This is what emboldened white supremacists look like

[ClimateSanity]

You are desperate to make me look desperate.

You are clearly desperate.

 

[WizardofOz]

GOP Lawmaker: Lynch Anyone Who Takes Down Confederate Monuments
None of the state’s Republican leaders have condemned Karl Oliver’s comments.

:hammer:

He's a rep from....Mississippi

"Oliver made headlines earlier this year for dismissing the concerns of a resident because she wasn’t born there, and urged her to leave Mississippi."

 

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[drbrumley]

GOP Lawmaker: Lynch Anyone Who Takes Down Confederate Monuments
None of the state’s Republican leaders have condemned Karl Oliver’s comments.

:hammer:

He's a rep from....Mississippi

"Oliver made headlines earlier this year for dismissing the concerns of a resident because she wasn’t born there, and urged her to leave Mississippi."

Really no need for that kind of rhetoric.

Bible says we should take the high road. If the people, no matter how wrong they are want it gone, so as to not offend, put them in a museum

Sent from my SM-G920V using TOL mobile app

 

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Offensive to emboldened liberals.

 

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Offensive to emboldened liberals.

 

[Town Heretic]

You could make a case for perhaps the flag on that note, but the persons? It seems to me, you are hating men that had honorable reasons for warring.

There is no honor in defense of an evil. Lee knew better and acted contrary to his greater moral obligation, the same sense that had him decry the institution his personal service upheld. Seeing them clearly doesn't require my hate, but it does remove from me an ennobling pity and lift the veil of that myth.

You saw the quotes I gave, for instance. Historically, these men were seen as trying to sustain their states.

Understanding their states were upholding something else.

There were economic reasons for this as well. There was a fight rearing at the time, long before the war began. Not so Nazi Germany, by comparison, imho.

No, Germany was under a harder thumb, suffering from economic disaster largely brought on by the actions of the victors in WWI. That is part of what drove that people mad and turned their own racist tendencies into something horrible and consuming. In the South that turn was engendered by a prosperity driven by racism. The only saving grace was that unlike Germany it required maintenance of the object of its contempt, not wholesale extermination.

We've never seen Lee anywhere near akin to Hitler.

I wouldn't suggest that he is. I think Hitler was insane and believed in the evil he embraced. Lee knew, evidenced by letter and actions outside of his service to the Confederacy. His evil was vanity. His lot and name was tied to a state and he was willing to embrace the preservation of an institution he knew to be evil in the service of that...reminding me of the rich young ruler after a fashion. Hitler is a personal horror. Lee is a tragic, flawed figure.

...is a statue of Lee, in and of itself, offensive?

It isn't in and of itself though any more than a flag is just a piece of cloth. It's a tribute to something and that something is more than the man as is evidence by the uniform they have him wearing and the service it honors. That's the problem. Lee did enough actual good for New Orleans that they could have put him in simple clothing and altered the message. They chose another route and it evidences another intent.

I know of no 'unbiased' sentiments against Lee or Grant to that degree and am frankly taken aback in thread.

Well, Lee has been part of the soft soap, nobility myth so I don't wonder at that lack of hostility (though some wanted him tried after the war). Grant gained a measure of respect for refusing to capture and try Lee. Most of the loathing from the South was reserved for other men, like Sherman.

Lee and Jackson are emblems of the slavery state?

They were heroes of that state and are presented for that service, in uniform.

Again, not in the North. How did that happen in the South? You saw the quote I gave in thread a page or so back regarding Lee and why he is admired by all historians? I've never seen the like, regarding Hitler. This again, is where we disagree and I think it important to talk this particular point out, well and perhaps long.

But I haven't compared Lee to Hitler except in answering your question about the comparison.

War is never noble. Blame can and always does go both ways.

Noble? No. Can it be honorable or in the service of the good and honorable? Yes. And I've said for a long time now that the blame for that war was systemic, that there were captains of industry in the north who profited greatly by the trade for a very long time and I've set blame in foundation on the shoulders of our founding fathers and their capitulation to that evil.

Some, perhaps unbelievably, hate Lincoln as well. That said, we in the North have not been taught slavery was the only reason for the war, and we were taught, in public high schools, that Lincoln didn't issue the Emancipation Proclamation until the war was well going.

