and the rebels blamed Sherman's army while the Union blamed the retreating Confederates for burning down the city. Sherman scoffed at the idea that he'd had anything to do with it, and pointed to the hundred miles worth of cities he actually had burned, pointing out that if he really had set the city on fire, he'd have been more than happy to take credit for the deed.
I think I can see that. The look and face of Grant earlier on he has the eyes of professional who wants to win. He looks set and determined and his eyes are almost hard. Not callous but hard like he means business. One of the more well known photos of him as president he looks like he has been sipping tea in the mouth of hell and can't believe he walked away. He looks tired and somewhat haunted to me.
Sherman I think looks angry and very determined. There is a photo of him where he is older and he is nowhere near as fiery eyed and his beard definetly looks grey. If anything he looks like he is more relieved than anything else to be done with the whole affair.
Keep in mind these are just my personal interpretations.
As for his comment I would argue he was proud of having pulled off a rather daring raid and to his great credit the whole affair was kept under fairly good control and the loss of civilian life was rather minimal. He showed mercy and restraint on several occasions when he could have easily resorted to butchery. It could also be the burning he was blamed for was so shoddy and poorly executed that it offended his professional pride as much as it was an overt and casual insult.
Who watches the watchmen?Let's get back to fun facts about Ulysses S. Grants shall we?
When they finally met at Appomattox, Ulysses S. Grant's beard was so blood red with fury at the South that Robert E. Lee didn't need to raise a white flag to surrender. His beard just turned that color instead.
Stonewall Jackson wasn't accidentally shot by his own troops one night. They had decided to defect since they couldn't stand the thought of seeing Ulysses S. Grant's beard in person.
Klansmen took to wearing their bedsheets outside so they could wet them more efficiently should they ever encounter the beard of Ulysses S. Grant.
Whilst leading his troops at the Siege of Vicksburg, Ulysses S. Grant threw a grenade over the city's walls that killed approximately 50 Confederates. Then it exploded.
Ulysses S. Grant once beat two Confederate soldiers to death with the corpse of a Mexican one.
Robert E. Lee once said that J.E.B Stuart's cavalry were the eyes of the Army of Northern Virginia, and that without them it would be blind to Union movements. Ulysses S. Grant would say that they actually were its genitals since without them it wouldn't be able to fuck with him anymore.
Stonewall Jackson didn't lose his arm to a musket ball. That was just a story needed to cover up the fact that he had masturbated too hard to the wet dream of having a beard like Ulysses S. Grants in his dying hours.
When Ulysses S. Grant was at West Point, he was assigned an essay asking "What is courage?" He received an A+ for turning in a blank page with only his name at the top.
There are no Confederate veteran associations. Only PTSD treatment groups whose members Ulysses S. Grant allowed to live.
When a civil war breaks out, Ulysses S. Grant doesn't try to survive. The rebels do.
Although Ulysses S. Grant was a rigorous commanding officer, his troops don't actually have good aim. Their minie balls just know better than to miss.
And an honorary one for his dear friend:
William T. Sherman was once charged with more than a dozen counts of attempted arson in Georgia, but the judge quickly dropped the charges because a man like Sherman does not "attempt" arson.
edited 30th May '18 10:39:14 PM by FluffyMcChicken
Some thoughts from the concluding chapter of Grant's memoirs:
"The cause of the great War of the Rebellion Against the United States will have to be attributed to slavery." Grant admits that he didn't actually think about it until after the war was over but upon reflecting back on history leading up to it he agrees with that assessment.
Slavery was not a natural state of being, so it required specific protections by the federal government to keep existing. Thus, the slave states needed to maintain control of the government to ensure that, which they did with the help of pro-slavery northerners. It was the slave state's encroachment on the rights of the free states through the Fugitive Slave Act that galvanized the free states into direct opposition. Grant credits the industrialization of the US for both the slave states increasingly using their control of the federal government to force the free states to cooperate with slave laws and the the free states increasing hostility towards it. Before industrialization, the individual states were so loosely connected that the free states had adopted an "Out of sight, out of mind" view of slavery since it didn't really affect them. The increase in railroads, canals, telegraphs brought the free states more into contact with slavery and their disdain for it grew while the slave states found that the rise in industrialized was matched with the growth in federal power, which they seized to advance the Slave Power.
"It is probably well that we had the war when we did." Grant notes that European powers had been industrializing and becoming more interconnected, and the war acted a a jump start for the Union to do the same within itself. Prior to the war, people hardly ever left the immediate areas of the birth which were largely self-contained and self-sustaining. "This is all changed now. The war begot a spirit of independence and enterprise." All the soldiers who had intermingled with men from other states kept moving around, mixing up many local distinctions and bringing everyone further into a melting pot.
The very existence of the US was regarded in Europe as a republican experiment probably doomed to failure, a house of cards waiting to fall down but the war proved that the country was much more resilient than the Europeans had given it credit for and thus had to be taken more seriously. "But this war was a fearful lesson, and should teach us the necessity of avoiding wars in the future."
On this day, 29 years ago, nothing happened. A man who lived through it as a young boy gives his testimony to the ABC.

Hey everybody, so I've recently gotten hooked on European historical comic series such as Enrico Marini's Les Aigles De Rome, which is a fictionalized retelling of the events leading up to and during the Battle of Teutoberg Forest, where three Roman legions were infamously destroyed by a coalition of German tribes led by Hermann/Ermananer/Arminius, an auxiliary commander turned traitor.
Do check the tropes page if you have time. I've been working on it.