CDZ Fêting losers is not what winning states do

[usmbguest5318]

Last night and today in Charlottesville, VA, bands of white nationalists, under the theme of "Unite the Right," rallied violently to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a city park in Charlottesville. The events in Charlottesville are not the first wherein Americans have acted violently out of fealty inculcated by their will, like that of leaders and supporters of the Confederate States of America, to reinstitutionalize "subordination" of non-whites as the "cornerstone" of American society. Dylan Roof's shooting defenseless church goers so as to make a statement in opposition to South Carolina ceasing to fly the CSA flag in front of its statehouse is yet another example of the lengths to which these fanatics will go.

Roof and people sharing and acting upon white supremacist values like his are not patriots of the United States of America, but rather patriots of the Confederate States of America (CSA). The Southern states seceded from the United States of America and formed a nation of its own, the CSA. The CSA, lost the war! Period! .

Since before the the overthrow of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus human history has recorded one insurrection after another. In their aftermath, however, I can think of only one nation wherein the nation itself and various states, counties and cities by naming parks, counties, streets and bridges after them, by erecting in central prominence statues of them before significant state government buildings, by incorporating the loser's flag into their own, etc. pay homage to the losers and their luminaries, to say nothing of doing so with regard to the losing actors in single most divisive insurrection in a winning nation's history. That nation is the United States and the states are those that lost the War of the Rebellion.

Some examples of this state-sponsored approbation for the icons and ideals of the Confederacy include:

• Fort Bragg is named for a Confederate general, Braxton Bragg.
• Fort Hood is named for Confederate general John Bell Hood.
• Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, AL, the bridge itself being among the most famous locales of the civil rights movement, is named for a Confederate General.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Jefferson Davis Highway in VA
• Jefferson Davis County in MS
• Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is the namesake of the Forrest County Courthouse in Hattiesburg, MS
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The city seal of Mobile, AL has a Confederate flag in it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Robert E. Lee bridge in Richmond, VA

And do white supremacists rally around symbols of the Confederacy to holler chants decrying its ideals and admonishing against its ugliness? Do they admonish us to let such scorn for one's fellow man never again rear its head? Hell, no! They rally to call for the resurrection of the Confederacy's value system. They rally to maintain the preservation of Confederate ideals and iconography among the organs of the cities, counties, states and nation. These people who have been raised and nurtured in a nation that laid waste to the Confederacy had rather see the ideals of the CSA reborn. They thus rally as patriots of the Confederacy, not as patriots of the United States of America and its post-Civil War system of values.

Quite simply, one is hard pressed to find elsewhere similarly pervasively given glory by organs of the winning state to the losers of an insurrection. Indeed, in the U.S., but for the Civil War's Confederate generals and political leaders, one doesn't find such homage paid to the losers, or, for that matter, by the losers to the winners.

These, for example, are monuments that preserve for the sake of public history the memory of Shays' Rebellion:

​

The one statue of George Washington that I've seen in London is at the National Gallery. Can you find it in the photo below?

Of course, you cannot because it's not standing in the center of the promenade leading to the front doors. That's in stark contrast to the homage accorded the Confederacy in various state run/owned places in Southern cities, states and counties in the U.S.

​

Is there even a monument to the Taos Revolt? The point of noting the Taos Revolt is this: history is not altered or lost merely because a city, state, nation, etc., winners in political contests, doesn't give prominent place to the losers of insurrections. Do the British not recall that they lost the War of Colonial Aggression merely because there are scant few statues of George Washington in London? Of course, they know they failed to squash the colonists' insurrection. That is among the great things about the Internet. Nearly all one can want to know about history's events is but a Google search away.


Note:

• AFAIK, there was no statue of George Washington in London until the 1920s when Virginia sent a copy of one as a gift.

 

[Fishlore]

There is no rational discussion of this profound topic. In the current political climate, our dialogue and our electoral mechanisms are damaged and cannot function effectively. Whatever rights the ship of state will have to come from outside the political process, not within it. Sad but true

 

[Wyatt earp]

It takes two to tangle...only in the OPs mind they were the ones to throw the first punch..

.