If they taught you that slavery wasn't the reason for the war they did you a disservice. Begin your reeducation by reading what the men who made those decisions said, especially in public. Read the declarations of the states as they announce and withdraw. Most are plain enough.

From the opening of Georgia's, by way of illustration:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.​

Then why are there protests and lawsuits? Clearly some believe differently.

There are people who see those emblems differently. How, God knows. I can only say as a son of the South brought up in the myth I've mentioned that it took an effort on my part to peel that away with fact and history before I understood my error and the root of it. And there are some here who are simply hostile racists of varying stripes. That isn't done with either, which shouldn't shock you. There are Klan chapters and the like in the north as well.

On laws protecting slaves:

I know there were laws against these violent crimes against slaves then. Not enforced? Maybe we are ALL naïve up here in the North (or most of us)

Slave codes were mostly about protecting property and reserved in most cases a fairly absolute right to do with that property what was deemed necessary by the owner. Slave Codes were state matter and varied. It was common for masters to sire children by their slaves without anyone saying much about it, though some codes would have imposed penalty for the "fornication". Slave owners who killed their slaves during punishment were not held to account for it, since those codes presumed no man would intentionally destroy his property to his own disadvantage, and similar nonsense.

Because he was unfaithful to his wife? Because he had a few more sins upon the table for all to see?
There are a good many others I look up to before I'd ever consider him.

As with Jefferson. And Washington owned slaves. And on and on. But what is noted in commemoration is the key to whether or not we should find it objectional as a matter of reason. MLK, whatever his debated faults, is honored for the sacrifice and service to an undeniable good and against an undeniable evil.

Yet, he is an offense to many in America. Should we tear him down in deference to those offended and wronged (by their own words).

No and for the reason given prior and above. I would hope our history is clearer and more objective in schools than the idealized and simplified taught in my day, but again, what we commemorate in the individual is important. Adding traitors to that list, even before we get to the why of it, is rarely a good idea.

I haven't even seen movies made, that portray these men as you seem to disdain them, let alone our history books up here.

I noted the celebration of the myth of the South, not its condemnation in popular media. It went on for a great while. Most of Ford's hugely popular and much celebrated westerns had it as an element, from Fort Apache to The Searchers. Gone With the Wind was a wholesale tribute to it and the rewriting of a brutal history. And so on.

From what I've read, their was an economic crises that could not be met by the demand. There was no 'phasing out' slavery per say. The cotton gin was still expensive and the availability not of effect. They were not so much fighting for slavery as their livelihood by such accounts. Again, up here, in school, slavery was and is taught as but a part of the overall problems at the time.

You cannot change the ugly fact of a thing by calling the same thing by another name. If your livelihood is derived by slavery then it is slavery you support. And make no mistake, it wasn't about mere survival, but expansion and power. Lincoln had promised to leave slavery where it lay, sadly. That wasn't enough for those who desired to see it continue into political and economic power with the newer territories.

I've read a few Civil War books as well. All of them biased? Give me a bit of reading material.

Start with the proclamations I noted. Then look to the headlines of the major papers of the day and the editorials. Start processing real information with your own good sense. It's there and archived for you to see without the filter of another person telling you what it meant. A lot of watered history was written to preserve a troubled peace and to avoid the guilt by association. The victor went to war to preserve a Union. A harder look at slavery would have tarnished that victory given the role the institution played in the economic life of the north, its profit by shipping and moving and the textiles it used.

Outside of that, any number of good books written on the subject. To shake off some of the cobwebs of popular imposition try reading Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Blight takes a look at how both sides managed an uneasy peace by distraction. I think you'll find it informative and helpful.

I need this disseminated a bit more, if you would please.

The north went into the war to preserve the larger Union. Slavery was an issue for many, but it wasn't the theme for our government. Once the war was well and truly on it allowed anti slavery elements to move the public needle a bit (as had Uncle Tom's Cabin) and with enough work the thing the South fought to preserve was undone. Or, the South left the table to protect what it felt was threatened by the expansion of free states into new territories and the limitation of slave states to their present course. The north fought to preserve itself and to forbid a rival for those new territories. It was then an economic war on both sides. But on the Southern side that economic advance was the cause of slavery, its engine.

I know this topic is painful, but I'm deeply appreciative of you going through it with me, and in a thoughtful and reasoned manner.

