# Why is the Confederacy not worthy of contempt? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 10, 2009, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994 "2009-11-10T03:09:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 13
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 3:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/241 "2009-11-15T03:46:51Z")
Tom Lehrer had guts. He released his _Dixie_ before anybody had ever even heard of Rosa Parks, MLK, or Medgar Evers outside of their innermost circles. Almost 60 years later I doubt even he would argue it’s still relevant. He has said he’s a fan of _The Daily Show_ but also says he doesn’t enjoy most political or topical humor anymore because (I’m paraphrasing not quoting) he finds the vast majority of it inane, focused on the trivial, and generally same-ol’-same-ol’, half banal and half plagiarized from wiseasses who don’t know what they’re talking about. I see his point. Look after that penis; no matter how well you garden it’s hard to grow a new one. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 9:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/242 "2009-11-15T09:03:23Z")
There were no streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr. before 1968. There are now [hundreds of streets named after MLK](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_streets_named_after_Martin_Luther_King,_Jr.). Very few of those are likely to be entirely new stretches of concrete or asphalt. All of the pre-existing ones were once named something else, and many of them were presumably once named for someone else. According to **Sampiro** , this re-naming of streets was the equivalent of the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. ---
**Author:** ![breezman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@breezman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/breezman)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 4:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/243 "2009-11-15T16:03:19Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > There were no streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr. before 1968. … > > According to **Sampiro** , this re-naming of streets was the equivalent of the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. Hogwash. Sampiro’s point was that the names of streets (or schools, parks, plazas, etc) shouldn’t be changed to remove historical names that are offensive to many people in current society. Renaming a street to honor someone is a very different thing. ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 4:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/244 "2009-11-15T16:08:03Z")
> [@breezman](#): > > Hogwash. Sampiro’s point was that the names of streets (or schools, parks, plazas, etc) shouldn’t be changed to remove historical names that are offensive to many people in current society. Because doing so is akin to behaving like the Taliban. That was the analogy he made, wasn’t it? ---
**Author:** ![breezman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/4491bb/32.png) [@breezman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/breezman)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 5:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/245 "2009-11-15T17:26:05Z")
> [@you\_with\_the\_face](#): > > Because doing so is akin to behaving like the Taliban. That was the analogy he made, wasn’t it? Now that you mention it, he DID make that analogy, but where did he say we shouldn’t do things **because** it would be acting like the taliban? Anyway, my point was that renaming a street to honor someone is a different thing than removing someone’s name, and that the poster above was fallaciously equating the two acts. ---
**Author:** ![Epimetheus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/c4cdca/32.png) [@Epimetheus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Epimetheus)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/246 "2009-11-15T17:32:56Z")
> [@Zoe](#): > > My grandfather wanted to fight with his brothers and so he left home to be with them before he was old enough. He was at Shiloh, but he was too sick to fight. He did fight at the Battle of Stones River at Murfreesboro. He probably marched within a mile or so of the house where I live now even though that is far away from where he lived. My mind boggles! Your grandfather was in the civil war? Even if your grandfather was 40 when your dad was born (or your dad was older when you were born) you would have to be over 80, no? (not that I’m saying that is a bad thing mind you, just shocking to me somehow to see how few generations removed the civil war really is) ---
**Author:** ![you\_with\_the\_face](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/ecccb3/32.png) [@you\_with\_the\_face](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/you_with_the_face)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 9:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/247 "2009-11-15T21:33:05Z")
> [@breezman](#): > > Now that you mention it, he DID make that analogy, but where did he say we shouldn’t do things **because** it would be acting like the taliban? Dude, he implied it by using the analogy. Unless **Sampiro** is of the opinion that acting like the Taliban is hunkey dory there would be no other reason for him to use them as a rhetorical device. ---