 

[jasonnfree]

Last night and today in Charlottesville, VA, bands of white nationalists, under the theme of "Unite the Right," rallied violently to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a city park in Charlottesville. The events in Charlottesville are not the first wherein Americans have acted violently out of fealty inculcated by their will, like that of leaders and supporters of the Confederate States of America, to reinstitutionalize "subordination" of non-whites as the "cornerstone" of American society. Dylan Roof's shooting defenseless church goers so as to make a statement in opposition to South Carolina ceasing to fly the CSA flag in front of its statehouse is yet another example of the lengths to which these fanatics will go.

Roof and people sharing and acting upon white supremacist values like his are not patriots of the United States of America, but rather patriots of the Confederate States of America (CSA). The Southern states seceded from the United States of America and formed a nation of its own, the CSA. The CSA, lost the war! Period! .

Since before the the overthrow of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus human history has recorded one insurrection after another. In their aftermath, however, I can think of only one nation wherein the nation itself and various states, counties and cities by naming parks, counties, streets and bridges after them, by erecting in central prominence statues of them before significant state government buildings, by incorporating the loser's flag into their own, etc. pay homage to the losers and their luminaries, to say nothing of doing so with regard to the losing actors in single most divisive insurrection in a winning nation's history. That nation is the United States and the states are those that lost the War of the Rebellion.

Some examples of this state-sponsored approbation for the icons and ideals of the Confederacy include:

• Fort Bragg is named for a Confederate general, Braxton Bragg.
• Fort Hood is named for Confederate general John Bell Hood.
• Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, AL, the bridge itself being among the most famous locales of the civil rights movement, is named for a Confederate General.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Jefferson Davis Highway in VA
• Jefferson Davis County in MS
• Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is the namesake of the Forrest County Courthouse in Hattiesburg, MS
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The city seal of Mobile, AL has a Confederate flag in it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Robert E. Lee bridge in Richmond, VA

And do white supremacists rally around symbols of the Confederacy to holler chants decrying its ideals and admonishing against its ugliness? Do they admonish us to let such scorn for one's fellow man never again rear its head? Hell, no! They rally to call for the resurrection of the Confederacy's value system. They rally to maintain the preservation of Confederate ideals and iconography among the organs of the cities, counties, states and nation. These people who have been raised and nurtured in a nation that laid waste to the Confederacy had rather see the ideals of the CSA reborn. They thus rally as patriots of the Confederacy, not as patriots of the United States of America and its post-Civil War system of values.

Quite simply, one is hard pressed to find elsewhere similarly pervasively given glory by organs of the winning state to the losers of an insurrection. Indeed, in the U.S., but for the Civil War's Confederate generals and political leaders, one doesn't find such homage paid to the losers, or, for that matter, by the losers to the winners.

These, for example, are monuments that preserve for the sake of public history the memory of Shays' Rebellion:

​

The one statue of George Washington that I've seen in London is at the National Gallery. Can you find it in the photo below?

Of course, you cannot because it's not standing in the center of the promenade leading to the front doors. That's in stark contrast to the homage accorded the Confederacy in various state run/owned places in Southern cities, states and counties in the U.S.

​

Is there even a monument to the Taos Revolt? The point of noting the Taos Revolt is this: history is not altered or lost merely because a city, state, nation, etc., winners in political contests, doesn't give prominent place to the losers of insurrections. Do the British not recall that they lost the War of Colonial Aggression merely because there are scant few statues of George Washington in London? Of course, they know they failed to squash the colonists' insurrection. That is among the great things about the Internet. Nearly all one can want to know about history's events is but a Google search away.


Note:

• AFAIK, there was no statue of George Washington in London until the 1920s when Virginia sent a copy of one as a gift.

The slaves were freed over a century and a half ago. Time to move on. If we're not careful, the American flag may be on the chopping block next, considering some pretty bad things have happened while old glory was flapping in the breeze.

 

[OldLady]

I can see both sides of this argument--for Lee to stay or to go. It doesn't seem to me that the OP is taking into consideration that this CS "enemy" is our own people, Americans. Grant made sure that the surrender at Appomattox was as respectful as possible for the Confederate side. They were our people: not foreigners out to destroy us, but Americans fighting to defend their way of life on their soil. They had to be reintegrated into the Union, not goaded into continued resistance due to suppression and humiliation. Southerners are as proud of their great great grandfathers for fighting for the Confederacy as Northerners are proud of their ancestors who fought for the Union.

