I will never understand these people:
Gov. Bob McDonnell (R) has quietly declared April 2010 Confederate History Month, bringing back a designation in Virginia that his two Democratic predecessors — Mark Warner and Tim Kaine — refused to do.
Republican governors George Allen and Jim Gilmore issued similar proclamations. But in 2002, Warner broke with their action, calling such proclamations, a “lightning rod” that does not help bridge divisions between whites and blacks in Virginia.
This year’s proclamation was requested by the Sons of Confederate Veterans. A representative of the group said the group has known since it interviewed McDonnell when he was running for attorney general in 2005 that he was likely to respond differently than Warner or Kaine.
“We’ve known for quite some time we had a good opportunity should he ascend the governorship,” Brandon Dorsey said. “We basically decided to bide our time and wait until we had more favorable politicians in Richmond.”
If someone can explain to me why it is so important for people on the losing end of a war they fought to perpetuate an evil institution like slavery to be “recognized,” I would really love it. Why would anyone willingly be associated with that?
different church-lady
Wasn’t there a thread earlier about “going back to a time when you knew who you were better than?”
Doesn’t that explain it all?
Jamie
Wow, I guess all the poisons are boiling out.
Zifnab
It’s just like Black History Month, but for bigots. What’s not to love?
Rick Massimo
Because there’s a Democratic president, and when there’s a Democratic president declaring war against the United States is cool.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
Because all of these people believe that Gone With the Wind was a documentary.
riffle
The Civil War somehow involved slavery?
There’ s no video so I don’t believe it!
jenniebee
Huh. The really odd thing is that, if folks were to dress in Union uniforms and hurrah all up and down Monument Ave about how Confederate History is the history of getting your ass whupped, the locals would most likely cheer them on.
Okay, maybe not the locals who live on the actual Monument Avenue, but the cross streets would love it.
scav
mmm. Few whole page ads
would liven things up no end.
Mark S.
And republicans wonder why black people don’t vote for them.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Well then, it is all starting to make nonsense. What could be the next jackboot to fall?
Albatrossity
Piffle. It wasn’t slavery that caused the late lamented “War of Northern Aggression”, it was state’s rights! So this faux memorial month helps them keep that fire burning. Once they get their state’s rights back, they can reinstitute that slavery thing.
PTirebiter
Check out Confederates in the Attic by Tony Horowitz. He’s a Pulitzer Prize winning writer and it’s a great read that may offer some insight.
CaseyL
Mark S:
No, they don’t.
Repugs have given up on anyone voting for them but ignorant, embittered, angry white people. It’s not the largest demographic, but it is one the GOP can absolutely get a monopoly on.
Whether the “ignorant, embittered, angry white people” vote is enough for them to regain power is a separate issue; as is, once having gotten it back, there will be any kind of USA left when they’re done.
JGabriel
It would be nice to see Obama take this occasion as a signal to discuss the treasonous symbolism of the Confederate flag and the divisions still engendered by the Confederate insurrection.
That said, I suspect that it’s smarter to avoid comment. Too many Confederate sympathizers (connie symps?), too large a voting block, still out there in the South, all too willing to argue that the main issue was state’s rights rather than slavery.
.
Third Eye Open
B..B..But the Sons of Confederate Veterans are the only thing between us God Fearin’ Muricans and the unholy axis of The Black Panthers, ACORN, and Speedy Gonzalez
SalParadise
why it is so important for people on the losing end of a war they fought to perpetuate an evil institution like slavery to be “recognized,”
More than that – why is it so important to honor traitors and seditionists ? These people hate America, they want the union dissolved, they want their own constitution.
These are the fuckers saying “9/11 changed everything.” Yeah, right.
PeakVT
Liberals are for the Union. Therefore conservatards are against it.
Keith G
Oh, different church-lady, you took my toughs.
Because they can. Because it is a manifestation of cultural thumb sucking. Because as Obama pointed out in that SF fundraiser comment that he never should have apologized for, when a people get stressed they may fall back upon comfortable ideas and rituals – like when they were in charge and when they were pure and just (I know, I know).
It’s all just a masturbation fantasy.
aarrgghh
’cause punchin’ a
hippieyankee just feels so damm good.Aimai
I’d totally kick in five bucks to buy a few local ads saying “happy we kicked your pasty asses in 1865 and we’ll do it again in 2012!”
aimai
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Wash-inton is chock full a damn yanka simpathizers.
Cat Lady
Abraham Lincoln nailed it in 1860:
They’re traitors: undemocratic, unAmerican, and revanchist. Always were and always will be.
demo woman
No where in the proclamation by the fine Governor of VA did I see the word slavery.
Virginians were just fighting for their homes.
Bad Horse's Filly
Maybe we should have just let them secede.
blondie
(with tounge firmly in cheek) slavery? this ain’t about no slavery, its about State’s rights you silly Yankee. That makes it all better!!
J.W. Hamner
If Canada came down and kicked our ass in the bloodiest conflict in our nation’s history, I think that might leave a mark. We probably wouldn’t get over it in a 150 years even.
Not saying it’s right, just saying I understand it to some extent.
I honestly do think most “Confederate History” fans aren’t at all racists and are just looking for things to be proud of in their regions’ history… but there’s gotta be a less racially charged way to do so.
Zifnab
I can haz reding comeprayhenshon?
No one ever suggested the Governor of VA said the word slavery. We’re all just refusing to do the little Confederate Army Two Step around the 800 pound elephant in the room.
arguingwithsignposts
@scav
I’m thinking this would be perfect for Balloon Juice or Sadly, No! ratf**king.
And in keeping with the spirit, I’m declaring April, 2010 National Bring Back the Reply To Arrow Month. We surround you, Cole!
demo woman
Is it really possible to write a proclamation about confederacy history month and not mention the word slavery?
That is one talented gov. Gee!
Zinfab… that was tongue in cheek.
Kryptik
The romanticization of the Confederacy usually boils down to contempt of “the north” and of the nebulous “them”, usually anyone not of a proper skin color or ethnicity. The “states right” bunk usually leaves out the reasons behind wanting “states rights”, i.e. the ability for a state to legally discriminate without interference from that damn authoritarian tyrannical Washington that there.
Lisa K.
I dunno, but I hear Germany is bringing back “Nazi History Month,” too, and Russia is focus-grouping “Gulag History Month”.
Dave L
Instead of constantly opposing white southern bigots’ endless struggle to claim all of regional pride for themselves, isn’t it time for the other proud sons and daughters of the south to respond in a more positive fashion, by promoting their own celebrations of antebellum civilization?
It’s time for South Carolina to start recognizing Nat Turner day! – An equal opportunity celebration of the other Deep South war of resistance! I’m sure that no Son of the Confederacy could do otherwise than enthusiastically embrace this memorial to the sacred cause of violence in the service of liberty!
arguingwithsignposts
@J.W. Hammer
If we’d ever been a willing part of the Canadian union and then told them to piss off, that analogy might actually work.
scarshapedstar
The Yankee media continues to cover this up, but Fort Sumter was actually attacked by Union plants… and that’s how ACORN was born.
robertdsc
Well, our White House was burned by the Canadians and we got over it. These tards refuse to get over it.
Zifnab
Being a southerner who takes pride in the Civil War is a lot like being a German taking pride in WW2 (or WW1 for that matter). It’s something to morn and regret. Anyone who takes pride in the Civil War is either a treasonous sympathizer or a lunatic.
Comrade Dread
Well, I’ll be empathetic and fair and acknowledge that they fought for their own freedom and the right to institute a government more to their liking, so there is some reason to celebrate that.
Of course almost all of that good will is immediately lost by the fact that they were also fighting to keep black people enslaved.
And the fact that they fought to continue to keep black people enshrined in law as inferior for the next 100 years just a giant ‘F*** you’ to them and to the U.S. government pretty much burns the rest and puts them squarely in the “jackasses we don’t need to celebrate” category.
Zifnab
/Fixed
I was raised on the notion that the US won the war of 1812. It wasn’t until high school US History, when we studied the war more in depth, that I got enough of an education to realize it was – at best – a Pyrrhic victory.
demo woman
Using slaves as labor prevented others from earning a living. How free market folks justify this is beyond me. I live in the south and still hear stories about how the slaves were treated “good”.
Belafon (formerly anonevent)
demo woman @23:
They want it to be about states rights, and have everyone ignore that it was about deciding that slavery was evil and could no longer be supported by the country. The problem with their argument is what the states said when they seceded. This is from the Texas Ordinance of Secession:
The Grand Panjandrum
So Virginians can once again proudly celebrate TREASON!
R-Jud
@Rick Massimo:
Lincoln was a Democrat? That’s news to me.
Josh Huaco
Will they celebrate by burning down Richmond after the gov sneaks out wearing his wife’s dress? Because if they did, I’d be all for this.
wonkie
Conservatism isn’t a political philosophy. People are conservatives because they see politics and history in an ego centered way: it’s all about them and how they feel. For a conservative what you fight for is immaterial; the usual array of jingoistic slogans are sufficient justification for killing large numbers of people. What matters to a conservative is winning and losing. They hate losing because it makes them feel like losers and love winning because it makes them feel like winners. The real world consequences of the war don’t matter; perceptions of reality can be adjusted to be more satisfying to their egos, if necessary, when the war is over.
This is why conservatives are still traumatized over Viet Nam: we lost. So they rewrote history to make the loss the fault of the Democrats and never consider the issue of whether or not we should have fought there in the first place. The fact that we are now friends and trading partners with Viet man, a relationship we could have achieved more easily without the war, is not acknowledged. The only thing about the Viet Nam war that concerns them is their ego bruising over losing: that can’t be tolerated. Acknowedge that we shouldn’t have gone in in the first place? Can’t do that. That means admitting to error. Nope, we lost, therefore to protect conservative egos someone else has to be blamed but no admission of error or acceptance of responsiblity will ever happen.
Same with the Civil War. Many modern conservatives (is that a contradiction? Modern conservatives?) identify with the Confederacy;therefore it is necessary to rewrite history into a narrative that is more satisfying to their egos. Thus the war was not about slavery, the brave citizen soldiers were fighting for small government and defending their homes, yabbity, yabbity, yabbity. Can’t just say that the Confederates were wrong. Can’t admit error or accpet responsiblity. That’s not how conservaties roll.
HRA
“If someone can explain to me why it is so important for people on the losing end of a war they fought to perpetuate an evil institution like slavery to be “recognized,” I would really love it. Why would anyone willingly be associated with that?”
First of all they do not think slavery was an evil institution. The Old South has been glorified through a lot of fiction and they have bought into it. They don’t consider having lost the war. They think it was stolen from them.
I have to say people who live in the past should be sent there to experience it first hand.
Elie
I guess that its ok to think that because the actual word slavery wasnt used, that somehow this little celebratory week isnt about racism. Does anyone remember why the Civil War was fought and what about State’s Rights presented as the salient issue? Well, it was slavery and the right of white people to own, buy and sell black people. The Civil War was triggered when the folks in the South wanted to expand the ability to sell slaves across state lines in the new Western states.