**Author:** ![black\_rabbit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/f19dbf/32.png) [@black\_rabbit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/black_rabbit)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/248 "2009-11-15T21:46:01Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I’m going to take a wild guess you’ve never read a biography of him or read anything about his years in D.C.. Since I’ve already addressed both in this thread no point doing it again. Are you asserting that all of those bridges, elementary schools, and roads are named after Davis because he was a good Secretary of War and a big DC booster? James Earl Ray was probably good to his momma. What should we name after him? ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/249 "2009-11-15T21:58:52Z")
> [@breezman](#): > > Hogwash. Sampiro’s point was that the names of streets (or schools, parks, plazas, etc) shouldn’t be changed to remove historical names that are offensive to many people in current society. Renaming a street to honor someone is a very different thing. Re-naming Jefferson Davis High School to something else is making a moral and political judgement about the overall contributions to society of Jefferson Davis. Re-naming Smith Street to Martin Luther King, Jr., Boulevard is making a moral and political judgement about the relative contributions to society of Martin Luther King, Jr., and whoever Smith was. Given that we’re on such an astonishing slippery slope that case #1 is apparently indistinguishable from the Taliban deliberately destroying 1600-year-old statues, I’m having trouble seeing the great gulf between case #1 and case #2. It’s not like someone has a feather of Maat to objectively determine the difference in worth of MLK and poor old Smith, now do they? ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 11:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/250 "2009-11-15T23:15:04Z")
Then there’s always the best of both possible worlds, where you don’t even have to [change the stationery](http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=678). ---
**Author:** ![Malacandra](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Malacandra](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malacandra)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/251 "2009-11-15T23:30:34Z")
> [@Epimetheus](#): > > My mind boggles! Your grandfather was in the civil war? Even if your grandfather was 40 when your dad was born (or your dad was older when you were born) you would have to be over 80, no? (not that I’m saying that is a bad thing mind you, just shocking to me somehow to see how few generations removed the civil war really is) No cite, but there’s some guy in the States whose grandpa was born in 1790 - when George Washington was President. Grandpa sired a son circa 1860, who followed the pattern by himself becoming a father in his mid to late 60s, grandson is still about the place in his eighties. ---
**Author:** ![Jackmannii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jackmannii/32/311_2.png) [@Jackmannii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackmannii)\ **Post date:** [November 15, 2009, 11:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/252 "2009-11-15T23:56:26Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Then there’s always the best of both possible worlds, where you don’t even have to [change the stationery](http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=678). Since the original “King” of King County, WA was Rufus DeVane King, a “gentle slave monger”, does that mean his slaves loved him too? In any case, it’s evident that the Taliban is running roughshod over the politicocultural traditions of the community up there. ☹ You think Obama would consider sending some of those 30,000 troops to Washington State instead of Afghanistan? ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 12:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/253 "2009-11-16T00:13:04Z")
> [@Captain\_Amazing](#): > > Then there’s always the best of both possible worlds, where you don’t even have to [change the stationery](http://www.historylink.org/index.cfm?DisplayPage=output.cfm&file_id=678). > [@Jackmannii](#): > > Since the original “King” of King County, WA was Rufus DeVane King, a “gentle slave monger”, does that mean his slaves loved him too? William Rufus Devane King- interesting figure. Known in his lifetime as “Aunt Nancy” and “Mrs. Buchanan” by his detractors for his longterm live-in relationship with James Buchanan (who was sometimes called “Queen James” [for being the wife of a King] and sometimes “Mrs. King”. The gentle slaveowner notion is possibly a ‘relative to other slaveowners’ factor perhaps- just perhaps- based on the