:rolleyes: The point here is that everybody tends to romanticize their ancestors, but you take exception when Southerners do it. Really, is that the best response you can come up with?
Southerners sentimentalizing the Confederacy and the plantation culture of the Old South is no worse than black Americans sentimentalizing Africa.
Thank you. I assume you’ll send a check for my winnings in the mail.
Robert E. Lee was not the ancestor of Billy Bob. And neither was Jefferson Davis or any other Confederate official. These men are revered by people for ignorant reasons, not out of family pride. So this response of yours shows that you don’t quite grasp my point. The Billy Bob we’re talking about in this thread isn’t romanticizing his ancestors. He’s romanticizing the enemy.
Aren’t you the same Lonesomepolecat who is always going on and on about how poor whites were victimized by slavery as much if not more than black people were? So ask yourself why the descendants of poor whites are sympathetic to people who 1) profited handsomely from slavery and 2) made their ancestors fight (and die) to preserve the same institution that you claim victimized them.
And then call me when black people extol the virtues of people whose sole claim to fame was locking their ancestors up and packing them into slaveships. Because that is what would be necessary for an apple to apple comparison, okay?
Hateful? My last post was about French bankers and tariff motives.
THIS is hateful. My personal ideology is Yellow Dog Democrat far left of center and I deplore groups like the SCV. I’m debating history in this thread.
I tend to take a much larger view. And longer.
No, you are not. History has no place in your topic. You begin with a moralizing point of view and arrive at the only possible conclusion. I started with an amoral point of view and acknowledge that I was initially wrong about some things. Then I can and did see how morality affected and still affects things.
While I have no dog in the fight (yellar’ or otherwise), people make mistakes, and they fight for reasons which are not economic or even entirely rational. more to the point, a damn lot of them didn’t fight, or fought against their will (but were coerced in a variety of ways, including but not limited to outright conscription), or even fought for the North. Sampiro is not right in his interpretation, but much of what he said is true: many fought simply because their states were fighting, or they thought of themselves as a seperate “race” from northerners entirely*. And the upper reaches of Southern leadership was largely controlled by slaveholders.
So history has no place in a discussion of the Confederacy and I am not right except when I agree with you. All we need to know.
That’s entirely my point. It was not rational and neither is a lot of the nostalgia. Which makes defenses for it particularly sad.
But why is the nostalgia in other parts of the country (nostalgia here being defined as it has been by some in this thread by the fact that there are northern Civil War reenactors, there are schools and parks and cities and bridges named for non-southerners whose views would be looked upon somewhere between benighted and evil today, and there’s no outroar to tear down statues of people like Franklin and Sherman and Roosevelt who had definite darker sides, and all of this on land seized from Indians) acceptable yet in the south it’s indicative of character flaws?
A cite that this existed in anything like wide notions beyond a very few members of the planter class, please, followed by a cite that said notions were limited to southerners.
All you have to do to answer this question is ask yourself what defined the Confederacy. What was its raison d’etre? What made it so special?
Was it bluegrass? Was it hot summer nights and honeysuckle blossoms? Was it BBQ chitterlings and veranda porch swings?
No. The Confederacy existed for one reason: to fight for seccession. And over what? Slavery.
Highways, bridges, and buildings named after stalwart citizens who happened to be alive in the 1800’s and owned slaves doesn’t bug me. It’s the naming of these things after people whose main (if not sole) claim to fame was helping the nation destroy itself over slavery that bugs.
It’s bad enough that they were traitors, which should alone inflame those who call themselves patriots and red-blooded Americans. But it’s the Confederate’s specific cause that grates like a sharp razor blade. And really, what is so difficult to understand about that? No need to make this out to be like long division when it’s really not that complicated.
Are there holidays named after Benedict Arnold? What about John Walker Lindh? These are the only people in US history that I can think of off the top of my head that are even remotely comparable to Jefferson Davis…and they didn’t even cause half the damage that JD and his merry band of offficers did! Now I’m sure that Arnold and Lindh had plenty of redeeming qualities and had causes that they believed in to the bottom of their hearts, but I don’t give a rat’s ass about them. Neither do I give a damn about the scarves Davis knitted in his spare time or the five languages that Lee spoke or any of the other trivia you’ve regaled us with, to be honest.