Robert E. Lee was their Primero Uno military leader. There are hundreds, probably thousands, of statues of guys on horses scattered around the United States and no one pays any attention to them or usually knows who they are. I think it's ridiculous to remove his statue from a park in Virginia. If his likeness offends you, for heavens sake, walk by without looking or, better yet, go to a different park. I am not getting this. It IS revisionist to remove the statue of such a famous historical figure. We FORGAVE them. Now we are going to wipe their memory from history? I don't like it. Leave old Lee where he is. Let the birds keep pooping on him and the rain keep falling on him and let him continue to remain as a silent, honored sentinel to those who fought for what they believed a century and a half ago.

They were defending an insupportable and heinous institution, but every single living breathing American who was here prior to 1865 benefited from slavery. Every American who drank a shot of rum or used sugar in their baking or wore a cotton shirt or apron or stuffed tobacco in a corncob pipe was benefiting from slavery. It was so much part of our economy that it couldn't be extricated from commerce everywhere in these states; our whole economy depending on it, not just the Southern states. So we in the North can stick our nose in the air and say we were "blameless," but all participated in it and were enriched by it; our country was built on it to a degree.

Slowly, the Civil Rights Act is actually growing teeth. The days of having to defend against slavery are over. Let the dead lie and honor their sacrifices on BOTH sides of that terrible war. I realize the White Nationalists are troublesome and I certainly find them distasteful when I encounter them on this board, which is pretty much every day. They will not take over this country, though. They are very outnumbered and for the most part despised. I am glad counter protesters showed up to make that point. I am sorry anyone had to die or be hurt in the process. I've been on vacation and don't know anything about it except there was a violent protest and a car plowed into a group of protesters and one was killed, several injured, and the Unite the Right rally was cancelled before it ever began. That's all I need to know.

I understand the OP's stance, but I think he is forgetting that these are Americans we are talking about, and the bigots in this country aren't only in the old Confederate states. There is a better way to deal with their bent of mind than trying to eradicate them from history by taking away the statues of their generals from centuries past. A big ole slap in the face is not going to work on these fellas. It is what they live for--a big ole fight to show how tough they are. Why else stockpile all those guns if you can't be a bad ass once in awhile and show them off?

What happened in Charlottesville is interesting, if sad. Right v. Left and blood was spilled. Let's not have another Civil War, is my suggestion. I suppose Lee will be removed, regardless. That decision was made months ago. Don't know what the big hold up is--are all the cranes booked that far in advance? Anyway, I don't think the Left should view this as a big "victory" at this point. Eradicating history and causing loss of life is not "winning" in my book. The White Nationalists may have gotten more press than most of us would have liked, and possibly even some sympathy for having their party cancelled, but it should end here, as quickly as possible.

 

[Anathema]

The OP makes a strong point that in almost no other case have the victors allowed so much homage to be paid to the defeated. I will make only two points:

1. This is because the Union won a POLITICAL victory, not a military or philosophical one. Yes, the Union was in a position to win a military victory, but they instead accepted a POLITICAL surrender. One which a vast number of Confederate soldiers and civilians didnt want and never fulky accepted.

2. This is not the only time the US Government has done this. Look at the end of the Indian conflicts. We now have the monuments referred to as the Reservation System and the Indian Nations.

My poibt is that in the latter half of the 19th Century, the US Government had no idea how to properly deal with enemies of the nation... by wipung them out.

 

[usmbguest5318]

the Union won a POLITICAL victory, not a military or philosophical one. Yes, the Union was in a position to win a military victory, but they instead accepted a POLITICAL surrender. One which a vast number of Confederate soldiers and civilians didnt want and never fulky accepted.

Dude, you've not said anything of note. To the extent a war is a political action, every war victory is political.

• Theory of Victory

The Union accepted the Confederacy's surrenders (Appomattox was but one of the several surrenders of Confederate armies.) because the South's leaders and generals were willing to give them. Were that not so, the two forces would have fought on.