little fact that King freed many of his slaves as an incentive and left them all land and money in his will, bequeathing his valet $3000 (almost $80,000 in 2009 dollars)- the most ever bequeathed to any slave by a master in all of United States history- when he died, and the fact that those who remained enslaved at his plantations were referred to by both whites and other slaves as “the free niggers at the King place” because of the liberties they had (dances, preaching, their own store, rewards and incentives, and other such things). Perhaps it’s a reference to the fact that like Jefferson Davis’s brother Joseph, who was a good friend of King- King was a follower and supporter of the British philosopher [Robert Owen](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Owen) and was one of a few large planters who attempted to implement his plantations on Owen’s writings and from his own interviews with Owens, King going so far as to name the largest of his Alabama plantations New Harmony after Owens (failed of course) Utopian community in Indiana. I’m guessing- just guessing of course- that’s what the “gentle slaveowner” part was about, or more likely since all slaveowners were alike and identical in their evil it’s probably just silly notions. All this great gossip yet today he’s best remembered, on the rare occasion when he is remembered, as being the only VP of the USA who never set foot in the country during his term it goes. (G\*ddamn the willful ignorance and simplifications to support their own world view on this board- the notion that “gentle slaveowner” could not possibly have any basis in anything other than romanticism of the past rather than the fact that KING WAS A LEADING “WITHIN THE SYSTEM” REFORMER OF SLAVERY AND WAS IN FACT _CONDEMNED_ FOR IT BY OTHER SLAVEOWNERS! But no let’s not cloud issues with trying to find out anything about the man, let’s just villify him because it’s impossible to think that a slaveowner might be a morally complex character just like the abolitionists often were because ALL SOUTHERNERS ROMANTICIZE A PAST THEY’RE COMPLETELY IGNORANT OF.) [QUOTE=Malacandra] No cite, but there’s some guy in the States whose grandpa was born in 1790 - when George Washington was President. Grandpa sired a son circa 1860, who followed the pattern by himself becoming a father in his mid to late 60s, grandson is still about the place in his eighties. [/QUOTE] Probably the grandson of John Tyler mentioned elsewhere in the Gettysburg thread. Tyler had children in his 60s (and a daughter at 70) and one of those sons had children in his 70s. [QUOTE=black rabbit] Are you asserting that all of those bridges, elementary schools, and roads are named after Davis because he was a good Secretary of War and a big DC booster? James Earl Ray was probably good to his momma. What should we name after him? [/quote] No, I answered your question- [QUOTE=black rabbit] What did Jefferson Davis do to earn our reverence? [/QUOTE] and I stand on my assertion that I’ll bet you’ve never read one damned thing about him other than his 4 years in the Confederacy have you? Why do you think he was _chosen_ president of the Confederacy when he certainly wasn’t the richest (his brother was 10x as rich as he was, his pal Bishop Polk was richer than either of them, and Polk and the Davises combined were living in squalor compared to Wade Hampton who still wasn’t the richest southerner) or the most militarily high ranking (that would be Joseph Johnston a) or the most militarily distinguised (that would Lee) or aristocratic (take your choice there- Davis was nouveau riche and that from his brother and was born in a 4 room tavern his parents ran) or most experienced in running a country (that would be Sam Houston, who was anti-secession)- it was because of his career in D.C.. Had he died in 1860 he would likely be one of those names like Schuyler Colfax or John C. Breckinridge or Thomas Hart Benton that most Americans vaguely remember from history class but can’t really identify; most books written about him would be from academic presses for sale to academic libraries, but he would be well known to students of the era. And if you answer please answer this since I have answered your questions: have you ever read anything about Jefferson Davis’s career before 1861, yes or no? [QUOTE=you with the face] Dude, he implied it by using the analogy. Unless Sampiro is of the opinion that acting like the Taliban is hunkey dory there would be no other reason for him to use them as a rhetorical device. [/quote] [QUOTE=MEBuckner] There were no streets named after Martin Luther King, Jr. before 1968. There are now hundreds of streets named after MLK. Very few of those are likely to be entirely new stretches of concrete or asphalt. All of the pre-existing ones were once named something else, and many of them were presumably once named for someone else. According to Sampiro, this re-naming of streets was the equivalent of the Taliban’s destruction of the Bamiyan Buddhas. [/QUOTE] Kirisuto sama. I understand why “If I only had a brain” must strike a