Here is another article from 1888, about the origins of the holiday, that quotes the Vicksburg Herald from 1866, responding to criticism of Mississippi women who placed flowers on the graves of both Federal and Confederate soldiers:
“We envy not the narrow heartedness of journalists who can find fault with so noble an action. To our mind it speaks volumes for the purity of woman’s character. Our ladies are not politicians – they are Christian women. And while engaged in the decorating and preserving of the graves of our soldiers, they thought not of warlike strife, nor of vengeance against the dead. They only knew, as they viewed those solitary graves of strangers in a strange land, that they were sleeping far away from home; far from mothers and sisters, and as they dropped the spring roses of our sunny clime upon their silent resting places, it was with the Christian hope that some fair sister in the north, in a like charitable spirit, might not overlook the silent graves of our southern sons which are scattered among them.”
This is a holiday with very womanly origins, really.
The Confederacy set this country back millions of dollars and sacrificed half a million lives, and all for a cause that was humiliatingly unjustifiable.
Anyone in their private life is free to honor their dead great great grands who died over this mess. But I’m in favor of reserving this federal holiday for folks who died in service of the federal government. Not those who died fighting it.
My great, great grandfather was a Confederate soldier. My great grandmother, his daughter, was still alive when I was a little kid. He was mentioned twice in dispatches for his bravery at the frong. Fuck him.
He was one of the bad guys, he fought for a disgusting cause and when he finally put down his arms, he was welcomed back into the nation that he tried to destroy. Why the fuck would we honor people like that?
The violated their own principles and manufactured lie after lie to justify themselves. Their society was collectively crazy because it had to deny reality to do what they did without admitting that by their own standards it was wrong. They weren’t ancient Romans; they knew better.
So what? Every person no matter how evil is someone’s child. What, did you think that bad guys came from pods?
Their way of life was slavery. Their entire social and legal structure was defined by the need to protect slavery and prevent the slaves from rebelling. Their religion revolved around the justification of slavery, to such an extent that Southerners who visited the North expresses surprise that Christianity had anything to say on subjects other than defending slavery. Their homeland was created for the sole purpose of promoting and defending slavery. By the time of the Civil War the South had twisted its entire society into being not much more than a gigantic machine to protect slavery.
Anyone who fought for the Confederacy, fought for slavery.
No; but supporters of the Confederacy can and do still engage in racism of all sorts. And pandering to them just helps them do it.
That’s because its true. People in the North don’t go around espousing the ideas of the losing side, or refer to the Civil War as the ‘War of Northern Aggression’, or idealize the pre-war time as some kind of libertarian utopia. And they certainly don’t take the cause of the war, state’s rights, as a rallying cry and an ideal we should go back to.
And the only reason the pro-Union side ever brings up the Civil War is in response to Southerners. I never talk about it. No liberal I know talks about it. But people in the South like to talk about how great it was when we could all decide by ourselves if we wanted slaves and how terrible the North was for not acquiescing to their demands. Plus, all of the constant attempts to rewrite history doesn’t sit well. Do we have monuments to Erwin Rommel or Yamamoto? Then why do we have statues of Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson? Atlanta should have only one Civil War memorial: a giant statue of William Tecumseh Sherman kicking the crap out of them and making them see how wrong they were
Adam Gadahn, the American Taliban, was also someone’s son. Do we overlook his beliefs because he was born an American? So what if these Confederate soldiers died? They deserved it for trying to destroy the US and perpetuating the horror of slavery. Good riddance to them
How far do you take that? Were the British only trying to protect their legal right to tax their colonies? Does China have a right to treat the Tibetans however they want because they conquered them? As far as I’m concerned, the Confederate soldiers were wrong and they took up arms against the US. They were enemies and deserved what they got
Magnanimous about what? Let them have their state’s rights arguments, tell Rick Perry its fine if he secedes, bring back slavery, let the Southern states make all the laws they want that opposes the Constitution? I’ll agree that the North should be magnanimous when the South owes up to the mistake they made and expresses regret at their wrong decision
I don’t think that’s a conclusion you can reach on their behalf, to say nothing of the fact that you’re ascribing common ideas and beliefs to millions of individuals.
