Why is the Confederacy not worthy of contempt?

Great Debates
381

Sampiro: please read this as the compliment it’s mainly intended to be… I’ve never before seen someone post so verbosely, so knowledgeably, so passionately, with generally reasonable logic making generally reasonable points… and yet so completely miss the point at a fundamental level.

You’ve very successfully convinced me of the following points:

-lots of individual confederate figures were not, in fact, 100% evil baby raping monsters
-not everyone in the south currently is a drooling racist
-not everyone in the south currently who drives a pickup truck is a drooling racist
-there’s lots of stuff about the civil war that I didn’t know

Trouble is, I already knew all of that stuff, as did any other reasonable person.
The issue at hand (well, there are various issues at hand, but I think this is the one that is most relevantly about a real world issue rather than just a fairly hard to define issue such as whether the confederacy is worthy of “contempt”) is how appropriate it is to have a Jefferson Davis Elementary School, and how that compares to having an Andrew Jackson Elementary School, or Abe Lincoln, or George Washington, or MLK.

Well, what’s the point of something being named after someone or something? It’s to communicate a message, and the important thing about messages is what information is actually communicated.

Now, it may well be the case that Jefferson Davis was as phenomenally complex a character as you are describing. Certainly I (a person with a far above average interest in and knowledge of American History) can’t dispute any of the specific claims that you’re making. But that’s totally irrelevant. What is it that people in general know about Jefferson Davis? What is it that is associated with him in people’s minds? The answer is clearly “He was president of the Confederacy”, by a margin of a million to one over any other fact. Therefore, what message is actually being conveyed to the general public (the ones who know enough to know who JD was but not as much as you) by having an elementary school named after him? It’s “we respect and honor the Confederacy”. And, hopping another step, what’s one of the absolute first facts that people know about the Confederacy? That they were deeply, officially, institutionally racist. Therefore, what’s the message that we, as a society, send by having an elementary school named after JD?
MLK, on the other hand, certainly was a man with flaws. But what’s the thing people know about him? What’s fact #1 about MLK? That he was a civil rights leader. Naming a school after him sends the message “we honor civil rights”. That’s the difference.

(Andrew Jackson is a kind of middling case… but that’s a tangent.)

382

He knows this. And as I recall he mentioned being for changing the name of one such school. The problem apparently is that any such recognition of history and changing values must be fiercely resisted if it appears to be a result of pressure by Evil Northerners or anyone who doesn’t view the old South through nostalgia-distorted lenses.

As mentioned before, the problem (such as it exists these days) is not ignorant Joe Bob in his pickup truck, but seemingly intelligent people who just can’t let go of the myths.

note to Sampiro: with regard to the numerous instances of slaves serving as Union spies during the Civil War mentioned in the link I provided, including the recently published book detailing the role of one of Jefferson Davis’ slaves in funneling important information to the North* - if you’ve got any historical references to the contrary that are more compelling than some vague 150-year-old account in Harper’s Weekly, bring 'em on.

*a small part of Davis’ life and times, but a story that apparently must be fiercely denounced, as it conflicts with the magnolia-scented view that his slaves adored him.

383

The Sons of Confederate Veterans has a Heritage Defense Committee whose job it is to to protect against attacks on “Southern Heritage.”

Those of you who have visited the south may have had the opportunity to see the large number of monuments dedicated to the Civil War. Most of these were set up by the Daughters of the Confederacy with the Sons of Confederate Veterans and other groups contributing but not as much as the UDC. These groups were champions of the Lost Cause, antebellum ideology, and, of course, the right of secession. They were quite influential in the late 19th and early 20th centuries.

Vanderbilt University in Tennessee tried to change the name of a residence hall called the Confederate Memorial Hall. The UDC had donated about $50,000 dollars in the early 1930s. A Tennessee court finally ruled that Vanderbilt could only change the name if they reimbursed the UDC based on the current value of the building. Vanderbilt officially changed the name but didn’t alter the inscription on the building so they didn’t have to pay the UDC.

Naming a school after Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, Stonewall Jackson, etc. is a way of honoring those people. Nobody names a school after Jefferson Davis because of his great government work prior to the Civil War. They name it because they want to honor the Confederate President.

Odesio

384

I never made the claim that slaves didn’t serve as intelligence. More than 200,000 blacks (not all of them former slaves- honestly don’t know the numbers there- most I believe were) served as soldiers; Harriet Tubman not only served as intelligence but became the first woman [possibly the first illiterate narcoleptic] ever to lead troops into battle, OF COURSE they served as intelligence. I can give you the names of black operatives in Montreal and Florida off the top of my head!

