Why does the United States honor the treasonous Confederacy?

[arcadian]

There are four large monuments to Confederate members honored in Washington DC our nation's capital. Three generals and the leader of the rebellious Confederate States. There is a statue of Confederate general Albert Pike in Judiciary Square and statues of Robert E. Lee, Joseph Wheeler and Jefferson Davis are all in Statuary Hall in the US Capitol. Lee is actually wearing his military uniform as is Wheeler with a big old CSA belt buckle.





He re-entered the Senate in 1857 and was a recognized as a spokesman for the South. When Mississippi seceded, Davis resigned and accepted command of Mississippi's military forces. Hoping to be appointed commander of all southern armies, he found himself instead elected president of the Confederate States. When the Confederacy surrendered, Davis was captured and imprisoned in Fort Monroe for two years, indicted for treason (but never brought to trial), and finally released on bond in 1867.


When the South seceded, Lee reluctantly resigned from the army, hoping to avoid participation in the war he deplored. However, a sense of duty to his state made him accept command of the Virginia forces. His successful strategy, his tactical skill, and the confidence of his troops earned him the respect of the Confederate leaders. President Jefferson Davis appointed him commander of the Army of Northern Virginia on April 1, 1862.

Joseph Wheeler was born near Augusta, Georgia, on September 10, 1836. An 1859 graduate of the U.S. Military Academy, he resigned from the Army to join the Confederate forces in 1861 and rose rapidly to the rank of lieutenant general.

Albert Pike (December 29, 1809–April 2, 1891) was an attorney, soldier, writer, and Freemason. Pike is the only Confederate military officer or figure to be honored with an outdoor statue in Washington, D.C. (in Judiciary Square).

[Name removed]

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[arcadian]

3. I think we would be better off if Lee and Davis had just been hanged.

Along with the other politicians and generals from the south.

[NoNothing]

11. That may have made them less inclined to surrender

How many Union soldiers would be worth satisfying that kind of vengeance?

[arcadian]

21. The Confederacy was in tatters.

The problem with letting them live is the threat that their cause might see a revival. Which in essence we have seen and are seeing today.

[NoNothing]

23. Illogical

I could just as easily argue that retribution and martyrdom would legitimize the grievances of the southerners and cause even greater division carrying through to today.

Has our policy retribution and martyrdom crushed the resistance in the Middle East?

[arcadian]

24. You live up to your username.

[Ferret Annica]

63. Lincoln was correctin wanting a policy of reconciliation that ohnson

worked to carry out. Making martyrs and encouraging revenge would have satisfied few and caused animosity that would be far greater today.

We might of even seen the spit open again. As for the petty crap about a user name, grow up.

[Fire1]

160. Sorry, with a name like that, they're "begging" for it. n/t

[Ferret Annica]

162. I prefer to talk on conservative boards because I prefer to debate and argue

So, I suppose one could say I deserve it when I am called a weasel by right wing wingnutz because I use ferret in my user name.

So it's all relative; flamer Juan. Oh, excuse me torchie, that's right, you are the impossible to apply the principle of quid pro quo to name of yours', fire 1. What ever could I be thinking of?

[RaleighNCDUer]

166. Read the post again -

"Illogical" is his comment, not his user name.

I think he was trying to define his upcoming argument.

[RaleighNCDUer]

39. They already surrendered. We're talking a year or two AFTER the war,

when they've had their fair trial and hanging.

[Posteritatis]

44. ...thereby sending a hundred thousand or so vets back into the hills... (nt)

[RaleighNCDUer]

56. Nope.

Even well before Appomattox, confederate soldiers were deserting by the thousands every single day. There's no way they'd continue fighting for the memory of a general who lost the war for them.

It was over LONG before April 65.

You might have gotten a few hundred. They'd have wound up as bandits, like the James and Younger boys - last gasp of a worthless cause.

[demosincebirth]

15. Thats what I said and came close to being flamed.

[greencharlie]

29. that's foolish...

the Confederates had threatened to retreat to the mountains to wage a Guerilla war against civilian and military alike... the war already cost 600,000 lives over 4 years. How many MORe would have died to chase small bands of mountain men?

[arcadian]

31. You got a source for that?

[greencharlie]

46. yup

AN HONORABLE DEFEAT
The Last Days of the Confederate Government.
By William C. Davis.
Illustrated. 496 pp. New York:
Harcourt.

As the outcome of the war grew more certain that spring of 1865, a select group within the Confederate government debated how best to meet the desperate situation. The discussions began in February, when President Jefferson Davis made John C. Breckinridge his new secretary of war. Breckinridge decided all was lost, and he wanted the government to concede defeat while its armies, especially Lee's much feared veteran force, still posed a credible threat to Union foes. To surrender under those circumstances, as a viable, united nation rather than as a fragmented, conquered rabble, might bring a more lenient peace, spare the South absolute subjugation and persuade history to judge the Confederate cause kindly. A gracious, voluntary surrender, Breckinridge insisted, would yield an honorable defeat.

Many politicians and generals rallied to him, and it is likely that a majority of the Confederate people would have welcomed such an arrangement. However, one man wanted to fight on, and he was the people's president. Jefferson Davis insisted that victory alone could save the South, and he meant to achieve it, even if he had to disperse his armies and wage a guerrilla war. His unrealistic predictions of ultimate victory bordered on the ''delusional,'' William C. Davis says, but for Jefferson Davis, an honorable defeat -- if, indeed, defeat must come -- meant going down swinging.

A showdown between the stubborn, imperious president and his popular secretary of war appeared inevitable, but Breckinridge knew better than to confront Davis directly. If he challenged the president's constitutional authority by using Congress or the cabinet to gang up on him, the government and nation would appear weak and divided, the very image Breckinridge sought to avoid. Instead, the secretary and his supporters, who temporarily and covertly included even General Lee, attempted the ''most benign sort of 'coup.' '' They tried to convince Davis through a campaign of ''subtle persuasion'' that by relinquishing the sword he could spare the people further anguish and ensure swift restoration of their political rights within the Union. The likely alternatives, they argued, must necessarily bring ruin and humiliation.

[arcadian]

72. Your source doesn't back up your assertions.

You claim the south would have gone to the mountains to fight a guerrilla war, yet your source says that it was a crazy idea maintained by only the top leadership. No where does it say that the plan was to retreat to the mountains.

[greencharlie]

84. well...

Davis was the PRESIDENT and his Generals, including Lee talked him down from doing it. If Lee, Johnston, Breckenridge and Forrest could see themselves on the end of a rope, they CERTAINLY wouldn't have fought Davis on ending peacefully.

[Posteritatis]

55. Pick any Civil War history; the threat of guerilla war isn't exactly poorly documented. (nt)

[Orsino]

87. April 1865: The Month That Saved America

http://jaywinik.com/index.php/books/april_1865/
Robert E. Lee, who was very nearly a Union general himself, helped heal the nation.

[Are_grits_groceries]

33. If Lee had been hung,

I don't know when there would have been any semblance of a united nation again. You obviously have no idea how much Lee was respected.