So its all well and good to say that the Civil War and the Confederacy was just about State’s Rights, and that if Canada invaded the US we would be aggrieved as well, but please do not kid yourself about the underlying issue — it is all about slavery and the message certain white people keep reinforcing with each other that they believe themselves STILL to be the privileged and righteous owners of other humans beings — the privileged and superior owners, by the way.
Mumphrey
Because they’re assholes.
That’s all I have. I have forebears who were confederate leaders. Not just the nobodies who fought and died at the front, but military and political leaders. I’m not proud of them; I think they chose the wrong side; I think they were good little fascists who were a few years too early; they were oppressors, not heroes. We’d be better off asa country if we just pulled down all the confederate statues and renamed every “Rober E. Lee” and Jefferson Davis” and “Stonewall Jackson” street and avenue and building in the country. I don’t care that they were “brave” or that they were only “defending their homeland” or that it was a “noble lost cause” or any other such bullshit. We need to get over this.
I know, though, that there are still a lot of racists in this country, and a lot of spoiled white kids with no empathy, and who long, for whatever twisted reason, to go back to the days of slavery. But they’re assholes. And we need to call them out as such.
scarshapedstar
I’ve been a Saints fan all my life, but that doesn’t mean I take pride in their entire history.
Seriously, though. I grew up in in St. Tammany Parish, Louisiana, occasional (when he’s not in prison) home of David Duke. I’ve spent summers in North Carolina. I’ve been a Democratic fundraiser in rural Georgia. If there’s one thing I learned about people who display a confederate flag on their porch, their pickup, or their person, it’s that they will unironically use the word ‘nigger’, even with people they barely know.
I’m not saying they would lynch anyone. I’m not even saying that they’re openly rude to black people. But it’s a tribal identifier, and most of these “history buffs” can’t even spell the word ‘confederacy’. There’s nothing good to say about it.
This bill, let’s not kid ourselves, is meant as a giant “fuck you” to Obama, and not because of the content of his character. That’s red meat to a certain breed of Southerner. If you live here you’ve at least encountered one of them. I can’t attest as to how many Virginians are really tuned in to this message, but that’s the one this fine Governor is trying to send.
GregB
Glory days, they’ll pass you by. Glory days in the blink of a young slaves eye. Glory days….
Zifnab
Glenn Beck will fill you in on the details shortly.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
This is excellent news for J.E.B. Stuart.
GregB
Oh yeah.
I also always ask those dildos who fly their Confederate Flag why they use that flag instead of the last flag that the Confederates flew?
The white flag of surrender.
cleek
heritage, not hate!
it’s kindof like how all the people who live between Lake George and Albany, NY celebrate the birthday of the great American general who captured Fort Ticonderoga and who lead the colonies to victory in the battle of Saratoga: the legendary Benedict Arnold !
every January 14th, we would all renounce our citizenship and pretend to be British subjects – as we were meant to be.
tradition, not treason!
or not.
Fax Paladin
Nice bit of doubletalk in the whereases. Of course, if he actually meant any of that, he’d’ve proclaimed “Civil War History Month” instead…
Elizabelle
When do we get Massive Resistance Month?
I most recently heard the phrase “our heritage” in Eyes on the Prize rebroadcast last week.
It was being spoken by Governor Ross Barnett, who stood firmly against the JFK administration’s backing the right of James Meredith to enroll in Ole Miss in 1962. Two people died in the riot that followed before Meredith was permitted to register.
http://www.nytimes.com/1987/11/07/obituaries/ross-barnett-segregationist-dies-governor-of-mississippi-in-1960-s.html?pagewanted=1&pagewanted=print
Mark S.
@ scarshapedstar
That it certainly is, but if you want to succeed in the GOP, it is apparently an important constituency. I marvel every four years how GOP nominees make a pilgrimage to Bob Jones University and talk about how great the Confederate flag is just to win frigging South Carolina. Couldn’t someone like McMaverick write that fucking state off and concentrate on the other 46 or so less racist states? Apparently not.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@scarshapedstar #48:
Well you have to admit, electing another tall, skinny guy with big ears from Illinois was bound to get on the last nerve of some people in the south.
Elizabelle
Incidentally, good luck finding the word “Massey” on the Richmond Times Dispatch’s website front page today.
Massey, owner of the WV mine disaster site, is based in Richmond.
All you will see is “WV mine.”
Nothing here to see, folks.
(Paper is known as the “Times Disgrace” to locals.)
J
Since there have already been some splendid quotations, I’ll add one of my favorites, about heroes, black and white, worthy of being celebrated.
For the Union Dead
Relinquunt Ommia Servare Rem Publicam.
The old South Boston Aquarium stands
in a Sahara of snow now. Its broken windows are boarded.
The bronze weathervane cod has lost half its scales.
The airy tanks are dry.
Once my nose crawled like a snail on the glass;
my hand tingled to burst the bubbles
drifting from the noses of the crowded, compliant fish.
My hand draws back. I often sign still
for the dark downward and vegetating kingdom
of the fish and reptile. One morning last March,
I pressed against the new barbed and galvanized
fence on the Boston Common. Behind their cage,
yellow dinosaur steamshovels were grunting
as they cropped up tons of mush and grass
to gouge their underworld garage.
Parking spaces luxuriate like civic
sandpiles in the heart of Boston.
a girdle of orange, Puritan-pumpkin colored girders
braces the tingling Statehouse,
shaking over the excavations, as it faces Colonel Shaw
and his bell-cheeked Negro infantry
on St. Gaudens’ shaking Civil War relief,
propped by a plank splint against the garage’s earthquake.
Two months after marching through Boston,
half of the regiment was dead;
at the dedication,
William James could almost hear the bronze Negroes breathe.
Their monument sticks like a fishbone
in the city’s throat.
Its Colonel is a lean
as a compass-needle.
He has an angry wrenlike vigilance,
a greyhound’s gentle tautness;
he seems to wince at pleasure,
and suffocate for privacy.
He is out of bounds now. He rejoices in man’s lovely,
peculiar power to choose life and die-
when he leads his black soldiers to death,
he cannot bend his back.
On a thousand small town New England greens
the old white churches hold their air
of sparse, sincere rebellion; frayed flags
quilt the graveyards of the Grand Army of the Republic
The stone statutes of the abstract Union Soldier
grow slimmer and younger each year-
wasp-waisted, they doze over muskets
and muse through their sideburns…
Shaw’s father wanted no monument
except the ditch,
where his son’s body was thrown
and lost with his “niggers.”
The ditch is nearer.
There are no statutes for the last war here;
on Boylston Street, a commercial photograph
shows Hiroshima boiling
over a Mosler Safe, the “Rock of Ages”
that survived the blast. Space is nearer.
when I crouch to my television set,
the drained faces of Negro school-children rise like balloons.
Colonel Shaw
is riding on his bubble,
he waits
for the blessed break.
The Aquarium is gone. Everywhere,
giant finned cars nose forward like fish;
a savage servility
slides by on grease.
The ancient owls’ nest must have burned.
Hastily, all alone,
a glistening armadillo left the scene,
rose-flecked, head down, tail down,
and then a baby rabbit jumped out,
short-eared, to our surprise.
So soft!- a handful of intangible ash
with fixed, ignited eyes.
Too pretty, dreamlike mimicry!
O falling fire and piercing cry
and panic, and a weak mailed fist
clenched ignorant against the sky!
Robert Lowell
Tazistan Jen
The South is just never ever going to change, is it? My daughter was telling me an awful story about that girl in Mississippi who wanted to bring her girlfriend to the prom. The held a fake prom for her, which seven kids attended, and didn’t tell her about the prom that everyone else went to. I just . . . can’t conceive of the world view that allows this kind of meanness to a teenager. All the kids and all the parents who snuck around and kept secrets, just to spite her. Ugh.
Lincoln was a great man and my favorite president, but I really think he may have made a mistake in not letting the South go. They are their own country, and apparently always will be.
Elie
That Left Turn @ 57
This :-)
Elizabelle
Let us not forget that Virginia’s telegenic new governor is a proud law school grad of Pat Robertson’s fine institution, Regent University.
Squid696
I believe Mississippi’s Declaration of Secession is the worst of all of the Declarations of Secession.
A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery– the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
http://avalon.law.yale.edu/19th_century/csa_missec.asp
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
Hey cleek, just to make sure we’re not missing the other half of the story on account of our cognitive selection bias, can you link us to where some liberals declared it Weather Underground Heritage Month. I imagine this must have happened somewhere. Berkeley, CA? Boulder, CO? Help me out, I’m drawing a blank here.
SRW1
And the party of Lincoln is going to take this? Times must have changed!
kay
I’m going to look at this as an opportunity to take a moment and just be really, really grateful that they lost.
My, my. Imagine what a different result might look like, now.
patty gann
well, maybe because our ancestors died fighting for the confederacy and we are proud of them. my ancestors didn’t have slaves. when the south seceded from the union and went to war, they served just like you would do if your state was invaded. my great uncle was hung from a tree in front of his kids by sherman’s thugs on his march to atlanta. it really is no more than honoring your ancestors.
if you read a whole lot about the civil war you will find that it was about slavery and a whole lot more.
Martin
They’re just gearing up for the Great War of Hafrican Aggression.
Michael D.
And Canada ranks above you! So much for that socialist healthcare we have being the precursor to socialism!
kay
Squid696
Thanks so much, and also to the person who posted the Texas declaration. I hadn’t read these.
scarshapedstar
Yeah, well, the rest of the country is living in the 21st century and snickering about how the South hasn’t noticed yet. PUNK’D!
Kirk Spencer
@ 61 Tazistan Jen,
No, they’re not. I’ve said this before, I’ll say it again. The south is an oriental culture. Three things dominate the culture, and their very nature is such that they resist change.
The three things are ancestry, face, and class.
Who your ancestors were and what they did matters, often more than anything you did or will ever do. Until, of course, you become an ancestor. Elders are almost ancestors and treated as such.
Face — appearances matter more than reality. There is extraordinary shame to be had in looking less than “right”. During the peak of the recession, the one type of business that never seemed to falter was the beautician.
Class — you must never get above your station, nor let those below you believe otherwise. You may be permitted to increase your station but it’s always at the allowance of those above, not at your own insistence. In conjunction with face, you must never appear to BE one with the lower classes. You may mingle, but you must never demean yourself. Note this doesn’t mean you must be a prurient prick — it’s culturally right to drink beers and watch nascar and all that. But when you get in small groups they must be YOUR people. If in doubt, use your fellow church members as your guide. (you WILL attend church.)
ThresherK
Can anyone tell me if other countries reenact battles on this kind of scale, with the requisite “honoring both sides” stuff?