responsive and perhaps melancholy cord to you, but the urge to repopulate the world by making more strawmen is a bit beyond your abilities, don’t you think? MEBUCKNER IS AGAINST SLAVERY- Y’ALL GET THAT? HE’S AN ABOLITIONIST- OPEN ABOUT IT, DOESN’T CARE WHO KNOWS IT, ALL HAIL. I can also only assume that he’s a world class racist, homophobe, and antisemite judging from his simplistic view of damned near everything and more-than-willingness to twist facts and judge groups of people by their worst members, but the nice thing about choosing dead folks is that they don’t fight back, so te salud on that judgment call. My Taliban/Bamiyan comment- which I admit was and was intended to be hyperbolic, which is allowable in rhetoric- was to demonstrate the senselessness and idiocy of obliterating the past to suit the current fashions. Where does it end? Without checking google, can you tell me who Juneau AK is named for? Or Nashville TN? Or who Lemuel Montgomery [for whom Montgomery County AL is named- the city in the same county is named for Gen. Richard Montgomery])? Do these people have a dark side (answer: yes) and if so should we change the names of the cities? I have actually _proposed_ the renaming of Jefferson Davis High School here in town to MLK High School, I think it’s long past time. As for Rosa Parks it wasn’t a judgment on the previous name at all that led to the naming of Rosa Parks Ave. here in town, it was done for two reasons: the street was previously named Courtland and 1) that was the street Rosa Parks lived on 2) that was the name of the Bus Route she was on. I’m going to take a wild guess that you think it disrespectful the theater she was arrested in front of was renamed The Davis Theater as well. I have no problem with streets being renamed. I just don’t think it should be a prerequisite to a section of the nation not being seen as imbeciles- WHICH WAS SAID BY YOU AND YOU WITH THE FACE!" [You With the Face]“Gee, yall, you shouldn’t ought to name stuff after those guys and then act surprised and upset when other people consider you backwards-thinking racists.” [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 12:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/254 "2009-11-16T00:19:37Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I have actually _proposed_ the renaming of Jefferson Davis High School here in town to MLK High School, I think it’s long past time. News flash: **Sampiro** opposes slavery, joins the Taliban. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/255 "2009-11-16T00:25:23Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > News flash: **Sampiro** opposes slavery, joins the Taliban. I am going to guess that not one person who you do not know on a first name basis has ever complimented your intelligence, wit, knowledge, assessment skills, or insight have they? ---
**Author:** ![DanBlather](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/f4b2a3/32.png) [@DanBlather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DanBlather)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 12:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/256 "2009-11-16T00:34:17Z")
> [@Malacandra](#): > > No cite, but there’s some guy in the States whose grandpa was born in 1790 - when George Washington was President. Grandpa sired a son circa 1860, who followed the pattern by himself becoming a father in his mid to late 60s, grandson is still about the place in his eighties. My grandfather was born in 1877. That is before AC motors, electric trolleys, the internal combustion automobile, roll film, the phonograph record, radio, and the zipper. He helped lay the first telegraph cable under the Great Lakes and lived to see man land on the moon. It blows my mind sometimes. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 12:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/257 "2009-11-16T00:41:09Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I am going to guess that not one person who you do not know on a first name basis has ever complimented your intelligence, wit, knowledge, assessment skills, or insight have they? You know, the more I think about it, the more that’s a fairly bizarre insult. I suppose it’s intended to suggest that my Mommy tells me how smart I am but no one else agrees. But of course any teacher or professor, or any boss or employer or co-worker, would also likely know me on a first name basis. So, “Other than your mommy, and your teachers, and your professors, and your boss, and your co-workers, who has ever complimented your intelligence, wit, knowledge, assessment skills, or insight?” You mean, do people just walk up to me in the mall and tell I’m real smart? Well, no. And I’m not a world famous author and have never claimed to be. (Bear in mind I grew up in late 20th Century/early 21st Century America; so I’ve mostly not been in very stuffy workplace or school settings where everyone addresses each other as “Dr. Jones” and “Miss Smith”. Although I’m sure there was probably at least one old-school professor who gave me a good grade back there.) At any rate, you’ve now slipped from special pleading, to incoherency, to outright personal insults. This really doesn’t speak too well of whatever position it is that you’re trying to defend. ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 1:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/258 "2009-11-16T01:01:55Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > My grandfather was born in 1877. That is before AC motors, electric trolleys, the internal combustion automobile, roll film, the phonograph record, radio, and the zipper. He helped lay the first telegraph cable under the Great Lakes and lived to see man land on the moon. It blows my mind sometimes. I’m 43. Four of my great-grandparents (who died before I was born) could remember the Civil War and my father grew up in the house with an uncle who’d fought off Yankees trying to steal his father’s peach brandy. Two former slaveowners attended my parents’ wedding. It’s that recent. At the same time it’s a reference to a completely different time as alien to us as Rome. THIS COUNTRY FOUGHT A CIVIL WAR! That’s almost unfathomable- Richmond Virginia was demolished and Atlanta railroad stations were destroyed by devices engineered specifically to destroy the Atlanta railroad stations and later patented and marketed for use in demolition everywhere. Four thousand and two hundred men died in _one day_ in a tiny crossroads town in North Georgia- boggles the mind. The word _deadline_ still used everyday comes from a line at prison camps you’d be shot dead if you walked past. And there was a time so recent when human beings could be bought and sold that we have photographs of them as slaves and we have voice and video recordings of the same people when they were old. How the hell did we come this far this fast? The W.R.D.King comment above is in one post what irks me most about historic revisionism by anti-southerners as the historical revisionism of the Sons of Confederate veterans. I’ve researched King in depth and written papers on him- I’ll freely admit he’s not a household name and I would no more expect most people to know who he is than I should be expected to know anything about Jorge Videla’s relations with Chile, but the information is out there. (My personal favorite thing about King is that as a D.C. fashion arbiter he first popularized [Guayabera shirts](http://images.google.com/images?q=guayabera%20shirts&oe=utf-8&rls=org.mozilla:en-US:official&client=firefox-a&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&hl=en&tab=wi) which I love to wear in summer- they’re comfortable and drape nicely over paunches.) But the fact that somebody reads his name (and I’m not picking on Jackmanni, it’s just exemplary of the “all southern culture is evil and stoked in blood and uniform and to not change the names of things named 80 years ago for a romanticized and simplified time is to justify being the butt of jokes until the end of time” is a tribute to simplification/romanticism/revisionism/regionalism/etc. that the hoopskirted neo belles at a pilloried deb dance in South Carolina could devote their lives to and never top. THESE WERE INDIVIDUALS- some were evil, some were good, there was no easy way out of slavery and being victimized- whether you’re Nat Turner or Jesse James- does not romanticize or ennoble your life or your cause but to try and take somebody out of their time and place is equally insane. The Eastern Shore of Virginia is divided into two counties: Accomack and Northhampton. At one point the entire peninsula was known as Accomack. Wanna know why it isn’t anymore? Because Oliver Cromwell ordered that all places with Indian names be changed to erase that this had ever been (by Puritan standards) a pagan godless place. (The northern half of Accomack and all of its placenames were changed also but later the county changed back.) So that was 350 years ago- so what? Well, when the city of Montgomery was constructed it was on the site of the Muskogee town of Econchate except for the wharves which were on the site of Nunnachugga. Both names were changed because it was thought ridiculous that a Christian town should be named for godless savages. (Had the state capitol stayed in Tuscaloosa it was planned to change Tuscaloosa’s name to New Philadelphia, which was incidentally the name that Nunnachugga had already been changed to.) I like the fact I grew up in a place called Weokahatchee and went to school in a town called Wetumpka because it’s a daily reminder of so many things: the Indians who founded and named them, the notion that all is fleeting, the connection to history. Obviously I don’t see the renaming of a high school from Joseph Johnston to Medgar Evers to be on par with the Taliban blasting Buddhas, but I also don’t see LEAVING the name Joseph Johnston on par with saying “the South was right! CONFEDERACY! YEEEEE-HAWHAWHAW!” It’s a progression one way, it honors the past the other, either is alright, but either way it says exactly jack about the mindset of the people there. Why is the south so much more harshly judged for the actions