At the end of the war, this occurred:
"Now there were men who came with smoldering eyes to Lee and said, "Let’s not accept this result as final. Let’s keep our armies alive. You can be our leader." But Lee shook his head. "Abandon your animosities and make your sons Americans," he said."

If Lee had advocated resistance, there would have been continual guerrilla action. What actually happened after the war would appear like a calm time compared to what it might have been if he had chosen a different attitude. I can't even imagine the response if he had been hung.

[JPZenger]

38. Movie Gettysburg was right: Lee Screwed up at Gettysburg

The movie Gettysburg was accurate. Lee did screw up by not leaving Gettysburg while his forces were still intact and then threatening DC. Meade was entrenched at the time and would have had to chase after him. Longstreet was condemned after the war for criticizing Lee's decision at the time, while Lee was given the highest honors in the South.

[Are_grits_groceries]

47. Okay.

I'm not trying to say he didn't make mistakes. His actions have been argued about for years. I'm pointing out the feeling the region had for him.

Even if he had taken a different course, the outcome would have eventually been the same. The Union had too many soldiers and supplies. In addition, when Lincoln appointed Grant and Sherman, he put in place 2 soldiers who knew what would be required to beat the South and its resistance.

[arcadian]

48. I'm in Virginia outside Richmond.

Believe me I know. And I don't agree, by your logic, the south should have gotten a bounce when Booth shot Lincoln. It didn't. Most Virginians/Confederates were appalled.

[Are_grits_groceries]

54. I grew up with the idea that

Lincoln's assasination was one of the worst things that ever happened to the South. I don't know what your post has to do with hanging Lee except to say it wouldn't have demoralized the region. It would have pissed people off beyond all measure.

[arcadian]

61. I'm saying that the whole country was demoralized by constant slaughter in their backyards.

The South more so. They were broken. Lincoln's assassination didn't prompt the south to rise up nor would the death penalty for Lee cause some common cause revolt.

[Are_grits_groceries]

69. The South was broken.

However, I didn't say open revolt. Hanging Lee would have created an even more enormous chasm and there would have been some form of retribution.

[arcadian]

73. History is not really on your side.

Nuremberg trials? In fact The US Civil is almost a singular example where the defeated foe was not completely humiliated and it's leaders executed.

[Are_grits_groceries]

82. Reconstruction was a pivotal time.

The North wanted to punish the South, and they did a good job of it. In addition, they pulled out after a while and left the region to itself. That left the freed slaves at the mercy of the angry whites who started Jim Crow and a lot of other evils. The entire effort was a mess.

if Reconstruction had been handled differently, there would have been some amelioration of the feelings that were evident instead of adding to the anger. The South should have been punished in some way. Howevever, even Lincoln wasn't advocating the measures that occurred.

After WWI, the allies decided to severely punish Germany. There was no way that the government left after the treaty could survive. The stage was set for someone like Hitler. After WWII, a different approach was taken. Nuremberg addressed certain individuals. The Marshall plan rebuilt Europe and helped Germany back to its feet. If some form of that idea had been applied after the Civil War, there wouldn't have been as much resentment. The combination of Reconstruction and hanging Lee would have been awful.

[Art_from_Ark]

112. I agree with your basic premises

Reconstruction did far more to harm than help the South. It would be better to call it Retribution, because that is essentially what it was. Yes, the entire effort was a mess-- by design. It finished off much of what was left of the Southern economy, without providing for anything meaningful to replace it. It also allowed Northerners to gain control of much of what was left, and former slaves who migrated to the North because of frustration with the crappy post-war South could provide cheap labor for Northern factories.

I disagree about punishing the South, however. After all, the South had been punished enough already-- hundreds of thousands dead or maimed, millions of acres of homesteads and farms devastated, countless families torn apart and lives ruined, the economy in a shambles. Why add to an already miserable situation?

[RaleighNCDUer]

52. Not true. That is largely post-war propaganda.

At the time Lee was HEAVILY blamed for the catastrophe at Gettysburg. And rightfully so. If he'd listened to Longstreet they might have won there and changed the course of history.

If he'd been hanged, in 20 years he'd just have been another rebel general, no better remembered than Longstreet or Johnston or Forrest.

[Are_grits_groceries]

65. I disagree.

He was deified after the war made to appear as a god. That was way too much. However, he never would have been just another general. Stonewall Jackson was devoted to him. Lee was looked on with great affection by a lot of people. That isn't propaganda.

[tom_paine]

74. Also a valid point. This is all second-guessing and we can't see where the Bushie-KKK alliance

will now take us.

So we are making our judgements in the absence of knowing what the final outcome of this thing is going to be.

If, in the extreme and unlikely (I hope) event that they take us to something like Uber-Right Nazi-land in 20-50 years with millions of victims killed, would we then say that it was a mistake?

How about a Corporate Neofeudalist state with immense poverty and immense wealth, the Constitution a sham and our government hopelessly corrupted by Bushifcation, millions of victims, though not industrially murdered in death camps?

Would that be an equivalent trade? None of us can say because none of us can yet see how the Bushie-KKK alliance is going to end this time around.

I have no answers, this is all historical metaphysical speculation.

[proteus_lives]

66. It would led to an insurgency that would torn the country apart.

Unlike you, the leaders of the time could think past the end of their noses.

[TK421]

99. Not Lee, arcadian...he was truly respected and I get a sense he was

a good man, a decent man by all accounts and his loyalty was with his home state. Davis, on the other hand.....I'm not going further with this one

[liquid diamond]

115. A "good man" that believed slaves were property.

Yeah, Lee was a swell guy. :sarcasm:

[Thothmes]

168. So did George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.

[thereismore]

2. This artsy/sculptures stuff would give Beck something to think about. Maybe. nt

[Why Syzygy]

4. Were they tried for treason? nt

[demosincebirth]

16. No. They died of old age.... compared to the 600,000 young men killed in the Civil War.

[old mark]

5. The reasons I heard were tourism and nostalgia, but neither makes much sense.

I never would travel anywhere to see a bronze confederate big shot, and I am not nostalgic about the worst killing we have ever had in this country.

They hate to admit they lost, they don't want to accept it, so they try to relive the "glory" of the old days, which they know from myths in movies and TV.


mark:patriot:

[eShirl]

6. Good question!

[HowHasItComeToThis]

8. unrec

HA HA

[Zoeisright]

102. [phone]

Anyone who honors the confederacy is a traitor.

[zipplewrath]

7. Probably because of this

"...let us strive on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation's wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow, and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves, and with all nations."

It's how we RE-became a union. We decided to not play "winners and losers" in a battle that,

"If we shall suppose that American Slavery is one of those offences which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South, this terrible war, as the woe due to those by whom the offence came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a Living God always ascribe to Him?"

[Individualist]

10. Correct.

Lincoln wanted to end the bitterness engendered by the war.

[tom_paine]

17. And ended NONE of it. Complete FAIL, I am sorry to say.

"The South Will Rise Again"

"The Cult of the Lost Cause"

And all the Confederate revisionist statuary and plaques around the Old Confederacy.

What did the Old Confederacy do after it's loss? Instituted a KKK Reign of Terror that ultimately lasted for 80 years.