Perhaps you have in mind Lee's statement:

"The Army of Northern Virginia has been compelled to yield to overwhelming numbers and resources."​

That explanation enabled Southern whites to preserve their pride, to reconcile defeat with their sense of honor, even to maintain faith in the nobility of their cause while admitting that it had been lost. The Confederacy, in other words, was compelled to surrender not because its soldiers fought badly, or lacked courage, or suffered from poor leadership, or because its cause was wrong, but simply because the enemy had more men and guns. The inference Confederates took from that line is that the South did not lose; Confederates wore themselves out whipping the Yankees and collapsed from "glorious exhaustion." This interpretation became the mainstay of what has been called the Myth of the Lost Cause, which has sustained Southern pride in their Confederate forebears to this day.

(Click the links above and read the content before responding, please. I don't want to go down a tangential road of discourse.)

in almost no other case have the victors allowed so much homage to be paid to the defeated....This is not the only time the US Government has done this. Look at the end of the Indian conflicts. We now have the monuments referred to as the Reservation System and the Indian Nations.

You know what's different about the matter of the Native Americans?

• They were the invaded people who had literally everything taken from them by people who had absolutely no regard for the fact that the land upon which they'd just landed was already occupied and had been for literally some 10K+ years. A Native American monument here and there is meager recompense. It's but a small moral concession -- an apology of sorts that as minor as it is, is all they will ever get -- to a people and a whole culture and civilization, not just a nation, that, at least to some extent, welcomed Europeans and in return lost everything they held most dear, their lives, their land and their sovereignty.
• The CSA "fired the first shot" against the USA when they seceded. Their secession was no different from the colonists' declaration of independence, secession, from England. The colonists won the fight to secure their independence; the Confederates did not. That they did not does not negate the fact that they seceded. Quite simply, were there no secession, there'd have been no Civil War and the USA would not have suffered the losses of life, limb and resources it did.

 

[Anathema]

The Union accepted the Confederacy's surrenders (Appomattox was but one of the several surrenders of Confederate armies.) because the South's leaders and generals were willing to give them. Were that not so, the two forces would have fought on.

The leaders and generals did so against the wishes of the soldiers and citizens, who would have fought to the last man. In fact many Confdderstes co to yes to fight or rebel for years afterwards. Many going to their graves still considering themselves something other thsn Americans.

That explanation enabled Southern whites to preserve their pride, to reconcile defeat with their sense of honor, even to maintain faith in the nobility of their cause while admitting that it had been lost. The Confederacy, in other words, was compelled to surrender not because its soldiers fought badly, or lacked courage, or suffered from poor leadership, or because its cause was wrong, but simply because the enemy had more men and guns.

Which is, for the most part, the Truth. The CSA was the side if Right in the conflict and I proudly speak of my family members who went South from Connecticut to join gheir cause much moreso than my relatives who wore blue

You know what's different about the matter of the Native Americans?

They were the invaded people who had literally everything taken from them by people who had absolutely no regard for the fact that the land upon which they'd just landed was already occupied and had been for literally some 10K+ years. A Native American monument here and there is meager recompense. It's but a small moral concession -- an apology of sorts that as minor as it is, is all they will ever get -- to a people and a whole culture and civilization, not just a nation, that, at least to some extent, welcomed Europeans and in return lost everything they held most dear, their lives, their land and their sovereignty.

Possession is 10/10ths of the Law. They were stupid enough to not only fail to resist, but in certain situations to ASSIST the Europeans. They got exactly what they had coming, as we are now for failing to ruthlessly monitor and defend our borders. They should have been wiped out.

The CSA "fired the first shot" against the USA when they seceded. Their secession was no different from the colonists' declaration of independence, secession, from England. The colonists won the fight to secure their independence; the Confederates did not.

No. The North fired the first shot by nominating and electing Lincoln. They fired the second by refusing to abandon Fort Sumter.

You are right that the War of Northern Aggression was a second Anerican Revolution. The People won the first one. The Federal Government won the second one. We'll see which side ends up Sunni g the upcoming decisive third Anerican Revolution.

