Also, how come the lost causers think toppling their statues and desecrating their bones specifically *isn’t* part of history. “He was so despised that 150 years later people were still flipping his ghost off” that’s a new chapter of history for you right there, a real cool one
— Hemry, Local Bartender (@BartenderHemry) December 15, 2022
From the local news, “Chaos ensues as crews remove A.P. Hill’s remains in Richmond”:
Crews hit the vault that held the remains of A.P. Hill on Tuesday morning, but the day was overshadowed by intense arguing among onlookers.
Crews started removing the remains around noon. Shortly after, intense discourse began between those behind the caution tape.
Many of those standing and watching were wearing jackets with Confederate flags, which upset many in attendance celebrating the statue’s removal…
At one point, the closest collateral descendant of A.P. Hill, John Hill, climbed out of the gravesite. He yelled in anger at those disturbing the process.
NBC12 spoke to John Hill Monday, who said it was an emotional and devastating process for his family. On Tuesday, following the heated exchange, he tweeted, “I was exhuming my ancestor’s remains. And they wouldn’t stop screaming the entire time. It was a very personal moment removing his remains, and they were completely out of hand.”…
Police remained on the scene and were forced to separate some people. Some officers even showed up in full military gear with rifles.
After about an hour of fiery back and forth, things fizzled out…
The intersection of Laburnum and Hermitage road, where the A.P. Hill monument once stood, remains closed.
It will be closed off to traffic through Wednesday, Dec. 14, when crews pave over the spot.
Truth be told, Hill seems to be a less-than-perfect exemplar for The Glorious Cause, except ironically. Per his Wikipedia entry, his primary military talent seems to have been ‘making friends easily‘ among his West Point classmates and future battlefield comrades. He seems to have committed the wartime version of suicide by cop, and his corpse had already been dug up and reinterred by revanchists during ‘Reconstruction’, because his survivors chose to consider his ‘legacy’ potentially profitable. And that’s not even considering his sporadic lifelong periods of disability due to the gonorrhea that delayed his West Point graduation…
I was thinking we could repurpose their statues as part of miniature golf courses.
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) December 15, 2022
The way we dealt with the confederates was like taking antibiotics until you feel better and not finishing the course. The infection is still there, and it just becomes resistant to further treatment.
— Jean-Michel Connard (@torriangray) December 15, 2022
KrackenJack
That last one is an outstanding analogy on several levels:
ian
NBC: Ancient Native American burial site blasted for Trump border wall construction
Somehow I don’t think it is unbridled respect for the buried dead motivating the thinking of John Hill and his fellow Confederate flag-wearing brethren.
smike
Do I hear a second?
smike
@smike:
Alas, I do not hear a second.
West of the Rockies
On this one, I’m of the mind that it’s better to take the high road. Oh, I might whiz on Trump’s eventual grave, but I wouldn’t choose to mock Ivanka and co. at the memorial service. Just seems bad form, bad karma, etc.
Maybe I’m reading the post wrong.
eclare
JWR
Oh, you know the answer, dickhead. (Unless of course your dreaded bots vote to keep you on the island.)
This particular straw “poll” went up under an hour ago and already has well over 12 million “votes”.
Anotherlurker
Confederate statues should be loaded onto a barge and dumped on a sandy site in the Atlantic, to form an artificial reef. This way they can become a base for ocean life and actually do some good in the world, supporting the ecosystem.
Their traitorous asses owe the world something.
Aussie Sheila
@KrackenJack: Yes. I studied US history at University and the thing I never understood was how leniently the insurrectionists were treated. I don’t mean the ordinary Confederate soldier/supporter-I mean the leaders, the Generals and the southern political elite. I am against capital punishment, but for the life of me, I never understood how people weren’t hanged/executed for their treason, particularly at a time when such punishments were handed out for much less serious crimes.
That is why I believe that those responsible for planning Jan 6, every elite member and politician up to and including the former you know who, simply must face severe punishment. I still believe that if this tendency within the US right isn’t nipped in the bud, it will be seen as a training exercise.
I also believe that unless the US is seen to have the wherewithal to punish its own elite, US citizens will become even more demoralised, and the international right wing more emboldend.
eclare
@Aussie Sheila: Agree on all points.
Redshift
@ian:
I could be wrong, but as I read the article, Hill wasn’t with the flag-wavers, he was pissed off at them.