That’s the kind of parade which should go over big in Budapest, Prague and Warsaw.
some other guy
Because “free market” boosters don’t really give two shits about labor. All that matters to them is how much profit the owners can turn.
Hart Williams
There are two reasons for this, both with contemporary parallels.
First, the poor bastards of the Confederacy were sold a bill of goods about “freedom” and “states rights” and sent out to fight — not to protect the private “property” of the few wealthy landowners who could afford to own slaves, but actually against their own best interests. (“tea parties” come to mind.)
And that still seems crazy, when you consider that virtually every Southern state’s statement of Secession contained specific reasons relating to slavery. But it was all wrapped up in a shining frosting of duty, honor, country, freedom and liberty, with the Founding Fathers tossed in for good measure. (Remember, there were many years of propaganda, and a long proxy war in Kansas beforehand.)
Secondly, AFTER the war, nobody could live the the idea and the shame that what had been fought for was as terrible as slavery, and our good father, grandfather, uncle, brother, etc. could NOT have died so ignobly. And so, the idea of the “Lost Cause” was born. And no one dared to challenge it. The North was weary, and sold freedom down the river in the stolen election of 1876, where Hayes bargained away Reconstruction in return for a House victory over Tilden (who won the popular vote, BTW.)
The Southerners would not honor “Decoration Day” (nor, for that matter, would they have been welcomed) which was promoted by the G.A.R. to decorate the graves of the fallen and the veterans who had died after the War. Decoration Day finally became “memorial day” which doesn’t really memorialize much, just a generic holiday and an excuse to get drunk in a motorboat.
They had their OWN decoration day, for many years, and developed their own, parallel history.
Part of it really got going by “Swift-boating” President Grant, as being the pawn of corrupt men, of being a lousy president, and of being a drunken general (a calumny begun by Copperhead papers after Shiloh.) If you will go to the White House web bio, you will see how effective it was.
(Note: Robert E. Lee, when confronted with the slanders against Grant, told Washington and Mary’s honcho that if he ever heard another word against General Grant, that Lee and the college now known as Washington and Lee would part company.)
And the Lost Cause, and the “War of Northern Aggression” and separate names of major battles, i.e. Southern: Sharpsburg, Northern: Antietam. Bull Run for the North, Manassas for the South. And so on.
To this day, you can run a pro-Southern film like The Outlaw Josey Wales, with the “bluebellies” as enemies, but you can’t have an “Undefeated” without the Southerners all being gracious and noble and all that bullshit. BECAUSE it would not play in the South. On the other hand, Northerners have gone to see “Birth of a Nation,” “Gone With The Wind” and a zillion other Southern apologist films, and the victors never boycott the evil lunacy of them.
Just a couple of weeks ago, some bug fuck crazy Southern congressman referred to the “War of Yankee Aggression” on the floor of the House. The North never smacked down the South for this crap, and it was allowed to fester and breed, just as the 1875 Civil Rights law ceased being enforced after the Grant Administration (another reason he’s been libeled), was declared unconstitutional in 1883, and was essentially resurrected in the 1965 Civil Rights Act.
Nobody wants to think that their grand-dad died defending the monstrousity of slavery, just as no one in Texas will admit that remembering the “Alamo” would be to remember that Texas revolted against Mexico when Mexico outlawed slavery and after a couple years of being ignored, meant to enforce their law. THEN those “noble” Texans revolted against the “monster” Santa Ana.
You CAN rewrite history, and some have done just that. You CAN rewrite the “cause” you’re fighting for as “noble” and get dupes to die for your “property.”
We’ve seen it once. I wonder if we’ll see it again.
Sorry to be this long-winded, John, but you asked.
Catsy
It is notable how many of these “history buffs” who purport to be interested in their heritage, history, and regional pride wrap themselves not in the Stars and Bars, but in the Confederate Battle Flag.
Allan
I welcome Civil War II. I’ll enlist to fight in that war.
asiangrrlMN
Kirk Spencer, your reading of ‘oriental culture’ is superficial. Please don’t conflate the two. Asian cultures have their flaws and positives just like any other culture. In addition, they are changing as well. Go to Taipei. You will see a very different culture than the one you just described.
P.S. It’s probably the only bright spot in these people’s lives, anyway.
arguingwithsignposts
@patty gunn:
My ancestors (not slave owners) also fought for the confederacy. I am not proud of that fact, and as a native Texan, I’m not proud of the fact that the state went with the dickheads who liked owning slaves.
And, btw, their statesweren’t invaded.
Squid696
I grew up in the South. On both sides of my family, I am the descendent of veterans that fought for the CSA. As with anyone else that does even the slightest bit of research into the CSA, I find it to have been a vile, evil institution.
The first problem that Southener’s have in properly evluating the CSA is a basic lack of knowledge of what the CSA was and what it did. Most of it is outright lying and deception on the part of parents and educator’s, e.g., the whole States-rights BS.
However, another problem that I think most Southerner’s have with letting go of the CSA is that they believe that their ancestors supported it, so they have, too. They aren’t comfortable with breaking away from what they perceive to be the view of their parents, Grandparents, Great-Grandparents, whatever. They just can’t say to themselves, “that was their view, I think they were wrong.” Instead, they personally identify with their ancestors and the CSA. It should be simple to cut the cord, but it isn’t for them.
Alice Blue
I believe it was William Faulkner who said “In the south the past is not dead; it isn’t even past.”
My family has lived in the south for over 300 years but I feel like an outsider. I listen to the people in this small town, and it’s astonishing to me how seamlessly Confederacy worship and wingnut conservatism have merged. I agree with PTirebiter that Confederates in the Attic is an excellent book on this subject.
Kirk Spencer
@79 AsianrrlMN, I’m being precise in my terminology, though I recognize the implied insult and apologize for it.
I said oriental culture, not asian culture. There is a significant difference.
Fergus Wooster
@Belafon #5:
Fix’d.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
And now evolved into an alternate reality born of nothing more than habitual rebellion over many decades.
wonderful comment btw!!
Cacti
Good old Republican dog whistle politics.
They’ll hold on to the Southern Strategy until it sinks them to the bottom.
kay
Well, I can tell you how it looks from the other end. When I lived in the south for a coupla years (admittedly, very unhappily, I’m absolutely biased: I was miserable) I got the distinct impression that the confederate sympathizers meant to tell me something with the flags on the trucks and the rest.
I felt as if they meant to tell me I was “new” here (in the US) which is true, in a historical sense, since my ancestors were immigrants, and nowhere near the US during the Civil War.
I didn’t mind that, actually. I was completely comfortable in the “outsider” role, but I did get that feeling. They were reminding those of us who got here a little later that we weren’t as “American” as they are.
JGabriel
Hart Williams @ 76: Good post / essay. Thanks.
.
Mnemosyne
Not really. Every problem between the North and the South was rooted in slavery. Every single one.
Competing economic systems? Those two systems were an industrial system run by paid workers and an agricultural system run by slavery.
States’ rights? It was about the states’ rights to keep their slaves and expand slavery to new states, and nothing more. When newly admitted states decided to be free states and not slave states, riots broke out because the only “right” that the South wanted states to have was the “right” to own slaves.
Your forefathers fought and died for the right of rich people to own slaves. Period.
El Cid
My fellow Southerners who keep doing the whole ‘heritage’ thing with the Confederacy don’t give a shit about the African Americans who suffered and died during the war, or those who had to flee or who joined up with Union armies.
When they give a shit about memorializing that time period in history other than the dupes who fought for the plantation-owning slavery bastards, let me know.
But then, I’m from North Carolina, which boasted the highest number of Confederate deserters, so I’m able to think a bit more clearly.
Mnemosyne
Heh. I could have blown their minds with my 100 percent Italian name and my Revolutionary War ancestor that guarantees me membership in the DAR should I ever be insane enough to join. I simultaneously haven’t been here as long and have been here even longer than most of the Scots-Irish who make up most of the South.
Hart Williams
Let me add one piece of connecting tissue. Southerner James Knox Polk used the admission of Texas as a pretext for invading and annexing half of Mexico (after abandoning the famous “54’40” or Fight!”)
If you live in California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado, Arizona, and New Mexico, now you know where your state came from.
A big chunk of the Civil War was about whether the South could export slavery into those new territories. Grant, in his memoirs, called it the evilest war ever fought by a powerful nation against a weaker one. Lincoln’s famous speech at Cooper Union (the ‘speech that made Lincoln president’) was entirely about whether the federal government could prohibit slavery in the territories.
See: http://history1800s.about.com/od/abrahamlincoln/a/lincolncooperu.htm
In 2000, in a little-reported bit of election coverage, while the MSM was claiming that McCain was beaten in South Carolina because of a whispering campaign about a black baby via Karl Rove, the BIG kerfuffle was the John McCain didn’t proudly support the Confederate flag. The Sons of Confederate Veterans not only opposed him, but in 2008, they semi-merged with certain new Southern PACs, which I wrote at length about elsewhere. In 2008, McCain didn’t make the same mistake in SC. He had learned his lesson.
Neo-Confederate organizations still thrive, as John Ashcroft nearly got in trouble for his membership in during his Attorney General hearings, except the story just quietly vanished. As usual. See the Southern Poverty Law Center’s site if you want to learn more about Neoconfederates.
Oh, and Texas is the only state to ever fight for slavery TWICE. When was the last time you ever saw a pro-Northern film that wasn’t counterbalanced by Southern “nobility” a la “Gettysburg”? Its sequel “Gods and Generals” was such a gushing paen to Southern general Stonewall Jackson that I have never been able to sit all the way through it.
The losers never forget; the victors never remember.
Before you hurl insults at me, at least go to the link and read the Cooper Union speech, which has been forgotten in the conscious revision of history that began in the late 19th Century and continues to this day.
Cacti
If you really want to piss off a modern Republican, burn a Confederate Flag.
kay
Everyone jeered at the “gorgeous mosaic” phrase, remember?
I actually bought it. You’re a shiny thread with that crazy background! Celebrate!
I still do, in a lot of ways, although it’s probably naive. It’s why I was completely comfortable as an “outsider”. The whole “club I don’t want to join” syndrome. Thanks, anyway. I’ll just be blundering through alone, due North!
EFroh
My guess is that McDonnell intends to run for the GOP slot when Sen. Webb comes up for reelection in 2012 (VA only allows one term to our governors and I’m sure McDonnell has his sights set on a GOP presidential bid in 2016 (or 2012, but he has zero foreign affairs cred, which won’t hurt him in the GOP primary, but will hurt him in a possible match-up with Obama)). Assuming that McDonnell does make a bid for the GOP primary, he’s running for the hearts of the teabaggers against Liz Cheney (who will probably run for the same slot instead of going back home to Wyoming where she belongs). Thus we get crap like this Confed declaration and the earlier anti-gay moves to suck up to the pissed off white guys/gals that are the teapartiers.
scarshapedstar
LOL! That would be freakin’ awesome. It would be great if we could get a couple hundred people together to burn them en masse at the statehouse.
