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The goal here isn't the statues themselves. They are irrelevant. The goal is to create an issue so the left can assert it's moral authority and coerce people into taking leftist positions out of fear of being fired or otherwise harmed. Trump was elected precisely for garbage like this. The left is creating an underground resistance of people who won't admit to supporting trump, but will do so in the voting booth.
Actually, IMO, it removes the false idea (for those who are young and impressionable) that the statues and the subjects of the statuary are something to be proud of or admire.
Move onto something else? Hell yes. Once the statues are gone, it will be time to move on to the next offensive thing that had been installed by a society that admires racists and wanted to promote their causes when they had ALL the power.
Hmmm. Indeed young and impressionable people are are a large group who have been and are being influenced by false a d seriously biased teaching inside the hallowed halls of higher "education" massive nu.bers of young people are being molded by false ideas. Seriously radical and even dangerous ideas that are forcibly infused by threats of failing grades, peer shunning and even violence, public shaming by peers and even faculty.
Yet the history behind these statues of people who were instrumental in the shaping of our nation and what they accomplished is a false idea? The idea that even enemies can show respect for each other is a false idea? OK, people like Washington, Jefferson, many others who put their signatures on our Constitution were slave holders. That was an accepted thing in those times. The Civil War became come tell wrapped around the slavery issue as history has been recorded, and edited, revised and morphed over time.
The monuments to Confederate commanders and soldiers are an attempt to honor an adversary in our martial history. Many tributes to Confederate dead were erected with the complete approval of the Union military. Bear in mind this was a civil conflict. Brother fighting brother, Father's fighting sons. Friends and neighbors, fellow generational residents of this land, forming up on battle lines in brutal and intense combat. This is not the same as honoring a foreign invader. This was Americans against Americans.
Union and Confederate soldiers in huge percentages shared many of the same ideals, including slavery and White dominance. When the Union formed Black regiments they were not either treated or seen as equals. Many White skiers came to respect them on the battlefield but still they were both seen and utilized as an inferior a d experience dale resource. They were always commanded by White officers, and the officers who were either assigned these commands or volunteered were shunned by the general officers corps. Being assigned command of b
Black troops was a punishment and a career ender. Volunteering was a definite career ender. White troops did not respect these officers nor did they recognize any rank among the Black troops. A mud rolling White private did not recognize Black Sergeant Major in the field. And I must say that a Sergeant Major is NOT a rank that is taken lightly. Those hiding that Rank with the Black regiments earned those stripes and a White soldier of that rank would have beaten anyone showing him disrespect within an inch of his life. It's stl that way in the modern military though what color skin is in that uniform doesn't matter a whit now. A Sergeant Major is God and controls all he surveys.
Given this fact a d the attitude of the times of Union troops toward Black soldiers, let alone Black civilians does it seem logical to claim the Union held the noble cause of freeing Blacks in the Confederate states? And regardless of what attitude was held toward Blacks by Confederate soldiers does it seem logical to claim the hundreds of thousands of average, mud rolling soldiers gave a far in a high wind about the holding of slaves? None of them could even afford to own slaves and did their own work. Yet there's this image that every Confederate soldier was a slave owner and was fighting for that. It's total horse $h!t.
The cavalry tactics of Bedford Forrest are required reading at West Point and still applied in modern warfare. Many Confederate commanders are studied in depth in our military academies. So , I submit that a great deal of what is being put out there about taking down the monuments, the anger and hatred being shown by these people who are just tearing down monuments in mobs, attaching slavery to ALL our countries historical figures as a central issue is a seriously false idea.
This whole thing has been silent for a long time. Through the Obama administration when you think it would have been a hotbed...crickets. Now with all the anti Trump movement looking for anything and everything to stir up crap it sounds like a pack of ten thousand coyotes who raided a meth lab. Then these Hitler humping scumbags stick their heads up, one of them commits a brutal and unforgivable act of murder and gives opportunity on a silver platter to the mobs that have now formed in the aftermath.
Enough is enough. Our history is what it is and our historical figures are stl the people who built the foundation of our nation. Complete with what is seen as their sins now. The post I quoted above and am responding to here strikes a cord with me. The advocating of removal of monuments to figures in our history and particularly the idea of how young people should be molded in the ideas espoused. Well, newsflash, they already have been and are being now. But thanks for revelaling the agenda. There's much more that can be said about this. But I think I'll save that for later.
Monuments, plaques or statues to memorialize fallen Confederate soldiers at Civil War cemeteries or battlefields are one thing. That is not what the debate over Confederate monuments is centered on.
Statues of people that led the Confederate forces or government which glorify or enshrine them in their treasonous rebellion against the United States of America are another thing, especially those statues or monuments that are in prominent public spaces such as a town square, government building or public educational institution. These are the items that are up for discussion and are the candidates for removal to the ash heap of history.
After the end of WW2, all shrines to Hitler and the Nazi regime were removed in Germany very promptly. Germany does allow memorial plaques or solemn memorials to fallen Germany military personnel from the WW2 era in battlefield cemeteries or other legitimate war memorials but does not allow those memorials to glorify the cause of Nazi Germany or Hitler. In Germany they recognize the evil of their Nazi past and the horrible destruction it caused to their people and to the world. The Nazi era is part of their history and heritage but to glorify that past is not how you learn the mistakes of that past.