When THAT was more or less ended by Northern Liberals and the Federal Government during the 60s and early 70s, the same bunch of bastards took off the robes and hoods, flipped and joined the Republican Party because the Democrats were now the party of the Yankees, teamed up with the Yankee Elite Bushies pretending to be Rebs along with their massive Intelligence Factional Control that operates for them whether they are in or out of power, they are starting basically the same shit all over again, using more sophisticated marketing and plausible deniability.

Because they COULDN'T sell slavery anymore, they are fixing it up in a new way. But it will be just as Neofeudalist and just as enriching for the American Aristocracy.

Other than the Yankee Corporatists that they added, the heart and soul of this movement toward RW Authoritarianism are the spiritual descendants of those to whom Lincoln offered the olive branch and we are living with the results because they didn't take it. After losing the Civil War, they started the 70 year Reign of KKK Terror and basically re-enslaving African-Americans for another 70 years by another process.

Just as they have now teamed up with the Yankee Industrialists they so despised to bring it back to all of us in a new, slick newly marketed brand.

NOTE: To all DU Southerners - I am not trying to bash the South as a whole and I know there are many good people living in the South, always have been. I just cannot deny the reality that Bushification has grown out of the embers of the Old Confederacy.

[Igel]

28. But Lincoln's actions weren't in a vacuum.

To understand the South you have to have some inkling of what happened from 1865 to WWI.

Most don't. So they can't understand the institutional nostalgia.

They also don't understand that the South had a slightly different cultural basis--one that survives, with some changes, in a lot of the immigrants from the South from the 1920s to the 1950s who didn't assimilate more or less to "white northern culture." And that people found refuge in what they considered their past greatness.

Just as lots of people around the world do, romanticizing the past, whitewashing out the oppression and injustice, and then saying what a great people they were and, deep down inside, still are.

A lot of people judge first and opt for empathy and understanding later, if ever.

[tom_paine]

45. You make it sound so benign, yet you ignored it's tens of thousands of victims

I have no problem with the characteristics or the reality of societies as you descruibe it, except that in this particular case, it was used to justify the most horrific behaviors towards African-Americans and Yankee Liberals (to a MUCH lesser degree) for 80 years.

The Klan rode high, and you couldn't stop it by going to the local sheriff, because the local sheriff was also the Grand Kleegle (or whatever). You couldn't stop it by going to the county DA. Because even if the county DA wasn't Grand Imperial Wizard, he was good buddies with those guys and wasn't going to stick his neck out for some Negro or Yankee Liberal.

Tens of thousands of African-Americans lynched during that Reign of Terror, and miserable poverty and opresssion for tens of MILLIONS more.

A society, forever tarnished by it's slaveholding, that now has finally closing in on undoing the 60s and maybe even the FDR 30s by teaming up with the Bushies (Yankees themselves, but they moved down to Texas to hide it) to turn this country of ours into God Knows what in 20 years.

That was my point. If we ignore the victims, not just the lynched and murdered, but those whipped, beaten up, had windows smashed by the KKK and it's local offshoots, which often included local law enforcement and local government, then your benign interpretation makes sense.

But I can't ignore the victims because now the KKK-Bushies are taking the whole country down with them.

RW Authoritarian darkness is coming, in some form, probably within 20 years. Will it be MERELY a Far-Right Corporatists State or will the Uber-Right demons in our national soul the Bushies have stirred back to life going to overtake the Bushies who currently are pupetteeering them to take us to something more darker and Nazi-like?

Stay tuned - because I think the odds are very likely that Far-Right Corporate Neofeudaism and Uber-Right KKK-like are our long-term choices.

I'd like to be wrong about this, but the trends are now snowballing towards, if not past, tipping point.

[misanthrope]

107. I have more than an inkling...

...I was born in Alabama and have lived here all my life. My family has been in the Deep South for almost two centuries. I've stood beside the graves of my direct ancestors and read their ranks in the C.S.A. carved into their tombstones. I've heard the stories passed down through the years. I watched, listened and learned.

What I learned was that Southerners choose to see themselves as something apart from their countrymen. At its most naive, it's merely regional pride. In reality, it has metamorphosed into something far worse.

I don't find my greatness in some dirt farmer who fought like a rube for a wealthy man who aspired to keep him as subjugated as the slaves beneath his whip. I don't discover my worth in the glory of some misguided war. I know the past can't be overcome until you come to grips with its faults so you don't make the same mistakes again.

And if those insights are possible to me, the descendant of "po' white trash," the great grandson of a sharecropper, they're possible to anyone else. There's nothing special about me so why can't everyone see these things for themselves?

Unless of course, they don't want to...

[RaleighNCDUer]

165. well said.

If you want to celebrate regional pride, cheer for your college football team.

Celebrating those who started a war for the sake of owning people, killing hundreds of thousands of their countrymen in the process, is NOT the way to show such pride.

[Arugula Latte]

143. "Empathy and understanding" -- for WHAT? Slavery and treason?!

Jesus H. Christ on a Ritz I am SICK of the whinyass Southern demand for us to honor the shameful legacy of enslaving, torturing and murdering Africans and people of African descent.

[Raineyb]

155. Thank you.

I was starting to think I was at the wrong board with the amount of apologizing for the confederacy I've been seeing.

[Uncle Joe]

35. This is where I disagree, Bushification was nationwide before and after the Civil War.

The Republican Party, leading Union Generals; and later Presidents had more in common with the former Confederacy than with freeing the slaves or empowering African Americans with equal rights, Plessy vs Ferguson of 1896 being a prime example.

Plessy vs Ferguson was a 7-1 one decision with one abstention the lone dissenter came from a slave owning family in Kentucky.

This was a Union/Republican dominated court, there was no President from the South or former Confederate States from Zachary Taylor's brief tenure in 1850 until Woodrow Wilson with the exception of Andrew Johnson serving out the remainder of Lincoln's second term.

The 14th Amendment was used overwhelmingly in the latter half of the 19th century to magnify corporate/oligarch power over the American People as a whole, not to support oppressed minorities and corporate person-hood grew from that environment along with robber barons and the "Guilded Age".

Both sides being played against the middle and for so long as the American People remain divided, that strategy will work.

[Posteritatis]

43. "Bushification" before the civil war? Isn't that just a wee bit anachronsitic? (nt)

[Uncle Joe]

59. I'm not an anarchist but I do believe the powers that be play both sides against the middle.

And when one side accumlates inordinate power for his/her institution against the protestations of the other, how often has the aggrieved party given up power when obtaining the expanded envelope?

[tom_paine]

64. Hmmm. You have a point there. Although that's using the term "Bushification" quite broadly.

(as someone just mentioned below ;-) )

What you are speaking of is the even more broad "big picture" aspect of European Colonialism, starting in 1400 or so with Europe outpacing the rest of the world technologically.

The bottom line is the same song keeps repeating over and over and over. Occasionally, we Plebs make some headway, but the Elites take it all back before too long as they figure out new ways to circumvent old defeats and setbacks (like the New Deal/Financial Regulation).