ColoradoGuy
@Aussie Sheila: The country was shell-shocked by the first modern war, which was very quickly followed by the first assassination in the country’s history, followed by President Andrew Johnson trying to let the Confederates off the hook, followed by the failed impeachment effort. And the good ‘ol Electoral College, a few years later, resulted in a deadlocked election that led to the end of Reconstruction and the institution of Jim Crow (serfdom, or slavery 2.0) across the South. With that, the oligarchy was restored to power, and the South reverted to a Latin American economic model.
To do a full de-Nazification of the South would have been the work of two generations, and the will just wasn’t there. The South was abandoned by the rest of the country for nearly a hundred years … the West was where the action was, with the completion of the Transcontinental Railway (which effectively bypassed the South) and led to explosive growth in California and the Mountain West. This is a typical American development pattern; abandon the problem areas and just go around them.
A while back I looked at air routes in the 1930’s, as well as national TV network microwave relays in the 1950’s. The South was bypassed, just not enough economic activity to invest in. It wasn’t until residential air-conditioning became a mass phenomenon in the 1960’s, along with passage of the Voting Rights Act and the Civil Rights Act, the South started to catch up with the rest of the country.
eclare
@ColoradoGuy: In my state a govt entity, TVA, had a lot to do with development.
Gretchen
@Aussie Sheila: many of the officers on both sides went to West Point. They knew each other both from college and from fighting together in the Mexican American War and border skirmishes. It was harder to condemn someone who was once a friend or colleague to death. We wouldn’t still be dealing with the remnants of the Lost Cause if they’d stamped it out at the time.
Gretchen
@ColoradoGuy: one reason the South was bypassed for the transcontinental railroads was that the bills authorizing it were passed in 1862, when the South wasn’t part of the US. The Land Grant college authorization was also passed during the war, which is why the South didn’t get some. It turns out that you can get a lot of progressive legislation passed when there are no southerners in Congress to vote against it.
Aussie Sheila
@ColoradoGuy: Yes, the assassination of Lincoln did ineffable damage to the trajectory of the US. Not to say it wasn’t terrible in its own right of course. However the historical forgetfulness of the US is amazing. My grandfather (maternal) was a WW1 veteran and an Anzac (he was at Gallipoli). The memory of the cluster..ck that was the Anzac landing wasn’t confined to one family. It is a miasma that coloured a lot of politics in Oz for two generations. It has political salience even today, when nearly 40% of Australian households have a non English speaking member.
I get that historical memory needs to fade for a polity to move on, but sometimes historical memory can be a prophylactic, and if blended with real visceral and clear insight, can help a society to grow and grow up. Particularly when older generations assist younger ones in learning the real personal lessons of elite F ups.
opiejeanne
@Redshift: I read it that way too. When you read the article at the link, the family is upset because they wanted to keep the headstone and move his remains with it, but the article isn’t very clear when they’re referring to the monument, as if it and the headstone are one and the same.
opiejeanne
@Gretchen: I thought that the railroad was begun before the Civil War began, but I don’t know for sure. I know that work had to be halted during the war.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
eclare
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch:
Must see tv…
cmoren
@Gretchen:
For the first couple of years of the war, up to summer 1863, the Confederates had the better (or at least less incompetent) commanders, whether from West Point or elsewhere…until Lincoln realized that the talents of Grant were what the Union needed to win the war. We can critique Lee as overrated, but he was better than any of the opposing Union generals…until he wasn’t at Gettysburg, and let hubris and machismo lead him into a terrible mistake on day 3 in charging the Union line uphill across open terrain, losing far more soldiers than he could afford.
It’s scary to recognize how close the Confederates actually came for much of the first two years of the war to wearing down the North’s will to continue, until finally Confederate mistakes and dwindling manpower and supplies took their toll. It’s scary to recognize that had Union troops not beat Confederates to Little Round Top by 5 minutes, Gettysburg might have turned out very different
We owe a great debt to Lincoln, without whose shrewdness and determination the Union might not have been able to sustain the war long enough to finally be able to take advantage of their superior manpower and materials and wear the Confederates down.
ColoradoGuy
It’s hard to describe, but a big part of the ethos of the South is a soft-focus, romantic image of the past. My mother was an old-school Southerner from Virginia, which considers itself the elite of the South. But after growing up in the Far East, our family settled in the West, which has the exact opposite ethos. The West is about The Future, and always has been. The latest tech, the latest social trends, the part of the country that adopted vote-by-mail, popular initiatives (referendums), marijuana reform, etc. etc. The South is none of those things … at a national level, it fights against them tooth and nail. They worship the past, which in the (white) imagination is a kind of Disney cartoon.
