Memphis City Council unanimously votes to dig up Confederate General, wife

[Uncensored2008]

No there isn't. None of you will do anything.

We already engaged in civil war in this nation. It is a cold war, but it rages nonetheless.

The adherents of the Constitutional Republic are losing. As we slide into a fully authoritarian state, I would not be surprised if there is rebellion. Especially if the democrats continue the open and institutional racism against whites and the open assault on civil rights of Christians.

 

[Uncensored2008]

Yawn, guy, I just don't see Forrest as an "american". He fought against his country. Then when his country was kind enough to NOT hang him as a traitor, he started a hate group. removing him from positions of honor is the sanest thing we can do. Crazy was building statues to this guy.

You fight against America each and every day, Comrade Stalin. I guess no one should view you as American.

 

[defcon4]

Yawn, guy, I just don't see Forrest as an "american". He fought against his country. Then when his country was kind enough to NOT hang him as a traitor, he started a hate group. removing him from positions of honor is the sanest thing we can do. Crazy was building statues to this guy.

You fight against America each and every day, Comrade Stalin. I guess no one should view you as American.

…because he is not American… he poses as one. It seems like he is a jew in England…

 

[JoeB131]

The Waffen SS thought so too, yet the end result proved it otherwise. I am just looking out for you.. Don't fuck with Americans with your superiority as a delusional subhuman believing in his own superiority…..it could be hazardous to your health… WW II proved that

guy, we don't have to fight you Cleetus. All we have to do is manipulate you because you are generally stupid.

I see you have another account too on USMB… interesting.

Um, no, I don't. this is the only account I have, Cleetus.

And again you reject as invalid any viewpoint or motivation that you do not share.

People can disagree with your without being "dumb ass crackers".

It is one thing to disagree with the motivations of others. It is another to pretend they don't exist.

No, I just reject REALLY FUCKING STUPID ONES. This is not a conversation we should still even been having. THe South was stupid for what they fought for and they were stupid for fighting to start with, given they had absolutely no chance of winning.

Sadly, the Dumb-Ass Cracker mentality exists today. Case in point.

"Damn, Cooter, I just got my health insurance cancelled because they moved my job to China"

"Hey, Cleetus, look, they just said them faggoots can get married!"

"That makes me so durned mad, Cooter. I'm going to vote Republicans so they can sign them some more bad trade deals!"

 

[JoeB131]

This is a speech Forrest gave to colored people after the war>

You mean when he was dying and going to meet his magic sky fairy, he felt guilty about all the bad shit he did?

Doesn't make up for the bad shit he did.

It's why we don't let prisoners out of prison if they say they are really, really sorry.

 

[EverCurious]

I love seeing actual history going down in this thread. Thanks for that minor renewal of faith in American intelligence heh

As a addition to such education sharing, I'd also like to address the apparent misunderstanding of the KKK, specifically in relation to Forrest. "The KKK" as a general statement actually includes three distinct movements in our history, and not only that, but it was not structured at all, there were a bunch of isolated small local groups that absconded the name. Go look it up if you want to know more about the other two, I'm only going to go into the original first KKK movement that Forrest was involved in.

As best we can tell Forrest's KKK was formed resist the state governments put in place in the south by radicals in 1866, while this did happen to include being against the promotion of African American's to positions of power in the south, that was not necessarily about the segregation of blacks by modern interpretation, but rather it was more about the retention of confederate positions of power after the war ended.

While both Presidents Lincoln and Johnson took more moderate [aka slower moving] approaches to bring the South back into the Union after the war, a group calling themselves the Radical Republicans used Congress to block any moderate approaches and imposed harsh terms, rapidly advancing African American's to power positions while simultaneously removing Confederates from power; reportedly much to the detriment of the Southern economy, and without giving the north and south time to emotionally recover from the war. In 1866 these radicals had seized control of policy and enacted their vision, removing former Confederates from power and replacing them with African Americans.