Appreciated. I'm doing my level best not to be harsh on the point, but this is my house and this was our evil. It continued to kill and maim and stunt within my lifetime. It continues some of its more subtle work to this day...and much of that can be lain at the feet of well intentioned men who soft peddled a brutal truth and doing so hid it and preserved it and ennobled it to some extent. We're all still paying for that error as a nation.

 

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Offensive to emboldened liberals.

 

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Not only do these emboldened liberals want to remove these historical monuments, but also want to rename streets, parks, and schools that have any names or titles associated with the Civil War.

 

[WizardofOz]

I am now convinced that there are far too many Confederate monuments. :chuckle:

 

[Lon]

There is no honor in defense of an evil. Lee knew better and acted contrary to his greater moral obligation, the same sense that had him decry the institution his personal service upheld. Seeing them clearly doesn't require my hate, but it does remove from me an ennobling pity and lift the veil of that myth.

It isn't just me, however. Did you read this?
Again, if there is no redemption in them, I have never heard it, but from you. How is this reasonable? It seems, with the removal of the statues, it is, at least to some, but why? What changed? When does it no longer matter what Eisenhower or Churchill and others believed?

Understanding their states were upholding something else.

Again, the Bible talked about slavery. Slavery is still going on. Not to excuse, but when a culture by and large is steeped in something, it is harder to see the problem.
Abortion is legal, not because it is right. It is an atrocity. Will we call Regan and every president since him, until the law is reversed, evil? They all willing took office at such a time. I'm not understanding all guilty-by-association accusations as they relate to those generals.

No, Germany was under a harder thumb, suffering from economic disaster largely brought on by the actions of the victors in WWI. That is part of what drove that people mad and turned their own racist tendencies into something horrible and consuming. In the South that turn was engendered by a prosperity driven by racism. The only saving grace was that unlike Germany it required maintenance of the object of its contempt, not wholesale extermination.

Hitler was not dealing with a full deck. The Gestapo was wrought by paranoia because the government was a dictatorship of one. There are too many disconnects for this to be an accurate or even fair, comparison, to me.

I wouldn't suggest that he is. I think Hitler was insane and believed in the evil he embraced. Lee knew, evidenced by letter and actions outside of his service to the Confederacy. His evil was vanity. His lot and name was tied to a state and he was willing to embrace the preservation of an institution he knew to be evil in the service of that...reminding me of the rich young ruler after a fashion. Hitler is a personal horror. Lee is a tragic, flawed figure.

Then the comparison is strained. Why use it? I am not sure that Lee saw the Southern institution to be evil, but rather a necessary one. Lincoln, too, chose what he believed was a necessary evil as well.

It isn't in and of itself though any more than a flag is just a piece of cloth. It's a tribute to something and that something is more than the man as is evidence by the uniform they have him wearing and the service it honors. That's the problem. Lee did enough actual good for New Orleans that they could have put him in simple clothing and altered the message. They chose another route and it evidences another intent.

Wasn't it rather, embracing terms of the truce? The Constitution provided for means of men to stand up for their unalienable rights, on both sides. To disdain one side, in its pursuit, is heavy-handed. We have always been a nation of fighters, not push-overs. As such, the statues imho, are not thumbing their nose at the North, but a celebration of indomitable human spirit. Is the only good American a trodden American? A non-contentious American? A compliant American? I may have bought a slave or a few back then. Why? 1) To keep tribes from killing one another. If they kept their enemies alive, me getting them would save their lives. 2) That I might care for them when they got here, and gave them work, taught them the language. etc. Read again Booker T Washington's tribute to Jackson and Lee. It seems to me, a man born under slavery has a more balanced view than you? How is that possible? Do we not listen to Booker T Washington any more?

Well, Lee has been part of the soft soap, nobility myth so I don't wonder at that lack of hostility (though some wanted him tried after the war). Grant gained a measure of respect for refusing to capture and try Lee. Most of the loathing from the South was reserved for other men, like Sherman.

They would never have been able to surrender at that point.

They were heroes of that state and are presented for that service, in uniform.

I've no problem, as being 'conquered' that a requirement would be that those uniforms or flags would not be glorified, but my original problem was the burying of them under the sea or hidden in a museum as opposed to a private group or individual being able to sit them on their own property.
ATF is a bit late. It would depend what the public sentiment of those statues represents. To me, they represent the same as Gettysburg, something we don't want to forget. I might instead, have placed a statue of Grant across the street. Or made another of Lee surrendering, or such. There are other ways, than tearing stuff down, to get a valued point across.