What I said was that YOUR SOURCE, this one

was highly suspect. As for the “vague” 150 year old newspaper, IT’S THE PRIMARY SOURCE IN WHICH JACKSON’S ACCOUNT APPEARS:
And in that source it says that

1- he was not a “slave of Davis” (your own words- re-read them) if he was a slave at all

2- the information he was cited as giving in that PRIMARY SOURCE was worthless (Confederate money was useless- which was no secret anywhere, and that Richmond was pro-Union and the Davises were evacuating, which was false)

3- he was speaking of Davis less than one year after Davis even came to Richmond, mentioned having been a waiter during that time (i.e. hardly likely he was a full time coachman, especially since we know the name of Davis’s full-time coachman [Robert Brown]) and had been away for at least several weeks, thus the ABSOLUTE MOST he could have been was a temporary hired coachman and it’s not likely Davis or anybody else would have talked about anything top secret around him to begin with (these weren’t stupid men- they knew that black people, slaves or free, weren’t deaf)

4- Jackson’s interview was in June 1862 when the South had not even reached its apogee yet and there is absolutely no evidence to support that any of the information he provided was used (would a temporary coachman have seen maps? Orders? Battle plans? DAVIS’S OWN GENERALS didn’t know his plans for several campaigns as the most cursory reading of the fiasco with Bragg will let you know.)

How are you not understanding that the primary source refutes (your misreading of) a CNN source? And Harper’s incidentally was a northern based PRO-UNION newspaper.

The only possible way you can interpret my lack of a cite for something I never once said due to reinterpreting my words and the only possible way you cannot understand how that source refutes yours on the issue of Jackson is that

1- you are an utter and complete moron
2- you are a liar
3- you are just being a dick

Of those three reasons there is not a single one that warrants you as somebody to debate with. I have repeatedly said I don’t wish to debate anymore anyway. I am stressed out and preoccupied and nobody is even debating anyway- however you and **smiling bandit **- snarker emeritus who freely admits she hasn’t read my posts- come into this thread AFTER I HAVE SAID LET’S TABLE THIS and argue not with the issues but just make cowardly personal attacks on me personally knowing that

1- I won’t return to defend myself, in which case you can hoot and haw
or
2- You’ll make comments so stupid or absurd or incendiary that have nothing to do with a thesis of any kind other than you dislike me personally so you can force me to return

So rather than completely flameout, which I’m quite capable of, and trust me, there is NOT ONE REASON to believe you haven’t been soundly and utterly defeated- ask anybody including those on your own side- I am doing what I should have already done and avoiding flameout by putting you both on ignore. As for anybody else, this isn’t my message board so please feel free to debate the subject until your eyes bug out, but please don’t bother me personally- I don’t want to play anymore because I’ve got more pressing issues.

OR, another option, move it to the pit. Pit me and I’ll gladly take you off ignore and play along. But probably not immediately.

385

Exactly to all of this- they date from another time. You would be hard pressed to find anything named after Jefferson Davis other than a specific historic site associated with his life in the past 50 years. And of course it was named to honor him as the Confederate president- though chances are had he not been there would still be forts and the occasional school named in his honor as there are for others who were once famous and not forgotten.

Meaning nothing personal though- and I really don’t- I find it hard to bow my head to a biographical assessment of Davis from somebody who not only didn’t know the legend of his wearing a dress when captured (probably- the -single -most -artistically -reproduced -story -of -the -Civil -War) but who upon hearing it decided to find the truth by posting on a message board rather than looking up the actual story with a google search which would flush out the story from smithsonian.edu or loc.gov or many other objective and detailed sources.

386

My source regarding one of Jefferson Davis’ slaves providing important intelligence to the Union was not “CNN”. It’s CNN interviewing an author who’s knowledgeable on espionage and apparently took the trouble to do actual research, instead of relying on southofthesouth.com and its Harper’s Weekly articles.

*"Jackson was Davis’ house servant and personal coachman. He learned high-level details about Confederate battle plans and movements because Davis saw him as a “piece of furniture” – not a human, according to Ken Dagler, author of “Black Dispatches,” which explores espionage by America’s slaves.

“Because of his role as a menial servant, he simply was ignored,” Dagler said. “So Jefferson Davis would hold conversations with military and Confederate civilian officials in his presence.”

Dagler has written extensively on the issue for the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence."*

Like, wow. Who should we believe - an author affiliated with the CIA’s Center for the Study of Intelligence who’s written extensively on this issue, or Sampiro, an anonymous message board poster and Confederacy devotee? That’s a tough one.

We realize that your main arguments (about how Confederate leaders and their cause cannot be held in contempt because revered Americans did bad things, and it would be like the Taliban to accept the verdict of history) have crashed and burned, so you have to obsess about minutiae (on which you are wrong in any case) and preen about your debating skills, such as they are.

Sad.

How many times have you announced that you’ve seceded from the thread and then returned? Even General Lee knew when to quit.

Please don’t take it that way. :slight_smile:

My interest here has not been in attacking you personally, but in refuting apologist rubbish.

Best wishes for your dog’s recovery.

387

I didn’t make a biographical assessment of Jefferson Davis. I simply said that monuments honor him because of his presidency of the Confederacy and not his political life prior to the war. If you call that a biographical assessment then I can only say that we had wildly different ideas of what that entails.