of its distant past? Is NYC taken to task for the draft riots that killed more black men than Lee ever killed [other than in battle] or for the boycott of Broadway when Bert Williams performed with white dancers? Or Chicago for its organized crime, its segregation laws that were as strict as the south’s but just not called Jim Crow or the houseburnings that happened in Cicero when blacks moved in _after Rosa Parks_? Or Hyannisport because of the Kennedys connection to crime or the fact that the same laws that integrated schools in Arkansas had to be enforced there as well? It’s the past- we own it- we can’t change it- I’m not proud of the actions of my ancestors and I don’t apologize for them either- get over it. Why is it okay to mock the South but not other regions of the country? Martin Luther King said that he _preferred_ the racism in the south to the north and other regions because say what you will about it they weren’t hypocrites- they were right out in the open; now they’re not, you’ll be fired here more quickly for a dumbass comment than you will almost anywhere else, the south really and truly has changed. What more do you want? Must we completely denounce our ancestors and our history before we can vote? What exactly is wanted? ---
**Author:** ![Odesio](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/odesio/32/20003_2.png) [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/259 "2009-11-16T01:43:17Z")
> [@Sampiro](#): > > I > Why is the south so much more harshly judged for the actions of its distant past? Because the South didn’t really move on until much much later. Following the Civil War many southerners engaged in a campaign of terror to prevent freed blacks from voting which became known as the Mississippi Plan. A series of laws called Black Codes (later called Jim Crow) were designed to strip blacks of their civil rights and keep them subservient to whites. Southern Senators and House members successfully stopped the Federal government from passing anti-lynching laws. The vast majority of blacks who were lynched by white mobs occurred in the southern part of the country. The lynching of Emmit Till occurred in 1955 which is hardly the “distant” past. (Ok, I’m a historian in training so I don’t think of that as too distant so maybe it’s just a matter of perspective.) The South fought tooth and nail to keep their barbarous society going and had to be dragged kicking and screaming to civility. **That’s** why the South is still harshly judged for their actions in the past. I say that as someone who lives in the south and loves it here. Odesio ---
**Author:** ![Sampiro](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/2acd7d/32.png) [@Sampiro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sampiro)\ **Post date:** [November 16, 2009, 1:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-is-the-confederacy-not-worthy-of-contempt/516994/260 "2009-11-16T01:45:37Z")
[QUOTE=MEBuckner] I suppose it’s intended to suggest that my Mommy tells me how smart I am but no one else agrees. [/quote] Hardly surprising you had to wonder what something means you at least used more dissection than you’ve used towards anything else in this thread. > [@MEBuckner](#): > > At any rate, you’ve now slipped from special pleading, to incoherency, to outright personal insults. This really doesn’t speak too well of whatever position it is that you’re trying to defend. # You didn’t insult me in this thread? Of course not… I’m sure you don’t think you did. I’m a southerner shug, we already established we’re treacherous, stupid and vile. In closing because this argument is going nowhere and nobody is even remotely convinced that history is anything other than what they think it is, I’ll include a self serving inclusion to demonstrate the odd notion of Dixiephrenia. I have written/am constantly rewriting a book about my childhood and it is major irony that one of the chapters deals with the transition of Robert E. Lee’s Birthday to Martin Luther King’s birthday. In this section, a [ahem] reconstruction of an actual conversation my father had with a former student (in the middle of a grocery store) he discusses the significance of that move; in the first sentence he’s responding to a question about why he’s off that day. (The chapter is called “Me and Bobby E. Lee” though the section of the book is called The Book of Janus [[picture- rough](http://www.flickr.com/photos/28949748@N06/3709373654/)- Lee looks too much like Papa Smurf- the fire and ice are relevant]). > [@](#): > > “Today is the 174th anniversary of the birth of Robert Edward Lee and as an employee of the great state of Alabama I am off with pay and with no rigid schedule.” > “That’s good. My daddy-in-law works for the state and he’s off today too. Y’know I’m tryin’ to get on with ‘em myself over in Motor Vehicles. You hear they’re talkin’ about changing it from Bobby E. Lee to Martin Luther King Day for the state next year though? That’s gonna cause some commotion, I tell ya what. Must really bother you as a history teacher and all?” > After a brief