A trait they share with non-supporters of the Confederacy, to the extent that supporters of Confederacy even exist (obviously there are white-nationalist groups and such). Then again, if you define support as “unwilling to completely vilify, as individuals, men who were honorable and brave soldiers”, then it’s no surprise you see Confederate supporters all around.
How about starting with honoring only those whom you can prove were “honorable and brave soldiers”? Because assuming that they all were isn’t justified.
And that will be the answer to any question that begins “Should we apply this to non-Confederate …?”
There is no equivalence between those who served in the Confederate military and those who served in the U.S. military. I reject all attempts to establish any comparison by analogy.
So, I will reject all arguments based on purported hypocrisy or double-standards or unfairness or whatever. Confederate soldiers are not worthy of any consideration or assumption or good will or presumption that U.S. service people might be worthy of.
Confederate service people deserve or are worthy of zero a priori considerations. If you want to assert that even one of them was “brave” or “honorable,” you bear the burden of proving it with regard to every individual with specific evidence.
And even if or when you establish that one of then was brave or honorable, I will still reject your overall argument. Because that person was a traitor who took up deadly arms in the service of an enemy against the United States. Period. It’s a trump card.
In fairness, if you prove that any particular U.S. service member was a traitor, feel free to treat him or her as I would a confederate. I’ll give you that.
Hey, you’re certainly entitled to your opinion. You can believe that the average Confederate soldier was an innately worse person than the average Union soldier, instead of just being born further south. You can believe that you’d have never fought for the Confederacy if you’d been born in the South 18-45 years before the war.
I don’t claim to think any of those things. But that has no bearing on my position. If I had taken up arms against the United States, I would be a fool to think that the United States would include me in a national day of recognition.
Throughout history, many people’s lives have gone unremembered, uncommemorated, and unhonored, perhaps through no affirmative fault of their own. Them’s the breaks. In fact, I’d say nearly all people who ever have lived fit into this category. I don’t see any reason to make an exception just for people just because they happened to serve under arms.
Idle conversation. Offering you a chance to concede to the smallest degree of rationality. Setting you up for when I play the trump. Does it matter?
With malice towards none and charity for all. For whatever reasons they fought, they stood up to what they perceived as tyranny. Against all odds, they lasted for 4 years against a superior enemy. They showed the American fighting spirit. Although what they fought for was one of the worst things to ever fight for, they did it with honor. They are part of the U.S. now. Yes, Memorial Day is for them as well.
First, You might be trying to introduce me to the concept that nobody is a goddamn saint, and if so, I appreciate your time, but I already knew that. Not only did I know that, I also took it under consideration when I set up my standard. You needn’t point out the bleedin’ obvious to me.
Second, however, you’re way off base. Anthony worked on behalf of the abolitionist movement, and she was friends with leading black abolitionists in her day. I’ll trust their judgment over yours (or over any right-winger trying to discredit social activists). Yes, she had some opinions that aren’t going to stand up to 21st-century standards, but if you think that’s equivalent to committing murderous treason on behalf of chattel slavery, as Confederate soldiers did, you’ll need to explain the parallels.
Not necessarily, although as an aside I don’t see that as a terrible thing at all. Of all the categories of labor in our world, soldiering is the dirtiest, and while its commission should in the rare case of its necessity be appreciated (in the same way we appreciate folks who clean bedpans in ebola-ridden hospitals), the beatification of soldiery as a career is a pernicious evil in our society.
Based on their own constitutions the Confederate states seceded almost entirely to prop up slavery. We can all agree that slavery is evil. Therefore, a government that supports slavery is evil. Yes, the US government supported slavery, and was evil for it, but that it was moving away from that support (becoming less evil) is what triggered the secessions.