General Forrest [allegedly] joined/formed the KKK movement in 1866 or 1867, to oppose the "hostile takeover" of political power in the south and the "unjust punishment" of Confederate's and supporters which was causing a lot of what they felt was unnecessary upheaval in southern society, and especially the economy. Forrest either joined, founded, or simply met with, (it's a bit unclear) the "local" KKK shortly after the Radical Republicans took over. The reported purpose of the KKK Forrest joined boils down to an attempt to convince freed slaves that a return to slavery was in their best interest (or perhaps the South's best interest, of which the freed slaves were now a part of), basically to resist the Radical Republican's sweeping policy changes. Forrest had called for the KKK to disband in 1869, arguing that the Klan was "being perverted from its original honorable and patriotic purposes, becoming injurious instead of subservient to the public peace."

It should be noted that these same Radical Republicans filed impeachment charges against President Johnson after Lincoln's assassination because he generally stuck to Lincoln's opposition to their "congressional reconstruction" actions in the South - aka both president's shared the overall opinion of General Forrest regarding the "speed" of Southern change, regarding Confederate "sympathizers" retaining power positions, (and, at least in Johnson's case, even perhaps the rise of African Americans to positions of power at all - Johnson was openly against African American's right to vote.)

My personal interpretation of historical documentation on the political situation surrounding that time is that Lincoln, Johnson, (and Forrest as well as the members of at least that local KKK group,) did not want to take a traditional victorious army route, where the conquered territory is completely annexed, and all vestiges of the "enemy" are wiped out, but rather they sought to /restore/ the south as reinstituted and equal members of the Union without hostile action. Essentially, if a mother gets into a fight with their daughter and the daughter runs away from home temporarily, the mother does not afterwards work to destroy the daughter nor remove her from her life, rather the mother lays down a set of rules and attempts to work out whatever caused the fight between them so they can become "friends" again.

The Radical Republican's on the other hand wanted a "removal" of all Confederate's as they, rather like JoeB, did not see them as fellow American's after the war, but rather as enemies and traitors who should have been imprisoned (or worse) for attempting to secede from the Union. I suppose by my former analogy the mother would berate the child for running away, ground her forever, and install bars on the daughters windows and a lock on the door.

In any event, the Radical Republicans seized Congressional power in 1966, and complete power when fellow Radical Republican President Grant was elected in 1869...

And here we'll have a slight side track, because President Grant, ironically to the particular argument of Forrest's alleged war crimes at Fort Pillow, has a pretty "immoral" history himself. He was first put in charge of "disciplining unruly troops of the union army" and had one of his own men bound, gagged, and tied to a pole for disorderly conduct, he became known as "Unconditional Surrender Grant," and the press heavily criticized him throughout the war for his high casualties, and for being drunk while in command on the battlefield. He was actually removed from command after one of the bloodiest fights of the war; some 23,800 union solders, nearly half his forces, died in that battle alone, and the higher ups blamed his aggressive tactics (and rumored drinking.) He also issued general order 11 in 1862, expelling Jews from the area, one of the most blatant acts of anti-Semitism in American history - Lincoln himself demanded Grant revoke the order. Grant was later in the war relabeled as "The Butcher" by the press for having suffered 52,788 union casualties in a span of a mere 30 days. He ordered the Union army of Shenandoah to "follow the enemy to their death" and he recommended rounding up Confederate solders families as hostages during the war.

And, of now President Johnson, after Lincoln's assassination, Grant said "that he dreaded the change in administrations; he judged Johnson's attitude toward white southerners as one that would "make them unwilling citizens", and initially thought that with President Johnson, "Reconstruction has been set back no telling how far." Grant, and his fellow Radical Republicans, wanted all Confederates removed from any possible power, they wanted their "ideals" buried and squashed so as to prevent any hope of ever re-seceding; an ideal rather in keeping with Sherman's "total war" policies. In fact, Grant was so concerned that Johnson's position on the south would cause renewed insurrection, he disarmed the South; ordering Southern arsenals to ship arms north to prevent their capture by Southern state governments.

Not to mention Grants slew of corruption and scandals, not exactly a "good" guy here - some historians even argue that it was Grant's forwarding of Radical Republican ideals in the South that caused the "failure" of southern reconstruction, leaving the south in a state of bitter poverty that the more moderate approaches of Lincoln and Johnson likely would have averted - ultimately saving Southern Americans (including slaves) the pain and suffering of what amounted to an economic and social overthrow.