The national fight over the Transcontinental Railway is illuminating. It could have been built decades earlier along a much easier Southern route, from New Orleans to Los Angeles (with no mountain ranges in the way). But Northerners in Congress blocked that, because it was part of the Southern dream of a coast-to-coast Slave Empire, with an even bigger bite out of Mexico. When California settlers voted to become a Free State that killed the Slave Empire dream then and there … and heated up North/South relations quite a bit.
So the more difficult, and more mountainous route, of the immediately postwar Transcontinental Railway is no accident. Development then followed the railway, and very quickly. Denver got a spur line down from Cheyenne only one year after the Transcontinental opened up, and a Union Station with lines going direct East to Missouri and down to Albuquerque another year later. The 1870’s were the years of the explosive growth of the West and the South slowly sinking into rural obscurity.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
@JWR:
16% here, 16% there, pretty soon you’re talk’n real money
Gretchen
@opiejeanne: the Pacific Railway Act was passed in 1862, providing funds and right of way along the 32nd parallel from Omaha to the Pacific. Construction started in 1863 and finished in 1869. There were of course railways in the eastern part of the country before that but in general the south was less likely to invest in public goods than the north, and it was easier to get things done when they weren’t voting no.
Gretchen
@ColoradoGuy: thank you. I didn’t know that part of railroad history.
Aussie Sheila
@ColoradoGuy:
‘And the South sinking into obscurity’
Yes except that the southern ethos, with its brutal Labor relations and its obscurantist social ethos appears to have won over a significant and powerful faction of the US political and economic elite. That is the amazing thing about the US. When I was a student, it appeared that the US was socially and politically moving ahead of my country.
Not now, and not since the 1980s. Its Right wing is a domestic and an international menace.
I am second to none in my admiration for US Labor movement and political activists . I count many among my friends and comrades. They face social, political and economic obstacles that the rest of the advanced capitalist world have moved on from, albeit in places far from the centre of capitalism. Nevertheless, US elites need a big wake up call, from the bottom up, and the best way to do that is to punish all and every A hole that even thought about overturning a democratic election. Oh, and confiscatory taxation would be good as well.
David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch
The inscription on General MacArthur’s crypt reads “I won’t be returning”
ColoradoGuy
It’s hard to overstate the impact of the Civil War and the Transcontinental Railway on the nation. The Civil War divided the nation in ways that still reverberate today, and the Transcontinental Railway created the vast continental empire that Jefferson dreamed of. It changed a little runt of a nation clinging to the East Coast, the laughingstock of Europe, into a full-blown Empire on the scale of Rome. This was seen quite clearly by the proponents of the railroad, who openly spoke of a vast Empire with access to the biggest markets in the world, with one railway linking the Atlantic and Pacific, and a massive civilization in between. And that’s what happened.
In comparison to this hypnotic and enchanting dream, the South was a burned-out shell, ruined by Sherman’s March to the Sea. Yes, it should have been occupied by Federal troops for 40 years, and the aristocracy sent to prison. But the dream of a world-spanning empire was irresistible (Manifest Destiny), and immigrants flooded in from Europe to settle vast new spaces … no visas or passports in those days (my ancestors included). That door wasn’t slammed shut until the 1920’s.
Bruce K in ATH-GR
@ColoradoGuy: Makes me wonder if it’s something other than coincidence that the central railroad station in a number of US cities is called “Union Station”.
ColoradoGuy
That’s exactly what a Union Station is. The city forced the competing railways to have a common junction, rather than make passengers to travel all over town to make connections. I’m astounded that London has multiple train stations, for example.
hervevillechaizelounge
@David ⛄ 🎅The Establishment🎄 🦌 🕎 Koch:
Am I the only one who desperately doesn’t want Trump to be indicted?
Every 1/6 conspirator should be serving life without parole, obviously, but I really think we need Trump cockblocking Deathsantis in 2024.
Unpopular opinion?
lowtechcyclist
@ColoradoGuy:
It would have happened anyway, the only question was whether the rails would have led the way or followed it.
The only thing keeping the Colonies clinging to the East Coast was Great Britain, which wanted its American subjects where it could control them. Once they were out of the way, the westward push followed in short order, first to Ohio and the Midwest, and to California and Oregon by the 1840s.
I’ve always wondered if the westward expansion was what kept the U.S. from having much of a labor movement in the 19th century. American workers could ‘light out for the territories,’ in Sam Clemens’ phrase; if they didn’t like conditions where they were, there was the option to pick up stakes and move to land that, from the white man’s perspective, was unoccupied. While their European counterparts, lacking that option, had to organize if they wanted to improve their lot.
