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Confederate flag is the battle flag of a war in support of slavery. It is indeed a symbol of racism.
That's not for you to decide. Thank you for your little opinion though.
The North and Federal Government were doing the same thing to the South that whitey was doing to black people. They were trying to keep the South subordinate to them because that was most profitable. That's what the South was resisting.
Slavery was a tertiary issues, and the right for each sovereign state to deal with slavery without interference was the issue there.
The proud Confederate Battle Flag is a flag of resistance to Government tyranny and of brave men who would not be subservient to a bunch of arrogant Yankees.
Confederate soldiers may have believed they were fighting for a noble cause, just as the Nazis believed they were fighting for a noble cause.
Both were wrong.
The pardon from Lincoln, Grant, and the North, the "Grand Bargain," the statues... have all led Confederates to fantasize there was honor in treason.
There isn't.
If you think the 19 year old German soldier fighting on the front line in the trenches "for his country" was "wrong" then I feel sorry for you. His leaders were wrong, not him. He was doing what most any other 19 year old would. He simply did what his society, government, and peers expected him to do. Do you really think that he was fighting for the cause of gassing Jews by the millions? Personally, I don't think he was unless he was one of the few sadists that exist in any society. He was fighting for his country just the same as you would be if you saw Iranians parachuting into your city, regardless of any grand "cause."
But only one side is guilty of trying to tear apart the U.S.A. in support of slavery.
You exaggerate. The USA wouldn't have been torn apart. It would have just been a lot smaller. It wasn't in support of slavery. President Davis said the north could have all the slaves if they wanted them, they just wanted to go.
"You have already emancipated nearly two millions of our slaves, and if you will take care of them you may emancipate the rest."
~Jefferson Davis, to a Northern newspaper reporter towards the end of the war
BTW, did y'all know the grand Union fought a war with Mexico??? Yup. That's right. That same Union that you support vehemently when it comes to the Civil War, yet despise when we talk about... say the Native Americans or.... say, imperialism.
So, say, since the Union fought a war with Mexico, then Mexico must be bad, right? Thus, the Mexican people must be evil. After all, they opposed the Union. So why in the name of Sam Hell are you allowing so many Mexicans into our grand Union? Shouldn't they and their culture be despised and spit upon as you do the folks of "the south"?
I sure wish you lefties would be so supportive of the "Union" when it comes to anything other than the Civil War.
They are not interested in reading the actual history of the man, his thoughts, or his actions. They are quite content to take modern revolutionary cherry-picked rhetoric as fact. They are quite content to take half truth engineered specifically for divisiveness.
And they are quite good at taking things out of context. They will point their finger a Lee and say, "He was a vile man who was a slave owner, thus a supporter of the institution of slavery." Yes, Lee held slaves. That's the part they will latch onto. They won't bother to dig any deeper. They won't (and wouldn't want to) acknowledge that the reason he owned slaves for a time is that he inherited them through his wealthy family. They won't acknowledge that he freed his slaves. They won't acknowledge that he condemned slavery and was quite vocal about it. They won't acknowledge that he fought for the CSA (after agonizing reflection) not because he believed in slavery, but because he lived in a state that broke away from the Union. Lee almost didn't follow that state, but grudgingly decided to stick with the land he grew up in and spent his whole life within. None of the Offended Generation will ever study the words and actions of Lee through the Civil War. Why? Because they want a flash point, not the truth.
And at the end of the day, if California (for example) were to break away from the United States, not an Offended Generation'er who lives in California would go running off to Texas so that they could then kill their fellow Californians. NONE would do that. Yet that's the exact same choice Lee and the overwhelming majority of the military command and soldiers of the CSA made--they stuck with their states and what was, at that time because of the difficulty of travel, their entire world. And somehow, they were wrong and the Offended Generationers would be right by making the same choice.
I'll tell you one thing, if my state broke away from the union, I sure as **** wouldn't go running off to the "other side" so that I could kill the people I've lived around my whole life. So I'm never going to blame a nineteen year old farm boy from Arkansas for fighting for his own state. And I don't blame Lee either. That war was a sad chapter in our history, and I see no reason to condemn 90% of the southern residents for a belief and institution that was practiced by the wealthiest of that era. As for me, I blame and condemn the slave owners of the south and the wealthy slave runners who primarily lived in the north, I don't blame and condemn the millions of men and boys who were caught up in a bad situation. That includes Lee, as far as I'm concerned. He was a victim of "the establishment" of the time just as nearly the entire CSA military was.
Great post, so much truth here....which is why the hater mongering PC mob will hate it. The PC mob has no ability to or desire to look for context or truth.
Do they even know that Robert E. Lee opposed slavery?
Virginia was a state in the Union until Lincoln offered to make slavery permanent.
Are you kidding me?
Here's a different perspective. You are missing the point that these statues were put up to intimidate. They belong in museums. We must not forget the terror of our past.
No idea. But I'd venture a guess that most would have no clue who they were. They probably wouldn't give a damn unless some activist came up to them, pointed to the statue, and said something to the effect, "Hey, kid, you know who that evil devil there is? Well let me tell you aaaaalllllll about it..."
Oh, I'm quite certain that those who are protesting taking down a statue of General Lee would know who General Sherman is. And that they would protest just as vehemently if statues of Sherman and Grant were erected in their town squares as they do about taking down the statues of Confederate generals.
Why shouldn't blacks in the South have statues to their liberators right beside the Confederates? They're just as much Southerners as the white Southerners are.
Boy, would we hear howls of outrage were that to happen.
Here's a different perspective. You are missing the point that these statues were put up to intimidate. They belong in museums. We must not forget the terror of our past.
As monuments to the Confederacy are swept away from public spaces, white supremacists, neo-Nazis and the president of the United States have been fretting over the so-called attack on history, presumably their history. Their white history.
The monuments debate isn’t about the past. It’s about present-day white supremacy and whether our nation is going to stop making excuses and stare it down.
Great post, so much truth here....which is why the hater mongering PC mob will hate it. The PC mob has no ability to or desire to look for context or truth.
Put good old REL in a museum where he belongs and then go gaze at thim as long as you want. See no reason why public money and my tax dollars should go to finance a monument to slavery,hate, murder, rape, lynching and treason.
Just saying - got it!
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