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Wars are started by politicians and fought by common men. In civil wars the men doing the fighting are fellow countrymen and sometimes even brothers. Remembering the men and women who fought on both sides of a civil war is a way of bringing countrymen back together in the aftermath of that war, and a way of healing a reunited nation. It also serves as a reminder of the true consequences of civil war in times when a nation is divided but not quite yet at war with itself once again.
The men who fought and died for the confederacy did not fight and die for slavery. General Lee fought to defend Virginia. The men and women in the ranks fought and often died for their homes and their families and their fellows. The politicians and landed gentry who started the war did not have the same motivations as the men who fought it and we would do well to remember that. Monuments and statues of confederate officers and fighting men are not meant to honor slavery they are meant to honor the men who fought and the men whose blood soaked the American ground where the battles were fought.
These are just my own thoughts so please don't ask for a link.
History?! On this webpage? My good man, I think you're in the wrong place.
Well it's a topic that is both history and modern controversy as well as being tied in heavily to modern politics. If this is the wrong forum to post this in the mods can move it if they wish.
Wars are started by politicians and fought by common men. In civil wars the men doing the fighting are fellow countrymen and sometimes even brothers. Remembering the men and women who fought on both sides of a civil war is a way of bringing countrymen back together in the aftermath of that war, and a way of healing a reunited nation. It also serves as a reminder of the true consequences of civil war in times when a nation is divided but not quite yet at war with itself once again.
The men who fought and died for the confederacy did not fight and die for slavery. General Lee fought to defend Virginia. The men and women in the ranks fought and often died for their homes and their families and their fellows. The politicians and landed gentry who started the war did not have the same motivations as the men who fought it and we would do well to remember that. Monuments and statues of confederate officers and fighting men are not meant to honor slavery they are meant to honor the men who fought and the men whose blood soaked the American ground where the battles were fought.
These are just my own thoughts so please don't ask for a link.
You're wasting your breath. They won't get it. They've been brainwashed from youth just as surely as the kamikazes were brainwashed in imperial Japan. Just as surely as ISIS killers are today. They do not understand that it was a nation divided in half and that the men fighting for both sides were fighting for "their country." They do not understand that the common foot soldier of the south was largely poor and was probably little more than a slave himself. He'd certainly never owned a slave. He happened to be on the wrong patch of real estate at the wrong time, and he happened to, unfortunately, be swept up in a youthful romanticism about what war is as youth so often are. He happened to read the news media of the time that said the "Yankees" were coming to destroy his world. And he happened to believe it.
They don't understand that they, themselves, would very likely do the same thing today for different reasons. If, hypothetically speaking, the east half and west half of the US were to split, there are very few east coast youth and young men (NYC, Boston, NJ, etc) who would go running to off to Montana or Idaho or North Dakota to join their "militia" no matter the cause their east coast states stood for. They would defend "their country."
They don't get any of that because they have no common sense. Common sense was outlawed years ago.
Well it's a topic that is both history and modern controversy as well as being tied in heavily to modern politics. If this is the wrong forum to post this in the mods can move it if they wish.
No no, I was being sarcastic. If you read most of the other "thoughts" here on this issue it amounts to "The south lost!!!!!!! They were like Nazis!!!!!!" I'm glad to see someone else here who actually knows a bit of history.
IMO After the Buchanan v Warley supreme court decision in 1917 municipalities needed something to replace the sundown town signs. The statues were a way of communicating to outsiders that, "we still play by the old rules here."
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