ThatLeftTurnInABQ
@Cacti:
Or if you want to be polite about it, just recite the Pledge of Allegience with feeling the next time the occasion arises, paying close attention to the historical context and meaning of each the phrases in it. For something the wingers love so much, it’s amazing what a pro-Union statement it is.
eemom
once again, this is what happens when people don’t fucking VOTE.
This is the fault of every “disillusioned,” “unmotivated,” firebag asshole who let this Neanderthal and his gang of prehistoric slime take the election last November.
gnomedad
@Kirk Spencer 83:
Since you bring it up, can I ask you to elaborate a bit?
kc
See, the Civil War wasn’t really about slavery. It was about freedom. Specifically, the freedom to be able to own slaves. And also, the freedom to prevent other states from harboring your state’s runaway slaves.
You Yankees will never get it.
Polish the Guillotines
Well, I’m gonna go full Godwin here.
Germany — you remember, the country who invaded greater Europe, committed genocide, etc. — has laws on the books making Nazi symbols (under the umbrella of “unconstitutional organizations”) illegal.
Now, I’m not saying I agree with suppression of speech — even if it’s freakin’ Nazis — but the point is, Germany has demonstrated some ownership of responsibility for one of the most brutal blood-lettings in modern history by officially rejecting the symbols of those who perpetrated the atrocities.
The Confederate States of America believed they had a god-given right to own human beings like so much furniture. They were fucking slave owners. And they LOST THE FUCKING CIVIL WAR.
I’m not advocating making the symbols of the slave-holding South illegal, but holy fucking shit.
How deeply, unrepentantly racist do you have to be to actively seek the rehabilitation of those symbols!? What pride can you take in glamorizing the losing side of a war rooted in the argument over whether or not to expand the reach of an institution that reduced human beings to pack animals?
On second thought, I’m really not so sure the Southern states were the ones who lost.
artem1s
I’d pay money to see this re-enactment.
Another example of re-writing history is that the south didn’t invade and plunder the north. Morgan’s raiders were storming through Indiana and Ohio long before Sherman’s march to the sea. Morgan just sucked as a commander, didn’t know the lay of the land and failed at guerrilla warfare miserably.
I have never understood why Lee is so venerated either. He had no control over his generals (lost 2 of his best because of it) and was only successful as a commander as long as he stayed in his own back yard. he was the Montegomery of the civil war, not the Patton. Imagine what would have happened if the 3rd Army had refused to leave France after D-Day. Also, too, a traitor to his country. Virginia AND the US.
kc
well, maybe because our ancestors died fighting for the confederacy and we are proud of them. my ancestors didn’t have slaves. when the south seceded from the union and went to war, they served just like you would do if your state was invaded.
With all due respect, your ancestors were chumps. They fought so that some rich bastards in Charleston and Savannah could have slaves.
Rick Massimo
@R-Jud: No, he wasn’t; Republicans didn’t think it was cool then. I’m speaking in terms of the process of looking back fondly on, um, declaring war against the United States of America.
Hart Williams
I don’t doubt that the majority of Confederate soldiers truly believed that they were fighting for noble and abstract causes.
They were constantly bombarded with the finest rhetoric that money could buy. But it WAS about the economic interests of the plutocracy, even if they never knew WHO they were really dying for. Just give ’em a bible and a gun and tell ’em they were fighting the BIG GOVERNMENT of the Northern Aggressors.
If you’ll look at the rhetoric of that time, it is eerily similar to the “libertarian” free market, freedom, states’ rights, 10th Amendment, Big government, etc. rhetoric of our own time.
Some historians note that it was the very “lassaiz faire” nature of Southern government that doomed them. The weak central government couldn’t levy taxes or raise troops, and each state insisted on being in control of their own little armies and taxes etc.
Who knows? Last time it was abolition and states’ rights.
This time, it may well be abortion and states’ rights.
Hart Williams
And thank you for the kind words, commenters.
Polar Bear Squares
If this happens, can wingnuts quit complaining about BET now?
We got a month. You got a month.
We’re even now right?
You can stop sending me badly written junk e-mails about how pissed of you are about the NAACP as well.
trollhattan
@artem1s:
Hey lookie, the Magical Reply Arrows(tm) return to Capistrano!
I wonder if the New South wants us to give back Arlington Cemetary, after exhuming all the buried Yanks, naturally.
chrome agnomen
‘you defend the war you had, not the war you wish you had.’
the south was largely left out of the revolutionary conflict, so that one is being relegated to lesser status. see texas school books vs jefferson. and so they are left with celebrating the one they were in, even at the cost of ignoring the underlying reasons and the fact of the ass-kicking received. i’ve lived in the western hills of virginia for many many years, and i never tire of warning them that ‘we’ll’ come down and kick their asses again if they keep mouthing off. they just laugh at this crazy yankee, (FTFY), which is good, as they out-gun me about 6 million to zero.
also, too, plus, in addition, moreover, not to mention, “who you going to feel better than?”
morzer
@artem1s:
I am sorry, but this is tripe. Montgomery was a very cautious commander, who built up overwhelming superiority before attacking, and preferred the defensive. Lee was almost compulsively aggressive and a gambler – Seven Days Battles, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg are all evidence of this. He won a lot of his battles, but paid a price in men that was higher than the South could arguably afford. As for losing generals, leaders were expected to be in the front, driving the men on. To blame Lee for losing commanders, especially when the means of communication were so minimal, is simply unrealistic in the extreme. You have to remember that Stonewall Jackson was shot by his own side, accidentally, at the end of the day, in gathering darkness. How was Lee supposed to stop that? As for treason, Lee chose to follow Virginia, so he can hardly be accused of betraying her. As he saw it, he put his country first. I don’t see Lee as a saint, but this sort of reassessment simply isn’t based on history.
geg6
I hate the south. There I said it. I do. I’ve spent time there, all over, and though there are pockets that I adore (Savannah, New Orleans), I would be happy to see it go as the vast majority of it is a hellhole AFAIC, filled with too many ignorant, hateful, superstitious, prideful rednecks. I am glad I’m a Yankee and I’d rather die than become a snowbird like so many I know. They and their political leaders want nothing more than the reinstatement of the Fugitive Slave Act so they can put Obama right where they think he belongs, in shackles and tied to a whipping post. I’m sick of people who fly that treasonous flag, I’m tired of pretending that glorification of the Confederacy isn’t seditious, and I’m seriously gonna punch in the neck the next asshole below the Mason Dixon Line who tells me that they celebrate and honor traitors because they were “brave” or had “honor.” No, they were cowards and had no honor at all. Brave and honorable people don’t need to subjugate others to feel good about themselves. States rights, my ass. The only right these assholes cared about was their right to be evil. Looks like nothing has changed there to me.
Hart Williams
Today’s date kept ringing a bell. Wikipedia:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/April_6
1832 – Indian Wars: The Black Hawk War begins – the Sauk warrior Black Hawk begins a war with the United States.
[The war that Lincoln served in.]
1862 – American Civil War: The Battle of Shiloh begins – in Tennessee, forces under Union General Ulysses S. Grant meet Confederate troops led by General Albert Sidney Johnston.
1865 – American Civil War: The Battle of Sayler’s Creek – Confederate General Robert E. Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia fights its last major battle while in retreat from Richmond, Virginia.
1866 – The Grand Army of the Republic, an American patriotic organization composed of Union veterans of the American Civil War, is founded. It lasts until 1956.
Anya
Someone should ask Sheila Johnson, BET co-founder – who endorsed Bob McDonnell for governor and Doug Wilder, who refused to endorse Deeds, what they think about this.
Elie
I just think they are scared. Scared and looking for some noble way to dress “scared” up.
This is a wound that continues to fester because the underlying need — for being “special”, for having a certainty about your place in the world, is so deep. Working class whites have taken a beating — largely at the hands of those they purportedly support — the corporatists, the Republican party — but they can’t show how they bleed and are not yet able to see what they have in common with their working class brown brethren…
But it HAS changed — this country is light years farther away from the days of the confederacy. We are without a doubt one of the most diverse countries in the world, and despite our histrionics, mostly get along with each other pretty well. Perfect, not, but much better than any other western nation of this size. Most others are pretty homogenous and the route to citizenship if you are a foreigner is pretty complex.
I remember a couple of years ago traveling through Ramstein Airforce base with my husband who is retired from the service. We had been traveling in central Europe for a couple of weeks and I remember how wonderful it was seeing our military and their families traveling back and forth from the US to Europe — brown, black, white – Asian, Latino, women, tall, short — I remember thinking WOW — We ARE the United States of America — all together now — how proud I was.
I keep thinking about that memory and reinforcing my good feelings against such shallow theatrics put on by people who really have no idea…living in a past that will never return – celebrating a cause that required the death of millions of young men to support oppression. It was a disgrace, but the generations that descend from that time, celebrate a different life now and one that is truly an example to other nations —
AnnaN
Feel free to leave a comment to the “esteemed” governor.
http://www.governor.virginia.gov/OurCommonwealth/Proclamations/2010/ConfederateHistoryMonth.cfm
I left the following:
“Someone of your ilk will ignore me or rationalize away my irritation with your insistence to proclaim April Confederate History Month but I will have my say nonetheless.
This makes you appear to be nothing more than a pathetic white man beholding to ignorant and racist individuals whose only claim to self-importance and personal achievement is the color of their skin.
It is disgusting that you help in the furtherance of this attitude.
I’m sure Jesus thinks highly of you.
With absolutely no respect…”
Fergus Wooster
@geg6:
I’m a Southerner, Texan no less, and I get it and take no offense. They preach “my country right or wrong” and yet glorify the Confederacy, celebrating just the one act of resistance/sedition that was completely motivated by the desire to continue to enslave fellow humans. Full stop. They were planning to expand into the territories, and to expand a slave-friendly empire southward (see Walker, Honduras, etc.).
Remember Brazil didn’t abolish slavery until the 1890’s. Take the excesses of American capitalism in Latin America, and imagine the CSA being the colonial power. ‘Nuff said.
These neo-Confederates are no better than Nazi apologists (There – I said it) and should be denounced as such. Apologies to Godwin.
Anne Laurie
@scav:
cleek
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ:
i’ll let russell field this one.
Mike in NC
Hardly a week goes by where I don’t overhear somebody complain, “These people are still fighting the Civil War down here”. It’s pretty much a fact, and with the passage of time the lies and myths continue to pile up.
As for McDonnell and his cronies, they’re just pandering assholes. Maybe next up they’ll try to bring back the Sunday “blue laws” in VA.
Donald G
As an expatriate Virginian who has long been troubled by the rise of the acolytes of Robertson and Falwell to holding the reigns of power in the Republican party in the Commonwealth, I am disgusted at the behavior of the current governor – even more so than I was over George Allen and Jim Gilmore – and the voters how put him there including, most probably, members of my own family.
