Here again, we are conflating two questions. Would he have supported secession and formation of the Confederacy? No. I think he NEVER would have supported that.
If the Confederacy were fait accompli, would Washington choose the gray over the blue? That’s a harder question to answer. Lots of men opposed secession, but then signed up for military service once the deal was done. On the other hand, a lot of Southerners wore blue.
That second question is the one that might be impossible to answer, but as I’ve said before, I don’t think we have to.
“Allowed” is a tricky word. I’m in no position to stop them. The question was whether they were “justified.” And no, they were not.
The whole reason to chose Washington as your icon (whether for the Confederacy or some other group) is to legitimize your movement. That was surely the intent. Whether that was accomplished depends on the perception of the individual, I suppose.
And yes it does denigrate Washington to have him associated with a movement which not only defended slavery, but glorified it (in direct contradiction to Washington’s own thinking on the subject). The difference between the Confederates using his image and the KKK using his image is a difference in degree and not in kind.
Yes, I think we can safely say the CSA was bad. See above. Its reason for being was the defense of slavery. (Paging MEBuckner.)
Please do. I am genuinely curious as to how far you would extend the logic.
Oh, and as to the difference between “justification” and “rationalization,” I am only refering to dictionary definitions:
justify: 1 a : to prove or show to be just, right, or reasonable
rationalize 1 : to bring into accord with reason or cause something to seem reasonable
You can “make something seem reasonable” without making it “just” or “right.”
Horrible actions can be rationalized and still not be justified.
Both. I think the aims of the CSA were wrong-headed and “bad,” and it was therefore not “just” to have Washington defamed by being associated with those aims.
And I also think it is not “right” inasmuch as Washington did not buy into the Confederate principle that slavery was a positive good.
So it was neither “just” nor “right” (referring again to the dictionary definition of “justified”).
I have been attempting to address the third question (the OP). Personally, I don’t find it particularly helpful to break down the other two questions, because my answer to both is the same: We don’t know. And we can’t know. Because Washington was dead and the situation throughout the country had dramatically shifted 60-something years after his death.
For clarity, however, I’ll break 'em down:
Starting here - It’s not that I strongly disagree with you spoke-, it’s just that I think there is clearly room to disagree.
Washington fought in the Revolution against a strong authority imposing its will on the states. Washington then led the newly formed nation to stability.
I don’t think these accomplishments are radically different from the CSA’s goals — to rebel against a strong authority they perceived as imposing its will upon them, and to lead their new nation to stability.
Washington was a rebel, and it’s hardly surprising that Southern rebels would identify with him. But because he died, it’s my assertion that we CANNOT know whether Washington would have supported the secession and formation of the Confederacy. You believe that he clearly would not have. Fine, we must (shudder - and apologies for using this expression) agree to disagree.
Let me just state that I think this question, just like the last one - is essentially unanswerable. Why? Because Washington was dead and the situation had drastically changed.
But, here’s one for you: Why, if Washington would not have supported the secession of the CSA, do you concede that this question is harder? Is it because Washington was a Southerner? Is it because Washington was a slave-owner? Is it because Washington was a rebel?
I think that whatever makes this question harder for you - illustrates why the Confederacy was justified in appropriating his image. It’s ambiguous. Reasonable people can differ in their belief on which way Washington would have chosen.
Obviously it’s more palatable for us - since Washington is such a towering national hero - that he would have chosen the path of Lincoln. But - and I’m sorry to repeat myself - I don’t believe we can know that.
Of course! The Confederacy clearly chose Washington in an attempt to legitimize their movement. I don’t disagree there. I simply disagree that merely using Washington’s image actually legitimizes the CSA.
In my view, simply saying “Washington would have supported us!” does not legitimize the movement in any way. It was clearly a way to rally support at the time.
But now, with the advantage of hundreds of years of hindsight, of course the use of Washington does not legitimze the movement. This does not speak, however, of the legitimacy of USING Washington’s image.