Sorry if this hurts your feelings, but I don’t cherish these people and I can’t understand why anyone would. White, black, yankee, southerner, whatever.
:rolleyes:
This is exactly what I’m talking about.You seize upon any excuse to demonize your opponents, when it’s bloody obvious that I was quite obviously judging your views and perspectives. That is, they are utterly and competely biased to such a degree that your judgement is usefully clouded. History has no place in your topic, Sampiro.
Let’s dissect this little gem (pile of feces) for a moment to note how biased Sampiro is.
First, he grabs the word “popular” and then turns it into “beyond a very few members of the planter class.” This indicates that he knows it is a fact and is trying to minimalize it. I can respond to this one by citing multiple sources across large spatial distances, but he would always claim it was rare. The fact that these themes and justifications for this belief were featured in extremely common and popular poetry (The Virginians of the Valley by Ticknor, for only one example) and in best-selling books would be irrelevant to him. James DeBow, author of the extremely influential and pan-Southern DeBow’s Review, argued for the idea publicly, as did the Southern Literary Messenger based in Richmond.
Second, he demands a negative cite, which I cannot respond to. He can and presumably will always argue it was a commonplace American idea, despite the fact that it was a purely Southern invention with no analogue in the diverse North. IN fact, there was no North to speak of. New England, the Middle States, and the Midwest had their own regional ideas and interests. None of them included fictional inheritance that I’ve ever found.
People from each section tended to see their cultural differences as superior, but only the South created a racial concept (ironically, it faded over the course of the war).
See also the works of Jared Gardner (Master Plots: Race and the Founding of an American Literature) and James McPherson. (The Smack, she is laid down!)
Since I honestly don’t believe anybody is that worked up over or even notices the names of the bridges they travel across that were named by people 90 years ago but simply use them as an excuse to see nostalgia and hero worship where there is none, I’ll forego that to focus on these two:
If the notion that they were traitors is so black and white then why was Jefferson Davis never tried of treason? He was imprisoned, he was indicted for it multiple times, he was released only on bail, and if a traitor he led directly to the deaths of more than half a million men, as you yourself said he did far more damage than people far less hated and rightfully convicted (in the case of Lindh, Arnold fled).
So why were the charges dropped? Shouldn’t his trial have been one of the greatest moments in the history of America? A precursor by four-scour years to the Nuremberg trials. Why did they drop the charges and refund the bail to his backers and let him walk a free man for the last 22 years of his life?
And I’m not saying he wasn’t a traitor- in fact I believe he was- but if it was such a clear cut issue, why not try him? He was certainly far guiltier of harm that Mary Surratt who had hanged just for running a boarding house and having possible knowledge of a conspiracy, he not only caused incalcuably more deaths than Wirz but was arguably responsible for the deaths Wirz caused, and yet he’s not just released but allowed to run around Europe and give lectures and speeches without guard or probation terms.
Guiteau was absolutely insane- no question about it- and he only killed one person if that [as he argued at the time medical malpractice did worse]- they hanged him. Here’s Jefferson Davis, who killed far more people, many still believed he was in on the Lincoln conspiracy, and he lives a life of relative comfort in a pretty house by the gulf for 7 years after Guiteau is strung up. Why was this? If you can see that his guilt is precut and secession completely unconstitutional, do you suppose that it’s because the legal minds of the late 19th century were your intellectual inferiors?
Show me where I have ever claimed to cherish these people. You are twisting my words to win an argument by chest thumping and humping straw men when you are incapable of winning intellectually by command of fact or argument.
You call me a hateful twisted idealogue and then accuse me of demonizing my opponents?
No, it proves that I can argue. If I were to say “it is a popular notion in America today that the U.S. Government was responsible for demolishing the buildings on 9-11” is it true or reflective on a culture just because in fact it really is popular among a tiny subset of people?
No you can’t.
I would also claim that poodles bark, because they do.
Your words, not mine.
Who’s arguing that a few people argued this? Franklin argued that Americans were a new race in speeches in Europe a century before the war. I ask for a cite that this is not rhetoric, that these notions took more root with the average southerner than the transcendentalists took among the farmers of Iowa and Illinois.