I hope that, through his backwards actions, the current governor comes to be seen as an embarrassment to both his party and his state. For God’s sake, Mills Godwin was an ardent segregationist and supporter of massive resistance in the late fifties and early sixties, and even he, was smart enough to moderate his views and try to reach out to African Americans when he ran for won the governorship win 1965 (as the last democratic Governor elected by the Byrd machine). Even after democratic dominance was broken in Virginia and Godwin switched parties and was elected again in 1973 to a second (nonconsecutive) term, to my knowledge, neither he nor his successor, Republican John Dalton, were ever tone-deaf enough to suggest a Confederate History Appreciation Month.
I also don’t recall democratic governors Robb, Baliles and Wilder supporting such a thing, either.
No, but post-Reagan and post-Robertson/Falwell, we get goobers like George Allen and Jim Gilmore and this idiot and their quixotic quest to turn the clock back to 1953, to an age my paternal grandparents mourned the loss of, when everyone was publicly a believing Christian and black folk knew better than to try to come in the front door.
BobS
@Mark S.: The NAACP could get rid of official displays of the Confederate flag in South Carolina (and on the state flag in Mississippi) altogether by kicking their ongoing boycott up a notch.
A targeted boycott by black athletes of South Carolina and/or Clemson and Mississippi and/or Mississippi State football would have residents of those college football crazy states rethinking their veneration of their southern heritage.
Mike P
@ThatLeftTurnInABQ: Thread win?
Where I grew up, in a town in the southern part of Virginia called Martinsville (which George Packer just profiled in the New Yorker), there’s a rather upscale area called Chatmoss. Over in that neighborhood, the street names were things like “Stonewall Jackson Trail” and “J.E.B. Stewart Place”. Gag.
Mike P
@BobS: I’ve long wondered why this hasn’t happened. It would be the college football equivalent of “A Day Without a Mexican”.
Trust me…there’s nothing Southeners love more than a college football Saturday. Deny them that and you could bring the whole region to heel.
TuiMel
@Mnemosyne:
Your forefathers fought and died for the right of rich people to own slaves. Period.
Harsh, but, I think accurate – as an outcome if not an intent.
Svensker
@El Cid:
Ex-frigging-actly.
THERE IS A REPLY BUTTON! CALLOO CALLAY!
Anne Laurie
@patty gann:
Part of the ongoing tragedy of the Southern Rebellion is that it was largely fought then, and “commemorated” now, by a tribe whose historical memory is several thousand years of being driven to the stony fringes of a continent we once roamed, and then being evicted from even those barren margins via indentured servitude in the not-so-New-World. The Scots-Irish (my paternal ancestors) have been forged into the human equivalent of pit bulls, and while I understand at a deep emotional level the urge to defend “our” history from the lazy thank-goodness-we’re-smarter-than-those-people modernists, too often we’ve let ourselves be defined by the same robber-baron “aristocracy” that’s been manipulating us since at least the time of Elizabeth I. The genuine “bloodline Confederates” are as much an anachronistic tragedy as the other tribalists killing each other in Bosnia, Gaza, or the Congo.
WereBear
When I was in high school in Florida, those who had cars would never park them in one particular corner of the lot. This corner belonged to the Future Farmers of America, and they would remind outsiders of that by slashing the tires of intruding cars.
These were not happy 4-Her’s feeding a lamb with a bottle. Being a Future Farmer was just a way of avoiding academic rigors with a trade school curriculum; not that there’s anything wrong with that.
Except these guys were not looking forward to anything but hard labor in the citrus groves or stooping over strawberry plants. This was a gang who enforced the boundaries of their bit of power because that was all they could do. And the pickups with the rifle racks and Confederate flags were all they had.
And that’s still the case.
patty gann
“Your forefathers fought and died for the right of rich people to own slaves. Period.”
like i said in my previous post, my ancestor was hung from a tree by sherman’s troops in nc. i don’t know what you would call an invasion but that pretty much qualifies in my book. i imagine a lot of people fought because there wasn’t a choice. you either fought to protect your property from invaders or you didn’t.
my ancestors came to the us in the 1600’s; every branch in my family tree. some fought on the british side and some fought with the “rebels” in the revolutionary war. i’m proud of both; some of you may say what you will about which side the proper side was; i’m proud of both sides. just like i’m proud of my ancestors that fought in the civil war. southerner’s property was confiscated after the war and many people were left starving. the south was a war zone; cities destroyed. is any war noble? i don’t think so.
do i wish the south would secede from the union again? hell, yes, ’cause i don’t live there any more. let my people go!!
jrosen
I repeat my proposal: after a population exchange, Texas (and if they wish, OK, LA ,MS and AL) secede and form their own little 3rd world country. We get all all of their intelligent, creative, and realistic people, and they get our bigots, racists, homophobes, and crypto-fascists (some are not so crypto any more). We take back things like the Hunstville arsenal, Fort Hood (named for a Reb General BTW, who destroyed his own army by suicidal attacks at Atlanta and Nashville) and Johnson Space Center. They can keep the Alamo and the Texas School Book Depository. In about 20-30 years, deprived of oil revenue (it is running low, after all) and Federal money (of which my state NJ pays proportionately the most) they will be (re) annexed by Mexico and we can wave them a final goodbye with our Union flags. I’m sure all of us will be better off.
Joseph Nobles
The Virginians were just fighting to protect their homes.
Their homes and all the property contained therein.
I was born in west Alabama. If there’s ever a Confederate flag burning, count me in. I’ll also chip in for a statue of Sherman to be installed somewhere in Atlanta or South Carolina.
“Let my people go.” ROFL.
Elie
@Anne Laurie:
Wow — incredibly profound comment Annie.
drkrick
@patty gann:
With all due respect, if you read up on the 70 year effort by a minority of Southern politicians to engineer secession, you’ll find it was really about very little other than slavery. Which is not to say the North fought them because they were against slavery.
Once the war started, all kinds of other issues were used as fig leaves, and all of the kinds of grievance that accompany any war were accumulated. But without the grim determination of certain powerful Southerners to retain the right to own other human beings as property, there would never have been an American Civil War. Anyone who is proud of that history is either ill informed or morally defective.
patty gann
@Anne Laurie:
my ancestors were also scots-irish and i agree with much of what you say. frankly all wars suck. i well remember how our vietnam veterans were treated with contempt when they returned from war. our gov’t sent them there the same way the confederate gov’t sent men to die. but the men who died were just cannon fodder and to not honor their sacrifice is shameful to me. my husband is in the air force and i wonder if one day his memory and sacrifice will be held in contempt for fighting in the wars we are involved in today.
Sly
I’d grant a Confederate War Heroes commemoration in exchange for the creation of a national holiday celebrating the life of William T. Sherman.
Now there was a war hero. We could use a no-nonsense guy like that in Iraq and Afghanistan. I’m sure my Southern war-supporting friends would agree. I know my Northern war-supporting friends certainly do.
Chuck Butcher
I live in Baker City, Baker Co, OR which is named for the only sitting Senator (Baker) to serve in combat during his term.
Elie
@patty gann:
Patty
History is complex.
My father’s great great great grandfather, Richard Hill was born in 1792 and immigrated to Georgia from Ireland. He took a Black/Cherokee common law wife and before the Civil War, he was able to leave land to their offspring (about 11 of them). Some of this but not all was confiscated during the Civil War. My bloodline on my father’s side zig zagged through white and black and Cherokee. My father’s “people” (informally attributed), include the white Mayor of Milledgeville GA back in the 1800s..
You know only your story and some of the story of your ancestors. History belongs to everyone is way more complex than you will allow. The blood of most white people living in this country from way back then has antigens from other races and tribes. That is reality. 30% of the HLA in black people in this country is “white”. How do you think that happened?
patty gann
@drkrick:
i never said i was proud of the history i said i was proud of my ancestor’s sacrifice. that’s a big difference. btw, the confederate flag means absolutely nothing to me. politicians always set the stage and the grunts are the ones to lose their lives. always been like that and always will be.
if you had an ancestor that fought for the confederacy would you be ashamed of him? knowing he was just a cog in the wheel?
Sly
@patty gann:
Speaking for myself: Yes.
But I have ancestors who fought on the side of Franco during the Spanish Civil War, so its an easy question for me to answer.
Mnemosyne
@patty gann:
It’s an “invasion” the same way that sending the National Guard into South Central LA in 1992 was an “invasion.” If the government is not allowed to keep the peace by putting down rebellions, I’m not sure what the point of having a government even is.
And I’ll weep for your poor hanged ancestor when Southerners bother to apologize for the strange fruit they left hanging all over the South all the way through 1968, more than 100 years after your ancestor was hanged for treason.
I would have thought that 50 years of killing strangers in revenge for your ancestor’s killing would have been enough but, nope, you guys had to go for the full 100 years.
Ruckus
Cole
As always one word answers are the best.
Racism. pure and simple.
How they got that way, why they still are that way, why they can’t see that they are not better than others and if fact worse, none of this matters.
Because they refuse to believe that they could be wrong. Because they refuse to believe that someone who doesn’t look exactly like them might be smarter and more capable than them. Because they are convinced, and constantly assured of these things. Because they have small minds and refuse to use even that amount of thought in a positive manner to figure out that they are wrong, their forefathers were wrong and that racism is just ignorance.
patty gann
@Mnemosyne:
jeez dude, what snark.
i’m not asking you to cry for anybody. as for the strange fruit, which i assume you are talking about is the lynching, not every southerner is prejudiced, now or in the past. jimmy carter and his ancestors come to mind as well as mine. my aunt marched behind martin luther king to selma and has a scar on her head from a police baton to prove it. it’s really easy to stereotype people.
it seems to me the north has a pretty sorry history post civil war with race relations. it also seems to me that the northern shipowners profited quite a bit from the slave trade so spare me your sanctimonious bs.
scav
@patty gann: There’s just a mite of difference between being proud of someone and insisting on a month that essentially holds up his “cause” as one worthy of state-endorsed celebration.
morzer
@patty gann:
Could we agree that sometimes good men fight for bad causes, and that one can remember them as courageous and good men, while regretting that they fought for the cause they chose?
Frank
Yankees don’t get it.
My ancestors wore the grey.
Honoring the Lost Cause isn’t about honoring my ancestors or others who wore the grey.
We can honor them without honoring the Cause.
Honoring the Lost Cause is all about putting them darkies back in their place.
Ya gotta know the code.
Alice Blue
All of the discussion about why nonslaveholders fought for the Confederacy reminds me of a story Shelby Foote told in Ken Burns’ documentary “The Civil War.” A raggedy, illiterate Confederate soldier had been taken prisoner. He was obviously not a wealthy slaveowner, so a Union soldier asked him why he was fighting.