 

[westwall]

The one over arching concern I have is for the willful destruction of history. The only people who seem to always want to hide history, or destroy it, are those who wish to do it all over again and thus don't want the history known to all and sundry as that will prevent them doing it again.

 

[usmbguest5318]

It doesn't seem to me that the OP is taking into consideration that this CS "enemy" is our own people, Americans.

I don't take it into account because as Confederates, they were not "our" people. They were not citizens of the United States of America. I also do not consider it because the cornerstone of Confederate society was in the Constitution expressly abolished.

They were our people: not foreigners

They were not. Just prior to the surrender, they were about to be absorbed into the USA, but the CSA was separate nation from the USA. As a practical matter, yes, Grant acquiesced to rather generous terms of surrender. It'd have been imprudent for Grant to consider absorbing/annexing another nation full of people so pissed off that they reinitiate armed conflict.

If I move to Canada and yield my USA citizenship, I am no longer an American and I no longer owe any allegiance to the U.S. So it was with Confederates who opted to remain in the CSA.

There are hundreds, probably thousands, of statues of guys on horses scattered around the United States and no one pays any attention to them or usually knows who they are.

If nobody paid them any mind, would there truly be all the uproar that ensues, deadly conflagrations like what we've witnessed in C-ville, whenever it's proposed to remove one?

It IS revisionist to remove the statue of such a famous historical figure.

What exactly do you think is being revised?

They were defending an insupportable and heinous institution, but every single living breathing American who was here prior to 1865 benefited from slavery. Every American who drank a shot of rum or used sugar in their baking or wore a cotton shirt or apron or stuffed tobacco in a corncob pipe was benefiting from slavery. It was so much part of our economy that it couldn't be extricated from commerce everywhere in these states; our whole economy depending on it, not just the Southern states.

And yet, well before the Civil War, well before secession, Abolitionists were willing to forgo those benefits and make do as best they could because the notion of maintaining "the peculiar institution" was turpitudinous enough to make doing so "just the right thing to do," no matter the economic cost.

It wasn't as though there were no illustrations that a very productive and profitable way of life could be had absent slavery. Europeans grew crops just as the South did. Prior to 1860, Spain, France, Portugal, Denmark, Great Britain, and Sweden each abolished slavery or slave trading. The U.S. in 1808 banned slave trading, but the fact is that it did not enforce that ban. It may have been that new slaves were not purchased from outside the U.S. but the purchase and sale of slaves inside the U.S. endured. (Trade, economic exchange, occurs both domestically and internationally.)

Also, enterprise has long managed to thrive as various products and modes of production become obsolete. IBM, for instance didn't go out of business because typewriters became obsolete. Railroads still thrive even as airplane transportation have grown. Quite simply, obsolescence and opportunity are closely linked.

I understand the OP's stance, but I think he is forgetting that these are Americans we are talking about, and the bigots in this country aren't only in the old Confederate states.

My remarks have nothing to do with the bigots and their ilk. It has to do with not according places of homage and honor to the CSA and its luminaries. They lost the war.

Just as Hillary lost the 2016 election and is due no glory, no homage in the wake of her loss, so it is with the CSA, its icons and iconography. Will history, statues or no statues, yet record that Hillary was the first American woman to have received the presidential nomination of a major political party? Of course, it will.

trying to eradicate them from history by taking away the statues of their generals

History is extant. It is not eradicated by removing statues from places of prominence in society. Another member, Marianne, proposed an alternative that I find completely acceptable if preserving history be the sincere purpose for having the statues.

A big ole slap in the face is not going to work on these fellas.

Whose face do you conceive I aim to slap. The folks to whom I'd deny the homage of bridge names, government building names, prominent place of memorialization that associate them with organs and institutions that enforce and embody the antithesis of the Confederates and Confederacy's "cornerstone" values.

No one alive today is a citizen of the Confederate States of America, and plenty of people are citizens of the United States of America. The CSA is due no homage -- the recording of history is not an homage, a favor or laud; it is but the telling of what was -- from the institutions of the USA. Individuals who care to erect a statue of R.E. Lee on their privately owned front lawn are free to do so. Outside of explicitly historic venues, venues like the Manassas and Gettysburg battlefields, R.E. Lee's house overlooking the Potomac River, and other such venues, there's no place for the government to honor anything about the CSA.