That's the Bigger Picture of our current situation, as the Aristocracy using the RW Authoritarian Followers, overwhelm the mushy Liberals in a Triumph of the Will, and bring Authoritarian Darkness for a period of time.

Hell, one could argue that the only reason we Democrats won the sucesses for the American People that we did in the 1930s was because the Old Confederacy was allied with US, not the Bushies, and we shamefully turned our heads away from the KKK Reign of Terror to buy this allegience.

When we stopped doing so in the 60s, well the KKK took off the robes and joined the Republican Party with the historic Reagan 1980 Philadelphia, Mississippi "Republicans-KKK Team Up Rally".

The rest is history to the present.

[Uncle Joe]

81. I'm speaking of colonialism and prejudice, they fit like a hand in glove.

I would argue that the Old Confederacy became allied with US not the Bushies because FDR transcended that emotional boundary, he showed real concern for the most downtrodden in the South, and coming from a Yankee Oligarch this was overwhelming.

The KKK is the most extreme element, they thrive on general fear, ignorance and hatred, Joseph McCarthy set the stage for this general environment by magnifying fear and hatred with his telecast red scare witch hunts, this was a light years away from FDR's Fireside Chats.

The Cold War and the prospect of nuclear annihilation combined with Vietnam all contributed to this estrangement along with racism.

Fear is fear and hatred is hatred.

[misanthrope]

104. +1,000**

**

[arcadian]

13. You want to tell me where Lincoln said to honor these people with statues?

[greencharlie]

53. BTW...

for those who just don't KNOW such things... there were NO Confederate statues or battlefield monuments for DECADES after the war. You'd go to Gettysburg and there you'd see all the UNION monuments and battle markers but Confederate markers and minuments were absent until the early 20th Century.

[zipplewrath]

79. To do ALL...

"to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace, among ourselves"

"lasting". We're still trying.

[Raineyb]

18. That didn't seem to work out too well.

All it did was allow generations of people pretend that there was something noble in seceding while allowing the attitudes that embodied the confederacy to fester. It needs to be lanced like a boil.

How about we try this on for size:

The confederacy is nothing but a bunch of treasonous bastards whose graves should all be spit upon as we do with any traitor. There is no such thing as an honorable confederate because by definition there is nothing honorable about treason.

[Posteritatis]

41. Easy to be all absolutist when not staring the possibility of a guerilla war in the face

Leaving aside the irony of an American claiming that by definition there is nothing honorable about treason, the Union near the end of the war was all too aware of the possibility of a good chunk of the Confederate army going partisan, which would be only slightly better than their winning the war in the first place.

We can stand here a century and a half removed from the time and pooh-pooh them for being so merciful and so on, being as absolutist (or as others have been, as bloodthirsty) as we want about something like that, but people at the time were more in favor of ending the Civil War in the mid-1860s than the mid-1890s or something.

[RaleighNCDUer]

70. Oh, come on, there WAS a long-running guerilla war -

what do you think the KKK and the other night-rider groups were? What do you think the Quantril-trained James and Younger gangs were? What do you think the massacres of black communities throughout the south were? The Wilmington coup? 70 years of lynchings?

That was ALL neo-confederate guerilla war, and it continues today.

The 'wild wild west' was virtually all southern ex-soldiers against former Union lawmen - whenever there was a conflict it almost invariably broke down to pro-confederates on one side and pro-unionists on the other.

[tom_paine]

75. Well said!

:applause:

[Posteritatis]

78. Pinpricks compared to the CA refusing to disband. (nt)

[misanthrope]

100. Yes, very noble. Too bad it wasn't reciprocal**nm

**

[zipplewrath]

109. More than one might expect

As someone pointed out, much of the confederate memorial construction has been in the late 20th century. And the south has been "pulled along" as it were for decades, culminating in what is effectively the "second civil war" i.e. the civil rights movement of the middle 20th century. That some folks are constantly looking to "bind new wounds" over these conflicts is hardly surprising. But I'd bet it is another 100 years before all real vestiges are gone. I've met monarchists in France. There are still "nazi's" in Germany, and there are still "communists" in the Russian parliment. These things don't end just because the shooting stops. The problems aren't over in Ireland, South Africa, and won't be in Iraq for a long time. Fundamentally, this is no different.

[Warren Stupidity]

136. After reconstruction was abolished the southern establishment was rehabilitated.

African Americans were re-disenfranchised and returned to a condition that was essentially serfdom in what the History You Weren't Taught In School refers to as The Nadir.

By the late 1800's and early 1900's that process was complete. The new system remained in place until the mechanization of agriculture ended the need for cheap land labor in the south, although the political and social mechanisms of control were not completely overthrown until the civil rights movement of the 1940-70s abolished apartheid. Instead a vast migration of african americans from the rural south to the urban centers of the north occurred during the first half of the 20th century.

Concurrent to that, a mythology of a noble lost cause was created as the new narrative to explain the worst conflict in our history and the odd lack of real change. DW Griffith's Birth of a Nation, and the equally hideous Gone With the Wind typified this narrative.

We like to pretend that this is all ancient history, but instead the effects of that brutal conflict are still major forces in our political dynamics today. There was nothing honorable about the Confederacy. There is nothing to celebrate about 'their cause', and there is little that is honorable about the peace that followed.

[zipplewrath]

137. There is little doubt of much of the "retrograde motion" after the Civil War

There was as much economics as anything in the Civil War causes. Slavery was more a symptom of those economics. Within a few years of the end of the war, the north had lost much interest in reforming the south and was far more interested in getting them back into the economic flow of the country. It would be another 100 years before there was any serious move towards the promise of the 14th amendment, and much of that would come from the court, not the congress. In the end, to the OP point, the monuments and "reformation" of the confederacy was as much a mid 20th century effort to not "refight" the civil war in the process of trying to reform the segregated south. To a great extent it worked, in the short term. I am curious in 50 years how much interest there will be in these preservations as the "southern culture" continues to erode through immigration, migration, and the final acts of emancipation.

[HereSince1628]

9. With malice toward none and charity toward all.

We are one nation struggling with conflicting notions of human dignity.

[RaleighNCDUer]

12. "conflicting notions of human dignity"

One side believes in it, the other does not.

[HereSince1628]

19. No, we are now one side, we value indignities differently

And until we recognize that our values conflict, we cannot reconcile our values peacably.

I think monarchies and the notion of nobility is inheritly repulsive and demeans common people. But I am roundly chastised everytime I say such things, especially when they include the late Diana.

Cognitive dissonance is common in people and in nations.

[Raineyb]

20. We are not one side now. The neoconfederates are just as nasty now

as they were then. Worse actually because respectable people don't currently consider the stances the confederacy to be valid.

[HereSince1628]

89. Nope, in reality, "they" is "us" nt

[Raineyb]

94. Speak for your damn self. I am NOT them. If I were alive back then

I would be in chains. You want to claim them that's your business. I will not. Period.

[HereSince1628]

110. Well, that's a real shame.

I regret you feel you've got to swear at me. ALthough, I do understand that anonymous swearing is somewhat easier than doing it face to face. But then face to face I think you'd be confounded.

What did I say that makes you feel that "back then" I wouldn't be in chains as well????

