Hola, dropzone!
And I take back what I said last night about the OP. He is not an apologist, since he offers no apologies for the Confederacy or its goals. So what’s a good word for “maker of pathetic excuses and rationalizations”?
Moron?
Okay, name calling isn’t in the spirit of free debate. I apologize.
OTOH, I do not accept remembering the actions of ANY members of the Confederacy or Confederate Army as honorable. They were criminals engaged in actions supporting a monumental evil and their defenders and descendents have been making lame excuses for 135 years.
WTF?
You were sounding pretty smart until I read that. As mentioned in the thread Jackmannii referenced above (and by MEBuckner in this very thread), saying that EVERY soldier in the Confederate Army was fighting in support of slavery is just as wrong as saying that every German soldier in WWII was a Nazi.
I, too, am sickened by fervent displays of Confederate emblems in support of racist dogma, but I’ll be goddamned and dipped in shit before I’ll accept being lumped in with skinheads just because I consider Robert E. Lee an heroic figure.
Dropzone…
So according to you every fighting man from the south was fighting for slavery? Lee freed his slaves before Grant did. Have you never had any loyalty to anything? Other than blind loyalty to the north? You never mentioned tarriffs on southern goods…you never mention unfair taxes. All you are centered on is slavery. The north bent over backwards to accomadate the south and slavery. Yet the war happened anyway. Why is that? There is much more to the cause of the war than slavery. I do not condone slavery or racism in any way. Might I suggest you read up on the causes of the war?
The war started because the South seceded; the Federal government chose not to accept the dissolution of the Union, and therefore did not withdraw its troops from the South; and the South fired on those troops.
Why did the South secede?
It seems evident that the Southern states did not share Reeder’s belief that the North “bent over backwards” on the slavery issue, or friedo’s contention that slavery “wasn’t even an important issue in the beginning of the war”.
Too bad, because that’s how I lump you. Lee was fighting for an evil institution, the same as Rommel. Neither was a heroic figure. Both were evil because their causes were evil.
Trust me, I already know I’m as dumb as a rock, so further questioning of my intelligence will get you nowhere. And, as you may have picked up elsewhere, I generally try to see both sides of every issue. I have studied the Civil War, including its origins, for many years. My contempt for the Confederacy was gotten the old-fashioned way: they earned it. However, I do not believe the North was acting in a constitutional manner when it tried to prevent the secession of the Southern states. Good riddance was my attitude.
dropzone:
[Moderator Hat ON]
Not only is it not in the spirit of free debate, it’s against the rules in this forum. Don’t do it again.
[Moderator Hat OFF]
Actually, that’s not true. First of all, Gen. Grant never owned “slaves”. He owned one slave, which he got from his father-in-law in 1859, and which he emancipated in 1860. Gen. Lee emancipated his slaves in 1862.
As for the succession and war being about slavery, people seemed to think slavery was a pretty big issue at the time in the 1860 elections, and a pretty big part of the seccession of the southern states came out of Lincoln’s winning the election. If you want to see how important it was seen at the time, check out this pro-Lincoln editorial in the Atlantic Monthly from 1860.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/policamp/lowell.htm
You also might want to check out this (fairly offensive, by our sensibilities), Democratic political cartoon.
http://elections.harpweek.com/1Cartoons/cartoon-1860-large.asp?UniqueID=6&Year=1860
or this, (possibly even more offensive) cartoon from the race.
http://www.boondocksnet.com/gallery/bishopi21.html
Both of these cartoons, offensive though they are, help to show the way that the Republican party was seen by some individuals at the time.
Finally, check out Lincoln’s first Inaugural address, which can be found here.
http://libertyonline.hypermall.com/Lincoln/lincoln-1.html
The address has 34 paragraphs. Of those, 9 of them contain assurances that Lincoln won’t abolish slavery. The rest discuss the illegality of secession. Lincoln wouldn’t have felt it neccesary to address that in 1/3 of his speech unless the issue was seen as important.
Jeeze, Gaudere, kick me AFTER I apologize, why doncha! If we could edit our posts like grownups, maybe my childishness wouldn’t show so much. 