Note:

• I can imagine there may be some few instances of exceptions to what I just wrote. There may be a public university, for example, that was founded by some Confederate character or some other bigot. I don't think the name of the school need be changed. Doing so would be revisionist. If the guy founded the school, well, he did. That's not nearly the same as naming a street or park or building after a long dead Confederate, or leaving arbitrarily erected in a city park a statue that honors a Confederate leader.
  
  (I can't speak for most cities, but in D.C. we have city parks all over the place -- supposedly we have more equestrian statues than any other place in the world -- and each of them commemorates someone. Below is a photo of Sheridan Circle, which is a small city park -- a round one -- named for Civil War General Phil Sheridan.)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  As go these various statues honoring Confederates, two that I find most unfitting are the two donated to the Statuary Hall collection: Jefferson Davis (MS) and Robert E. Lee (VA). Of all the places I think they least ought to be, they are in what I consider the least appropriate.
  
  

 

[Toronado3800]

Last night and today in Charlottesville, VA, bands of white nationalists, under the theme of "Unite the Right," rallied violently to protest the planned removal of a statue of Confederate General Robert E. Lee from a city park in Charlottesville. The events in Charlottesville are not the first wherein Americans have acted violently out of fealty inculcated by their will, like that of leaders and supporters of the Confederate States of America, to reinstitutionalize "subordination" of non-whites as the "cornerstone" of American society. Dylan Roof's shooting defenseless church goers so as to make a statement in opposition to South Carolina ceasing to fly the CSA flag in front of its statehouse is yet another example of the lengths to which these fanatics will go.

Roof and people sharing and acting upon white supremacist values like his are not patriots of the United States of America, but rather patriots of the Confederate States of America (CSA). The Southern states seceded from the United States of America and formed a nation of its own, the CSA. The CSA, lost the war! Period! .

Since before the the overthrow of Lucius Tarquinius Superbus human history has recorded one insurrection after another. In their aftermath, however, I can think of only one nation wherein the nation itself and various states, counties and cities by naming parks, counties, streets and bridges after them, by erecting in central prominence statues of them before significant state government buildings, by incorporating the loser's flag into their own, etc. pay homage to the losers and their luminaries, to say nothing of doing so with regard to the losing actors in single most divisive insurrection in a winning nation's history. That nation is the United States and the states are those that lost the War of the Rebellion.

Some examples of this state-sponsored approbation for the icons and ideals of the Confederacy include:

• Fort Bragg is named for a Confederate general, Braxton Bragg.
• Fort Hood is named for Confederate general John Bell Hood.
• Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma, AL, the bridge itself being among the most famous locales of the civil rights movement, is named for a Confederate General.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Jefferson Davis Highway in VA
• Jefferson Davis County in MS
• Confederate Lt. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest is the namesake of the Forrest County Courthouse in Hattiesburg, MS
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The city seal of Mobile, AL has a Confederate flag in it.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Robert E. Lee bridge in Richmond, VA

And do white supremacists rally around symbols of the Confederacy to holler chants decrying its ideals and admonishing against its ugliness? Do they admonish us to let such scorn for one's fellow man never again rear its head? Hell, no! They rally to call for the resurrection of the Confederacy's value system. They rally to maintain the preservation of Confederate ideals and iconography among the organs of the cities, counties, states and nation. These people who have been raised and nurtured in a nation that laid waste to the Confederacy had rather see the ideals of the CSA reborn. They thus rally as patriots of the Confederacy, not as patriots of the United States of America and its post-Civil War system of values.

Quite simply, one is hard pressed to find elsewhere similarly pervasively given glory by organs of the winning state to the losers of an insurrection. Indeed, in the U.S., but for the Civil War's Confederate generals and political leaders, one doesn't find such homage paid to the losers, or, for that matter, by the losers to the winners.

These, for example, are monuments that preserve for the sake of public history the memory of Shays' Rebellion:

​

The one statue of George Washington that I've seen in London is at the National Gallery. Can you find it in the photo below?

