So the US government… and which other one?
Any Southerners who didn’t like the decisions the traitors were making were free to join their nation’s military. If they chose not to do that, well…
Obviously the Confederate government, dummy.
I can only imagine what this would be like of the colonies had lost the revolution.
The “Confederate government”. I see. They were Americans, no?
No. It was groups of people knowingly deciding to commit treason and dressing that up with military pageantry. Anything that came afterwards is directly attributed to that cause.
Maybe The Real Treasure Was the Friends We Made Killed Along the Way
Friends don’t let friends kill friends.
Can the Army do that, though? Reading the thread, it seems that most of these former Confederate regiments are National Guard units, which are under the control of their various states’ governors, AIUI. Could the Army compel, say, Virginia, to disband all their Guard units with Confederate histories, and reconstitute them as brand-new entities?
National Guard units that are federally recognized US Army units can be administratively subjected to a reorganization of the command they are under and deflagged and remustered as another unit or melded into or split among others. So the 420th Battalion is demustered and most of it reconstituted as the “new” 666th in the same Guard command and the remainder spread to other units. That has happened before.
Next, though … if that state is one of those with a State Defense Force or equivalent that is not subject to federalization, perhaps the governor could theoretically create a unit of that organization, claiming the continuity of the state militia regiments existing before the National Guard Act. But he’d likely have to pay for thay from the state budget alone.
As mentioned above, yes, they can do this for federally recognized units. It’s less common for NG units but it does happen.
Of course the state does have unlimited power to transfer lineage. If (as a fictitious example) there’s a federally 201st Artillery that claims lineage from the Confederate 74th Infantry, and the US Army deflags the 201st, then Alabama is free to draft a proclamation transferring that lineage to some other unit that’s not federally recognized or funded.
Ignorance fought, thanks!
And today we have news that probably should surprise nobody at all.
National Guard Units in 7 States Have Held onto Confederate Streamers Despite a Deadline to Turn Them In
Army National Guard units with a Civil War-era lineage were ordered to relinquish any Confederate battle streamers from their guidons, but more than 100 of the streamers have yet to be recovered a week after the deadline.
At least 48 mostly southern National Guard units were directed in March to strip their guidons of rebel streamers to be preserved at the U.S. Army Center of Military History. Streamers hang on the top of unit flags, which are often held by a soldier during a formation, and are awarded for participating in wars or specific campaigns ranging from the Colonial era to the Global War on Terrorism.
The units that are not in compliance are (from the link above):
But units in Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Maryland, Mississippi, South Carolina and West Virginia have yet to surrender them.
ISTM it’s time to start relieving commanding officers over this.
Units from West Virginia? The state that seceded from Virginia because they were loyal to the Union? Hard to see how a West Virginian unit could have a Confederate battle streamer. I mean, at least one obviously does, but that just sound strange.
You think people remember that? My guess is they don’t.
Doesn’t really matter if they remember it, the question is, how did a WV army unit fight for the confederacy?
The answer seems to be that some units fought under the Virginia flag despite their members being mostly from West Virginia counties. Not everyone in West Virginia approved of being aligned with the Union, after all.
Yeah, that is weird. Some quick googling led to this - List of West Virginia Civil War Confederate units - Wikipedia
The following is a list of West Virginia Confederate Units which were composed mostly or notably by citizens of the 50 counties of western Virginia which eventually became West Virginia. These units, with the exception of the Kentucky units, are designated “Virginia”, as were the Union regiments from western Virginia. After the admittance of West Virginia as a state in 1863, those Union units from western Virginia changed their designation to “West Virginia”, while the Confederate units remained “Virginia”. Following the names of the units are the names of the counties, in parentheses, which contributed to those units, and does not include neighboring counties of Kentucky or Virginia.
So, the Union “Viginia” units became “West Virginia” when West Virginia was admitted to the Union as a separate state in 1863, while those from now West Virginian counties still siding with the Confederacy continued to call themselves “Virginia” units. Looking through the first few units doesn’t clarify how and when they became West Virginian units.
The anti-democratic rot in the military rank and file (and far too many of the officers, if at least somewhat reduced) is a thing of terror. This is a tiny part of a much bigger thing. Personally, I agree with @Monty - give the most obvious stonewalling members of the various commanding officers a short grace period, and then start removing officers, preferably from the service entirely. I know it won’t happen, but if this is the hill they want to die on, refusal to submit to civilian authority, I don’t want them in charge of anything but diddly and squat in the coming years.
IE if they don’t want this to happen to “their” units, then that’s an easy fix, they won’t be their units anymore.
Yeah, if nothing else it needs to be made clear that the unit is not theirs, it’s the government’s.
To me this looks like a good opportunity for the armed forces to clear out problem commanders that will not follow orders and might allow for a coup attempt in the future. Time to clean house I say.
I see Confederate flags being flown here in New York. The beliefs that the Confederate flag represents in the 21st century are unfortunately not limited to any one region of this country.