It's true that my "American heritage" can be traced to 1628. But that says nothing about the scope of the origin(s) of my ancestors.

[Raineyb]

111. Face to face I'd use words a hell of a lot stronger than "damn" Seriously

you catching the vapors over "damn" You might want to invest in a thicker skin.

Generally speaking you don't find a lot of black people making excuses for the confederacy. That seems to be a pastime of certain circles of white people.

[RaleighNCDUer]

37. I am not on the side that honors those who fought for slavery.

That side has no concept of human dignity.

[HereSince1628]

91. See 89

And contemplate the landscape from other than your seat on a high horse.

Southern states are part of the US. They are "US" and to some extent "WE" are "them."

Slavery was abominable, no doubt.

But, we are a nation that was founded on rebellion. And we have had a number of rebellions, by many times the worst being the Civil War. But, I wouldn't think badly of Pennsylvanians just because they were part of the Whiskey Rebellion.

I appreciate that we are in a polarizing time, but, I also appreciate that my grandfather served along side of southerners in WWI, my Father served alongside southerners in WWII, My uncles served along southerners in Korea, my brother and I served alongside southerners in Vietnam.

I think the only thing that has changed in 90 years is the nation's political polarity. Who, in WIsconsin, for example, will celebrate Confederate History Month? I think no one. I suspect the same is true throughout much of the nation.

Americans are a rebellious people. It is our history. Slavery is horrible, dumping slavery and civil rights abuses, didn't mean our attraction to rebellion went away.

If Virginia wants to "celebrate" this, well that's Virginia's problem. In Wisconsin we sent many many men to fight and die in the Civil War. We know the pain, we know how to show malice towards none.

[Arugula Latte]

145. Oh, so the South's view of "human dignity" was just DIFFERENT than the North's, huh?

So, one the one hand some people think slavery was okay and on the other hand some didn't and both should be respected?


:eyes:

[Pab Sungenis]

14. They're part of our history, too.

Davis and Lee both had large impacts on the nation as a whole before the Civil War, and would probably be remembered as American heroes, not just Confederate heroes, if the war had not happened.

[WinkyDink]

22. That's a galaxy-sized "if" ya got there.

[yellowcanine]

26. If Benedict Arnold had not defected to the British he would be an American hero also.

"If" covers lots of ground it seems.

[Johonny]

49. And he is an American Hero, Saratoga Battle field has one

Granted they only have his leg on it that he lost in the battle, but enough to say your point isn't a good one.

[yellowcanine]

71. Most people would say "no" if asked the question. I stand by my statement.

[MrScorpio]

25. Because the Sons of the Confederacy proabably paid for them

Decedents of the rich, white southern traitors who started the war in the first place.

After all, they have to make sure that their poor relations have something to look up to.

[TexasObserver]

27. Because latter day Confederates still demand it.

They like to plow under the two and half centuries of slave ownership and abuse before the war, the lynchings of abolitionists and former slaves in the civil war, and the KKK/Jim Crow horrors for a century after the civil war.

Oh, no. They like to regale themselves with stories of General Blah Blah and Colonel What's His Name.

They love to keep alive the notion that there's something respectable about the Confederacy.

[Hippo_Tron]

30. To give you a technical answer, each state gets two statues

And as far as I know, there are no rules excluding anybody.

The question you're really asking is why doesn't the United States treat the Confederacy in the same manner that contemporary Germany treats the Nazis. Not being a historian I don't have a good answer for you there, although I'm sure there are some fascinating journal articles that have been written about it.

[arcadian]

32. Apparently you don't even have to be American

Both of Hawaii's are not American and Serra from California is not American either.

[JPZenger]

34. Each state picked 2 persons for statues in Capitol

The Federal government did not pick these confederates for statues in the Capitol. Each state gets to pick 2 persons to be honored.

[slackmaster]

67. I believe JPZenger's answer is correct

Great topic!

[mdmc]

36. They are a big part of our history

:shrug:

[Raineyb]

42. And where is it written that they must be honored with statues?

Let's cut to the chase shall we? We have those statues because some where way back when some asshole segregationist dickhead decided to find yet another way to give black people the finger and deliberately chose confederate officials as a way to say "fuck you"

Frankly it would be a fitting "fuck you" to the neoconfederate assholes if we were to tear down those things.

[mdmc]

51. Perhaps those people represented by the statues were not pro-slavery?

I don't know their politics, but I do know that many Southerns did not support slavery, but supported the Confederacy.

If one of those statues are of Stonewall Jackson, that would not be a slap in the face to black people, imho..

[arcadian]

58. Here is a speech by Wheeler in 1894 on slavery

http://www.civilwarhome.com/wheelercauses.htm

[RaleighNCDUer]

83. What an incredible collection of lies and justifications for treason. nt

[Raineyb]

60. How exactly do you imagine that a statue of a confederate official

is a anti-slavery statement?

If you supported the confederacy you supported slavery. I don't care how much noise one says to the contrary. They can lie to themselves but they damn sure can't lie to me on that one.

And if you read the OP you'd know that none of the statues pictured are of Stonewall Jackson.

[TexasObserver]

62. Hitler is a big part of Germany's history, too. Do they have statues of him?

No, of course not. Because he was shameful. The things he fought for were shameful.

This romanticizing of the defeated Confederacy is gagging. They were traitors who terrorized slaves for centuries before the war, who executed abolitionists during the war, and who returned to terrorizing former slaves after the war.

[Zoeisright]

103. THANK you. [phone]

I wish these knuckle-dragging confederacy-lovers would wake up, look around them, and realize they LOST because they were on the immoral side.

[Warren Stupidity]

142. Exactly what I was thinking.

And I am sure there are quite a few Germans who wouldn't mind one bit.

[Bluebear]

92. So are Atta & McVeigh

:shrug:

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

40. It's the Southern version of, "I could'a been a contender."

[liquid diamond]

119. hahaha

:rofl:

[npk]

121. Oh shit that was funny

I am going to have to save that one.

[and-justice-for-all]

50. All hail the FAIL...nt

[Book Lover]

57. Yeah, and those statues of Napoleon really chap my hide!

Or saying this another way, get over it already, people. Both sides. Grow the eff up - the war's been over for over a hundred years. Stop fighting it.

[Orsino]

68. Because it was full of people who had been, and again became, American citizens.

American citizens are (mostly) worth honoring.

[Raineyb]

76. No one who put on the confederate uniform is worth honoring.

Not a single one of them.

[Orsino]

85. Not even the ones who were forced into uniform at gunpoint?

Not even the ones who died defending themselves and others?

Never mind the millions who never wore a uniform, or who were enslaved there?

If nothing else, we ought to congratulate (most of) those who survived. Malice toward none may be an unrealistic ideal, but I would hate to dismiss an entire nation's worth of people.

[Raineyb]

93. No. I'm not remotely interested in honoring those who would fight for the right

to keep slaves.

Not in the least.

You congratulate them. I'm not at all interested in pretending to be grateful for the racist legacy they left by not hanging the bastards when they had the chance.

[Orsino]

95. Not all of them fought for that.

The vast majority of them never had even the hope of owning slaves.