Gretchen
@ColoradoGuy: we have a Union Station here in Kansas City. I didn’t realize how hard fought the Civil War was here until I moved here. I live about a mile from an old house that served as a hospital, and the cannon still sits in the park. Quant rill probably passed not far from my house on his way to raid Lawrence and kill all the Free State men there.
Argiope
@hervevillechaizelounge: He’ll run anyway. The grift and megalomania demand it. And he will still be hard to beat.
John Revolta
@hervevillechaizelounge: I’m leaning this way as well. I don’t believe that DeSantis will be a popular candidate outside of FL and the South but then I didn’t think Trumpf had a shot in ’16 either. Having TFG running sows discord in the GOP which is a good thing. And I don’t think he beats Biden if he should get the nom, which he most likely would.
ColoradoGuy
@Aussie Sheila: The USA has always been divided. The Yankees saw themselves as the new Greeks, building a sea-going trading empire, and a world center of culture and learning. The Southerners saw themselves as new Romans, a slave empire ruled by a Senate controlled by a small oligarchy. The Greek/Roman architecture of Washington DC is no accident; it’s exactly how the founders saw themselves.
The struggle between urban democrats and rural oligarchs is as old as the country, and the Constitution weirdly splits the difference. Every now and then, the oligarchs make a power play to seize the entire nation, and that’s been Reagan’s evil legacy, with the South once again seizing control of the Court through various barely-legal strategies. It’s our job to fight back against these oligarch fuckers … not for the first time.
Aussie Sheila
@lowtechcyclist: Australia wasn’t much different, except that landholding was the subject of political tussle between the Crown and its local representatives, which post WW1 was settled by ‘grants’ to soldier settlers, by state governments, usually on land which was not much good, or less settled.
Land settlement in the 19th century and into the 20th in the north, was at the murderous expense of the indigenous people. White settler colonial countries all appear to follow a similar trajectory. But only the US appears not to have managed to grow a strong working class movement able to at least ‘hold’ and better, overcome the worst social, political and economic instincts of the elites that benefited from that history.
Pity for all the world in the last century, and particularly in the last 50 years.
Ruckus
@ColoradoGuy:
Many parts of Europe have trains as the main mode of travel for a lot of people. In many places it’s not even really necessary to own a car. Try that in most of the US. And yes I ride commuter trains here in Los Angeles county most any time I need to go across town. I have a choice, a noisy diesel/electric and a commuter full electric and subway. And they are making it far better. Within a year I should be able to go 45 miles directly to where I go most often on just the electric train and subway in less time than it normally takes to drive, with only one change, right to the front door of the VA and the cost is 35 to 50 cents depending on peak or off peak.
hervevillechaizelounge
Here’s something I never thought I’d say: if Trump keels over before 2024 I’ll be devastated.
That suppurating orange piñata’s death would be so propitious for republicans part of me will always be convinced he was suicided.
Aussie Sheila
@John Revolta: I agree. If tfg runs he loses bigly against Biden. Biden should be supported again whoever the A hole repugs nominate, but if it’s tfg, Biden will win. Of that I am sure. I am not worried about Biden’s political smarts, but I sure hope the wider democratic movement gets its boots on for 2024. The world needs the US to get a wriggle on with democratic reform and it needs the Congress to legislate rather than the US liberal middle class wailing about a Supreme Court which should never have been given the authority US liberals gave it.
Geminid
@opiejeanne: The U.S. government sent out teams to survey routes for transcontinental railway lines in the early 1850s. Army engineering officers, considered the elite of that service, lead them. One party was headed by future Army of the Potomac commander George McClellan. It staged its expedition from the California outpost where 1st Lt. Ulysses S. Grant was stationed, and the two officers met each other there.
Both men left the Army not long after to pursue civilian careers, but only McClellan found success. When the Civil War began he headed a rairoad company, while Grant clerked at his father’s leather shop in Galena, Illinois.
That was a happy time for Grant. The work was very mundane, but he got to spend time with his family. A neighbor remembered how when he wasn’t at the shop, Ullysses would spend his free hours playing with his kids.
Tony Jay
I do appreciate how the campaign to topple the physical monuments to Jim Crow and White Supremacy is finally putting the Lost Cause myth under the microscope. Far from the cosy, popularised image of harmless regional pride “Don’t fret none, it’s just Southern Heritage” that even foreign types like me have been propagandised with forever, the actions and reactions of the White Supremacists are making it ever clearer that they’re not defending ‘history’, they’re defending and promoting armed racism, and they’re losing.