Yeah, that’s what we need, posters being able to post insults and then edit 'em before a mod sees 'em so there’s no evidence! But I do appreciate the fact that you apologized.
Yeah, like they aren’t all collected on the big central computer in the Pentagon as soon as they are posted. :rolleyes:
BTW, good thing this isn’t MPSIMS so I don’t have to wish you a happy 3500.
My personal opinion on this (and I’ve had to have one since I grew up in SC) has long been that they lost the war, so put up the flag. However, both sides need to recognize that there is more meaning in the flag than what you see in it. While slavery was undeniably an issue in the war, one must recognize that most of the people who support the flag don’t condone the idea of slavery. If there is an issue that causes them to support it, they generally feel that they are backing state’s rights. I do not feel that we have the right to condemn all of those who fought in the war as evil or bad men. Some were certainly ignorant (it was a problem even then), while others were just fiercely loyal to those around them. Being proud of those in your past and where you come from is not a bad thing, but I think that those who fly the confederate flag are taking this to an extreme. Some are genuinely concerned with the preservation of their heritage, while others are naturally divisive and use it as a means of rebellion. (What really gets me are people who say things along the lines of “The war’s not over.” Yes it is!) What all need to recognize is that this emblem has more meaning behind it than that which you perceive. Yes, it signifies state’s rights to you, but to another it speaks of a time when slavery was heavily integrated into southern culture. As such, the flag is naturally offensive and divisive. It certainly has no place in the public domain, and I feel that the preservation of Southern heritage can be done in a manner that exemplifies the things that all sides recognize as positive traits. This would make both sides more respectful of one another. (though without leading to the naturally rebellious nature of the flag which many of its supporters revel in.)
I, too, grew up in SC. I had a number of friends that had various confederate emblems (belt buckles, key chains, big flags hanging over their beds). Nonoe of them, however, were apologists.
IMO, for a person to be an apologist (for anything), he has to either believe that the actions taken by the group he is apologising for were all good, or that they did no wrong. In the first case, the apologist would be arguing that attempting to maintain slavery was good (basically, the Confederacy had the right to uphold the institution. It’s odd, I know). I’ve heard someone argue this, maintaining that slavery was evil all the while. The second type would probably argue that slavery WAS good (racism) or that the Confederacy was not supporting the institution (dang-blasted ignorance).
A person can wear Confederate emblems and not be an apologist. In this case, the emblems are a show of pride. The people I know who do wear these are sorry for the attachment to the Confederacy, but have no other means to express their views. There aren’t any other well-known symbols that one could wear to demonstarate general southern pride, are there? You could make something up, but others wouldn’t understand it, and the point of these things is to let others see it.
So, are you an apologist, Reeder? I don’t know, do you think the Confederacy was right?
As for Lee, I believe that he was an incredible general. He was sorry that the South was seceeding, but he viewed himself first as a Virginian, so went to fight for them. As for freeing his slaves, I’d be willing to bet it was for political reasons.
Well, actually, he inherited them from his father-in-law, with the provision that they be freed in 5 years…he missed the deadline, but ultimately did free them.
Nice to know I can give up any expectation of complex argument or reasoned response from you. Your statement above doesn’t seem to jibe with your acknowledgement that “the North was [not] acting in a constitutional manner when it tried to prevent the secession of the Southern states,” since that was the “cause” for which many Southerners were fighting.
However, your decision to equate my moral stance with that of white supremacists certainly does agree with your own analysis of your intelligence. Fortunately, others who have “studied the Civil War, including its origins, for many years” seem to actually consider the historical context when judging the morality of principle actions. I enjoy discussing the issue with those people, because they don’t call me a racist during the discussion.
It strikes me that dropzone’s comments re Rommel and by extension the ‘average German soldier’ are particularly relevant here.