The Confederacy shot first, which rarely works out well when dealing with a superior force. It had no chance of winning a toe-to-toe fight unless the Federal leadership was incompetent. It often was, but that’s nothing to bank the farm on, especially once the war was not over in a couple months. The USA started out with the moral high ground, and the Confederacy picking the fight like it did only helped. Therefore, the Confederacy was not only evil, it was stupid.
Northern troops did not “invade” the Confederacy until well after those constitutions were signed and ratified and the shooting started. By the laws of the United States of America those states had people and local governments that were in rebellion, but were still in the United States.
Taking up arms against ones government, for whatever reason, is treason. (Had the Revolution failed, Washington and the others fully expected to hang, though John Adams and his son could have probably kept it in continuance until all of them died of old age.) Therefore, any Confederate soldier was as much a traitor as his leaders. You can make any excuses you wish, and maybe your great-great grandfather, who owned no slaves, convinced himself, or allowed himself to be convinced, that he was fighting for a reason other than to support slavery, but see Point 1. I know it’s uncomfortable to think of your revered ancestor as a dupe of an oligarchy, fighting and dying for a group that kept the best land for themselves and flourished by using labor cheaper his own, but there it is.
Like with many emotional causes, there are people who profit by keeping the Confederacy in the public consciousness, both supporters and detractors. However, the detractors don’t usually have much to say and can sometimes be gracious because we, like, won. The supporters of the myths of the Confederacy, the biggest one being that the war was about “states’ rights” (again, see Point 1, the right at the core of the Confederacy was the right to own human beings like cattle), make the most noise, having often been manipulated by politicians who play on the emotional power of those myths. Of course, some simply don’t like niggers and see neo-Confederatism as a means to bring people without such strong feelings but with a romantic, Gone With the Wind view of faux history into their camp.
In conclusion, your great-great-grandpa was a traitor and, as such, deserves no veneration by the United States of America. You want to remember his “honorable” service? Fine, but understand that treason in support of an evil cause is never honorable, no matter how much you wish it were so.
I’m from Alabama and I live in Georgia. I visit battlefields once or twice a year, I read a good bit on the war, and I pass the grave of a very famous Confederate general every day on my way to work. I have actually tried to work the war into conversation- it’s hard to find anybody of any age who’s outside of a battlefield visitor center who much cares one way or the other on the topic, and when I do meet them they’re interested in it as history rather than a modern political cause.
I know Southerners who are tea party members and I know Southerners who are such knee jerk liberals that I roll my eyes. I know Northerners who are hands-in-the-air holyrollers and “Obama’s the debbil” nutjobs and who are “mind so open their brains fell out” moonbats as well. I don’t know many Californians but I’m going to assume based on my limited observation that they fit into this category as well- all over the map in their political views and in their level of being informed.
The closest I’ve come to a neo-Confederate was a recent old Jeep I saw that had a rebel flag (not the actual CSA flag) bumper sticker on one side and what I thought at first, second, and third reading said PROSTATE RIGHTS before realizing there just a tad of space twixt Pro and State. However, I don’t think you’d have to google very long to find out that misinformed bigoted statements are no more an exclusively southern phenomenon than are eccentrically worded/spaced/spelled signs. (No Georgian or Alabaman ever elected Michelle Bachmann, for example.)
I wrote the OP and I voted no, Confederates should not be included in the Memorial Day honors, and especially as a left-of-center openly-gay atheist I get so mad at southern politicians and church groups sometimes I think I’m going to stroke out, but I swear I never feel more southron in my sympathies or more fully understand the mindset of those who locked shields with their neighbors in spite of any objections that they had when I read the levels of uniform hatred and simplification and need for 4th grade comic book heroes and villains without any moral wiggle room that is in these threads.
Though it is usually just a handful of “I’m an abolitionist and don’t care who knows it!” fanatics who keep it running. The poll currently shows 58% in favor or undecided on the issue, hardly a fanatical “let me get my licks in since I missed Appomattox” landslide. Though it is possible the silent ones are planning to hire a substitute to argue against the south for them.