“Why you wanna go disrespecting our history? These are monuments to patriots and heroes who fought for their vision of America.”
“Fuck off, mate. They’re just traitors.”
It’s refreshing having it out in the open.
Geminid
@hervevillechaizelounge: Mitch McConnell and Karl Rove would poison Trump tomorrow if they thought they could get away with it. As it is, Rove is probably spending a lot of time gaming out the party establishment’s central problem: how do we ditch Trump and keep his supporters?
Anne Laurie
To a considerable degree, the Civil War happened because technology (including railroads!) was making ‘Manifest Destiny’ a possibility.
Southern slaveholders wanted to repeat the Corrupt Bargain behind the Constitution, and ensure that any & all new U.S. territories would be slaveholder-friendly. The rest of the voting population was more invested in using ‘modern miracles’ of transport to expand opportunities for urban businessmen and the workers who supported urban industries, from meatpacking to mining.
Apart from the (not inconsiderable!) ethical issues, the instigation of the war can be seen as a tantrum by the Southern ‘elite’, who intended to split off from the commonwealth if they couldn’t retain an outsized influence on national politics.
Aussie Sheila
@Geminid: That is exactly the dilemma for the US Right. 74 million votes in 2020 for the worst President ever . They must be salivating over the possibility of locking them in. However my view is that he mobilised a lot of low information voters that usually don’t vote in US circumstances. In 2024 the trick will be to undermine this cohorts’ confidence in him if he runs again. But I don’t think he will. I think he is too lazy, and also too scared he will lose again.
Which he will.
opiejeanne
@Geminid: I knew some of that, several years ago I read extensively on things that happened just before the Civil War, during, and just after. My memory sucks, though, so I wrote down a lot of odd stuff in a notebook while I was working on an historical novel. Armies and local militias sometimes had nearly identical names, like the (Confederate) Army of Tennessee and the (Union) Army of The Tennessee, and after Tennessee was in Union control some people drop the extra “The” when referring to the Union one. My GG grandfather was in the Union Army of the Tennessee. Figuring out the local militias in Missouri was confusing, which “Home Guard” was which was not always easy.
I didn’t know that about Grant. That he enjoyed spending time with his kids says a lot about his nature.
Geminid
A.P. Hill’s statue came down two years after the other Richmond statues of Confederate leaders because he was buried in the base. Distant relelatives found a state law regarding abandoned cemeteries and made it the basis of a lawsuit. The action ended with a whimper two weeks ago at a Richmond Circuit Court hearing.
The descendents had filed a brief appealing the judge’s earlier ruling that the city could demolish the monument. But their attorneys sent the appeal to the state Supreme Court and not the intermediate Court of Appeals, a bonehead mistake. They asked the judge for more time to get their mess together.
The city said no way, that dam’ statue has caused at least one traffic accident since the plaintiffs misfiled their appeal, and the demolition contractor says he’ll charge us $30,000 extra if he can’t start work this coming Monday.
“Down it goes!” ruled the judge. By that point he probably was pretty tired of this stupid case.
sab
@Aussie Sheila: A lot of families remembered. My mother’s grandmother lost her oldest brother at one of the battles of Manassas. She was just a baby but the family was devastated. My mother had a visceral hatred of all things Southern, even though Dad moved us South for most of my childhood. Mom died ten years ago.
mrmoshpotato
“reawakening old ghosts”
How old is this Abraham Ash guy?! Did he know that Lincoln dude?
Viva BrisVegas
It may be the absurdity of it that makes me smile, but when Hill was first interred he was buried, as per his will, standing up.
JWR
@hervevillechaizelounge:
Well, if you mean you never want him indicted, then yes, I’d guess that’s a pretty unpopular opinion around here. ;) But in any case, whether he’s on trial or in the pokey, he’ll still be duking it out with whoever runs against him, so there’s that.
Geminid
@Viva BrisVegas: Hill was in pieces by the time he was disinterred the second time. His relatives had the remains buried at a Culpepper plot the City of Richmond bought for $1000 dollars. The city will pave over the monument site this week.
lowtechcyclist
@Geminid:
“He’s in pieces, bits and pieces”
Can’t imagine that being buried standing up is a very stable position for one’s skeletal remains.
Nitpick: Culpeper
Good!