The Confederates lost the Civil War. All of the Confederate military and civilian leaders should have been thankful for their lives that President Lincoln extended the hand of reconciliation (to most) instead of allowing the just punishment that was due (to many) them for horrific toll their treason caused to the United States of America.
In the late 1990s I was living in Auburn, AL. I enjoyed living in the deep south and exploring the cities and towns, including many places seldom visited by tourists. Sure, I went to the tourist destinations like Charleston, Savannah, Asheville , New Orleans. But some real interesting things are beyond those places.
One Saturday I stopped off in Jimmy Carter's home town of Plains in rural southwest Georgia farm country. My old paper map showed a National Historical Site, Civil War POW site and National POW museum in a town about 20 miles beyond called Andersonville, GA. It was a short and easy trip there and seemed like something interesting. It turned out to be the site of the most horrific suffering and cruelty of the Civil War era, and perhaps in our nation's history. Tens of thousands of Union POWs were confined in a POW camp where in a space of just over a year, 13,000 or more died of starvation, sickness, physical abuse or execution. Walking through the cemetery of deceased prisoners at the edge of the old POW camp is a solemn experience.
There were some Union POWs who survived the Andersonville camp. Shortly after surrender of the Confederate forces in 1865, the survivors were able to tell their story and it resulted in an exception to Lincoln's offer of reconciliation to former Confederate military leaders. The Andersonville camp commander Heinrich Wirz was arrested, prosecuted and convicted of war crimes against the POWs. Appropriately, Wirz was executed for those crimes in 1865 - justice was swift and merciless for that level of cruelty.
After visiting the POW museum and POW cemetery, I stopped in the nearby town of Andersonville and went for a walk. Right in the middle of the Andersonville GA town square I spotted a big obelisk that turned out to be shrine and memorial dedicated to POW camp commander Wirz, a convicted and executed war criminal. This shrine was put up around 1910 by a Daughters of the Confederacy group of sorts. Really, what is the purpose of a shrine to a convicted and executed war criminal responsible for the cruel suffering and death of over 13,000 soldiers of the United States Army, within the boundaries of the USA. As a veteran of the US Army, I found it disgusting and sickening. Of all the Confederate shrines and memorials I have ever seen, the one in Andersonville belongs on the top of the list for removal.
You folks are history buffs, which is fine. I'm not, really, but I just read that most of the civil war statues in the south were erected not just after the war, but during the jim crow period, around the turn of the century. They were erected to remind the freed blacks that the whites were still in charge, just like the limitations on voting, segregation, etc. With that in mind, it is not surprising that people would feel they are an affront to those who were enslaved before the war, and continued to be enslaved by the system after the war. There is also the point that the statues were to venerate people who betrayed their country in order to sustain the institution of slavery. So I do understand the movement to take them down. Still, I think communities should make their own decisions about that. Those who are elected to represent their people should make decisions that are appropriate to the will of those people. So if community X decides to take down or leave up a statue, it should not be the concern of the rest of us.
You folks are history buffs, which is fine. I'm not, really, but I just read that most of the civil war statues in the south were erected not just after the war, but during the jim crow period, around the turn of the century. They were erected to remind the freed blacks that the whites were still in charge, just like the limitations on voting, segregation, etc. With that in mind, it is not surprising that people would feel they are an affront to those who were enslaved before the war, and continued to be enslaved by the system after the war. There is also the point that the statues were to venerate people who betrayed their country in order to sustain the institution of slavery. So I do understand the movement to take them down. Still, I think communities should make their own decisions about that. Those who are elected to represent their people should make decisions that are appropriate to the will of those people. So if community X decides to take down or leave up a statue, it should not be the concern of the rest of us.
Yes. A lot of them were. That's a fact. So I will concede that in those cases their removal from public display is appropriate. But not their destruction. Especially by rabid mobs. Utilize them in a proper manner. Ship them off to battlefield parks like Gettysburg and disadvantages them alongside their Union counterparts. They are works of art. Made of bronze and irreplacable. Ripping them down in hissy fits is just an expression of ignorance.
The current footage of that mob ripping down that statue makes me ill. That like ess was not even of a slave holding Southern aristocratic officer. It was of a rank and file soldier. A guy who did t even oown slaves and probably died for a totally different cause to his mind. At any rate these statues can still serve a useful purpose in an imagery of our history. Gettysburg, Antietam, Shiloh, Cold Harbor, The Wilderness, and other national parks could and would put them in proper context and save us all a lot of grief going to blows over them.
Does removing those statues change anything? Are we hiding from history or is it time for them to be removed?
Bending to the will of a minority that wants to do nothing but cause issues, and thereby, destroying things of historical value which should be remembered especially when it may prevent something like that from happening again. It can be addressed as something not to be proud of or proud of depending on one's thoughts, which I think, are still legal. It is still legal to have one's own thoughts despite what they might be isn't it?
Does removing those statues change anything? Are we hiding from history or is it time for them to be removed?
History. Those statues and monuments were never about "history". They were put in place to remind people that "the cause" (the confederacy) was still alive and that Jim Crow was boss.
We're not hiding from history.
We'd be walking away from lost causes and we'd stop venerating losers.
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