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Maybe its just my northern education, but this stuff seems odd. Why don't people demand this stuff be taken down? How do people get away with bumperstickers and flags that have such racist sentiments to them? It's like everyone here just accepts it even if they don't agree with it.
Yeah it is your northern education! People do demand it be taken down and southerners tell them to go pound sand! The confederate states was more than just slavery, it is a part of our history and southerners heritage, you may not like it, and thats ok! My son wears a baseball hat with the confederate flag on it and we live in Washington state. Havent you ever seen the Dukes of Hazard?!?!
really interesting thread. I'll tell my two experiences as a northern transplant to NC:
1. In my town square is a confederate monument that pays tribute to the men who fought for the confederacy. At first I thought "Oh God, where did I move to???" Then one day I walked up to it and saw the inscription. Nothing about slavery, or even secession, just that they were brave and fought for the South" And then it hit me that really they're honoring ancestors who died in the war. Not just that, but these people really do think it was about states' rights! It was an eye opener
2. I was walking the campus of UNC Chapel Hill and saw the "Silent Sam" statue that pays tribute to the college students who fought, and it saddened me. Like many posters here who said not everyone liked the war, I wondered how many of those young men were recruited/forced to fight because they were fighting for the planter class.
So even though I don't agree with secession, seeing a confederate monument doesn't really phase me. Because I don't think people down here see it as a pro-slavery monument. It's simply a monument to their ancestors, some of whom were poor men fighting in a rich man's war. And frankly, it is what it is. The tragedy happened to both sides.
Don't know if that all makes sense, I might have just been rambling.
Early 19th century New Englanders had real motives for forgetting their slave history, or, if they recalled it at all, for characterizing it as a brief period of mild servitude. This was partly a Puritan effort to absolve New England's ancestors of their guilt. The cleansing of history had a racist motive as well, denying blacks -- slave or free -- a legitimate place in New England history. But most importantly, the deliberate creation of a "mythology of a free New England" was a crucial event in the history of sectional conflict in America. The North, and New England in particular, sought to demonize the South through its institution of slavery; they did this in part by burying their own histories as slave-owners and slave-importers. At the same time, behind the potent rhetoric of Daniel Webster and others, they enshrined New England values as the essential ones of the Revolution, and the new nation. In so doing, they characterized Southern interests as purely sectional and selfish. In the rhetorical battle, New England backed the South right out of the American mainstream.
The attempt to force blame for all America's ills onto the South led the Northern leadership to extreme twists of logic. Abolitionist leaders in New England noted the "degraded" condition of the local black communities. Yet the common abolitionist explanation of this had nothing to do with northerners, black or white. Instead, they blamed it on the continuance of slavery in the South. "The toleration of slavery in the South," Garrison editorialized, "is the chief cause of the unfortunate situation of free colored persons in the North."
This argument, embraced almost universally by New England abolitionists, made good sense as part of a strategy to heap blame for everything wrong with American society on southern slavery, but it also had the advantage, to northern ears, of conveniently shifting accountability for a locally specific situation away from the indigenous institution from which it had evolved."
really interesting thread. I'll tell my two experiences as a northern transplant to NC:
1. In my town square is a confederate monument that pays tribute to the men who fought for the confederacy. At first I thought "Oh God, where did I move to???" Then one day I walked up to it and saw the inscription. Nothing about slavery, or even secession, just that they were brave and fought for the South" And then it hit me that really they're honoring ancestors who died in the war. Not just that, but these people really do think it was about states' rights! It was an eye opener
2. I was walking the campus of UNC Chapel Hill and saw the "Silent Sam" statue that pays tribute to the college students who fought, and it saddened me. Like many posters here who said not everyone liked the war, I wondered how many of those young men were recruited/forced to fight because they were fighting for the planter class.
So even though I don't agree with secession, seeing a confederate monument doesn't really phase me. Because I don't think people down here see it as a pro-slavery monument. It's simply a monument to their ancestors, some of whom were poor men fighting in a rich man's war. And frankly, it is what it is. The tragedy happened to both sides.
Don't know if that all makes sense, I might have just been rambling.
But some good ramblings, friend! It's northerners like you who "get it." We might still have disagreements, but at least you can see it from both sides. Thanks!
West Virginia was indeed part of the north, in fact the state did not exist prior to the civil war and became seperated over the debate.
The question isnt where the states sit on a map, its what side were they on.. I stand corrected on Virginia, but West Virginia was indeed part of the north..
I'm afraid you sort of got it wrong again, though it's not your fault, the traditional histories have never gotten the story of West Virginia correct. The state was actually created without the support of the people, it was a hand-out by Congress and Lincoln to loyal supporters in the northern panhandle area. According to one of the Union legislators after the 1861 vote
Quote:
"Now, Mr. President, to show you, and it needs but to look
at the figures to satisfy the mind of every member, that even a majority of the people within the district composed of the thirty-nine counties have never come to the polls and expressed their sentiments in favor of a new State. In a voting population of some 40,000 or 50,000 we see a poll of only 17,627 and even some of them were in the [Union] army."
Most historians just follow previous histories, although military historian Russell Weigley wrote the most accurate assessment of West Virginia that I've seen in "A Great Civil War", pg. 55-
Quote:
Here was yet another instance of the war's running out of control, creating its own momentum, with the predictable unhappy consequences. In much of the new state, the Confederacy in fact dominated throughout the war, all the more firmly supported by a local population resentful of attempts to alter its state allegiance against its will. Except in the Ohio River counties, the new state could enforce its writ only under the bayonets of the Union Army.
Early 19th century New Englanders had real motives for forgetting their slave history, or, if they recalled it at all, for characterizing it as a brief period of mild servitude. This was partly a Puritan effort to absolve New England's ancestors of their guilt. The cleansing of history had a racist motive as well, denying blacks -- slave or free -- a legitimate place in New England history. But most importantly, the deliberate creation of a "mythology of a free New England" was a crucial event in the history of sectional conflict in America. The North, and New England in particular, sought to demonize the South through its institution of slavery; they did this in part by burying their own histories as slave-owners and slave-importers. At the same time, behind the potent rhetoric of Daniel Webster and others, they enshrined New England values as the essential ones of the Revolution, and the new nation. In so doing, they characterized Southern interests as purely sectional and selfish. In the rhetorical battle, New England backed the South right out of the American mainstream.
The attempt to force blame for all America's ills onto the South led the Northern leadership to extreme twists of logic. Abolitionist leaders in New England noted the "degraded" condition of the local black communities. Yet the common abolitionist explanation of this had nothing to do with northerners, black or white. Instead, they blamed it on the continuance of slavery in the South. "The toleration of slavery in the South," Garrison editorialized, "is the chief cause of the unfortunate situation of free colored persons in the North."
This argument, embraced almost universally by New England abolitionists, made good sense as part of a strategy to heap blame for everything wrong with American society on southern slavery, but it also had the advantage, to northern ears, of conveniently shifting accountability for a locally specific situation away from the indigenous institution from which it had evolved."
Silliness shoud be rebutted:
North was free soil in the mid-19th century; South was slave.
War was fought over slavery:
Look at the first lyric of "Bonny Blue Flag.", says it all.
Then there's the pictures on the Reb money of happy slaves picking cotton.
Propaganda, of course.
Who was it aimed at?
Basic questions that the Neo-Confederates would like to ignore.
I'm afraid you sort of got it wrong again, though it's not your fault, the traditional histories have never gotten the story of West Virginia correct. The state was actually created without the support of the people, it was a hand-out by Congress and Lincoln to loyal supporters in the northern panhandle area. According to one of the Union legislators after the 1861 voteMost historians just follow previous histories, although military historian Russell Weigley wrote the most accurate assessment of West Virginia that I've seen in "A Great Civil War", pg. 55-One of the things traditional histories leave out is the large part of WV that voted to secede from the US.http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...Wvmapagain.png
I put together a list of Confederate monuments in WV. I'm sure I've left some out, I discovered 2 more just a few weeks ago, one in my own home county.Confederate Monuments of West Virginia (West Virginia - The Other History)
Amazing how little we know about our own history:
West Virginia was not part of the South's climate regime and was dependent upon her Ohio River for trade.
Hence, they seceeded from Va when it seceeded from the Union.
Kentucky was another "Border Region": Sent more (by about 1/4) men to the Union Armies than it did to the Southern Armies.
Pro-Union until the war ended. But when trade along that same Ohio River did not recover as fast as the businessmen in the Bluegrass State wanted, they became pro-Confederate in orientation.
The ugly truth is that several million "Americans" feel more allegiance to a failed racist state from a century and a half ago than they do to their own country. None of them has ever enjoyed one second of freedom or had a single instance of their rights upheld by the Confederacy, but they tend to overlook the obvious and praise the "heritage" w/o acknowledging that the Confederacy led the Old South to utter destruction.
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Whats with all the confederate stuff?