Geminid
@lowtechcyclist: Well, I guess that extra “p” in Culpepper will just have to STAND FOR PEDANT, WON’T IT!
Having a sick day doesn’t entitle you to pick on poor commenters like me. Now I must repeat my motto:
“Ain’t no pedant make me tow the line.”
Tony G
@KrackenJack: I had never heard of A. P. Hill before, and, after reading a little bit about him, I know why. Aside from the fact that he was a traitor in defense of slavery, his military record during the Civil War was pretty undistinguished. I guess the Lost Cause movement built shrines even for their D-List generals.
OverTwistWillie
Tell Hill he must come up!
Chris Johnson
@Tony Jay: This is also why I’d be happy to see Trump indicted and not able to act as a sacrificial candidate to help the Democrats win.
I don’t care that he’s doomed. I’d like people to quit acting like his ways have legitimacy. He’s just a criminal. Don’t normalize it, even to exploit it politically.
Geminid
@Tony G: A.P. Hill played a distinguished role at Gettysburg, but not in a good way. On the evening of June 30, 1863, Hill authorized division commander Harvey Heth* to march his division 8 miles to Gettysburg the next morning, ostensibly to gather shoes.
General Lee had emphasized to his commanders that they were not to bring on a “general engagement” because his army was not yet concentrated. But on July 1 Hill did precisely that, entangling the Confederates in an all out battle on unfavorable ground.
*Fun Harvey Heth fact: as a young Army lieutenant, Harvey Heth was best man at his friend Ullysses Grant’s wedding to Miss Julia Dent. James Longstreet was a groomsman.
Ken
If Trump is indicted, I would hope that even the U.S. media will be asking McConnell, McCarthy, DeSantis and other Republicans what they think. It will be darkly amusing watching them either stammer out a non-answer or run away. Meanwhile the loons will have no problem giving the answers the base wants, causing more problems for the “mainstream” Republicans.
Czar Chasm
@Geminid: Growing up in RVA, I hated that statue, in the middle of that damn intersection…good riddance!
What’s also funny is that he wasn’t on Monument Avenue, where all the statues honoring sedition were located, but about 3 miles away in a quiet, middle class neighborhood. Unpopular even in death…
Barbara
Virginia has so many old family cemeteries that someone maintains a website listing them — and Virginia law provides for an actual process for how to disinter and move the dead. It happens all the time. The only wrinkle is if those who owned the cemetery reserved rights to the cemetery portion of the property. If they did, you have to find their heirs and get their permission. It’s a long story for how I know this, but it seems that whoever buried A.P. Hill at the Richmond location did not make any reservation of rights, or maybe they didn’t actually own the property, but at any rate, there is no legal impediment.
ETA: My old car broke down somewhere between Washington and Fredericksburg, closer to the latter, and my husband asked me to come pick him up. While we waited to get straightened out at the repair shop he had managed to get to, we walked around and noticed a little hill behind the parking lot, with some trees. It looked shady so we walked over, only to find an old cemetery — like 20 X 15. Some of the gravestones had names that made them likely relatives for my husband. There was a Lowe’s in the next shopping center over — so between the car mechanic and the Lowe’s there was an old family cemetery. All of eastern Virginia is like that, and you don’t always need the family’s permission to move the graves, though you do need to move them. You can’t just dig them up and dispose of them as trash.
The Moar You Know
How it’s all gonna end, sooner or later.
The Moar You Know
@hervevillechaizelounge: hopefully you’re the only one.
We desperately need to put an end to the idea that some people in this country are above the law. You can trace most every fucked up thing in the politics of todays America to the failure to put Nixon in jail.
Brit in Chicago
@hervevillechaizelounge: No, you’re not the only one. I don’t want him indicted, not until after the 2024 election. My favorite outcome is: Trump runs but is so obviously out only for his own interests (money and ego-gratification) that he loses in a landslide, and his reverse coat-tails leave the Republican party at a fraction of its former strength in congress (and elsewhere). My second-favorite outcome: Trump loses the primary (to DeS, or whomever) but says the election was stolen, and his supporters should not vote for the winner who then loses in a landslide (and so on).
My favorite outcomes don’t generally come to pass (the recent election of the great and good Sen. Warnock being a notable exception); any chance of it this time?
Brit in Chicago
@The Moar You Know: Well I see the force of that argument as well. Can we at least have him openly disgraced, his wrong-doing evident to all except a small handful of his most ardent supporters?