Of course, you cannot because it's not standing in the center of the promenade leading to the front doors. That's in stark contrast to the homage accorded the Confederacy in various state run/owned places in Southern cities, states and counties in the U.S.

​

Is there even a monument to the Taos Revolt? The point of noting the Taos Revolt is this: history is not altered or lost merely because a city, state, nation, etc., winners in political contests, doesn't give prominent place to the losers of insurrections. Do the British not recall that they lost the War of Colonial Aggression merely because there are scant few statues of George Washington in London? Of course, they know they failed to squash the colonists' insurrection. That is among the great things about the Internet. Nearly all one can want to know about history's events is but a Google search away.


Note:

• AFAIK, there was no statue of George Washington in London until the 1920s when Virginia sent a copy of one as a gift.

The slaves were freed over a century and a half ago. Time to move on. If we're not careful, the American flag may be on the chopping block next, considering some pretty bad things have happened while old glory was flapping in the breeze.

Agreed. It is time to move on and denounce the Confederate South for the racist place it was......well, this is the CDZ so I should watch my languange.

The Confederate flag was well designed, looks cool and all, but it is a 150 year old symbol of failure, bigotry and slavery as you say. Time to denounce it.

 

[Toronado3800]

The Union accepted the Confederacy's surrenders (Appomattox was but one of the several surrenders of Confederate armies.) because the South's leaders and generals were willing to give them. Were that not so, the two forces would have fought on.

The leaders and generals did so against the wishes of the soldiers and citizens, who would have fought to the last man. In fact many Confdderstes co to yes to fight or rebel for years afterwards. Many going to their graves still considering themselves something other thsn Americans.

That explanation enabled Southern whites to preserve their pride, to reconcile defeat with their sense of honor, even to maintain faith in the nobility of their cause while admitting that it had been lost. The Confederacy, in other words, was compelled to surrender not because its soldiers fought badly, or lacked courage, or suffered from poor leadership, or because its cause was wrong, but simply because the enemy had more men and guns.

Which is, for the most part, the Truth. The CSA was the side if Right in the conflict and I proudly speak of my family members who went South from Connecticut to join gheir cause much moreso than my relatives who wore blue

You know what's different about the matter of the Native Americans?

They were the invaded people who had literally everything taken from them by people who had absolutely no regard for the fact that the land upon which they'd just landed was already occupied and had been for literally some 10K+ years. A Native American monument here and there is meager recompense. It's but a small moral concession -- an apology of sorts that as minor as it is, is all they will ever get -- to a people and a whole culture and civilization, not just a nation, that, at least to some extent, welcomed Europeans and in return lost everything they held most dear, their lives, their land and their sovereignty.

Possession is 10/10ths of the Law. They were stupid enough to not only fail to resist, but in certain situations to ASSIST the Europeans. They got exactly what they had coming, as we are now for failing to ruthlessly monitor and defend our borders. They should have been wiped out.

The CSA "fired the first shot" against the USA when they seceded. Their secession was no different from the colonists' declaration of independence, secession, from England. The colonists won the fight to secure their independence; the Confederates did not.

No. The North fired the first shot by nominating and electing Lincoln. They fired the second by refusing to abandon Fort Sumter.

You are right that the War of Northern Aggression was a second Anerican Revolution. The People won the first one. The Federal Government won the second one. We'll see which side ends up Sunni g the upcoming decisive third Anerican Revolution.

The North fired the first shot by electing Lincoln.....you know, this was a statement too far. Constitutionally electing Lincoln is qual to a deadly war in your eyes. Kinda reveals a slanted opinion.

 

[Anathema]

The North fired the first shot by electing Lincoln.....you know, this was a statement too far. Constitutionally electing Lincoln is qual to a deadly war in your eyes. Kinda reveals a slanted opinion.

As was electing FDR and Obama and running Hillary Clinton.

I have never claimed to be unbiased or open-minded. I know who and whst I am. I always have and always will.

 

[Zander]

Arlington National Cemetery is on land that was once Robert E Lee's farm and home.

Time to DIG UP THOSE BODIES!!!!

 

[Jarlaxle]

Actually, no. The estate was never Robert E. Lee's. The Federal government was sued (by his son Custis, the legal heir)and lost...they paid a large amount of money.