I disagree. I think that there were good people associated with the Southern cause who were not stained by their association with it. For example, I do not think that it denigrates Robert E. Lee to be associated with a movement which not only defended slavery, but glorified it (in direct contradiction to Lee’s own thinking on the subject). To quote Lee, slavery was a “moral and political evil.” Yet when the war broke out, Lee returned to Virginia to fight for his native state - greatly disappointing the North. I don’t think that denigrates him in any way.
To continue that thought - I don’t think that anybody saying “we are associated with X” denigrates X in any way. Only if X himself supports, encourages, or accepts their admiration can X be condemned.
MEBuckner cannot save you now. Here’s the point of that question: I believe that the reason that you find the CSA’s use of Washington so distasteful is that you disagree with their goals. There’s nothing wrong with that - I certainly don’t support slavery either. But I think that the relative good or evil of the Confederacy has nothing to do with whether or not they were justified in using Washington as an idol.
In my viewpoint - for the purposes of this argument - whether or not the CSA was bad is completely irrelevant. The question is whether they were justified in using Washington as an icon. The two things are completely separate.
Personally - I wouldn’t give a damn. The KKK could march up and down the streets of Richmond waving pictures of Mother Teresa, George Washington, and Pope John Paul the II, for all I care. And it wouldn’t (a) legitimize their racist beliefs or (b) denigrate the achievements and legacy of the people I mentioned. So no, even without supporting the beliefs of the KKK, I would have no problem with their use of famous people as icons.
It would be a different argument whether or not I believed that the KKK was justified in using George Washington as an icon. That answer would probably be “no.” I would just think they were idiots. The KKK is not a group of states that is rebelling and forming a new country. Thus Washington is not an appropriate icon for them.
I disagree. See above.
Let’s only look at justify right now since it was the operative word in the OP — from your definition: to justify is to prove or show to be … REASONABLE.
Throughout this thread, I (and others) have argued that it was justified for the Confederacy to use Washington - i.e. that it was reasonable for the rebels at the time to invoke Washington. We have attempted to prove or show that it was reasonable for the Confederacy to use a man’s image who they identified with.
I hate to sound like a broken record - but the Confederates were southerners, rebelling against a power that sought to impose its will by force on them. They were slave owners founding a new state.
GW was “the embodiment of what they believed themselves to be: A southerner, a rebel, leader of an army resisting a foreign power that sought to impose it’s will by force on them, victor in that fight, a slave-owner, a patriot, a founding father.”
It sounds REASONABLE to me for them to adopt him as an icon. Regardless of their relative moral worth based on our modern-day appraisal of the Confederacy. From my standpoint - it was clearly justifiable - and clearly reasonable - at the time. And that’s all that matters.
Washington, as we have all noted, was long dead in 1860. So his exact opinions on the secession crisis cannot be proven. But it’s not like we’re conjecturing on Washington’s hypothetical opinions about nuclear disarmament or stem cell research; the issues of 1860 were state rights and slavery - two topics that Washington had expressed opinions on during his lifetime. So it is possible to make a reasonable conjecture on what his opinions would have been based on rational evidence.
None of the above. Peer pressure would be the best way to describe it, I suppose. When your friends and neighbors are flocking to the Confederate Army, it would be very difficult to swim against that tide. If you join the Union Army, you are turning your back on the people you’ve known and lived with all your life. Perhaps members of your own family. A lot of men who did not support secession nevertheless found themselves signing up to fight for the Confederacy.
On the other hand, many Southerners made the agonizing choice to wear the blue.
It would have been difficult to predict in any given case what an individual might do, and that would have been true of Washington as well.
Whether he would have ultimately worn the blue or the gray is not the question, in my view. That choice might have had little to do with his view of the justness of the cause and much more to do with the difficulty of going to war against his friends, family and neighbors.