VOR
I have a nephew who wears a Confederate flag belt buckle and reliably regurgitates right wing talking points. Of course he thinks all the confederate monuments must stay in place because they are monuments to the troops. And some of the monuments, like the AP Hill one, are the final resting place of the hallowed troops. He claims there was some act of congress setting confederate cemeteries as equal to Union cemeteries, therefore all confederate monuments are really hallowed ground. My considered reply was that confederates were traitors who fought for slavery. He replies, States Rights. I say yeah, the right to own slaves. I’m not his favorite uncle.
I think we ought to put them into a museum with interpretation to explain a shameful period in our national history. Or maybe do what Budapest did with all the Soviet-era statues: stick them in a park on the outskirts of town as a tourist attraction.
gvg
Besides the aspect of the whole country being sick or the killing from the war and wanting to move on, something that we don’t say much is that the North was not much less racist than the South. They wanted to end slavery mostly because “cheap” slave labor undercut wages for ordinary white workers in the north and profits for northern businessmen in certain industries whose prices were always too high. This is why labor unions in the north stayed racist and blacks couldn’t get jobs. The north was looking out for its own interests not really being altruistic. There were religious groups who truly did get it, but they weren’t the majority of the north. Slavery was hurting all kinds of white people far away in the pocket and food on their table.
The second problem was that due to the way the Constitution was understood then, a lot of people really thought more in terms of loyalty to a state not America and that included the whole populations. Those troops who actually fought were just a part of a larger population who thought they were right, that they hd a duty, sometimes even if they didn’t approve of slavery. I can’t understand it myself, but thats what a lot of them wrote down. I am not sure we could have occupied and gotten rid of states rights then. I think it took decades of court rulings and demonstrated results of federalism being better to teach us. To get it drilled down into our laws. We are still fighting it but I think we will win this, this time.
Oh, and there were some other factors that made the south poorly equipped for the long run. Their financial smarts were way lower, based on slavery and they also had too much gambling and too much debt for various agricultural reasons. Tying their capital into slave labor instead of free labor and wage flexibility screwed them. It’s been decades since I studied so I can’t give details anymore but they were striking. And what was happening in the south was holding the north back even while it was getting ahead of the south. They knew they could get even richer if the south wasn’t a slave region.
I also think southerners were terrified of the slaves revolting. They had created enemies that hated them and didn’t know how to get off the tiger AND some few of them got to be rich and the other could pretend they were going to be rich enough some day.
CliosFanBoy
@Gretchen: And Omaha was the compromise terminus. The northern states want Chicago, the middle states wanted St. Louis, and the south wanted New Orleans. With the south out of the picture Congress picked Omaha which is roughly equidistant between St. Louis and Chicago.
Roger Moore
@Aussie Sheila:
The core was that the North was never of one mind on the Civil War; there was always a substantial group of Confederate sympathizers (Copperheads) in the North. Also, there was a real, persistent worry that pissing off Confederate rank-and-file would lead them to carry on insurrection as guerilla warfare rather than returning to peacetime. That turned out to be a terrible miscalculation, but we can only tell it with the benefit of hindsight.
gvg
@hervevillechaizelounge: He broke laws, he should be charged tried and convicted same as anyone else. I am sick of special exceptions (Nixon Watergate). It’s not just him. Won’t do as much good if he is the only one but we have started with others so that is not a problem.
Also think we need to fund more IRS and financial investigation and courts, not let the rich get aways with tax fraud and other financial shell games, which is another problem.
Don’t know how DeSantis will play nationally. Doubt it will be as simple as you think even if Trump runs. these people are kind of nuts and hard to predict. Better to just deal with what happens and who turns out to run. World events will happen we don’t know yet and change what people are looking for.
Obama got a big boost when world economy actually tanked (as opposed to predictions that someone is always making) tanked and McCain clearly didn’t have any clue about the subject and also was sort of showing panic/flail. The timing mattered too. I think Obama was going to win anyway but I am sure the margin could have been closer. Events matter.
pat
I came to this thread late and this is probably the end of it, but it is FASCINATING.
Coloradoguy, is there a book you could recommend that would cover some of your excellent posts?
Msb
Oh, for God’s sake. Hill’s remains have already been moved twice. One more won’t hurt him any.
Astonishing to think all the Confed monuments I saw in Richmond are now gone. Good riddance to bad rubbish.