reflection Daddy responded “If they change it from honoring Lee to honoring King then I will express my contempt for the notion by refusing to come into work that day”. Jerry wasn’t sure if the old man was joking (he was) but hedged his bets and laughed. My father, always a fan of positive reinforcement, relit his cigar and gazed up into the ether of reflection or the produce section; it was difficult to tell which and they were both in the same direction. > “Of course, as a political gesture it is practical. Wise even. It costs the state and its people absolutely nothing yet it appeases black voters and the nation without really giving them… anything. Unfortunately Alabama demagogues haven’t a clue how and when to use the empty gesture, they never have. A lack of notion for what is and is not worth fighting and killing for is the marble from which southern culture is carved. This is the empty gesture they should use, but they’ll fight it and they’ll posture of course and try to rouse the rabble to assure they’ll get reelected which they will. And the holiday will change anyway. It is time and fate working in tandem to attack. > For my generation it will always remain Robert E. Lee Day of course. For black folks, for younger white folks it’ll be Martin Luther King’s Day. Rather like the co-opting of Easter and Christmas from pagan holidays I suppose.” > “Yessir I suppose” said Jerry, who obviously did not. “Course you should just oughtta hear some of the old timers still come in here go off on it, Lord! I’m not hardly a liberal but you’d think old Martin Luther King killed their dogs the way they just carry on and call him every kind of name…” > "Well, fair is fair. And all is fleeting. What was the saying from the Greek movie, ‘what never dies never was born’, and Lee was born wasn’t he? They’ll die themselves soon enough and meanwhile they’ll rant and rave and talk about the unfairness of it. Talking is all they can do now about it. Like their grandparents and great-grandparents they know well they’ve lost another war, though they’re not sure when or how. There were few clear battlefields- a bridge in Selma that’s still standing, a church in Birmingham that’s been repaired. There was no surrender, just a cease-fire and then the seeping knowledge of their defeat. Their gates are opened and their temples looted, but the idols of the old gods were removed. > Lee is to them the newest of the old gods. Yet note he is the first to fall. Oh, like Zeus he’ll always have a cult, but the barge is even now being readied to ferry him down the River, all the way to the Gulf of the Forgotten. Whether it sails today or tomorrow, in ten years or in a hundred… it will not be a hundred… it will sail. It is inevitable. It is Written, in part by the Author and in part by Lee himself. In the Gulf he will join Xerxes, Belisarius, Barbarossa. Familiar names of the forgotten greats, men emptily deified by folks who don’t know a damned thing about them other than they were great and should be remembered though for what they don’t know, but the name itself is enough to them. Which is as bad as being forgotten altogether. Meanwhile the minister Martin, eternally young, an excellent choice, is raised. He assumes his nimbus and divine appointments and mounts the steps to take Marse Robert’s throne as the new god. At least for now. Do you know Jerry that the prayers here for two thousand years began with Esau?” > “Huh?” Jerry said, not from a lack of listening, not even from a lack of being enthralled, but a lack of understanding what in the hell this weird old man in the duster and Stetson he’d respected but also feared all his life was talking about. “Esau? Like… the brother of Jacob, Esau? Sold his soul for soup or whatever it was?” > “No, just real estate for beans. Same sound, different Esau. Esau… Esaugotamay. There’s more to the name but frankly I don’t remember it and it’s been so long since he’s heard it at all I’m sure he’ll answer to Esau. He created this land Jerry. He sat on a granite boulder and called the land up from the sea and he took clay and made people. Know what he did then? He breathed on them. And they came alive. They became humans. What story that you know does that sound like Jerry?” > “Mmmm… man from clay- the creation. Genesis.” > “Where was the world created Jerry? Where was Eden?” > “Israel I reckon…” > “Ah no. For two thousand years, probably more, this was Eden. Not a paradise, but the first land anywhere. Esau gave it to them. His breath became the Wind Jerry. The Indians worshipped that wind, did you know that?” > “Well… I remember you talking about the Indians here and said the Wind was their chief or something…” > “Yes. Where are those Indians now?” > “Dead or in Oklahoma.” > “Helluva choice, don’t know which way I’d leap. But did they take their Esau with them do you suppose, or is he still here, where he sat on a rock called Nuncha- I always wondered if the rocks in my woods the old folks called Nonesuch were they, but I doubt it. Here where he made the world and watched like Jehovah as his people were