Firstly, it strikes me that the question of the moral position of the “average soldier” – the wehrmacht soldier shall we say, and the average German, is being approached very naively by many posters. There is not “right” answer on this, but I believ it would be corect to state that much professional writing on the issue of Nazi Germany places a large amount of responsibility for the party being able to do what it did on the acceptance, nay support of the general population and even the army. Historians also point to the fact there were other choices, including rejection of the system. I suggest this is not a helpful analogy for southerners, as sometimes naively put forth.
Secondly in re the issue of symbols of heritage and pride. I am reminded of the contrasts one found between West and East Germany on this very issue. The West Germans consciously rejected the symbols and aparatus of the old Reich in order to build anew. East German, for all that it was communist did not do so, with the rather negative social consequences we see in the East today in re rise of racism etc.
It strikes me that the South, insofar as that remains a real unit, might wish to consider the lessons of Germany, and rather than clingng to old, and in the final analysis fundamentally soiled symbols, create new ones to represent its heritage, insofar as that is necessary, in a positive rather than negative fashion.
Certainly there may be rich (but let us not exagerate, they are imperfect) lessons to derive from the German, above all West German example of a break with the negatives of the past, an open repudiation of the evils contained therein and a rejection of symbols which carried inherently with them the symbolism of that evil. Certainly better lessons that the naive readings might suggest.
(Xenophon: I don’t believe that your reaction to dropzone’s notation on Rommel is justified. Rather whatever adolescent joy one might find in Rommel’s manuevers, his brilliance as a General are forever tarnished by his fighting for a criminal state, only partially redeemed by his late rejection of that same state.)
Collounsbury, I agree that the analogy between the CSA and Nazi Germany is not a good one, on several levels. But I think in both cases the soldiers fighting on behalf of their countries had morally defensible reasons for doing so. At the risk of being labelled a moral relativist, I’ll reiterate what I said in spoke’s thread. In the context of a split nation, with the armies of the North attempting to subjugate the Southern states in order to bring them back into the Union, leading or joining an army in defense of one’s state was not a dishonorable act, regardless of the reasons for which one’s state had seceded from that Union (undoubtedly to preserve the institution of slavery).
Now having said that, I’d like to agree wholeheartedly with your comments regarding the rejection of the symbols of hatred. (And I think I’ve been fairly clear on this elsewhere.) The “Stars and Bars”, while not tainted by the men of the South who died under that banner, has been thoroughly discredited beginning immediately after the resolution of the Civil War by its use in support of hate, bigotry and ignorance. Fundamentally soiled is a good term for Confederate emblems.
But it does no one any good to vilify historical figures because of our distaste for certain aspects of dead societies. Am I to reject Aristotle, Socrates and Plato as honorable men because the society of Ancient Greece depended upon the sweat of slaves? Should I consider the writings of Seneca and Cicero merely the ravings of criminals in support of an evil empire because the Romans depended even more heavily on slavery?
I won’t belabor the point, but I think it’s always wrong to hold the actions of historical figures to our own societal standards.
Man those Nazis must be tired by now.
Being as how they get trotted out every time the word “Confederate” gets mentioned on this board.
But hey, I’ve already said plenty on this subject, over here.
As far as this thread is concerned, I see more bigotry and prejudice on display in some of the responses to the OP than in the OP itself.
It looks like Reeder might need to be a little more cautious about buying into some of the propaganda being floated by Sons of Confederate Veterans and other similar groups. On the other hand, Reeder is absolutely correct when he asserts that not everyone who waves a Confederate flag has a racist motive for doing so. And while it is indisputable that the slavery issue was the proximate cause of the war, it is equally true that relatively few Confederate soldiers owned slaves, and that most of those soldiers were fighting out of a sense of loyalty to their state.
Reeder understands full well, I imagine, that many people are offended at the sight of a Confederate flag. He said quite plainly that he doesn’t fly the flag.
By the way, the flag to which we are referring is properly called either the “Confederate battle flag,” the “Southern Cross,” or “St. Andrew’s Cross.” (I’m not sure why that simple fact seems to offend some posters.)
It is not the “Stars and Bars,” which actually looks pretty similar to the Stars and Stripes. So similar in fact, that the use of the Stars and Bars in battle was abandoned to avoid confusion.