But I haven't compared Lee to Hitler except in answering your question about the comparison.

Well, yes. When Nazi Germany is brought into a conversation, it tends to elicit comparison.

Noble? No. Can it be honorable or in the service of the good and honorable? Yes. And I've said for a long time now that the blame for that war was systemic, that there were captains of industry in the north who profited greatly by the trade for a very long time and I've set blame in foundation on the shoulders of our founding fathers and their capitulation to that evil.

Well good. It the blame and evil is mutual, we have to be careful with our statues of Grant and Lee, as we are of Davis and Lincoln.

If they taught you that slavery wasn't the reason for the war they did you a disservice. Begin your reeducation by reading what the men who made those decisions said, especially in public. Read the declarations of the states as they announce and withdraw. Most are plain enough.

Again, I think it important that all of them give more than just the one reason for the war. You even mention it yourself regarding business practices as well. You also agreed that The Emancipation Proclamation was tacked on after the war was already going. It couldn't have started without that intent, if that was the only thing to draw from its occurrence. You'd really have to work very hard, not just for me, all of us in the North. We all have been educated to believe slavery was but one issue.

From the opening of Georgia's, by way of illustration:

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.​

​

First sentence? For context, it isn't enough. It 'could' be clipped to say slavery was the only reason, or 10 other paragraphs could enumerate 10 other equal and important reasons. Context is important for these discussions.

There are people who see those emblems differently. How, God knows. I can only say as a son of the South brought up in the myth I've mentioned that it took an effort on my part to peel that away with fact and history before I understood my error and the root of it. And there are some here who are simply hostile racists of varying stripes. That isn't done with either, which shouldn't shock you. There are Klan chapters and the like in the north as well.

Not as much as you might think. Sad really, 65 flyers?

On laws protecting slaves:

Slave codes were mostly about protecting property and reserved in most cases a fairly absolute right to do with that property what was deemed necessary by the owner. Slave Codes were state matter and varied. It was common for masters to sire children by their slaves without anyone saying much about it, though some codes would have imposed penalty for the "fornication". Slave owners who killed their slaves during punishment were not held to account for it, since those codes presumed no man would intentionally destroy his property to his own disadvantage, and similar nonsense.

I looked up a few more prior to reading yours here. It is a shame that Federal law didn't standardize those laws.

As with Jefferson. And Washington owned slaves. And on and on. But what is noted in commemoration is the key to whether or not we should find it objectional as a matter of reason. MLK, whatever his debated faults, is honored for the sacrifice and service to an undeniable good and against an undeniable evil.

Imho, those are concessions, and historically important for the context, setting precedence from our inception as well as reflecting world values at large. Looking back, we will likely always find atrocity where we do not sanction such. Again, abortion will be a dark spot on our generation. I pray our children's children are kind when they spread the blame. We tried and did what we could against Judicial abuses.

No and for the reason given prior and above. I would hope our history is clearer and more objective in schools than the idealized and simplified taught in my day, but again, what we commemorate in the individual is important. Adding traitors to that list, even before we get to the why of it, is rarely a good idea.

"Traitor" is somewhat subjective, even to this day.

I noted the celebration of the myth of the South, not its condemnation in popular media. It went on for a great while. Most of Ford's hugely popular and much celebrated westerns had it as an element, from Fort Apache to The Searchers. Gone With the Wind was a wholesale tribute to it and the rewriting of a brutal history. And so on.

Perhaps only in the interests of the dollar, but odd, when "the real story" is not at all hindered in Hollywood. "Coward Robert Ford" oddly, revamped support for the James Gang and cause of the South. You'd think there would be a different direction taken.

You cannot change the ugly fact of a thing by calling the same thing by another name. If your livelihood is derived by slavery then it is slavery you support. And make no mistake, it wasn't about mere survival, but expansion and power. Lincoln had promised to leave slavery where it lay, sadly. That wasn't enough for those who desired to see it continue into political and economic power with the newer territories.

Which is the problem of economics, when capitalism goes beyond earning a decent wage, to subjugating one's fellows with storehouses that can not possibly be used. It always creates hard feelings and downtrodden. I YET, think the issues deeper than slavery, which seems to be 'part' of the problem, than the full of it. There was no 'you shall free slaves' that caused seceding in the first place. It was for other reasons. The 'part' is a glaring part, yet as I say, full in practice for 100 years at that point in time.

Start with the proclamations I noted. Then look to the headlines of the major papers of the day and the editorials. Start processing real information with your own good sense. It's there and archived for you to see without the filter of another person telling you what it meant. A lot of watered history was written to preserve a troubled peace and to avoid the guilt by association. The victor went to war to preserve a Union. A harder look at slavery would have tarnished that victory given the role the institution played in the economic life of the north, its profit by shipping and moving and the textiles it used.

Will do that. It would preclude our discussion for a bit, however. We'd be talking about other information until such a time.

Outside of that, any number of good books written on the subject. To shake off some of the cobwebs of popular imposition try reading Blight's Race and Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory. Blight takes a look at how both sides managed an uneasy peace by distraction. I think you'll find it informative and helpful.

Added to my reading list. Is it just me, or is there irony in his last name? :doh

The north went into the war to preserve the larger Union. Slavery was an issue for many, but it wasn't the theme for our government. Once the war was well and truly on it allowed anti slavery elements to move the public needle a bit (as had Uncle Tom's Cabin) and with enough work the thing the South fought to preserve was undone. Or, the South left the table to protect what it felt was threatened by the expansion of free states into new territories and the limitation of slave states to their present course. The north fought to preserve itself and to forbid a rival for those new territories. It was then an economic war on both sides. But on the Southern side that economic advance was the cause of slavery, its engine.

Agreed.

Appreciated. I'm doing my level best not to be harsh on the point, but this is my house and this was our evil. It continued to kill and maim and stunt within my lifetime. It continues some of its more subtle work to this day...and much of that can be lain at the feet of well intentioned men who soft peddled a brutal truth and doing so hid it and preserved it and ennobled it to some extent. We're all still paying for that error as a nation.

I lived in Texas and have witness these to some small degree while I lived there less than a year. Rather, I'm yet trying to tie Southern generals directly to those. If the removal of those statues accomplishes what you seek, well and good, but to me it seems a baby out with the bathwater proposition. Thanks for taking the time. It is appreciated. -Lon

 

[Tambora]

I am now convinced that there are far too many Confederate monuments. :chuckle:

hehe!
There were a lot of Confederates.

 

[ClimateSanity]

It seems to me town sees himself as morally superior to these men:

By Barry Cook,*Chaplain of the Major John C. Hutto Camp, Sons of Confederate Veterans, in Jasper, Alabama

Robert E. Lee's birthday, January 19, is upon us. Alabama along with some other states observe this as a state holiday. It also coincides with a national holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. While the accolades of King will abound, there will likely be calls for deleting any reference to Lee.

Much will be said, deservedly so, about what King did for equality and fair treatment of all citizens. I don't really need to mention King's attributes as much is written about his contributions to our society. Little, if anything, will be said of Lee in the same manner.

Rather than the normal pros and cons of deleting references to Lee, maybe looking at what notable figures in both America and Europe said would be in order; those who were astute students of history, or actually knew General Lee in person.

Dwight D. Eisenhower:*"General Robert E. Lee was...one of the supremely gifted men produced by this Nation...Through all his many trials he remained selfless almost to a fault and unfailing in his belief in God...he was noble as a leader and as a man, and unsullied as I read the pages of our history...I proudly display the picture of this great American on my office wall."

Winston Churchill:*"Lee was the noblest American who ever lived and one of the greatest commanders known to the annals of war."

Booker T. Washington:*"The first white people in America to exhibit interest in reaching the Negro and saving his soul in the medium of the Sunday-school were Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson."

Field Marshall Viscount Sir Garnet Wolseley:*"...I believe all will admit that General Lee towered far above all men on either side...he will be regarded as the great American of the 19*th*century, whose statue is well worthy to stand on an equal pedestal with Washington, and whose memory is worthy to be enshrined in the hearts of all his countrymen."

Andy Griffith, aka Ben Matlock:*In all of Matlock's trials in the Atlanta courtroom there are portraits on the walls as in most courtrooms anywhere. While in most cases these portraits are of distinguished members of the judiciary, there are two distinct and unusual portraits in Matlock's courtroom. On the back wall are portraits of Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. This cannot be an accident. It has to be a subtle effort in support and admiration of these men.

 

[Tambora]

Erected in Maine 1896.
Photo taken 1909.