If you assume that slavery was on each and every one of their minds, it was mostly someone else's right to own slaves, and their right to a class of people to be "better" than.

In any case, when we failed to prosecute the slave owners, we made damned sure we would never prosecute the other crimes we committed while trying to end slavery. While we spend our outrage on slavery, we may forget the powerful men on both sides who led us to war, and the banal evils of Andersonville. We may forget that there were abolitionists in uniform on both sides. Even if all those crimes remain unpunished, we can celebrate getting through the damned war, and that so many enemy combatants took the oath and rejoined the Union, enabling a sudden peace.

We don't have to hate all of our own troops who have fought in Afghanistan and Iraq, do we?

[Raineyb]

105. Ah yes celebrate getting through the war. Meanwhile the evil of racism still

lingers. Considering which end of it I end up on I shan't do any celebrating thank you very much. Fuck the confederacy and those who continue to worship it as if it were at all honorable.

[npk]

122. +10000

Many of those so called heroes took the easy way out instead of doing what would have been the right thing by standing for what was right, instead of what may have at that time been popular view for many people in the south.

[Hippo_Tron]

108. None of the Confederates who have statues made after them fit into those categories

[Orsino]

135. The title of the thread is less specific. n/t

[unc70]

96. Said by someone in NY, a center of the slave trade until 1860!

New York, Boston, and Newport were centers for the slave trade, not anywhere in the South. And they continued the slave trade for 50 years after it was illegal.

The treatment of slaves and servants in NY and NJ was among some of the harshest in the nation.

I must assume that you have been sheltered and protected from unpleasantries faced by men in politics and commerce, otherwise, you would not insult the families of so many for the same actions you claim honorable in your own.

[Raineyb]

97. Excuse you? I am well aware of the role of NY in the slave trade thank you

very much. I'm also well aware that racism does not only occur in the south. But if you think as a black woman I am at all obligated to honor anything the confederacy stands for well you're even more ignorant than your comment is.

[MellowDem]

114. What an ignorant, ignorant statement....

there were a lot of Confederate soldiers who were drafted into the war and wanted no part of it. There were many who were killed for trying to desert. The Civil War was messy. The world is messy. And absolutist statements like yours are always wrong.

[Raineyb]

124. Considering the source, I'm not worried. Your ignorance on anything race

related is painfully documented for all to see.

Your excuse-making for those who fought for the right to keep people who look like me as slaves is predictable and pathetic. I stand by my statement. You fight for the right to keep slaves, you don't deserve to be honored. And if you think that the people depicted in the statues (you do remember the OP don't you?) fall into the category of which you speak then you're more fucking ignorant that I already thought you to be.

The world is messy. Yeah well racism is bloody ugly and I am NOT going to pretend that there is anything about the confederacy that I need bother to honor. There isn't any. Not a one.

You honor racist slaveholders or those stupid enough to be suckered into fighting for them. I'm not wasting my time on them. And considering that those statues were more than likely deliberately put up as a "fuck you" to black people in this country I say better to tear the monstrosities down.

Amazing the lengths people go to to make excuses up for all kinds of racist bullshit.

[MellowDem]

128. Bullshit as usual...

You just make false accusations and tell me things I've never said, as usual, like any good liar and bullshitter caught in shitty arguments does. You deflect and accuse and whine and hiss like a coward. You're just a caricature of extreme, ignorant, hateful thinking.

[Raineyb]

138. The bullshit is coming from you.

As it always does.

You come into threads, talk about things you don't know shit about then deign to lecture someone without bothering to read what they said. Then you wonder why based on your past bullshit some people consider you not worth listening to. Then when called out on your bullshit you accuse people of making false accusations about you. I've had run ins with you before and my memory goes back longer than a week.

I've told you before and I'll say it again. YOU have no credibility. As far as I'm concerned you're a racist moron who consistently flouts his ignorance as though he actually knew what the fuck he's talking about when in reality you're a small insignificant person spouting bullshit.

It's no surprise that you come in and the first post you make is accusing me of being ignorant. That's all you've ever done. Funny how you're consistent with your projection that way.

Go little man, go find someone who doesn't what an ignorant blowhard you are.

[MellowDem]

141. I never said you were ignorant in my original response...

just that your statement was. And it is, if you have any real knowledge of the war or any war. Trying to demonize any group and lump them all in together under one "evil" banner never really does seem to work in the real world. I personally can't stand when it is done since it is a justification that has been used in so many wars in the past and present, an excuse for viewing others as less than human.

I probably should have said it in a better way, and I should have been more polite in saying that I disagreed with you, but I did not call you ignorant. It wasn't a personal attack. Your response was just over-the-top craziness as usual though, nothing but personal attacks and it didn't even address my response. You just make stuff up, name call and cry racist over and over and over and it gets annoying.

It doesn't surprise me that someone that likes to lump groups of people together and views the world as such a dichotomy will freak out when someone disagrees with them.

[Raineyb]

154. What knowledge of war are you claiming?

THe knowledge that comes from reading about it in books and watching war movies? THat doesn't count in the real world, and you seem to always to delight in trying to "school" certain people around here as though your knowledge were oh so superior even to the point of dismissing people who have actual hands on experience in order to interject your opinion based on no knowledge whatsoever. I don't know why you keep insisting on answering anything I put up. I thought I made it perfectly clear months ago exactly how little regard I have for your opinion.

I could care less if you agree with me or not. I came to give my opinion but I'll be damned if I'm going to let yet another whitewash of just how despicable slavery was in this country go by under the guise of honoring people who under the guise of states rights fought a war for the right to enslave people and treat them no better than animals. And if you honor the confederacy that's exactly what you do.

The sons of confederacy is a white supremacist group. Neoconfederates are white supremacists. Statues of confederate "heroes" have been up up all over the south as a slap in the face of black people. The governor of Virginia proposed bringing back confederate History Month as a slap to the President who is black. Why the hell should we be honoring their ancestors as though their ancestors didn't turn their back on the country.

Close your eyes to it if you want but I damn well can't afford to. And I'm not going to sit here and pretend that there was any good in the confederacy. There's nothing good about demanding rights based on one's desire to enslave. None whatsoever.

[MellowDem]

159. Whatever...

I of course agree with most of your statements, considering I never claimed that the Confederacy was honorable or tried to whitewash slavery. You don't have to have first hand experience of war to realize that a big part of it is the demonization of the other, a dehumanization based on generalizing and dichotomies. You don't have to think the Confederay was a good thing to realize that not everyone involved had the same evil motivations or were not good people caught up in the war against their will.

There is a reason Lincoln didn't want to hang all of the Confederates and treat them as traitors.

[RaleighNCDUer]

164. I say let them keep their confederate statues -

so long as every one of them has a statue of Harriet Tubman stand to the left, and Dr King standing to the right of it.

[Zomby Woof]

123. President Carter restored Lee's citizenship

Not long after Jefferson Davis's citizenship was restored by an act of Congress, both in the late 1970's.

Why don't you write the former president and complain? I am sure he would LOVE to hear from you.

Federal law says Confederate veterans are American veterans. It was our war, an AMERICAN war, and people on BOTH sides fought bravely and honorably.