His answer? “Cause you’re down here.” I had to chuckle at that.
patty gann: I had numerous ancestors who fought for the Confederacy; I am thinking in particular of my maternal great-great grandfather. He died of pneumonia a few months before the war ended, and it doesn’t make me proud. He did not live to see his daughters grow up, marry and have children. As a Confederate soldier and slaveowner, he fought for a cause that was wrong and was a participant in a great crime against humanity. Yet I cannot hate him. When I look at his daguerrotype, I see the faces of my grandmother and mother. When I read his letters and poems, I realize how much he loved and missed his family. I think he just wanted to whole thing to be over, no matter who won.
patty gann
@morzer:
thank you so much for coming up with the words that failed me. that is exactly what i was trying to say!
and no scav, there should not be a confederate history month. i totally agree.
Elie
@patty gann:
Peace to you…
Bernard
This is payback time from the white southerners. 40 years after giving it all up to Washington, the rich Southern White Male has America right where he wants her. this is sweet revenge for the poor Southern White Man losing the South for the second time. in the 1860s and in the 1960’s Washington imposed Civil Rights on the Southern Way.
Twisted inside out. Right out of the 1960’s era, except going in reverse.
St. Ronnie so eloquently copied Richard Nixon’s game plan. it worked for Nixon and it worked again with St. Ronnie.
and some liberals live in the deep red still-bleeding south. the south, of all places. it’s the 60’s all over again, just with better delivery, Frank Luntz for example.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Those good men proclaimed they would summarily execute any captured black man fighting for the north, and their white officers to boot. I am from the south, and I would call that “lost cause” a pure unadulterated evil one, that ended up costing around 3 hundred large Union troops sacrificed to break the south of their habit using men as common mules. No quarter for Confederate respect in my soul. it ought to be buried in the devils cave and sealed tight as Jim Dement’s ass.
fasteddie9318
@patty gann:
Really? One of those sides was fighting the war for the right to keep human beings as chattel based on the color of their skin. Being “proud” specifically of your ancestors who fought on both sides is one thing, I guess (if I had an ancestor who fought for the Confederacy I’d be anything but proud of it, but that’s just me), but proud of both sides? “Some of you may say what you will about which side the proper side was”? Seriously?
Honus
@Elizabelle: and a yankee to boot. He was born in Phily and went to BU. He was raised in NOVA, which is not, as george Allen was fond of pointing out, the real Virginia.
Honus
Not to go all Godwin, but the Nazi/Confederate comparison is not inapt. As Dr. Porsche sadly said of his country after the war “Who could say they were not involved?”
The difference is the Germans have enough sense to be ashamed. It’s 65 years later and I don’t see them asking for a “Nazi History Month” to celebrate their lost cause.
I’m always fascinated by the fact that at any reenactment there are 4 or 5 times as many confederates as Union reenactors, pretty much the opposite of the actual situation. Of course, if you read the books and watch the movies that have come out over the past 20 years, you’d think the South actually prevailed in The Recent Unpleasantness Between the States and that all the southern officers were not really slaveholders but simple, poetic, agrarian gentlemen. And equestrians. Don’t leave that out.
patty gann
@fasteddie9318:
if you will look back at my post (#129) you can see that i was referring to my ancestors who fought on both sides of the REVOLUTIONARY war.
like i said in a previous post, my ancestors have fought in every war, with the exception of the korean war, since the revolutionary war, and my husband is in the air force. and yeah, i’m proud of all of them; they stood up and were counted when it mattered. if by accident of birth and geography, my ancestors were from the north instead of the south during the civil war, they would no doubt have fought for the union.
have you stood up when it mattered and fought for this country fasteddie? i bet you do your fighting on blogs.
timb
@Belafon (formerly anonevent): Are you that was the Texas Declaration then and not part of their Constitution now? I’m pretty sure I read something similar to that at the border when I visited, except that the African part had an arrow pointing to an apparent recent addition of “wetbacks too!”
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Leaving aside your knowledge of Jim DeMint’s ass, on which you may answer to your own conscience, I think your post is intemperate and unfair. Good men have fought on the “wrong” side many times, and yet remained good men. You can’t blame the follies of some Southerners on everyone who wore the grey, nor can we assume that all Northerners were angels. Many Southerners didn’t execute blacks with arms on sight, many were not even slaveowners. I don’t justify their cause, and I have no truck with Lost Cause mythology, but I don’t see much point in talking at large, unfairly, about a group of men who died many years ago.
Yes, it is. You don’t find Confederates committing genocide as state policy, you don’t find medical experiments on human beings, and you don’t find war crimes on anything like the scale committed by the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS in Russia.
Honus
@patty gann: While a lot of my ancestors fought after they were drafted or conscripted, they were mostly proud to have avoided service. The ones I’ve talked to who fought in the last 4 or 5 wars don’t seem particularly proud of it or feel that it was an enjoyable experience they wanted their children to share. Invariably they took more satisfaction in wht they were able to achieve at home, having families, educating their children, establishing businesses and careers. My dad in particular, who spent 1942-1945 in Africa, Sicily and Italy said that was something he never wanted me to do.
And we’re immigrants, so I can’t say that my people fought on both sides of the American Revolution or even the Civil War. But there were definitely people with my last name on both sides of WWII, so maybe that gives me a different perspective.
timb
@ThresherK: Northern Ireland sure as hell celebrates battles lost, as do the Serbs.
Wile E. Quixote
Why would anyone willingly be associated with that?
Because they’re a bunch of lazy, useless, ignorant, hate-filled good-for-nothing racist shit golems. Oh wait, was that one of those “rhetorical” questions? Damn! Got me again.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@morzer:
I was responding to your comment that sounded a little bit too sweeping in supporting men who died a long time ago. The ones who didn’t support the cause of slavery and their families have my sincere apologies. The rest can rot in their dirt beds. Certainly intemperate, but that’s how i feel about it from being raised on the noble rebel soldier horseshit/
Honus
@morzer: I think you need to brush up on your Civil War history. Read some books written more than 50 years ago. the Civil War was anything but civil.
As far as genocide, the institution of slavery lasted here for quite a while. If you think it was benevolent, read Huckleberry Finn again and pay close attention this time.
LD50
@Sly:
Sherman was not a nice man:
kadzimiel
Funny, isn’t it, that when some Republican says this about other people, liberals get all outraged, and yet we feel perfectly comfortable being amused by it in our own, rather smug community, when one of our own says it.
Wile E. Quixote
@Sly:
Hear hear! My father used to have to travel to Charleston a lot on business, and he hated the place. Once when he was asked by someone how he liked Charleston he replied saying that it was a real pity that William T. Sherman didn’t have thermonuclear weapons during the March to the Sea.
I’ve long since decided that if I ever build a time machine that the first thing I do after I get done killing Hitler and Hitler’s mom* is that I’m going to give nuclear weapons to the Union Army. You remember Harry Turtledove’s Guns of the South. Well this is going to be “Nukes of the North”.
*If you build a time machine you’re required to try to kill Hitler. If you don’t you’re a dick, or a Nazi, or maybe a Nazi dick who’s also a member of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
morzer
@Honus:
Judging by your idiotic Godwin comparison, I’d say you know jack about the Civil War, and jack about historical reality. Only an idiot would try and compare Hitler’s regime to that of the Confederate states. No one said that the Civil War was nice, so don’t try attributing that pathetic strawman argument to someone else. The fact remains: no genocide, no vivisection or live medical experiments on human beings, no war crimes remotely like those in Russia. And since you don’t seem to grasp the obvious: slavery was vile, but it was not genocide. The Waffen SS did not serve under Lee, Jefferson Davis did not direct the genocide of 7 million living human beings, and Stonewall Jackson was not Dr Mengele in butternut.
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Supporting them? No, just pointing out that, although their cause was wrong, they were not monsters. Was that a little too complex for you to grasp?
scav
My great-great-great grandfather fought for the union, apparently after fighting an entire not so civil war with his father about enlisting. We’ve got the letter where dear old dad announces that his son still has a home to come to after being wounded and then wanders off to a fine rant about the things even the plastic hand of the Almighty (sic!) cannot make equal — we’ll draw a brief veil here but in addition to being ever so not PC in the current environment the statement strikes me as theologically shaky. He then gloats over Lincoln’s death (I hear your boss is dead) and then defames Lincoln’s replacement “alias Whiskey Johnson”. This is in Illinois/Iowa. We’ve sort of forgotten how messy things and causes were all over the place.
Granted, on the slightly different line, my grand-father shot my great-grandfather, but only after having first been chased around and shot at by same. We’re not 100% sure it was after being handed a gun by his mother, there were apparently repeated similar incidents (County Sheriff didn’t even arrest him. Took him off to dinner for a cooling off). So it may come easy to me to accept my ancestors as mixed, if lovable and astonishing, bags.
Honus
@morzer: Nope, not a bit of genetic engineering or experimentation involved in slavery. Or vivisection.
I think my grasp and knowledge of history is a bit more solid than somebody who thinks slavery and the civil war were devoid of moral atrocity
Brachiator
@Fergus Wooster:
An additional irony is that some Southerners, who could not stand living in an America in which slavery did not exist, moved to Brazil after the Civil War precisely because slavery still existed there. The descendents of these people, Confederados, still form a tiny but somewhat distinct sub-culture.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
Since we have no way of estimating how many slaves died from the trip over from Africa, died in bondage due to unsafe working conditions, how many families were dispersed in open air markets, and how many were brazenly abused – sexually and physically – during the several HUNDRED YEARS history of slavery in the new world, I’d suggest you don’t know WTF you’re talking about.
ETA: While it’s technically not “genocide” in the sense that the Holocaust was, the fact that they were basically breeding humans as animals makes it a distinction with very little difference.
Elie
While in the most technical sense, I guess this is true, this is a pretty unequivocal statement about a practice that one can only say has some genocidal influences. Whipping slaves, lynching slaves, separating families, retention in bondage skirts genocide only in the scope and method — no universal intent in slavery to destroy “property”. The dehumanization and degredation of the humans exploited and mistreated in this kind of bondage can barely be expressed as having been “better” than genocide. Your distinction is just not workable for me. Slavery WAS pretty much like genocide to thousands who died or were killed during the crossing, the thousands of run aways captured and punished or killed.
I am actually rendered rather inarticulate by your statement and made truly sad. There may be a difference between genocide and slavery, but its not a difference that should give any humanist comfort.
Honus
@morzer: Oh, and Stonewall Jackson was from my home town, and he was certifiably crazy and one of the most brutal warriors in history. Much of what he did would be considered war crimes today. Of course the same is true of Sherman and for that matter Phil Sheridan.