I’m going to take it personally because I find your post to be rather unnecessarily dickish when I don’t feel I deserve such treatment. I have never had a keen interest in the Civil War and I cannot recall ever learning about the specific circumstances surrounding the capture of Jefferson Davis. Like a hell of a lot of other people who frequent these boards I did the lazy thing by posting a question in “General Questions.” I did this because I was slightly curious about something and just couldn’t be assed to do the research myself.

I don’t really understand why you felt the need to dredge up an old post of mine. Did you think I would be embarrassed by my lack of knowledge?
Of course not. If I was embarrassed I certainly wouldn’t have posted the question to begin with. Is it an attempt to show that I somehow don’t measure up and anything I say in this thread can be discounted? I don’t see how that could be the case given as how my two year old post has only the most tenuous relevancy to this thread. Congratulations, you’ve managed to alienate someone who has been rather friendly with you throughout this thread.

Odesio

388

[QUOTE=Odesio]
Congratulations
[/QUOTE]

Thank you.

389

An aside.

Our local bus station headquarters is named after Rosa Parks.

I can never quite decide if thats a good thing or a bad thing every time I drive past it.

390

The Google ad I just saw at the bottom of the page is quite appropriate for this thread.

“Bid on Civil War Costumes now! Find great deals & huge selection”

Yes, some folks just can’t stop playing dress-up.
One more historical note I would be remiss not to mention, in the context of Sampiro’s earlier dismissal of General Ulysses Grant as a “butcher”:

The story goes that after the Civil War, during his tenure as president of Washington and Lee University, Robert E. Lee was present during a conversation in which a professor at the school was harshly deriding Grant. Lee’s response was to bring the professor up short by reminding him of Lee’s great respect for Grant, and to tell him that any further insults to Grant would result in either Lee or the professor severing their ties with Washington and Lee University (one guess as to who would have departed).

Lee was a fairly classy guy, in contrast to many of his devout defenders.

It’s better than naming the back of the building after her.

391

You have no idea of the irony involved here.

You know what looms behind the bus terminal/headquarters ? A butt ugly 5 story or so jail.

And for the longest time, just to right of it was the farmers market. Not sure if that is still active or not though.

No, I am not making this up.

392

Minor side point, but did you mean in the Civil War rather than ‘ever?’ Joan d’Arc immediately popped into my head, I’m sure there are prior instances to be found.

393

Sorry, I meant American woman. (Nzinga was the wrath of God to would be slavers in Uganda centuries before Harriet, Boudicca was raising hell 1500 years before Nzinga and Hatshepsut thousands before Boudicca, so warrior women go way back.)

394

Late to the party, but I do feel contempt toward the Confederacy.

I fully appreciate that this is a very complex issue. In fact I have recently been doing some research, as part of my job, into the interesting paradox that some of the northern textile mill owners were abolitionists, but obviously knew that the cotton they were making their fortunes on was being grown by slave labor in the south. As a professional historian, part of my job is to attempt to get a better handle on the influences that cause people to make certain decision.

Thus, I feel I have a decent grasp on the mind-set of many of those that supported the Confederacy. And I recognize that there were myriad reasons for them to come to their individual decision.

In the end though, I still feel contempt for the Confederacy as a whole, and certain individuals in particular. For example, my study of military history allows me to appreciate, and respect the tactical genius of Robert E. Lee. I have a similar level of appreciation for the skill of Erwin Rommel – and a similar level of contempt for the causes that those two Generals served.

In particular, I view Lee as a traitor to the United States for resigning his commission in the U.S. Army in order to take up arms against it, and I would have no qualms had he ended up hung for the choice he made. I say that fully appreciating that, in his mind, he was defending his home-land of Virginia. I still believe that his action was treason, and probably put more weight towards my feelings on him since he had, in fact, sworn an oath to protect the United States as a member of its armed forces.

In closing, I happened to be down in Georgia a while back when the question of John Walker Lindh came up. There was no question among my hosts that Lindh should have been shot as a traitor for taking up arms against his home. So after a few minutes I said, “yeah, it’s always a shame when some whack-job grows a beard and becomes a traitor to America. Just like Robert E. Lee.”

They were not amused.

395

This is compounded by how effective he was for much of the war.

On the other hand, we should have considered giving Braxton Bragg the Congressional Medal of Honor. :smiley:

396

Y’all surely can come up with the most amazing excuses for why 200 or more years of slavery in the North don’t really count.

397

Has anybody here said that? Has anyone said “When they had slavery up in New York, it was just peachy!” What we’re saying is that the Confederate States of America is not worthy of our support. Of course we should remember it, in a historical sense, but the Confederacy is not something we ought to look back upon with fond nostalgia, and romanticize as a noble “Lost Cause”.

When New Yorkers start sporting belt buckles that say 1741: the Big Apple’s gonna do it again!, then you will have a good point.

398

Actually, my post only said that in comparison to the South the North wasn’t nearly as bad. It took wilful misreading on your part to construe it as excusing the North.