Incidentally, when the Lincoln Memorial was dedicated, veterans from BOTH sides attended the ceremony, as a gesture of reconciliation, which was called for by Lincoln in his second inaugural.

[Raineyb]

125. No BOTH sides did no such thing. One side isn't worthy of respect nor honor

I don't care what kind of bullshit politicians put up with.

I don't have to reconcile with anyone who wanted to chain my ass up. The south lost the fucking war and to pretend as though their side had merit is an insult.

There is NO honor in the confederacy. None whatsoever. And there's no excuse for making excuses for those racist shits either.

[JVS]

127. Darned tootin!

[arcadian]

77. McVeigh?

[Orsino]

80. Hitler?

:eyes:

[arcadian]

86. You're saying Hitler was an American?

:eyes:

[Orsino]

88. You believe I want McVeigh honored?

C'mon--I thought I was halting this escalation train.

[jody]

90. As pointed out by other informed DUers it's entirely possible that SCOTUS might have said states had

the right to secede therefore Jefferson Davis et al would not have been guilty and the southern states could have once again seceded from the Union.

The secession question has never been answered by SCOTUS. :shrug:

[Obamanaut]

98. Why do so many people obsess over this? nt

[Raineyb]

101. Gee, the celebration of racist traitors. Why would anyone have a problem with that?

:sarcasm:

[MellowDem]

117. Sounds like the Founding Fathers... nt

[Raineyb]

126. Technically, they were only traitors to the British. As we're not British the

word doesn't apply.

I never said that the Founding Fathers weren't racist. Hell a good number of them were elitists too.

[MellowDem]

129. Well, I was being somewhat tounge in cheek...

but they did rebel against a part of Britain that was free of slavery. And they did do it for mainly economic reasons.

I guess I'm just trying to say that a lot of the important historical figures in our history that we have statues for were far from saints, and in today's world would be thought of much less, even the ones that are supposed to be national heroes.

These Confederate generals were not too different at all from our Founding Fathers, but few look at them as heros. There will be those that do, but having statues of them isn't necessarily a celebration or honoring of anything. It is more like a reminder. It is part of an important history we shouldn't forget. I don't see how removing these statues would do anything to help. There are a lot of statues that need to be removed if the only factor is whether their morals and ideology would not be acceptable today.

[Raineyb]

139. I didn't say that they had to be saints. But they damn sure don't have to be

traitors.

And the idea that everyone at the time of the founding of the country and beyond thought that black people were not people and ought to be chattel is bullshit. There has ALWAYS been abolitionists. The argument that "everyone thought that way" is weak sauce at best. Slavery was wrong then and it's wrong now Thomas Jefferson knew that at the time even as he owned his own slaves. The times do not change the wrongness of an act it's just one of those pathetic excuses this country makes when it rationalizes its pathetic racial history.

I don't have to accept it.

[MellowDem]

140. Well, these traitors became Americans again...

after the war, which I guess is the point. It says something about a nation that can accept one-time traitors back into the fold. Of course it was going to be necessary after a Civil War. I don't think the statues honor them is all.

[onenote]

147. and some, like Joe Wheeler, served admirably in the US Army

After the Civil War, Wheeler eventually was elected to Congress from Alabama and, at age 62, volunteered to serve in the US Army in the Spanish-American War. He rose to the rank of General in US Army decades after having been a general in the confederacy.

But some "progressives" here think that those who served in the leadership of the confederacy should have been hung, which is an interesting take on the normal progressive view of punishment and redemption.

[Raineyb]

156. Yes, it says that it would prefer to bury its head in the sand rather than

actually deal with its problems.

And so it remains nearly a century and a half later.

[MellowDem]

158. I think having it out there in the open is better...

than pretending these people and inherent contradictions didn't exist.

[Raineyb]

163. Nobody said to pretend they didn't exist. But that's a far cry from treating them

like some kind of hero when they weren't.

[TK421]

106. Some have an interest in it...passing or otherwise. I lived in Florida and

remember history class-we watched the movie the Blue and the Gray and ( I swear to God this happened ) whenever a Union soldier was killed the kids in the class cheered, but when a Confederate soldier was killed, they booed ( no shit people...no shit ) I was also taught that Union soldiers had a significant advantage over Confederate soldiers when fighting in wooded areas because ( oh, get this people ) Union soldiers used bullets with rubber tips on them, thereby increasing the chance of ricochet.....

Yes, this shit was taught to me in middle school ( 87-88 ) so lots of bullshit about this war survives to this day, as well

edited to add: I approached the teacher after that particular class and told him what bullshit it was he was spreading....he didn't get angry or anything, just said these were accounts from actual military records he was recounting. What a shame, nice guy too

[MellowDem]

113. Why do you we statues of the Founding Fathers...

who were slave owners?

[MellowDem]

116. Statues don't equal "honor"...

It's a big part of our history I would imagine is why.

[underpants]

118. Lost Cause - the excuse mechanism

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

The Lost Cause is the name commonly given to a literary and intellectual movement that sought to reconcile the traditional white society of the Southern United States to the defeat of the Confederate States of America in the Civil War of 1861–1865.<1> Those who contributed to the movement tended to portray the Confederacy's cause as noble and most of the Confederacy's leaders as exemplars of old-fashioned chivalry, defeated by the Union armies not through superior military skill, but by overwhelming force. They also tended to condemn Reconstruction.

History
Many white Southerners were devastated economically, emotionally and psychologically by the defeat of the Confederacy in 1865. White Southerners sought consolation in attributing their loss to factors beyond their control and to betrayals of their heroes and cause. Many Southerners felt that their way of life had been disrupted by the North.<2>

The term Lost Cause first appeared in the title of an 1866 book by the historian Edward A. Pollard, The Lost Cause: A New Southern History of the War of the Confederates.<3> However, it was the articles written for the Southern Historical Society by Lt. Gen. Jubal A. Early in the 1870s that established the Lost Cause as a long-lasting literary and cultural phenomenon. The 1881 publication of Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government by Jefferson Davis, a two volume apologia for the southern cause as Davis saw it, provided another important text in the history of the cause. Even though the book's initial sales were very disappointing to the author, the book remained in print and was often used to justify and or romanticize the southern position and to distance it from slavery.

Early's original inspiration for his views may have come from General Robert E. Lee himself. When he published his farewell order to the Army of Northern Virginia, Lee spoke of the "overwhelming resources and numbers" that the Confederate army fought against. In a letter to Early, Lee requested information about enemy strengths from May 1864 to April 1865, the period in which his army was engaged against Lt. Gen. Ulysses S. Grant (the Overland Campaign and the Siege of Petersburg). Lee wrote, "My only object is to transmit, if possible, the truth to posterity, and do justice to our brave Soldiers."<4> In another letter, Lee wanted all "statistics as regards numbers, destruction of private property by the Federal troops, &c." because he intended to demonstrate the discrepancy in strength between the two armies and believed it would "be difficult to get the world to understand the odds against which we fought." Referring to newspaper accounts that accused him of culpability in the loss, he wrote, "I have not thought proper to notice, or even to correct misrepresentations of my words & acts. We shall have to be patient, & suffer for awhile at least. ... At present the public mind is not prepared to receive the truth."<4> All of these were themes that Early and the Lost Cause writers "gained wide currency in the nineteenth century and remain remarkably persistent today."<5>

Lost Cause themes were taken up by memorial associations such as the United Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy, helping Southerners, in some degree, to cope with the dramatic social, political, and economic changes in the postbellum era, including Reconstruction.<6>

[oasis]

120. General Lee's "tactical skill"?

He's the numbskull who ordered Pickett's Charge.

