Let’s cut through decades after decades of Southern “revisionist” history:
Cutting through the “economic and social reasons” and “States rights” crap, the bottom line is the Civil War was about the South wanting to keep slavery, and the North stopping them. North=Good . . . South=Evil
With the exceptions of troops that were illegally conscripted by the Confederacy, the Confederate government, its generals, leadership, and volunteers were all traitors to the United States government, and it was through the grace of God and mercy of the North most of them weren’t executed or imprisoned. I’m actually disgusted Lincoln didn’t put most of the leadership on trial. Im guessing it was in a treaty somewhere.
There was no “Northern aggression”. The South fired first, at Fort Sumter, in an ultimate act of terrorism. The South started it: North fucking finished it.
The Confederate flag not only is a symbol of racism and slavery, but also treachery against the United States. Its also the flag of a conquered, defeated loser force. Since when does the loser get to fly their flag? You are in the United States. Fly the United States flag.
It does my heart good to see this hateful symbol being torn down. I also call for all statues and monuments to Southern civil war military figures to be torn down and sent to a landfill as soon as possible. Enough of the glorification and excuse-making for a truly evil empire that thankfully, thanks to the courage and ingenuity of the North, we were able to stomp out like the anti-American pestilence it was.
Cutting through the rights crap and revisionism, the US government, generals and volunteers were just traitors to their rightful king, the king of England.
This I disagree with. Once you’ve won a war, it’s generally better to be magnanimous in victory and seek to reconcile the defeated people rather than punish them.
I would say that in this particular case, however, the federal government shouldn’t have sacrificed the interests of its black citizens to the cause of reconciliation. The government should have worked on bringing both black southerners from slavery and white southerners from rebellion into the political mainstream. It would have been a lot more difficult in the short run but it would have made a better and more just peace in the long run.
The US government was magnanimous, but the Carpetbaggers weren’t.
They made a point of rubbing the old “Gentry”'s nose in it.
It is a continuing debate as to how Reconstruction would have played out had Lincoln survived and his successor continued his idea of “welcome them back”.
The self deception and revisionism is alive and well in the conservative south. The war of northern aggression, a refusal to own their own naked bigotry of their sacred ancestors, a refusal to judge slavery as wrong. They are so delicate when they speak of it, whether slavery was right or wrong that’s beside the point, it was merely one factor that lead to succession due to the NORTHERN aggression.
It’s enough to make ones head explode. I want these fools dragged through the mud, and the people giving cover to them shamed in public.
“Let 'em up easy,” Lincoln told Grant and Sherman. He knew that to become a family again, we had to stop hurting each other.
It bears repeating that the Confederate battle flag semiotics were added to the Georgia state flag at the dawn of the civil rights era (1956) specifically to symbolize resistance to the civil rights movement…it had not been part of Georgia’s flag before that. Not heritage, but hate.
I’m conflicted about statues–I lean toward keeping battlefield monuments, but statehouse lawn statues not so much. And the flags can come down.
Carpetbagging was encouraged by the South who wanted more people (white people, really) to rebuild. Then they decided that carpetbagging was a bad thing in their deluded revisionist history.
To finish your sentence accurately, that should read “the North stopping them…from breaking up the Union (and stealing stuff on the way out the door).” Ending slavery in the South was much less a motivating factor, especially for the average soldier.
It’s long past time for the Confederate flag to be relegated to museums and private collections. Interesting though that a substantial minority of blacks in recent polling were against removing it from display on public property.
Well, sure. Why opening fire on and capturing a U.S. fort and seizing federal arsenals should be seen as justification for fighting back is something I’ll never understand. :dubious:
If there’s anything in the world to be bitter about, it’s this. White supremacy has fucked over people in the South for centuries, and there are still revisionists claiming it never happened, it wasn’t really that bad, they’re not honoring it, and we shouldn’t do anything to change it. The best part is, people take their incoherent gibberish seriously. Bet your ass I’m bitter.
Then there’s the nutty fact that 10 US Army posts are named after Confederate generals:
[ul]
[li]Fort AP Hill, VA - Confederate General Amborse Powell (AP) Hill[/li][li]Camp Beauregard LA - Confederate General P. G. T. Beauregard[/li][li]Fort Benning, GA – Confederate Brigadier General Henry L. Benning[/li][li]Fort Bragg, NC – Confederate General Braxton Bragg[/li][li]Fort Gordon, GA - Confederate Lieutenant General John Brown Gordon[/li][li]Fort Hood, TX - Confederate General John Bell Hood[/li][li]Fort Lee, VA – Confederate General Robert E. Lee[/li][li]Fort Picket VA - Confederate General George E. Pickett[/li][li]Fort Polk, LA - Confederate General Reverend Leonidas Polk[/li][li]Fort Rucker, AL – Confederate Colonel Edmund W. Rucker[/li][li]Fort Stewart, GA – Confederate Brigadier General Daniel Stewart[/li][li]Camp Van Dorn MS – Confederate General Earl Van Dorn[/li][/ul]
I think in hindsight it was exceptionally wise, if not ideal, to reunite Southern military mythology with the US military establishment. Better to rehabilitate the leadership and keep the holdouts marginalized. (Doubters - see the destruction of the Iraqi Army and Baath Party).
There is also a fine line to be drawn on censorship of symbols. Yes, they do have power and influence, but repressing them can imbue them with even more power and influence. It’s reasonable to see that any state government flying the Confederate flag is flirting with open rebellion even in this late age, and the US would be justified in removing said flag (with military force if necessary). This would be about as effective as killing al-Qaeda’s #2 leader yet again - even more would pop up.
So the reality is that we live in a divided country, and if a civil war wasn’t enough to secure a decisive ideological victory, then it is wise to tread lightly when addressing these divisions.
That’s great and all, but it doesn’t change the fact that the North was mobilizing troops before the South fired a shot (Lincoln had already declared that no State would be allowed to secede. To deny that much is to argue against history.
Yeah, and that has about as much to do with the Confederate flag as the color of his shoes. If you refuse to see this for what it is, then you’re simply ignoring the obvious.