carted off. Or did he go with them do you think?” > “Well…” reflected Jerry, and putting together wind and god and Indians and Oklahoma he responded in what pleased the old man more than anything he else he could say, “they sure got lots of bad tornadoes and winds in Oklahoma. Guess he went with ‘em.” > “Aha! And where else are their tornadoes? Here. He’s in both places. That’s the option of a god. Martin will be across the nation as well. As, frankly, he should be. He paid for the honor and had the good sense to… well, he paid. He leaned forward into history. That was no accident, it was the Author. He could have stayed where he stood and by now been a provost, a pastor at a church with nine thousand members, something that offers Cadillacs and health insurance and time to play with your grandchildren. But Messiahs never get to play with their grandchildren do they. Lee didn’t. He had no grandchildren til after he died. I’m not convinced he was Messianic, perhaps more Mosaic, but either way he couldn’t play with the grandkids and he couldn’t run from the ironies.” > “Lee didn’t have grandbabies?” Jerry asked. > "No. Now I must confess that I would far rather see the new god, Martin, enshrined in the vacated temple of Jefferson Davis. Lee was competent, honorable in person, the noblest rebel of them all to invoke the Bard, who what he did not in envy of great Cæsar, who only in a general honest thought made one of them. Davis, his dapple gray notwithstanding, was indeed a fool. Less a son of Justice rather than a bastard of Chance. And I’ll even confess, if only in this place and to those present, that the basest part of me chooses the cult of Robert over the cult of Martin. It always did and always will I fear, in spite of my clear knowledge of what is right. As Lee chose his soil over his soul, I chose my complexion over my conscience, my heritage over my heart and my head, and the safety of my family above all. But I accept as just and fair the capture of this January holiday by the forces of the Right Reverend King. I applaud it even. Silently. As I always applauded him. Silently. And knowing full well that to the discerning ear silent applause resounds exactly the same as no applause at all. > “But on Time’s stormy banks I stand and watch with wistful eye the loading of that barge. Marse Robert’s scrolls and relics wrapped in the Stars & Bars. I pray the Author but one thing, and that is this, that He will let that barge take a detour down the Potomac that Robert might once more see the columns of Arlington and reflect on happier times, or at least upon the irony of how that great estate whose slaves he freed became a graveyard for men who fought to free slaves, how that mansion’s grounds were sown with the hallowed warriors of that war while he himself, the most hallowed of all and its master, was himself denied burial there. I fancy The Author will allow that detour. The prayers of the Vanquished he hears most well so long as they are for pathos and not power. He is nothing if not a fan and writer of irony. Jerry, it is not in the details one finds The Author, I tis in the absurd. The symbolism. In absurd witticisms of history too well thought out and placed to be counted as spontaneously arising.” He looked into the eternal mysteries and the produce section, cigar smoke wafting, then with a deliberate smoker’s cough broke the trance. > “Well, to answer your question, at least we will still have Confederate Memorial Day and Davis’s birthday off with pay. A pity Dr. King wasn’t born in June, for then he could have trumped that sonofabitch Davis’s birthday rather than the Lee’s, but I seriously doubt whether his widow would change the date on his birth certificate for us. And I’d certainly not want anyone but Martin to be the new entempled. He’s the only god I ever had breakfast and talked about Poe and Tennyson with. What would you think?” > “Yessir, I guess so…” said Jerry > > Now show me a rutabaga. I wouldn’t know one if Esau dropped them on my head. I’m tolk they look like turnips. And my mother seems to have found a stool and gone to sleep over in your bread aisle. As well. So you plan to watch Carter get himself inaugurated tomorrow?” My father- who if anything this is lessening the grandiloquence and pretentiousness of his speech when pontifficating in grocery stores- preached for a year about the necessity, the justness, the empty gesture but well placed one and the inevitability of the holiday changing. He saw all things revered going the way of Esaugate Emissee. The next year he died in an ice storm and was buried on January 15, 1982, while cars drove with their lights on, some because in respect to the hearse and some because it was the first observance of Martin Luther King Day in Alabama. Relevance? Absolutely none, but I’ve been relevant in this thread and I’ve been self serving. To paraphrase Elwood Dowd, I recommend self serving; changes just as many views and helps you edit at the same time. If you need me I’ll be in other threads. Y’all come. 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