Anyway, on the KKK political front, the Radical Republicans, now bolstered by President Grant's full support, declared the KKK as a whole a terrorist group in 1870 in order to fully eliminate their opposition in the political arena. Around the South, other more radical groups calling themselves the KKK had/were violently pushing back against colored political leaders, former slaves, and anti-slavery folks, which provided the Radical Republican's public traction for squashing the movement as terrorists.

Forrest shortly after that testified at a Congressional investigation in 1871, denying membership in the KKK, and the committee, in speaking obliquely on Forrest's supposed KKK ties (as determining Forrest's association with the KKK was apparently not their focus), noted that most groups like the KKK trended toward violence to achieve their ends, so it was natural for men of influence, like Forrest to typically "disband" due to moral concerns before then. AKA they reasoned that even if General Forrest /had/ joined (or even formed) the local (less radical and violent) KKK, he left it when the movement as a general whole across the south took a more violent turn. It is documented elsewhere that Forrest stated /he/ 'disbanded' the movement in 1869, though it is unclear if 'disbanded' was the word he used or if that is a quirk of the reporters words because he had called for disbanding it. In any event, the KKK movement, as was carried on separately elsewhere, and possibly locally after Forrest had "disbanded" in 1869, mostly died out in 1871 - stamped out by the passage of very specific laws.

So it needs to be understood that the KKK Forrest was associated with is /not/ really the same KKK as many appear to be thinking of, the original KKK was merely a political social movement, almost a "grass roots" group, not necessarily a "racist" group, and not the violent hate/terrorist group it [rightly] became known as.


So in the assessing of General Forrest's true character and "worth" of remembrance, we must also look at other "evidence," to which others in the thread have cited such examples - Correll in post #394 provides Forrest's call for his troops peacefully rejoining of the Union, and Jackson in post #399 provided a 1875 speech Forrest was invited to give for an organization of black southerners advocating reconciliation. Those speeches, calling for a peaceful reconciliation between north and south, between white and black, is why he was honored with a park, and why his body was moved into it in the first place.


Even if you want to discard the /truth/ about the purpose of the KKK General Forrest was associated with, even if you want to discard the conflicted ambiguity surrounding his alleged war crimes at Fort Pillow and argue [unfoundedly] that he committed "racist" war crimes there, history reflects that General Forrest had changed such [assumed] racist views for the better after the war ended - and that, in and of itself, is well worth remembering, is worth memorializing, is worth commemorating. IF Forrest was indeed a hateful racist, and yet changed his colors to support reconciliation, then it would be a great proof that racism can be unlearned.

General Forrest might have been a brutal military officer, they are often the type who succeed, and who are written about, (see Grant, Lee, Sherman,) but I don't think the historical evidence points to him necessarily being a racist, nor necessarily a "traitor" in the general sense, nor a part of the /only/ KKK folks seem to think ever existed these days. He ultimately spoke for the United States to be /united/ not divided, not entrenched in hatred and revenge, he wanted the country to be one and that is a worthy thing in my opinion.


And therein lies the problem with the eradication of history, and with the "selective" teaching of things. To boil a man's legacy down to possibly incorrect accounts and misinformed assumptions of their character, to condemn a man to "Hell" and to /hate/ him entirely upon the basis of ones uneducated presumption - is quite simply no different than hating a man merely for the color of his skin, for the assumptions of their character based upon that skin color - upon that flag, upon that news report, upon the actions of others in a group he possibly associated with, upon a persons sexual orientation, upon their religion, upon the amount of money they may or may not have...

The character and morality of a man should not be judged through the lens of sweeping generalizations and ambiguous accusation, but rather on their individual actions and words, and mostly, upon the truth. When we lose historical context, we lose that truth, and when we lose truth we lose our justifiable moral standings - reducing us all to mere reactionary fools.