Brilliant! :eyes:

[MellowDem]

130. True on that...

but overall, he was a pretty good general. Being able to defeat a larger force time and again isn't easy, though some of the credit has to go to him being on the defensive in most cases, and the improvement in weaponry and accuracy in how it helped defense wasn't fully appreciated until World War 1.

I definitely think there were other generals that have generally been ignored, especially out in the Western theatre, mainly because of a certain Eastern bias for the longest time in history books. The war was won in the West, after all.

The end of the war was the most foretelling of the future though. The Petersburg campaign, with the endless stalemate, trench warfare, artillery bombardments, it was all just a prelude to WW1 tactics.

[Dank Nugs]

131. The intentions of wicked men..

Typical myopic white men. The genocide of a culture, to enslave an entire race and steal their souls. Humanity ill needs saviors such as you. Those of you who are berating the South for their actions during the War Between the States need to get a grip. We literally stole this entire country from under the foot of a entire culture, fenced them off in the middle of nowhere in places no reasonable person would want to live, then think ourselves to have the moral high ground?

Please. The nature of man is conflict. In a word, war.

Herb is the healing of a nation, alcohol is its destruction. Soon, the time will come to chant down the gates of Babylon and rid the intentions of wicked men.

[Art_from_Ark]

132. Treason?

Rebelling against King George III was also considered to be treason. But neither was.

The colonists wanted not to overthrow King George III, but to start their own country. Confederates did not want to overthrow the US Government (well, most of them, at least), but instead wanted to start their own country. Was the Declaration of Independence applicable in only some instances? Succession was not expressly prohibited by the Constitution, and Southern politicians considered it one of the rights reserved to the States.

I'm not a yahoo Confederate, hang the Stars-and-Bars in the pickup truck kind of guy. But the more I read about this subject, the more I realize that in the Antebellum era, just before the war, things were pretty screwed up on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

[Dank Nugs]

133. Also,

I'd argue that the right to self-determinism is a fundamental component of liberty. Succession is a right, but I"m sure the State would have to reimburse the Federal Government for the property they own within said state. What really drives me nuts is how people think the War Between the States was over slavery. It was, but it wasn't. It was basically one economic model competing with another economic model. Industrialism v. Agrarianism; along with States Rights issues.

A person cannot be considered property, because they have inalienable rights that cannot be infringed upon by any Man or State. But we didn't fight a war over that. The South was fighting for home and hearthstone, viewing the Union as oppressors in their own native land.

[Art_from_Ark]

134. "It was, but it wasn't" about slavery

I agree with you there. Certainly the election of Lincoln on an abolitionist platform in 1860 was the catalyst that sent first South Carolina, then 10 other Southern states scurrying for the exits. But as you noted, it was basically Industrialism v. Agrarianism; and States Rights (vs. Federal power). Lincoln himself in the early days acknowledged that the war was primarily to preserve the Union. But when he couldn't recruit enough Union soldiers for that purpose (many on the Union side said "Let them go"), then he focused more attention on freeing slaves. But his Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 did not free any slaves in the 4 slave states that remained in the Union.

[Arugula Latte]

146. Gee, I wonder what kinds of rights the South wanted for their states?

Hmmmm ... Could it be ... the right to own other human beings and force them to labor for free?

:think:

[Art_from_Ark]

167. Not everyone in the South wanted that

For example, there were just a handful of slaves in the whole of northwest and north central Arkansas before the war, yet every state legislator from that region, with the exception of one person from Madison County, voted to secede.. Most of the Confederate soldiers who fought and died at the Battle of Pea Ridge (Arkansas), for example, were not slaveholders, nor were they fighting for slaveholders. To them, it was more about the right to self-determination.

[Arugula Latte]

144. Oh, B.S.

I'm so bloody sick of the Confederate apologists who insist it wasn't about slavery -- that it was about the "homeland" or "states' rights" or "economics." Yeah, they wanted to fight so they could have the right to continue to enslave people to better their own economic situation. Free labor kept in squalid conditions will do that, you know!

Enough of this namby pamby let's-stroke-the-South's-fragile-ego revisionism.

[SemiCharmedQuark]

149. LOL...at least "Not all the slaveowners were bad!" and "Hey, those slaves had some racist attitudes"

hasn't come up...again...

[Critters2]

148. It's pretty disingenuous for people to complain about oppression while

so blatantly oppressing others. Did they ask their slaves how they felt about "self-determinism"?

[LostInAnomie]

151. What a load of shit.

Any way you slice it, the South started the war because they wanted to keep slaves. Their economic model wasn't agrarianism, it agrarianism based on slavery. It wasn't about states rights, it was about the states rights to keep slaves. It wasn't because the Union was oppressors in their own native land. The South started the war. It was the Union's native land as well. The only thing the South was being oppressed of was the right to keep slaves and expand the territory where slavery was legal.

The whole war was about slavery.

[NOLALady]

161. "the Union as oppressors in their own native land. "

The thought of the Union oppressing the Southern Confeds was more than they could bear. Yet the good ole Confeds had no problem oppressing others. :crazy:

[LostInAnomie]

150. A lot of Southern clowns hate to admit that their ancestors were traitors...

... or at least dumb enough to fight for traitors that wanted to keep slaves. They can dress it up with a lot of bullshit apologetics about states rights, "the secession question was never answered", preservation of the Southern economy, etc., but the real reason the war was fought was that the preservation of slavery was more important to these people that their own country.

The Confederates were traitors of the worst kind. None of them should be honored. They should be mocked, scorned, and ridiculed.

[Bryn]

152. How Typical of the Northerners

who think they're ALL GOOD. Wowsier!!! I am sooooo happy for you! :applause:

[LostInAnomie]

157. Whenever Northern states betray their country so they can enslave people...

... we should start to watch our tone. Until then, the Confederacy was completely in the wrong for starting the war and their motives for doing so, and it should be pointed out every time someone tries to play the apologist for it. There is nothing honorable about the Confederacy or those that fought for it.

[Dogtown]

153. Excellent thread, arcadian.

I noticed especially how well versed in CW history the apologists in this thread are. CW history from a southern perspective, that is.


Wonder how many "Sons of Confederate Veterans" have contributed in this thread...



I disagree on the hanging, though. I think that "honored institution", the southern chain-gang, would have been most appropriate. With a black Union veteran bossing the gang. Public humiliation as they labored to repair the damage they wrought, wearing the chains removed from their own former slaves, now *that* would've been justice.

[Taverner]

169. Honestly, some folks need to vandalize and destroy those statues

Not encouraging it - not at all :evilgrin: