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I've worked with several members since I volunteer for historic associations as I have interest in preserving how my own ancestors lived in the South. Several of them are your typical socialite types interested in proving they're somehow a "better" Southern family than another. Several of them are genuinely interested in history and I could work with these types well as they had as much interest as I did at preserving slavery artifacts, sites and histories.
Overall, they're mostly in the organization because their mother and mother's mother and so on were in. I think it's an inherited thing or something to belong? My general impression is that they're a nice enough group with the usual exceptions. This isn't to say they're ignorant of bad acts of their ancestors. They know it well and will give you great details about it if asked. They're more of a remember the good and the bad people but this is something I've found prevalent with all historic communities in the South. I guess shades of gray?? Cliché I know but it's true.
The problem I'm seeing is that so many people today want to define everyone in a binary fashion and that's just not realistic. Hardly anyone is a caricature of a person - they're complex and have, at times, opposing thoughts and feelings. I also do at times. I live in such a place. I can see a plantation house and see the beauty of the architecture and the grounds while at the same time see the horror and enslavement which created that beauty. Maybe I'm wrong but I feel like I've done some good by giving a voice to my own ancestors by helping to preserve their life.
To me, it's good to show it all because the contrast really hits home to people - something I've seen in the educational programs we set up. You show that kid the stunning house and then show them a slave cabin, let them pick a little cotton in the heat, comb some wool, or cook over a fire. I tell you, it makes an impact. More than a book ever would.
I've been thinking on this statue thing. Nah, I wouldn't take them down. I'd add more. Add black Southerners who had an impact on the South's history. Again, the contrast tells the story.
The economies and then prosperity of the South was very dependedent on the enslavement of humans. Biracial children were explained away or ignored. Slave status came from the mother, thus any offspring was a slave, regardless of pigmentation. Black women typically had 8-10 children, rarely by fathers of their choosing. Excess children were routinely sold to the highest bidder.
Slaves were engaged in factory work with an emphasis on railroad tracks as well as agriculture and domestic functions.
In 1860, 1/3 of the US population was black and most were slaves.
Percentage population that was black:
57% - South Carolina
55% - Mississippi
47% - Louisiana
45% - Alabama
44% - Florida
44% - Georgia
^ were the first 6 states which seceded.
In terms of absolute numbers, nearly 500,000 black people, mostly slaves, lived in Virginia, which became the capital of Confederate states.
In 1865, 75% of US households did not contain slaves. 1% owned four or more people. The rest had fewer than four, primarily domestic.
The UDC sought to rationalize slavery :
" Hundreds of thousands of African savages had been Christianized."
" KKK was necessary to protect against outrages by misguided negroes."
I am a northerner and was curious as to the origins of the thousands of statues that memorialize the confederacy. Who? What? When? Where? How?
The United Daughters of the Confederacy ( UDC) a heredity association of Southern white women was created in 1894 and evolved to an umbrella organization for hundreds of local orgs with goals of preserving a protective, romantic vision of glamorous Antebellum life and the gospel of " The Lost Cause" mythology.
It was this group who initially used bake sales outside churches to fund lobbies to obtain state support of their cause and errect monuments on public lands throughout the country and promote the myths of the Lost Cause.
The monuments were commissioned and erected during the decades of Jim Crow Laws. It has sought to describe the Confederacy as heroic in defence of a way of life, while minimizing/ ignoring ownership of humans, so very critical to the way of life on many plantations and markets. It has sought to sustain the myth that slaves were like family.
The UDC created children's groups to impart their values to subsequent generations.
The UDC raised an enormous amount of funds for the Red Cross, during WW2.
My daughter is a member of the UDC and the DAR through my ancestry. They are nice groups of older women, my daughter is not active but I don't see anything wrong with the groups as such.
The economies and then prosperity of the South was very dependedent on the enslavement of humans. Biracial children were explained away or ignored. Slave status came from the mother, thus any offspring was a slave, regardless of pigmentation. Black women typically had 8-10 children, rarely by fathers of their choosing. Excess children were routinely sold to the highest bidder.
Slaves were engaged in factory work with an emphasis on railroad tracks as well as agriculture and domestic functions.
In 1860, 1/3 of the US population was black and most were slaves.
Percentage population that was black:
57% - South Carolina
55% - Mississippi
47% - Louisiana
45% - Alabama
44% - Florida
44% - Georgia
^ were the first 6 states which seceded.
In terms of absolute numbers, nearly 500,000 black people, mostly slaves, lived in Virginia, which became the capital of Confederate states.
In 1865, 75% of US households did not contain slaves. 1% owned four or more people. The rest had fewer than four, primarily domestic.
The UDC sought to rationalize slavery :
" Hundreds of thousands of African savages had been Christianized."
" KKK was necessary to protect against outrages by misguided negroes."
The South was devastated, and ransacked during, and after the war. Post war actions were criminally bad against the South. The statues were erected as part of the healing process to recognize these American who were citizens of the U.S. before and after the war. They were put up in an effort to unify the country by not demonizing the South.
Is that so hard to understand. Some of you should study history, and do a little research instead of Virtue Signaling every chance you get to make you feel better about yourselves.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Bungalove
For all those making judgemental statements about the UDC, have you bothered to read their homepage and their mission statements? I bet not. Maybe I'm biased because they're headquartered in my state and the nearest city to me was the site of one of the biggest battles of the Civil War, where both sides are memorialized every year in a breathtaking ceremony. I hope protestors of any kind don't suggest removing any statutes or other symbols of the Civil War around here; this is still a very Southern area despite its' proximity to DC, and any efforts to do so would not end well.
The OP failed to mention anything about the memorials being erected being due to the North forbidding family from decorating graves of fallen confederate soldiers or even being allowed in cemeteries to visit their dead if they were even allowed to be buried.
I dont know if any posters have had family members fight in any of the wars or lost a family member to war but perhaps try for a minute to imagine yourself disconnected from those powers that be and their reasoning to start wars, imagine the war is in your backyard, your homes destroyed, your women raped, your children killed, imagine your entire existence and way of life as you know it gone. Much like some of the refugees we take into this country. Now imagine your son died in this war, his body lay in an unmarked grave, you unable to give him proper burial or honor his death, being ridiculed and mistreated by those that killed him. Do you not think you would want remembrance and memorial to those you loved that were lost? For some of those early women, forerunners of the DOC, thats all they had. They were not concerned with slavery, the battle over slavery the desires of the wealthy 1%, they were consumed with their loss.
The South was devastated, and ransacked during, and after the war. Post war actions were criminally bad against the South. The statues were erected as part of the healing process to recognize these American who were citizens of the U.S. before and after the war. They were put up in an effort to unify the country by not demonizing the South.
Is that so hard to understand. Some of you should study history, and do a little research instead of Virtue Signaling every chance you get to make you feel better about yourselves.
Don't forget their efforts to try and intimidate black Americans from voting; or terrorizing them. That's around the time that most of these statues were erected. It was not for southern blacks - it was for southern whites and it was done to enforce supremecy. So no, these statues were no erected to benefit southern citizens, because by their very nature they were exclusionary in message.
What exactly is virtue signaling? Does that mean showing you want to do the right thing? Because maybe that's what we need more of.
The South was devastated, and ransacked during, and after the war. Post war actions were criminally bad against the South. The statues were erected as part of the healing process to recognize these American who were citizens of the U.S. before and after the war. They were put up in an effort to unify the country by not demonizing the South.
Is that so hard to understand. Some of you should study history, and do a little research instead of Virtue Signaling every chance you get to make you feel better about yourselves.
Yeah--I did some research. Can you post your sources? Everything I've read states that the statues were erected 45-80 years after the war during very specific eras. I cannot find anything that supports your version of history.
"...Most of these monuments were not erected after the Civil War. In fact, all the way to 1890 there were very few statues or monuments dedicated to Confederate leaders. Most of them were built much later...
Yes, these monuments were put up to honor Confederate leaders. But the timing of the monument building makes it pretty clear what the real motivation was: to physically symbolize white terror against blacks. They were mostly built during times when Southern whites were engaged in vicious campaigns of subjugation against blacks, and during those campaigns the message sent by a statue of Robert E. Lee in front of a courthouse was loud and clear..."
Robert E. Lee didn't even want them. Guess he's not up on history either.
"...Lee himself never wanted such monuments built.
...“I think it wiser,” the retired military leader wrote about a proposed Gettysburg memorial in 1869, “…not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered...”
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Several of them are genuinely interested in history and I could work with these types well as they had as much interest as I did at preserving slavery artifacts, sites and histories. 
