I happen to agree there was “a failure of reconstruction” and that Jefferson Davis and the generals of the confederacy should have been tried for treason and crimes against humanity. But this post is about my view that they were enemy combatants and that actions by “deep south” states to memorialize them; to celebrate the confederacy; and to name streets, towns and lakes after its leaders and secession; and to use and display the flag of the confederacy is offensive, insensitive and troubling, especially for descendants of the slave experience.
Confederate Memorial Day (under various names and dates) is currently a legal holiday with state employees getting a paid day off, schools closed, courts and government offices closed, in as many as 12 to 15 states. Confederate Memorial Day - Wikipedia
I submit, the Civil War rages on unabated and the 13th Amendment did not right the wrong nor render justice for it. (For those who must know or their backs will break, I am a life long Caucasian.)
Welcome to the SDMB, sycophant. We put different kinds of conversations in different forums; since you seem to be laying out the basis for a debate, I’ll move this to Great Debates for you.
I think there is nothing wrong with memorializing the men who fought, mostly honorably, for all the reasons men put on uniforms and fight. The problem with the Confederacy is that it’s almost impossible to exclude the continuing racist/classist elements from the memory or the celebrations, especially when we spent 40 years or more (roughly 1890-1930) rewriting that history and erasing the context of race and slavery. That whitewashing continues to - pardon the phrase - color our perceptions of who did what and why.
But remembering soldiers? American soldiers? There should be no problem with that.
My ancestors fouight for the Confederacy, and I grew up with the southern myth of an honorable fight, but personally, I don’t see honoring the Confederate soldiers as any different than honoring John Walker Lindh, the American who fought for the Taliban. Free country and all that, but I don’t get it.
What crimes against humanity? If you mean slavery itself…it’d be rather difficult to prosecute that when Kentucky and Missouri, slave states, had stayed loyal to the Union, and the other Union states had formerly practiced slavery themselves.
As for treason, certainly that could have been done, but I defer to Mr. Lincoln’s wisdom on the need for reconciliation and union.
What did you expect them to do? The case of Germany, which completely repudiated anything related to the Nazi period, is the exceptional one. It’s normal for people to memorialize people who died fighting in their name, and for a sort of folk mythology to spring up to explain a defeat in terms acceptable to the defeated: (the Lost Cause, the stab-in-the-back myth, Japanese history textbook controversies).
And why shouldn’t it be? Honoring the bravery and fighting spirit of soldiers who fought for one’s cause is an American tradition, if not also a human one. So long as there is a warrior caste, they will be venerated.
Fine, but let’s be honest here: That’s not really what’s being celebrated in a lot of memorials to the Confederacy. ISTM such memorials are often used as a fig leaf to justify promotion of causes that–on their own–most folks would label as racist.
Groups like the League of the South and the Council of Conservative Citizen (formerly the White Citizens Council) have been in the driver’s seat on many of these pushes for Confederate memorials. IMO it’s gotten to the point where–if this really is about honoring the bravery and fighting spirit of soldiers who fought for one’s cause–there needs to be some mention about that cause, and some clear measures to ensure this cause isn’t being promoted by groups with a not-so-secret agenda.
Louisiana is one of the states mentioned in the Wiki article. I’ve lived here my entire life and have never heard of Confederate Memorial Day being observed here or in any other southern state.
Apparently (according to the wiki article) it is celebrated here in Tennessee on Jefferson Davis’ birthday (June 3). But I don’t recollect anyone mentioning it in the 13 years I’ve lived here. There’s certainly no parade or anything. Generally speaking, we honor the Confederate dead along with all other US soldiers who died in war on Memorial Day.
Why a day to specifically remember Confederate soldiers, when there isn’t a specific day to remember Union soldiers, or Revolutionary War soldiers, or Spanish-American War soldiers, or…?
One can consider the memorial separately from whatever motivated the financing, procurement, and dedication of it. Certainly, one that reads “Dedicated to the men of the Confederate Army, who died honorably maintaining the White Man’s natural position of dominance over the Negro” is inherently offensive in a way that one that reads “Dedicated to the brave soldiers who lost their lives in service to the Confederate Army” isn’t. Some would consider both offensive, of course; I’m just not one of them.
Historical quirk. At the time of the Civil War, there was no national day of mourning for the military dead. What is now Memorial Day started independently in the North and the South at the same time, motivated by the horrific losses the war inflicted.
Based on a prior thread on his subject, I can tell you that many object to including Confederate dead in Memorial Day observances, so rolling Confederate Memorial Day into Memorial Day has its own pitfalls.
There are local and state holidays memorializing American soldiers of other specificities, for example Patriots’ Day, also known as Lexington and Concord Day, in Massachusetts. There is also federal recognition of dates like National Pearl Harbor Remembrance.
Here in South Carolina Confederate Memorial Day is celebrated. About 15 years ago the state gave state workers the choice of Confederate Memorial Day OR MLK Day as a paid holiday. No more but it was once again a time to take sides.
If people want to honor their Confederate soldier ancestors, they should feel free to do so in the manner they wish.
But you can honor folk without having the government’s participation.
In Virginia, we celebrate Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day, along with Jackson and Lee Day. If you can’t find time to sing the praises of Great Great Great Grandpa Abner during these three days or the other 362 days of the year, something is wrong with you.
Many Southerners don’t have a Confederate soldier in their pedigree to honor. Many Southerners don’t care to honor the Confederate cause because they consider themselves American, not Confederates. And many Southerns would be enslaved if the Confederate cause had triumphed. I don’t understand why all these good folk should be ignored simply because there’s a minority who love pageantry and faux reverence even when it doesn’t make any sense.
And, IMO, that seems to be the underlying theme to various memorials to the Confederacy over the past 50-odd years. At best they’re used to tweak an imagined liberal sensibility regarding minorities. At worst, ithey’re a sop to groups who want to put minorities “in their place”. Either way, it’s not usually about the nobility of the common soldier.
As the Christians say, love the sinner, hate the sin. Even U.S. Grant spoke of his admiration for the courage and determination of the rank-and-file Confederate soldiers, while noting how bad the cause was for which they fought.
Death is a great equalizer: in death there is no free or slave, no North or South.
(Ronald Reagan tried to make that point by visiting a cemetary in Germany where SS soldiers were buried. It might have been better if more time had passed, to provide a healthier perspective from distance.)