To quote from Lord Ashtar in another thread…
Just thought it was cool and relevant.
Thanks.
I have seen some sources that indicate that most of the destruction was caused by the retreating Confederates, not that Sherman was guiltless. Unfortunately I cannot find a cite and don’t recall where I saw that.
I was also born and still live in Texas and never understood the nostalgia for the “bad old days.” I even new some people who would get mad if anyone criticized Robert E. Lee and this was in the 90s.
I just sent an e-mail to the national headquarters executive director of the SCV. I will post any reply. My guess they will reply with a form letter saying, “thank you for your letter, (blah, blah).”
Here it is:
I read about your opposition to the Abraham Lincoln statue in Richmond Virginia, and found it deeply disturbing. I am all for honoring the fallen heroes of the Confederacy, but to imply that the U.S. would be a better place if the south had won, and that Abraham Lincoln was somehow an evil person to attempt to preserve the union is sickening. I am a southerner with a direct descendent (my great-great grandfather) who fought for the confederacy.
As a historical preservation society I commend your work. But you cross the line by implying that Lincoln was immoral, and that modern southern society would have been better off had we won the war. Or even that a statue of him in Richmond is somehow wrong. You come off as racist, and just plain dumb. As well as far out of bounds to what your mission should be. Following is a message board post I placed which further details my feelings. Forgive the harshness, but this is how I felt when I read this.
"I was born in the South. Not quite deep-deep south, but not far away[Houston}. My great-great grandfather fought for the south. I certainly do not have a problem with an organization such as the “Sons of the Confederacy” honoring the dead that died in the U.S.A.'s bloodiest, cruellest, most divisive war.
Sometimes I wondor if the Sons of Confederate Veterans are more than just a society of preservation, but one who believes the war is still being waged. That the north is still the enemy. [That]The outcome of the war was a bad thing. I do know they see Abraham Lincoln in about the same light as most Americans see Saddam Hussein, or Adolf Hitler.
I just read an article in the Houston Chronicle, by Michael Buettner, of the Associated Press. I did not find that one online, but this, and this, will give you the story.
They are protesting a statue of Lincoln in Richmond Virginia. WTF is their problem. It was a horrible war, but most people in the south do not see Lincoln as an evil aggressor. In fact, towards the end of the war he was a voice of moderation and forgiveness. Does the SCV even acnowledge this?"
I know my opinion alone will change nothing. I am hoping that many more people write with similar feelings that you will reconsider your stance. I think this is a great country today as a result of staying together. But I don’t get the impression that the SCV agrees.
Sincerely,
Kyle Eriksen
Let me know what you think.
Road Rash, I think you basically alienated your audience (the society you’re writing to, not the SDMB:)), whatever part of it was listening, with this:
“You come off as racist, and just plain dumb.”
If not perhaps even earlier.
DAMN! Now they never will like me.:eek:
Oh well.
Well Hell, I wrote both state (Virginia) senators, the POTUS (GWB hisself) and my state representative (a while ago, and on an unrelated matter), and here is what I got back:
Automated email from POTUS
Request for address from state rep.
Oliver Wendell Holmes said it first, or least earlier.
I got a response to my letter! If you are curious what I sent, scroll up a bit. It is a few days old, but interesting. So come close to your screen and marvel at the words of a true SOUTHERN GENTLEMAN:
- Let me start by saying that I am merely the man who runs the day to day operations of the SCV international headquarters in Columbia TN. I do not make policy nor do I decide the issues in which certain SCV men choose to become involved. I also receive far too many emails, and I have grown particularly weary of answering ones from non-members who are eligible to join but far too p. c. to actively honoring their ancestors. I will, however, make an exception for you.
Thank you for writing and expressing your opinions. That is the wonderful thing about living in a free country and free society, everyone who has an opinion is free to express it. You might be mindful that this freedom of expression includes not only Northern people, but liberals as well as conservatives but also all Southerners. This freedom of expression includes SCV members and non-members alike who are free to disagree with what happens in our world, including Richmond VA. Now please read again what I just wrote, and I ask you to think about it carefully before reading further. People in Virginia, or anywhere else in this great country, are free to disagree with you. They are also free to express their disdain for the concept of this statue. They are entitled to express this disagreement without being called names or being ridiculed by people like you. You should feel free to express your disagreement but you ought to clean up your rhetoric.
Before you paint everyone in the SCV with the broad brush of “racist, and just plain dumb” you may wish to study some history other than what you were fed by the public (or perhaps private) schools you attended. Most of these schools use the textbooks written by the victors to justify and sometimes even to glorify this terrible loss of life from 1861-1865. Your great great grandfather believed he was fighting for independence just like his grandfather likely had done during the Revolutionary War. You may also consider reading about what occurred in the South during reconstruction when the victors and the puppets they put into office ruled the South, stealing land and personal property from the defeated as well as taking away their right to vote. Your gentle, kind Northerners also had terrible prisons where many Southern boys died in captivity, and you have probably only heard about the inframous Andersonville prison. I doubt that you have much real knowledge about this despicable time in America.