As I said, you need to read some history that isn’t a Shelby Foote fairy tale.
morzer
@Honus:
I see you’ve gone back to strawman arguments. Somehow, I am not surprised. Frankly, I am amazed you could peddle such nonsense and hope that no-one would call you on it. Your comparison was utterly inappropriate. Still, next time you want to explain how Huckleberry Finn shaped your knowledge of history, try telling a Jewish family that the Confederates were as bad as Hitler. I am sure you’ll be able to explain that the slaughter of their ancestors was just the same as maintaining slavery.
morzer
So you start by saying you have no idea what you are talking about, and somehow decide that Hitler and Jefferson Davis were the same? That’s idiotic. More to the point, you can’t blame several hundred years of slavery on the Confederates. We were discussing the Civil War, although you seem to have missed this subtle point. I repeat, the Confederates and their cause were wrong. They were not Nazis, and the comparison is a grotesquely offensive one.
lovable liberal
The South is filled with Jefferson Davis this, Robert E. Lee that, Stonewall Jackson the other, and Nathan Bedford Forrest shit. Many white people there still regard these traitors as heroes.
My grandmother, born 1899, still resented Reconstruction, but it’s clear it didn’t go far enough to inculcate new political values into the vanquished Confederacy. Duh.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
Talk about your straw men. I note that you didn’t ask an African-American family about that comparison. HUNDREDS OF YEARS OF BONDAGE.
BTW, I think the whole “my misery compared to your misery” argument is bullshit. Slavery=Evil. Holocaust=evil. Therefore Holocaust=Slavery=Evil. Simple, really.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Now your being a smartass. And people who were willing to fight and to soak American soil with the blood of 600,000 souls for the right to own men as farm implements, get not even a whisper of kind word from me and yes, I would put them in the monster category. The ones who believed and supported the southern way of life.
We ought to ban the Confederate Flag, just like Germany banned the Nazi Flag and symbol. it has no place in our society, nor do people who blow smoke up our asses and tell us they were just good men fighting for a lost cause, or even a bad cause.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
The Civil War was fought in defense of slavery, asshole. Read the articles of secession listed above. I’m well aware of the thread. I guess you’ll have to be grotesquely offended, because it is a distinction with few differences.
morzer
@Honus:
Tripe. You think Stonewall stands comparison with Genghis Khan? When exactly did Stonewall slaughter entire cities and pile up their skulls? Stonewall wasn’t a saint, but there’s no way you can seriously justify what you’ve just said. This is a ludicrous claim, and the reason you make it is because you can’t admit that the Godwin comparison you made was wrong.
morzer
@arguingwithsignposts:
Given your ignorance of history, I assume you plan to join the teabaggers. It is ludicrous to compare the Confederates to Hitler. I repeat: no genocide, no vivisection, no Waffen SS, nothing like the scale of war crimes committed in Russia.
Wile E. Quixote
Shorter morzer:
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
No, it’s so much easier to caricature the Confederates, because then you can glibly talk about how the South is pure evil, rather than being a shining example of virtue. It’s a shame that you are peddling self-righteous horseshit. Let’s just remember that the North had, and has, its full complement of racists, throwbacks and all-round thugs.
morzer
@Wile E. Quixote:
Shorter Quixote: I get off by fantasizing about using nuclear weapons on other human beings.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
I prefer to compare the Confederates to fascism. You know why, because it had all the bells and whistles of racial inferiority and an utter disrespect for those not considered fully human, with no rights and no worth, other than for common labor to benefit their masters. No need to drag Hitler personally into this.
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
Well, if you want to defend Hitler, have fun.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@morzer:
lOL, sounds like you’ve been reading Reason Mag and various winger drek on how dems are as bad as teabaggers. This is really week shit, dude.
Gian
the USA was a diffent place – state loyalty did mean something in 1861
some people took the cause of their state above the union, most who did were dupes.
I read a study done way back in undergrad about post civil war voting patterns, and the fact in the South, was that if your incomce wasn’t dervided from the plantation model of farming, you voted for the party which feed the slaves, the southern hill folk were part of the party of lincon and grant. the cause of the confederacy was not the cause of the average guy in the south it was the cause of the landed, rich, plantation owner – and their apologists to this day don’t want to admit it, the confederates declared war on and attacked the United States, they tried to get the Brits to help them (the russians helped the north BTW)
but the leadership fought for the right to own people – not like you own a dog, because if you’re cruel, you can be punished for animal cruelty – but like you might own a chair, something you’re free to break if it displeases you – a regime which would without batting an eye seperate mothers from children – the father having long been shipped off.
yeah they may have thought it was the right thing to defend against the agressors who attacked first – only it was their side which attacked first.
It was the war of treason spawned by the the plantation owners who just couldn’t suck it up to pay people to work, today their heirs bitch about the minimum wage and hire people who aren’t legal residents to do the work.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
This is even weaker than your previous effort. Tighten up dude.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
Shuttling generations of Africans to a different world to work as human farm implements? Breeding said humans to make better workers? Whipping, beating, devaluing education of said human beings? Sexually abusing said human beings? Valuing them as 3/5 of a person? Yeah, nothing equivalent there. Hitler treated Jews as animals. Guess what? So did the slave traders, slave owners, and those who enabled them.
Just because a system wasn’t as concentrated as the Nazis, who had the benefit of modern industry to do their evil, as did Stalin, FWIW. (btw, Waffen SS? WTF?) doesn’t mean it wasn’t equivalent in its evil.
The foot soldiers in the German army were just defending their homeland, just like the footsoldiers in the CSA. That’s sad. But the overarching battle – the control of human beings who are not like you – was very similar.
scav
you lot. Time to go abuse the Pope. They’re calling him a shy theologian.
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
You really are pitiable. Why do you think riots took place in NYC during the Civil War? Why do you think Chicago was the most segregated city in America? Why do you think the South Boston riots happened? Did you ever think about US history?
Tattoosydney
@morzer:
We can argue about “intent to destroy” in circumstances where the intention was to breed, noting that you can intend to destroy a racial group in whole or in part while keeping their bodies alive, but that sounds like a pretty accurate description of the effect of the international slavery trade on African cultures to me.
morzer
@arguingwithsignposts:
Right. So you’ve decided that slavery is the same as genocide, provided that you blame the Confederate soldiers – who we were originally discussing BTW – for the whole of the slave trade. That’s incredibly lame. More to the point, you get plenty of Southerners who thought that the peculiar institution was evil, feared the outcome, and hoped somehow to find a way out of it. You don’t find systematic and deliberate genocide. Even the deaths in slave ships, terrible as they were, are not the same thing. Cruel,yes, horrible, yes, but not aimed at eradicating black people. There is a difference.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
False equivalency FAIL. Slavery =/= segregation.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@morzer:
Yea right, argument by anecdote comparing the North with the South and institutionalized slavery that seceded from the Union causing a bloody civil war, whereby hundreds of thousands of Union soldiers payed with their lives in cause of ending slavery. You really are a gold plated jerk off.
morzer
@Tattoosydney:
No, we can’t. I repeat, slavery was wrong, as I have said all along. But it is not the same as genocide. The aim was not to destroy a group or people. Moreover, you forget that most of the slaves were sold by their fellow-Africans. That doesn’t make it right, but it does mean that you simply are not looking at genocide here.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
1. Slavery is the same as genocide: Yes.
2. blame the confederate soldiers: see “good Germans defense.”
3. Plenty of Southerners: c.f., Schindler’s List.
4. Not the same thing, there is a difference: Difference without a distinction. c.f. comment above: sufferings. Evil=Evil. I don’t see any way around that.
BTW, You might want to read above where I mention that my ancestors were veterans of CSA.
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
And you are a pompous, ignorant fool. You can’t even argue about US history honestly . You don’t want to face the truth: no-one in the US on the white side of things can claim to be innocent in all of this. We all have ancestors who screwed up, who brought diseases, who abused the native peoples, who treated blacks or other groups as inferior. That doesn’t justify treating the South as uniquely wrong, and when you try and play that game, it simply says you’d rather be comfortable with stereotypes than do the hard work of looking at yourself.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
And who was doing the buying?
morzer
@arguingwithsignposts:
That’s a fine catalog of lazy assumptions and arguments without evidence. If you want to call your ancestors Nazis, go ahead, but it’s an amazingly dumb thing to do, especially without cause.
Yutsano
@morzer: Just as many slave traders were Arabs. Does that mean we have to punish the entire North African Muslim community for our collective national sin?
BTW My family has lived on this continent since the 16th Century but we’ve only been actual United States citizens for a little over 100 years. Even with that I’m still more than willing to apologize for enslaving an entire race of humans. My family’s involvement or lack thereof is irrelevant.
Tattoosydney
Bullshit. The aim of slavery was to take people away from their home and their culture and to entirely separate them from those things and prevent them living according to their cultural norms. That is genocide, even if the intent was not to destroy the actual people. To argue the intent was not to destroy the culture of the slaves is semantic bullshit.
Here in Australia our governments took aboriginal children away from their parents and put them with white families. The aim was “good” – to give them a better life – and no-one got killed, but it was still genocide within the generally accepted meaning of that term under international law.
Add in forced work, denial of citizenship, classification as property and trips of thousand of miles in leaky boats during which millions of people died, and an ongoing attem,pt to stop the slaves living in their own culture or to develop their own replacement cultures – i.e slavery – and you have a textbook example of genocide on a massive scale over hundreds of years.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
Oh, it most certainly does, and continues today in different forms. The south is the yoke around this country’s neck, always has been. I would say let the fuckers secede, but then they would likely reek havoc in the world and we would just have to invade them, again.
You sound a lot like our Scarlett, (makewi). An awful lot like her. You two relations somehow?
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck: :
And you are an arrogant, ignorant and dishonest fool. The Union soldiers fought for the Union, often ambivalently and with deep suspicion. Many of them didn’t care about slavery, often they didn’t want black soldiers fighting alongside them, and at the start of the war they returned runaways to the South. How you manage to get a pure North out of that has to be one of the marvels of recent revisionism. The South were not demons or Nazis, the North were not angels or saints.
morzer
@Yutsano:
By your logic, should we punish all the South for the sins of the slaveholders? Many Southerners did not own slaves. Should we assume that they must all be condemned? Do you really want to defend a comparison of the South to the Nazis?
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@morzer:
Man o man., you got the false equivalency disease bad. I wonder if even Limbaugh would take it that far.
edit – Limbaugh would take it that far, but not Beck, well, maybe Beck. But not Malkin, unless she could inspect their counter tops.
arguingwithsignposts
@morzer:
Evidence in abundance above. Of course, I didn’t bring in the Nurenberg Trials transcripts, so #2 could be taken as such an argument without evidence.
Are you really saying there is *no evidence* for they things I listed above re: families separated, death, beatings, sexual abuse, etc.?
Did I call them Nazis? Um, no. But they were misled, misinformed, fought for a cause that was *evil*. Doesn’t make them any less my ancestors. But I’m sure there are plenty of Germans who have to crack that nut with a lot more recent history.
I repeat: Slavery and its defenses were *no better than* the Holocaust. Doesn’t mean it was *the same kind* of evil. But *evil* nonetheless. Good people can be deluded. I get that. But doesn’t make it right, or *good*.