It’s not a negative cite to ask for evidence that a small number of Americans seeing themselves as a nobility was limited to the south. THIS WAS THE MOST ROMANTIC ERA IN HISTORY- ALL OVER THE WORLD. It’s when Germans resurrected Hermann and statues of Boudicca began to spring up. America did not have an ancient heritage so they made a uniquely American notion of it. How is this irrelevant to your point.
You have a fantasy that you’re Eminem at the end of 8 MILE don’t you? The “lemme tell you wha dis bitch gone say” thing only works if you’re informed and intelligent, which anybody who claims there was no diversity in the south is not. Texas- New Orleans- Virginia- oh yeah, no diversity with these folks at all, in fact that’s why they all got along so good in the war.
You just made my point to the above.
Bullshit. The North did not believe in white supremacy? Lincoln never gave MULTIPLE speeches in which he espoused it? Frederick Douglass was a liar when he said that his people were the “Stepchildren” of the nation?
This is ignorance of the first order.
I have. Unlike you I haven’t just seen them, I’ve read them.
I have long suspected that the decision not to try Jefferson Davis was as much a political decision as it was a legal one. Because if Jefferson Davis was a traitor, so were a hell of a lot of other people. It wasn’t like Davis was the noble-born pretender to the throne and the rest were just following his lead–he was just the guy the secessionists saddled with the job of being their president. A very great many people who owed allegiance to the United States wound up waging war against the United States. And I don’t think anyone had any stomach for carrying out possibly hundreds of thousands of trials and executions across the South. (I don’t have any cite for any of this, so if someone has some sort of link or citation for discussions of the actual reasoning behind the post-war decision-making, feel free.)
When I say it was a political decision, not a legal one, this is not a criticism or to say I disagree with it. The betrayal of the freed slaves after Reconstruction was shameful, but I don’t think mass executions of Southern whites would have served anyone well; I think it would have led to a legacy of lasting bitterness more on the scale of the Balkans than anything we’ve actually seen in the U.S. (We’d probably still have the Real Confederate States Army setting off car bombs in Atlanta and denouncing the Provisional Confederate States Army’s decision to lay down arms to this very day.) In the case of “treason”, although a great many Southerners were undeniably guilty, the wise and prudent thing to do was to temper justice with mercy–though the Union should have stuck to its guns about guaranteeing the rights of its new citizens.
Then it must be true.
APA Cite:
Buckner, M.E. (2009). Suspicion. Retrieved from http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showpost.php?p=11815410&postcount=295 November 24, 2009.
Pretty much every historian of the time would disagree with you. Certainly the Nuremberg Trials didn’t go on to try and execute hundreds of thousands of Germans 80 years after the Civil War. But how can historians argue with your suspicions? Jefferson Davis was small potatoes- nothing but the president of a land whose rebellion cost 600,000 people their lives: why try him?
Honesty is appreciated and a complete lack of curiosity the hallmark sign of stupidity. Also I would argue that trivia when it comes to understanding personalities and complexities of history is often not trivial. There is trivia obviously: that Jefferson Davis’s nickname for his youngest daughter was Li Pei or that Abraham Lincoln’s favorite dish was chicken fricassee with biscuits and mayonaisse, both true, are trivial, as is stuff I’ve mentioned with the qualification that it is trivial. However, the fact that Davis was a man of great complexity and disparity in his views on blacks as individuals even while seemingly monolithically white supremacist in his views on blacks as a race is not trivial in examining slavery as a product of its time and stating that Lincoln had argued for self determination for Mexicans in the House and argued that blacks should never be allowed to vote is not trivial in examining the views of the Union leaders as something other than zealous abolitionism or that Johnston was a well educated man who owned no slaves in arguing that not all southerners who sided with the south were either illiterate morons or slaveowners. Not that I would expect somebody who is stupid to understand the distinction.
Guess you didn’t bother to read the part where I said:
Since you haven’t bothered to back up your “They didn’t dare put the sainted Jefferson Davis on trial for treason because he was so plainly innocent!” claim, I suppose we can just agree you pulled it out of your ass.
I suspect you know the answer, and it’s not that Jefferson Davis was a complex man with other, wonderful attributes and so he wasn’t viewed as a traitor.
The truth of the matter is that there were complicated legal issues weighing down the case against Davis, infighting amongst those charged with the prosecution, and an increasing feeling that pursuing the case (not at all a sure thing, what with the trial due to be held in Virginia) would be detrimental to reunifying the nation (Horace Greeley being one of the Northerners who held this view, and who was among those raising bail money for Davis).