You might also want to look further into this particular Lincoln Statue project as these men in Richmond, Klein and Moran, appear to be attempting to make money off the Lincoln statue while hoodwinking people like you. The National Park Service has dropped their support of this project. Did you know that and if so, have you bothered to ask why? Why do Klein and Moran have so many shell corporations and why is there a personal loan of $400,000 to their non-profit being repaid at the high interest rate of 10 % to one of them? Their company is is a 501 c 3, not for profit corporation; thus, a smart fellow like you can get on the internet and pull up their 990 IRS returns and see for yourself.
You might also consider reading a bit more about the much beloved Abraham Lincoln. Perhaps if you were further enlightened about him, you might change your perspective as well. You are clearly very confused about the SCV and its goals, and it is obvious someone has filled you with nonsense. As a retired military officer, I really resent your inflammatory use of Hitler and Saddam Hussein in your silly little letter to the editor. Are you a veteran and have you ever served a day in either the reserves or in active service to this country?
In the event you should someday be fortunate to encounter the soul of your great great grandfather, I hope he is more considerate of you than you are of the SCV.
Sincerely,
Ben Sewell
[/*
My initial temptation is to pick at it, phrase by phrase. But you guys can do it better.
Talk about perpetuating a negative stereotype!
Yup, you’re free to express your opinion, but not if it makes me mad.***
Oh, the eee-vils of Reconstruction. Thank God the carpetbaggers were sent a-packin’ and we were able to use the poll tax and literacy requirements to make sure only the right people got to vote.
I’m a little disappointed that he stopped short of revealing the horrible truth about Abe Lincoln.
Half right. The South’s prime reason for seccesion was to retain slavery, thus it was the cause of the Confederacy’s going to war. The North, OTOH, was primarily interested (at least during the first part, anyway) in preserving the Union.
And for those talking about “Sherman’s march thru Georgia” as a reason why the South had a greivance against the North- I’ll point out that the South- on a much smaller scale- started the whole war “against civilians” with Quantrill & other raiders. It was simply that the Union had the resources to do it on a much larger scale- “As ye sow, so shall ye reap”.
And the War did not ruin the South’s economy- dependence on Slavery had already doomed it. Even if the South had won, or the War hadn’t been fought- the whole “slave plantation” economy was doomed in a generation os so anyway.
Riiiiiiiiiiiight. Fighting for the independence to…own slaves.
The SCV exceeded my expectations quite admirably. Who needs to caricature a group like this, when they do such a good job by themselves?
What, exactly, does this mean? 
Esprix
Don’t try to reduce history to soundbites: The Civil War was no more about slavery than the Revolution was about tea taxation.
The Civil War was, essentially, Federalists against Plantationists. In other words, it was a war between two different socio-economic systems, one based around a strong Federal government with severely curtailed local authority and an industrial economy, the other based around a weaker Confederate model with most of the power held by landed gentry who controlled a largely agrarian economy. Slavery was simply the single most repulsive facet of the latter system.
If you need proof that Lincoln cared more about preserving the Federal Union than ending slavery, read the Emancipation Proclamation: It only freed slaves in states then in a state of revolt against the USA. Maryland, a Union state, was slaveholding throughout the war but was completely exempt from the dicta.
The final nail in the soundbite’s coffin: Lincoln’s letter to Greely
Anyone up for gainsaying Lincoln himself in the matter of Lincoln’s own motives?
As for my own opinions: The CSA sucked ass, and they still would have sucked ass even if slavery was abolished. Why? I dislike the idea of a landed gentry and the extreme social stratification that implies. I hate the perversion of the Jeffersonian Ideal and I would never have supported it, even knowing the extremes the Federal government would later engage in. Slavery wasn’t the only thing the CSA got wrong by a long shot.
You left off his last sentence:
Slavery was the cause of the war. No, ending slavery was not one of the Union’s war goals, but the freedom to keep slaves, and more important, to expand slavery to the West was the motivating factor behind the South’s desire to secede. They feared that Lincoln and his party were planning to throttle Southern agrarianism which depended on slavery. Revisionists who claim that slavery had nothing to do with the Civil War make my ass itch.
If you don’t believe me, ask Confederate Vice-prsident Alexander Stephens:
Ask the Secession Convention of Texas:
I can go on, but why waste bandwidth on an issue that has already been discussed to death?
Of course not. So let’s review the bidding.
There would have been no secession, hence no Civil War, if Lincoln had been willing to back down on the issue of allowing new ‘slave states’ to enter the Union.
So there are clearly things he wasn’t willing to do, relating to slavery, in order to preserve the Union.
For Lincoln, closing the door on slavery’s expansion into new territories was non-negotiable. To paraphrase Meatloaf (you can kill me later ;)), he would do anything to save the Union, but he wouldn’t do that. Like he said, within that limitation, he would make the Union whole again by any means - one that freed all slaves, one that freed no slaves, or anything in between.
But there were fifteen slave states in 1861, and he was willing to go to war rather than allow a sixteenth slave state. And the South was willing to secede, knowing it would bring on war, rather than accept that slavery would be forever restricted to only those fifteen states, with the resulting likelihood that in some distant day, slavery would come to an end in America.
The war was about the South’s plantation economy only to the extent that that economy was unwilling to part with its dependence on slave labor, and feared any threat to that dependence, no matter how distant.