RSA
Amen. There’s a reason Lady Justice wears a blindfold. Wishing is fine, but when people in power let political considerations affect their decisions about whom to prosecute and when, it’s a very slippery slope.
dnfree
@pat: A few years ago I was looking for a book that explained the Civil War run-up and aftermath, rather than the approach in my high school history class (1960s) that focused mainly on battles and generals. The book I read was “America Aflame”, which covers from around 1830 to the end of Reconstruction. I have come to believe that the failure of Reconstruction is what we’re still dealing with.
https://www.amazon.com/America-Aflame-Civil-Created-Nation/dp/160819390X
Martin
@ColoradoGuy: NYC would like to have a word.
Tony G
@Geminid: Nice move by A.P. So, our country should honor the man for unintentionally sabotaging the Confederate cause (in the same way that we should honor Mussolini for being a hindrance to the Nazi cause). The fact that A.P. made that move to “gather shoes” seems to be noteworthy. An army that runs out of shoes for its soldiers is not much of an army. The Union Army (actually, it should be called the United States Army) was a modern army by the standards of 1861, whereas the Confederate Army was severely lacking in supplies, logistics and technology. The Confederacy had essentially no industrial base, whereas the northern U.S. was one of the leading industrial states in the world. Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee and the other heroic leaders in the cause of slavery should have known (and maybe did know) that their rebellion had no chance of succeeding unless the U.S. just gave up. They were pretty much doomed to failure from the beginning, although they killed and maimed a lot of United States soldiers and sailors on the way to losing.
cmore
@Tony G:
Yeah, and the rag-tag Viet Cong didn’t stand a chance against the manpower and well-supplied and armed US military, and how did that turn out? Or that the Taliban similarly didn’t stand a chance to prevail against American armed might?
Don’t misunderstand me as harboring any secret wishes that the Confederacy had successfully pulled off the rebellion. Nevertheless, the Confederacy came dangerously close during the first couple of years of the war to sapping the Union’s determination and ability to see the fight through, and was rather successful in out-maneuvering and out-fighting the Union army. For but one example, the Confederates came dangerously close to trapping the bulk of the western Union army at Shiloh in 1862, and Gettysburg would likely have turned out very different had a division of Union troops not beaten a larger Confederate Texas unit to strategically key Little Round Top by a scant 5 minutes, or had Jeb Stuart not gone off freelancing out of communication with Lee instead of being with Lee at Gettysburg. What actually made the key difference up to the turning point of the war in summer 1863 was President Lincoln’s shrewd determination and the emergence of Grant as a superiorly capable Union commander (and Lincoln’s recognition of such). It was only after that point that the differences in manpower and material began to progressively wear down the Confederate ability to sustain the war and put them on the inferior defensive.
redoubtagain
@Geminid:
Dead thread, but one of the survey routes went through Arizona Territory. Which prompted then-Secretary of War Jefferson Davis to send camels to Arizona.
Tony G
@Tony G: I read a little more about this dope. Apparently the memorial in his “honor” wasn’t built until 1911. a half century after the beginning of the Civil War. Tens of millions of idiots living in the past (an ugly past).
Geminid
@Tony G: I think the shoes were an excuse. Ewell’s corp had marched through Gettysburg a few days before and his soldiers probably stripped the place of useful loot.
Heth sent Pettigrew’s brigade to Gettysburg for the shoes the day before. Pettigrew encountered Union troops, cavalry his men told him. I read an account of his meeting with division commander Heth and corps commander Hill that evening. Pettigrew said there were cavalry, but Heth and Hill pooh poohed him, told him they were Home Guards of no consequence. Then Heth asked Hill if it was OK to take his entire division to Gettysburg in the morning and Hill gave him the green light.
It turned out Pettigrew was right. Heth’s Division fought the cavalry and then Reynolds’ division of infantry. More units joined in. By the time Lee got on the scene the battle was well under way.
My theory is that Hill and Heth thought they could win an easy victory even against Union cavalry. The first day was considered a victory but it came at a steep cost. The different generals mishandled their brigades at a cost of hundreds dead and hundreds more captured. Lee chose to continue the battle with his forces in an awkward position and his opponent in a very good one.
And A.P. Hill was a crappy commander throughout. He had been an excellent division commander but was a mediocre corps commander. His colleague Richard Ewell was not much better.
Wilson Heath
We are almost exactly 160 years past the Battle of Fredericksburg. The crews finally allowed to bury the United States’ dead soldiers found bodies that hadn’t just been left in the elements for days by the time the traitors allowed it. Their uniforms had been stripped off in an organized effort of disrespect to make identification all but impossible and the traitors jeered and mocked in earshot of the crews.
Fuck the treasonous shit stains and their feelings.