BTW, I’ll say the same thing about the despicable treatment of native Americans that has been perpetrated over the entire history of this nation.
Hitler is not *uniquely* evil. Because evil is not unique.
morzer
@General Egali Tarian Stuck:
You listen to him, you figure it out. When you’ve finished telling the South that they need to be slaughtered in the name of your little fantasies of revenge. I am sure they’ll be grateful and want to remain part of your union. Why not? After all, they just have to deal with a little bit of hatred, prejudice and denunciations from you.
arguingwithsignposts
OK, enough feeding the troll for tonight.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@morzer:
LOL. Huffy Scarlett. Did I upset your delicate southern sensibilities? The south would be fine by me if they”d shut their yaps and get a yearly rabies shot./
Yutsano
@morzer:
What does this have to do with the declaration that Confederate history is something to be celebrated? Do you know who the greatest violator of habeas corpus rights was? I’ll give you a hint: it wasn’t the Shrub. The Civil War has its roots in trying to keep what was essentially thirteen separate countries united under a single government mostly for the purpose of keeping the British from conquering the former colonies one by one. Part of those grand compromises was keeping an uneasy truce in between the main economic engines of the North and the South intact. Slavery in fact would have slowly petered out were it not for the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney to make cotton production profitable. The end of slavery would cost the South money period. The North needed the South as a raw supply source. Abolition was a can that kept getting kicked down the road until the tensions became intolerable. It may or may not have been the only reason, but slavery was definitely in the top three.
General Egali Tarian Stuck
@arguingwithsignposts:
Yea, this is getting stale. We just don’t get the high dollar trolls no more. Everything is retread.
Wile E. Quixote
@morzer
Ahhhh, the old “slaves were sold into slavery by their fellow Africans” (and no, that’s not hyphenated, fuckhead), argument. Let me guess, you’re also one of those white guys who says “Jeez, why can’t I call black people ‘n*****s’? They call each other ‘n*****s’ all the time”
mapaghimagsik
Comparing the Confederate South with Nazi Germany is apalling.
After all, after they lost, the Germans realized something horrible had grown out from their madness, and regretted it. While in the South, its cause for celebration.
Fuck the south and their imbred bullshit. May all those apologists have nightmares of being skullfucked by Sherman.
mclaren
As Faulkner wrote,
The current culture wars are really just an extension and prolongation of the original Civil War. Or, as the people down south still refer to it, “The war of Northern aggression.”
After the Civil War the south boiled with resentment at the “radicals” (who, irony of ironies, who were then Republicans) who the southerners claimed had distorted the meaning of the constitution and brought ruin and destruction to the republic by usurping the powers of the states and running roughshod over the will of the people.
Fast forward 150 years, you’re hearing exactly the same damn thing from exactly the same damn part of the united states, the states below the Mason-Dixon line. Nothing’s changed.
scarshapedstar
@morzer:
True, but Hitler enslaved the Jews before he exterminated them. Ever watch Schindler’s List or Life is Beautiful? If plantation owners were less callously indifferent to human life, it’s mostly because they had to pay good money for their slaves.
One might say that American slavery was one grand medical experiment to see how long people would survive if you worked them to exhaustion every single day and whipped them if they refused.
This I won’t quibble with, but the Confederacy wasn’t exactly playing offense. If they had captured a Northern state, do you think they would have let the resident Negroes live free and equal, or sent them to the
forced labor campsplantations?Andy K
I’m a little shocked that the BJ commenters- whom I sincerely believe to be amongst the brightest in the blogosphere- hardly brushed on the real cause of the Civil War, and why so many non-slaveholders in the South supported that cause.
I’m referring to Article 1, Section 2, Paragraph 3 of the Constitution of the United States, aka The Three-Fifths Clause, which artificially apportioned Congressional districts (and the Electoral College) in favor of slave states. Non-slaveholders in the South benefited by their proximity to plantations. The southern non-slaveholders’ votes counted more than the votes of those in non-slave states. The areas of the South furthest from the plantations- those areas along the spine of Appalachia in eastern Tennessee, western North Carolina and western Virginia (the area that seceded from Virginia and became West Virginia)- were very pro-Union.
scarshapedstar
@Andy K:
http://sunsite.utk.edu/civil-war/reasons.html
Mississippi:
I’m not cherry-picking. That’s how it starts. Read through them and see how many times the word ‘slavery’ is used. They’re quite adamant that their whole economy would collapse without slavery.
But hey, that’s just the reason THEY said the war was fought at the time, why listen to them? After all, apologists have told us the REAL reasons since then, like this abstract concern about how their votes would ‘count less’. (I think their math is off; wouldn’t a freed slave’s vote increasing from 3/5ths to 5/5ths ultimately increase the political representation of their state? If they allowed black people to vote, that is? Wait… yeah, I see the problem.)
I’ve heard some REAL hardcore rednecks say that the South was THIS close to giving up slaves (and, according to your reasoning, their votes!) and then the Yankees picked on them and they had to defend their honor… the old “I’d stop beatin’ ya, honey, if’n you’d stop pissin’ me off” excuse. And then after the war ended, well, they had no choice but to institute lynchings and Jim Crow, with heavy hearts, in order to defend their way of life against Yankee corruption. They informed me of this in the tones that I might use to patiently explain, say, why the creationist ‘eyes couldn’t have evolved’ trope is completely stupid.
I’m kinda glad that most BJers haven’t fallen for that bullshit.
Hart Williams
So, basically you’re saying that the Battle Hymn of the Republic is worded as it is because ‘three fifths of a person’ didn’t fit into the rhyme scheme?
Nice try.
DougL (frmrly: Conservatively Liberal)
I wouldn’t mind if the Civil War was reenacted every year if they would just cut to the chase and get right to the part where we kick the Confederacy’s ass, followed immediately by the burning of Atlanta and other major cities in the south.
Nothing like being reminded every year that you got your asses handed to you to make the whole thing distasteful to view. Quit romanticizing about a brutal war that was started for selfish reasons. The Nazis were horrifying to behold and so was the slavery in the south, both were crimes against humanity. Trying to say that one is not like the other is like pointing out that shit from a dog is better than shit from a cat.
They were both shit.
CameronJ
Seems like once upon a time people used to be ashamed to be related to traitors.
chopper
@scarshapedstar:
ah, the white man’s burden. pity us, we did it not because we liked it, but because we had no other choice.
kay
Come on. That’s bullshit, and he knows it. It’s revisionist history, pure and simple. Slavery wasn’t “significant” in Virginia?
It’s a pure pander to his base, they demanded a quid pro quo and he delivered.
Tell me one more time how this guy was elected on “the economy” or “job growth”. Bullshit.
rickstersherpa
Well, he did it because the heart of his constituency in Virginia are the rural, white, residents of this state, who still worship their Confederate ancestors. Every town in Virginia has a monument with a long, sanguinary list of names of those who never came home. They still like to whistle “the Bonnie Blue Flag” about fighting for “their property” earned by “honest toil” (forgetting that the toil was mostly down by the “property.”) Yet saying this, the Southern Armies did fight with extraordinary courage and mostly, when it came to a fight, not for the reasons that caused the war. No one said it better than U.S. Grant in his memors: “I felt anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though the cause was…one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse. I do not question, however, the sincerity of the great mass o those who were opposed to us.” If he had called it Civil War heritage month it might be acceptable.
turtle
I am Jewish. My great-grandparents died in the Holocaust. And I say that hell yes, the Confederacy was just as bad.
For those of you who think it wasn’t– try reading some slave narratives sometime. (I’m pretty sure you can find some for free on Google Books or the Gutenberg Project.)
jenniebee
@scarshapedstar: why not? There’s supposed to be a tea party or some such thing going on at the State Capitol on April 12. Why not have some pro-Union forces in attendance?
Michael E Sullivan
fasteddie9318
@patty gann:
Well, you’ve got me there. I’ve never “stood up when it mattered and fought” for the right to hold other human beings in bondage for my own comfort.
Oh, wait, “for this country”? Which country would that be? Certainly the country I live in is different from the one for which your Confederate ancestors were fighting, isn’t it?
Andy K
@Hart Williams:
Why would you think a northern abolitionist anthem explain the motivations of southern anti-abolitionists?
By 1820 it was already evident that the non-slave states were gaining population at a much higher rate than slave states. The slave states were still powerful enough at that time to force the Missouri Compromise, providing one new slave state for each non-slave state admitted to the Union, effectively delaying an amendment that would negate the Three-Fifths Clause. As immigration to the North continued at rates much steeper than in the South it became evident that the Missouri Compromise would be compromised, and in 1854 this happened with the passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act. It should come as no surprise that those first states to secede did so as a free Kansas was applying for statehood in 1860 (the first six states to secede did so between 12/20/1860 and 1/26/1861; the first to do so was South Carolina, the state with the highest ratio of slaves to voters, thus the state with the most to lose if the Three-Fifths Clause was repealed by amendment).
Kansas was admitted to the Union on 1/29/1861. The bombardment of Fort Sumter began on 4/12/1861. Go figure.
LanceThruster
We need to up the ante a bit and start building settlements on their territory. Separate roads for southerners, countless checkpoints, forbid intermarriage, outlaw selling property to them…this combined with a massive media campaign to demonize them in the accepted narrative would do wonders.
binzinerator
@Anne Laurie:
Speaking as someone with such paternal ancestors: What. Fucking. Bullshit.
The hell with this ‘forged into pitbulls’ excuse for why these neoconfederate retards can’t help be bigoted vicious little assholes. Lots of cultures and lots of ethnic groups undergo long periods of hard and oppressive living conditions without becoming mean assholes. Or getting sucked up into perpetual victimhood (that includes you too patty gann). Jesus Christ, living on the stony edges of existence has been the definition of the human condition since the dawn of time for just about everyone.
And historical memory my ass. These are the same retards who can’t seem to remember that none of the hijackers were from Iraq. Or that no WMDs were ever found. Or that Bush was responsible for the massive trillions in debt. Or even what Palin said last week utterly contradicts whatever she says this week.
The real tragedy is the continued refusal to accept responsibility for treason and violence in an attempt to continue to oppress millions of people, to acknowledge that their ancestors killed and died for a great moral evil. They made a big fucking mistake. They were wrong, horribly and terribly wrong. Period.
Mr Hammock
I personally dont own a confederate flag, nor do I take part in confederate “ya-hooing”, but I am SICK of you sad faced crying-assed BITCHES wailing about something YOU claim is over. Is it over? REALLY????!!!??? It seems that bleeding heart liberals will NEVER let it be over. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a right winger, I find the right and the left EQUALLY irritating, But the left more so. Can’t we all just get over it? If a few (I’m FROM the south-believe me we don’t have that many rebel flags down here) good ol boys want to fy a rebel flag while they drink beer in the back yard ,why does that get to you so bad? Are you THAT insecure? remember: a secure man is nearly impossible to offend. Grow a set already!!!!!!