A guy surrendered twice in the same war and I’d prefer him to lead US armies every day & twice on Sunday (10 times on Palm Sunday). Trump and his clique of sycophants are too proud to call it quits. US society forgets most of its best and brightest and then has vulgar egomaniacs plunging it into senseless quagmires. Examples of leaders who knew when to quit a senseless war. When am so passionately critical of the United States it’s because of the other side of the coin: am passionately enamored with the greatness and the lessons in American history.

Every year in April I get obsessed again with several things, such as Nirvana’s music (Kurt died on the 5th of April), the assassination of Martin Luther King (April 4th) , but most of all the start and end of the US Civil War (April 1861 to April 1865). What really peaked my interest this year are the men who managed to surrender and walk away with their dignity, honour and reputation in mint condition.

Meet Joseph E. Johnston, Simon Bolivar Buckner, John C. Breckinridge and Pierre Gustave Toutant-Beauregard (Ah, that last one, arguably the loveliest name of any general on either side of the US Civil War. You see him pictured above). In mid April 1865 Confederate Americans had lost 258,000 soldiers. It was said to be robbing the cradle and the grave to fill its ranks. Lee’s troop had survived on a diet of only 1,200 calories a day for months in the trenches of Petersburg when his lines finally cracked. Atlanta had been burned. The Confederacy had lost every major port and had no more life line to Europe to supply its dwindling armies. There were still several Confederate armies in the field, but Lee’s army of Northern Virginia had been its principal and most victorious army.

Who could not see it was over? Confederate president Jefferson Davis. He tried to convince his generals to continue the fight. At one point even claiming a nucleus of a mere 3,000 soldiers would be often for the people of the south to rally around. Luckily for the US there were less obstinate people around him. Such as the four mentioned. They stood fast and convinced the president that seeking terms was the only right course left. Imagine Trump and Hegseth being that sane and telling the public, ok, we tried, we miscalculated, we can’t break those Iranians, let’s stop here, before we really blow up the entire global economy.

One of the guys I have mentioned surrendered twice in the same war and he is more of a man than Trump and his farcical buddies in oversized shoes will ever be. At the start of the Civil War in 1862 Simon Bolivar Buckner was the third in command at Fort Donelson. When there position was considered hopeless his two superiors, Floyd and Pillow snuck away, leaving it to Buckner to formally surrender the fort. Buckner, after being properly exchanged, as was customary at the time, went on to distinguish himself further in the war, Floyd and Pillow had ruined their reputation too much to be giving any significant command. At the end of the war, after Lee’s much better know surrender in April, Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. negotiated and signed the May 26, 1865 New Orleans surrender, formalizing the collapse of the Trans-Mississippi Confederate forces on behalf of Edmund Kirby Smith.

Here is what contemporary US leaders can’t get past their huge egos: sometimes swallowing a bitter, humiliating, pill is really the sanest, most intelligent, most constructive thing to do. How did Buckner fare after losing, but with his honour intact? Simon Bolivar Buckner Sr. rebuilt his life successfully after the war, becoming a wealthy businessman and later serving as Governor of Kentucky (1887–1891).

Hey, if you read this far your attention span is intact in a world where most people can only focus for 10 seconds before they need a new impulse. It’s not their fault, our attention economy has trained them to be that way. You, my friend, have escaped that fate, and for that I want to say: thanks, keep it up, thanks for reading my obsessive thoughts and till next time!