Just because Washington might have reluctantly joined the Confederacy, that does not “justify” using him as its icon, when it is so very clear that he did not support the principles upon which the Confederacy was established.
I’m trying to think of a good analogy. Say you had signed up for the National Guard, thinking it just meant being a weekend soldier. Then you find yourself shipped of to Iraq. Suppose further that you are opposed to the war, but nevertheless, you are obliged to fight it. Now imagine the government decides to use the famous Doctor Who as poster boy for the war. “Look! Here’s a picture of Doctor Who in uniform! See? He supports the war! Enlist now!”
Well, it would be “unjustified” to use your image in that way.
That analogy doesn’t quite work, but it conveys in a very general way what I’m talking about. Just because we can speculate that Washington might have laid his principles aside, under pressure, and reluctantly cast his lot with the Confederates, that does not retroactively “justify” the Confederates in using Washington’s image to legitimize their cause.
Thanks, everybody, for your contributions. Very interesting indeed, and I’m glad to see such a range of opinions expressed. Spoke-, you’re a Doper after my own heart. Well done, and well said.
And now I’ll 'fess up… I wrote the article to which I linked in the OP. I didn’t want anyone to pull their punches, and clearly you haven’t.
Washington, you realize, had the luxury of living in a time when the interests of his home state never seriously conflicted with the interests of the United States. While Patrick Henry was outspokenly worried about the lack of a bill of rights in the constitution, by and large, Virginia was always fairly on-board with the confederation and then later the United States.
Washington spok often and fondly of his home in Virginia during his many years away from it. It is a recurring theme in many of his correspondences.
Washington involved in countless activities within his state, and, most importantly he supported his state taking firm action against British acts that he viewed as intolerable. He was a strong advocate for Virginian opposition to the intolerable acts and the stamp acts. Note, that this was long before any confederation or union of the states was even being whispered about, before Lexington and Concord were even fought.
I don’t see how that is wholly dissimilar from Confederate idealists, who strongly advocated their state’s opposition to the laws of the Federal Government, Washington advocated his state’s oppositions to the laws of parliament, not dissimilar at all.
I think you are making poor analogies here. To the Confederates, who likened their fight to the American revolution “they” were the colonists, the North was the British. And there is ample evidence that Washington supported his state (and eventually the United States) opposition to the British.
I really wish I hadn’t spent all that time and effort on my history degree, then I might be able to forget history is made up of humans with all their foibles and instead sublimate reality to my comfortable 21st century point of view, which, as we all know, is the only way to look at things.
Damn you Dr. Blumburg, DAMN YOU! WHY DID YOU TEACH ME HISTORY IS MADE UP OF PEOPLE!
Wow, Weirddave! That’s almost a cite! Sure, it’s an offhand statement from some only-vaguely-identified professor familiar to none of us, and sure, it’s not at all relevant to the topic at hand, but still, it’s sort of a cite!
We know it’s your first attempt, so it’s pretty shaky, but keep at it! You’ll get the hang of it!
You know spoke, you seem to have grasped the nuances of the SDMB in general and GD in particular quite well. Asking for a cite on these boards is the way we do things. Unfortunately, you seem to have missed the subtleties as to when it appropriate. A cite is something provided when a poster presents something as fact. This thread deals with two things: #1 your hijack as to weather Washington would have supported the Confederacy, which I and every other poster except you, as far as I can tell, has rendered the opinion “we don’t know, it’s all speculation” and #2 weather the Confederacy was justified in using Washington as an icon, something that is a subjective judgement. I and several other posters have listed our reasons why we think, in our opinion, that they were. You’ve done nothing but jump up and down and scream repeatedly “Washington wouldn’t support the Confederacy”, which is your opinion (and a tangent to the OP). Screaming cite? cite? over and over again doesn’t do a damn thing for your case when the matter under discussion is purely subjective, but I’ll ask you straight out: What the bleeding fuck do you want a cite for?
