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I've been ambivalent about the Confederate statue controversy raging since Charlottesville and open to arguments for both sides, also I've seen some fair points about the hazards of the slippery slope argument used to suggest action against statues of flawed and often racist figures including Lincoln (who pushed for the expulsion of African-Americans and conducting a harsh campaign against the Sioux) who nonetheless, in the main, had a broad respect for human rights. Also I am receptive to the argument about the Confederate monuments like those to Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and Jefferson Davis being problematic since they're statues to military and political officials involved in treason. Fine.
Here's the problem I see. On the scale of horrible crimes in US history, I'd think most would find acts of genocide to be far, far more horrible than acts of treason, heck in the last century's genocides in Rwanda, Ukraine or Armenia for example, those fighting against the genocides would have been considered traitors. So if acts of treason (yes, in a push to continue slavery which was horrible) are enough to push a monument to be taking down, then acts of genocide even more so should be automatic disqualifiers for statue or monument status. And many of the worst genocidal officials in US history were, in fact, Union generals who prosecuted an explicit war of extermination against the native American indigenous tribes of the West, especially in the Dakotas, the Plains in general and around Montana and the Northwest. George Amstrong Custer's case is well-known, less well-known is that Custer's replacement, Nelson Miles, broke treaties and massacred Sioux men, women and children with an explicit goal of eliminating the tribes, with Wounded Knee just the tip of the iceberg. Yet Nelson Miles has statues and monuments named after him throughout the US, even in supposedly liberal Massachusetts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nelson_A._Miles
Even worse is the often cited cases of William Tecumseh Sherman and Phil Sheridan, who openly pursued policies to mass murder the native tribes and prevent their capacity to reproduce themselves, the textbook definition of genocide, yet they too are honored by many statues and street and school names across multiple states. Tons of articles and discussions have been pointing this out from across political spectrum, and in this case they have a point. They were very explicit in their intentions. Here are some of their quotes, from government archives and documents they themselves produced:
Some of the most egregious examples,
from Sherman:
"The more Indians we can kill this year the fewer we will need to kill the next, because the more I see of the Indians the more convinced I become that they must either all be killed or be maintained as a species of pauper. Their attempts at civilization is ridiculous."
Sheridan's "The only good Indian is a dead Indian" is of course well-known.
Whatever your feelings about their actions in the Civil War itself, which I agree are difficult to judge due to the fog of a vicious war, their actions against the native Americans are completely unacceptable and morally reprehensible from any ethical or human rights perspective. And also contrary to the usual excuses, their actions were considered appalling by many contemporaries. These were the indigenous people of the land who displaced and pushed off, with treaties repeatedly broken. And the common retort about how the tribes fought each other doesn't work, yes there was intertribal warfare, but Miles, Custer, Sherman and Sheridan pursued a policy of explicit elimination of people of a different race and heritage, with the expressed goal of eliminating their capacity to continue as a distinct people. (And the slaughtering of the buffalo was in every way a part of that genocide by cutting off the tribes' food sources. The British for example are attacked for genocides against the people of India and Ireland by burning down fields and forcing them into starvation, if that's a genocide, then so is removing the Plains tribes' food source) among many other operations explicitly targeted at civilians and especially women and children. Hard to find a more clear-cut example of what's considered genocide by practically any modern authority as well as contemporary authorities when they were committing their acts.
(To be clear on this I don't think the targeted monuments should include Ulysses S. Grant -- he was in favor of coming to more of an accommodating with the native peoples, it was Miles, Custer, Sherman and Sheridan who were actively genocidal).
I'm not just pointing this out to start discussion or stir controversy. It's simply that, if the actions of the Confederate generals are enough to merit removal of their monuments, then the genocides committed by many Union generals (and some ex-Confederate generals, and figures like Andrew Jackson), far worse crimes, sbould be more than enough to merit the same treatment.
Last edited by Corascant; 09-05-2017 at 08:16 AM..
The Indians were a legitimate enemy of the United States. They were a failed, violent, Stone Age culture that was replaced by a technologically superior one. Happened all over the world. Get over it.
The Indians were a legitimate enemy of the United States. They were a failed, violent, Stone Age culture that was replaced by a technologically superior one. Happened all over the world. Get over it.
Custer wasn't a general. He held a brevit rank for a short time, but he was actually a LT, Col. Miles was an absolute prick. As was Sherman, Sheridan,and Grant. Crook was about the best of the lot, as he at least never lied to the Indians. They were screwed, and he didn't pull any punches about it. Miles took credit for bringing in Geronimo, but it was actually Lt Charles Gatewood who pulled it off. Miles had him sent to a remote post in MT so as to keep him in obscurity.
Ahhh, yes. Good, stalwart Union men all. Miles was the one responsible for Wounded Knee. Uh huh, Such a glorious victory that "battle" was. As I see it, the Indias have about the biggest reason to be bitter about things than anyone else. More so than the freed slaves. They were treated as far more subhuman than the Blacks were. You could ask Black Kettle about that. Another glorious "victory" for the CO volunteers.
Freed Blacks were not treated to the wholesale butchery the Indians were. Lovely little victories like Sand Creek, Wounded Knee and dozens of other massacres of whole villages to the last man, woman and child. I read an interview with Rain in the Face about Little Big Horn that was quite interesting. He's the one who claimed to have Killed Tom Custer. If Sitting Bull, Crazy Horse and Red Cloud could hae held the tribal alliance together after Little Big Horn, the war would have gone on for a lot longer. The end result would have been the same, but there would have been a lot more dead bluecoats.
And that black men in Africa were selling other black men long before white people showed up.
And long after...till this very day.
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