If I might wax eloquent; reactionary fools have no long-standing foresight to the future, like the leaf of a tree twisting whichever way the wind blows, the leaf can not overcome the wind to direct itself, can no longer reach toward the sun, and it is destined to ultimately die and fall forgotten to the ground. We should aspire as a nation instead to be the tree itself; our branches, our varied ideals, relying upon the support of our roots, our history, to resist the breeze in it's support of /many/ such leaves, the individuals in the present. Our nation's goals and ideals should not be designed to support merely a single leaf, nor branch, but instead the framework upon which many branches and leaves might flourish.

America is no mere leaf meant to crumble and rot into an unknown speck in the soil, she is meant to be a mighty tree within the forest of nations. To such ends she should be allowed to grow past those knots and cracks of instability in her trunk no matter how large, to enshrine and thus strengthen those potential instabilities from future failure with the very fiber of her being. While our branches are want to roam, and will sometimes find themselves stretched past stability, those leaves upon them made to suffer; we should not seek to cut off those weakened branches, but dedicate ourselves to healing them, and support them with the complicated lattice framework of our united strength so the leaves of our people can enjoy their offshoot branch without fear of severance.

In such analogy the Confederate was not a mere branch, but akin to a split in our trunk; such a split can be balanced, maintained, and can be healthy, so long as both mother and daughter trunks support each other as they continue to grow. The actions of an unhealthy leaf sprouted amidst the many on that secondary trunk does not merit a call for the lumberjack to attempt to sever the entire secondary trunk from our core. Instead, we should pluck the single diseased leaf, discard it, and focus on improving the health of /all/ our leaves, in the hopes of preventing such diseased leaves from sprouting in the future. Such is not a job to be done with chainsaws, for severing the daughter trunk will not stop other diseased leaves from sprouting upon the "mother" trunk.

 

[defcon4]

guy, we don't have to fight you Cleetus. All we have to do is manipulate you because you are generally stupid.

You can fight Cleetus (who the fuckever that is) if you want to because I did not implied to anything about fighting me. The implication was to the ideology of the Übermenschen being defeated by the US and England, but mainly by the US thus the reference to "do not fuck with Americans with Übermensch ideology" even if you think you are the chosen people. Your spinning efforts are pathetic.

 

[Geaux4it]

With the New Orleans vote to remove Confederate Monument, this thread is once again relevant (bump) as it points to an overall objective to erase history for which the liberal left prefer to ignore

-Geaux

 

[Katzndogz]

No there isn't. None of you will do anything.

We already engaged in civil war in this nation. It is a cold war, but it rages nonetheless.

The adherents of the Constitutional Republic are losing. As we slide into a fully authoritarian state, I would not be surprised if there is rebellion. Especially if the democrats continue the open and institutional racism against whites and the open assault on civil rights of Christians.

It's a cold war so far, with only sporadic hot spots. Democrats won't keep it a war of words forever. They will have to step it up sooner or later.

 

[Claudette]

Forrest and his wife have been buried there for years and now all of a sudden their bodies and a statue of him on a horse are offensive??

Talk about politically correct morons.

 

[dilloduck]

Forrest and his wife have been buried there for years and now all of a sudden their bodies and a statue of him on a horse are offensive??

Talk about politically correct morons.

Liberals are simply irrational. They are afraid of dead people.

 

[AvgGuyIA]

The communist dug up graves of priest and nuns during Spanish Civil War. Nothing new to the leftist fringe.

The rightest fringe sent people to the ovens during WW2. What`s your point?

Nazi is left wing, idjit.

 

[Katzndogz]

Just think, in 50 years people will be comparing extremists to obama instead of Hitler and to liberals instead of nazis!

 

[August West]

Just think, in 50 years people will be comparing extremists to obama instead of Hitler and to liberals instead of nazis!

How damn drunk are you? Jeezus, it isn`t even 7:00!

 

[defcon4]

Just think, in 50 years people will be comparing extremists to obama instead of Hitler and to liberals instead of nazis!

How damn drunk are you? Jeezus, it isn`t even 7:00!

So, in which country do you reside? Your apostrophe is tilting to the left what is uncharacteristic to our English ones.

 

[Katzndogz]

Just think, in 50 years people will be comparing extremists to obama instead of Hitler and to liberals instead of nazis!

How damn drunk are you? Jeezus, it isn`t even 7:00!

You don't like the idea of your papa being that despised? Too bad.