You’re absolutely right, Weirddave. Now that I look back, I see that you haven’t contributed a single fact to this debate. I suppose content-free posts don’t really require cites.
I think you’ve missed the point again. The article we’re discussing is deriding the same thing you’re supposedly against - the attempt by the Confederates to “modernize” Washington up to the beliefs of their time. In opposition to this, we’re not trying to project Washington into the 21st century; we’re referring to what Washington said and did in the 18th century. It’s the same as when people try to “modernize” the Confederates by claiming they were primarily fighting for states rights and the opponents of this revisionism go back to the actual contemporary words of the Confederates in which they repeatedly state slavery was the primary issue. If you want to know what people thought, you have to go back to what they actually said, not try to guess what they might have said in other circumstances.
Spoke, this is not a fact based debate. It’s all opinions. I have contributed far more than you to this debate, because I’ve explained my reasoning behind my opinions, while clearly stating they were such, while you have stated an opinion that can not be proven one way or the other (Washington would never have supported the Confederacy), and then defended it as it it was a fact. In case you haven’t noticed, NOBODY agrees with you. So again, I ask you, since you’ve been so adamant about it, exactly what cites are you looking for?
Actually Nemo, I’m not. I have merely been pointing out that Washington-the-myth matched up pretty well with the image most southerners had of themselves in 1860, and was therefore an appropriate icon for them to adopt. I know I certainly haven’t stated that Washington would have been a reb, I’ve consistantly stated that we don’t know because he died in 1799 and the civil war didn’t come about until 1860. People like spoke here who claim that he absolutely would not have supported the Confederacy are the ones engaging in revitionalist history. The fact is that there is no way to know for sure one way or the other.
No, Weirddave, you’re wrong. As Little Nemo has been very gently trying to point out to you (and I less gently), there are facts available for discussion. Facts about the principles upon which the Confederacy was founded. Facts about what Washington thought and wrote about those principles. Facts about what happened during Washington’s life to influence his thinking. Facts about events that took place between Washington’s death and the start of the war which might or might not have changed that thinking. And when we marshal those facts, we then discuss them, and how they apply to the question of whether the Confederacy was “justified” in using Washington as an icon.
I haven’t quite caught up with this thread today (I will! I promise!), but after reading this I just want to say — regardless of my opinions/posts in this thread, well written article, Elendil’s Heir. You did yourself proud.
I wondered why the OP had abandoned this thread and let it be taken over by us hooligans…
First, I’m sorry it took me so long to get back to you. Other matters required my attention, but… To the best of my knowledge, the Klan does do that. They make a big deal about their patriotism, and how the country needs to go back to the values of the founding fathers, before it was corrupted.
But I think that’s getting a little off point. What I was trying to say was that there is/was a popular mythology of Washington (as there are popular mythologies of all public figures). If you go up to a random man or woman on the street, they probably would be able to tell you that Washington was the commander of the Continental forces during the Revolutionary War, or the first President. They probably wouldn’t be able to tell you what Washington thought about national-state relations. That’s not something that’s well known. I know it’s not something I knew until I read Elendil’s Heir’s article, and it’s probably not something that Jefferson Davis knew when he was calling Washington a Confederate hero.
Sure it’s possible to make a reasonable conjecture — the problem is that it’s still just a conjecture.
Moreover, it doesn’t address the actual question posed in the OP: Was the CSA justified in using Washington as an icon? Since there was no way of definitely knowing whether Washington would have supported them, both sides rallied under Washington’s image. The Union rallying under the “Father of the Country,” Federalist Washington. The CSA rallying under the rebel, Southern Washington. IMHO both sides were “justified” in using Washington in this manner - since there was an absence of which side he truly would have supported.
I’ve thought of another example: gay rights and MLK. Would MLK have supported gay marriage?
Gay marriage proponents (including Coretta King) say of course! MLK stood against injustice! MLK stood for equal rights for all!