Civil War re-enactors (silly as their activities may be at times) are commemorating and reliving the war, not overtly glorifying or excusing the behavior of the men who sent the soldiers to fight.
And speaking of silly, that describes comparing Jefferson Davis to Franklin and Roosevelt (I assume you’re speaking of Benjamin Franklin and not Joseph Paul Franklin). You earlier raised the example of Teddy Roosevelt, whom we’re apparently supposed to despise for promoting U.S. imperialism. However, T.R. also was responsible for trust-busting and early environmentalist activities, which accomplishments help ensure his place in history. Jeff Davis has no such marked achievement which balance out his negatives in leading the Confederacy. And while Sherman was involved in Indian campaigns which are dimly viewed these days, his role in preserving the Union arguably overshadows his later military activities. And unlike Nathan Bedford Forrest, for example, he didn’t found the Ku Klux Klan.
I love the concept of trying to tear apart the Union on behalf of slavery being viewed as a “character flaw”. :dubious:
And nostalgia is fine and dandy, as long as you don’t attempt to rewrite history to create a world that never was.
And I suppose you didn’t read the part where I said imo he was a traitor or the fact I said I think he was not so much sainted as loathsome. If you don’t have factual evidence to cite on why Davis was’t tried when participating in a GREAT DEBATES thread and the specific topic is the reasons for Davis not being tried, why participate?
Let me help you out:
A part was from fear that he would be exonerated if the trial were held in Richmond for the jury would come from that city. This was valid perhaps, but there were ways around it: striking jurors who had served in the CSA, or moving for change of venue, would have been legal and justifiable.
The fact that some of the greatest trial lawyers of their day, northern and southern and Irish and other, were begging to take the case was a bit more problematic, as was the fact that former Confederate Cabinet member Judah Benjamin- considered one of the most brilliant legal minds of his day (was twice offered and twice declined SCotUS appointments) was assisting with the case both financially and legally from his French exile and no less than Cornelius Vanderbilt and Horace Greeley spoke publicly of their doubts as to his guilt (and paid his bail) or the fact that Davis himself was known to be working on his defense daily in his cell (when his eye and health permitted) and that say what you will about his bastardy (most of it earned) in and of himself he was nobody’s fool, these were a bit problematic. And the fact that the U.S. began with an act of secession was a bit problematic.
Trivia or not- depends on your definitions: if you like political science and or the history of this era, Davis’s Rise and Fall of the Confederate Government is an absolute must read. He refused to write a memoir (didn’t want to write about his first wife for one thing- that’s trivia) but no memoir written in that era gives as clear a view into mindset as that book. The parts about military maneuvers are tedious and better written by others but the parts about the CSA government itself are one of the most important political manifestoes in 19th century history. (And no, I do not agree with them, but I don’t agree with most political manifestoes.)
While I recognize that I am seen as an unread and ignorant ideologue waving the Stars and Bars and singing Dixie for whatever reason, I think most who know me would agree that I have no blinders on as regards the South. I just refuse to see this era treated simplistically by either side or judged through 21st century eyes and I think quite frankly I know more about its history than anybody who has participated in this thread. It was not a simple time, there were no simple answers to slavery or to secession, there were not as many clearcut heroes and villains as people would like to believe, and the mindset of the 1860s whether of slaves or abolitionists or rebel zealots or anti-secessionists who fought for the south was NEVER the same as ours, and again I think that people getting indignant that bridges haven’t been renamed is a bullshit claim: I seriously doubt any of you have ever lost sleep over that.
And certainly the Allies could have tried alot more people than they did, stricly on the legal merits. The decision not to was in part a political decision. It’s always a political decision in cases like this–you can ask any historian.
That these decisions are in part political does not make them wrong. However, a problem does arise when years later people goes on to say “Gosh, they never tried grandpa for mopery after the Clone Wars, so obviously these claims that we engaged in mopery are just a bunch of vicious anti-Clone propaganda”–when the reality is that a big reason why granpda was never tried for mopery is that thousands of others were equally guilty and it was decided that it in the interests of peace it was better to be magnanimous than pursue complete and inflexible justice.