Gay marriage opponents say MLK was a preacher! MLK was an African-American (who traditionally oppose gay marriage)!
And the problem is that (just as with Washington) there’s no real way to tell. We can truly believe that MLK would have supported gay rights; we can paint this picture of a man who fought injustice - but we don’t really know. Anecdotally, I know lots of people who hate injustice, actively campaign for the Dems, etc. - and still oppose gay marriage. The point being, you just can’t ever tell for sure - until somebody proclaims themselves to be on one side or the other.
I just don’t think we can tell whether MLK would have supported gay marriage. I don’t think we can tell whether Washington would have supported the CSA. We can guess, but that’s all it is. And an attempt to firm it up - into a definitive answer - is (apologies to who said it first, but I like the phrase) pure historical revisionism.
Again - however - I think that this is irrelevant to the OP, which only asks if the CSA was justified in using Washington. I think the answer is yes.
I completely agree. Totally unjustified. But let me rearrange this analogy a bit - to reflect how I see the question we are debating. Bear with me:
I signed up for the National Guard, thinking it just meant being a weekend soldier. Then I got shipped to Iraq. I am opposed to the war, and I wrote home saying so. Wrong war, wrong time. But I fought out of a sense of duty, to end the suffering of Iraqis, and because I believe that (regardless of the legitimacy) Saddam was a threat. Then I die IN THE WAR.
60 years later, the USA goes to war with Belgium because the Belgian people are suffering under a mad dictator. The government wants to rally the troops so they use my image. They say “Be like Doctor Who! He fought out of duty! He fought to end suffering! He fought to stop a mad dictator!” And that would be justified. Because I did do those things!
But… can you see? There’s no way to tell whether or not I would support the War on Belgium. Why? Because I’m dead. Because regardless of my anti-war statements back with Iraq - times have changed. The situation has changed and it’s impossible to predict whether I would support the Belgian War.
Sure you can guess - but, just like saying Washington would not have supported secession - it’s ultimately just a guess. Maybe it’s educated - but it’s unsubstantiable. (Is that a word?)
Marshalling facts! I can appreciate that. Now here’s how I see it:
The CSA marshalled facts about Washington that led them to believe that he was an appropriate idol. He was a Southerner, he was a former rebel, he was a slave-owner.
Based on marshalling those facts, they chose him as an icon. That’s reasonable; that’s justified.
We can guess now that Washington would not have supported the CSA. We can find it distasteful that such a sordid endeavor usurped the Father of our Country.
BUT we cannot say that they weren’t justified (based on their perceptions) in doing so.
Finally, I just want to say something to Elendil’s Heir. Look - you did a great job at attempting to answer the unanswerable. A great marshalling of facts, terrific analysis. I think you really made an educated guess about whether or not Washington would have supported the CSA. And from that, you extrapolated that Washington was not an appropriate icon.
The problem I have is with the determination that the CSA was not justified. They had a perception of Washington as mentioned in this thread - as the leader of a rebel group that established its own nation. He achieved almost exactly the same goals that the CSA wanted to achieve. IMO, whether or not we can look back and (with hindsight) say “well, it really wasn’t appropriate to use Washington,” I just don’t think we can say that it wasn’t justified.
I certainly understand why the Confederacy adopted Washington as an icon. They’d be dumb not to, given a common but superficial reading of who Washington was and what he stood for, as well as his extremely popular patriotic image in 1860s America. I just think pro-Confederate Southerners totally misread (or ignored) his views and the core values of his work in the last several decades of his life, for the reasons I explained (at some length ) in the article.
IMHO, therefore, the Confederates were unjustified in using him as a political icon.
Here’s the point of that question: I believe that the reason that you find the CSA’s use of Washington so distasteful is that you disagree with their goals. There’s nothing wrong with that - I certainly don’t support slavery either. But I think that the relative good or evil of the Confederacy has nothing to do with whether or not they were justified in using Washington as an idol.
usurped the Father of our Country.