I wrote that in the comments section to a post I put up 2 days ago. I'd said "Why do we have monuments celebrating the losing side, the Americans who took up arms against America? That's rather crazy other than to express respect for the dead."
I really did not think the monument-topplers would go after the cemetery.
But today I see that Madison Mayor Paul Soglin has ordered the removal of a stone with a plaque memorializing those dead men at the site of their graves:
Soglin said in a statement Thursday that he has directed staff to remove a plaque and a stone at the Confederate Rest section of the cemetery, adding "there should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country."...
A plaque at the Confederate Rest section of the public cemetery describes how the 140 soldiers ended buried in Wisconsin after surrendering in a battle and being taken to Camp Randall. It described them as "valiant Confederate soldiers" and "unsung heroes."Here's an article from 2014 about that part of the cemetery:
The servicemen, most from Alabama’s 1st Infantry Regiment and others from Tennessee, Louisiana, Arkansas and Mississippi, died from their injuries or other ailments not long after arriving in Madison by train in April 1862. They were captured at Island No. 10 — a Confederate stronghold on the Mississippi River where Missouri, Kentucky and Tennessee meet — and held at Camp Randall, a Union army training facility that became a prisoner-of-war camp and military hospital.I truly believed that Madisonians were proud of the respect they had shown for so long for those prisoners who died here.
Visitors from around the U.S. seeking their forebears have made pilgrimages to the small plot, and some have taken its plight to heart. Alice Whiting Waterman moved to Madison from Baton Rouge, Louisiana, in 1866 to care for the graves. When she died in 1897, she was buried there with “her boys.”
It is awful to preempt public discussion about these graves, to choose go after them in a time of heightened passion. These are graves!
ADDED: Here is the full text of the statement Paul Soglin put up on the City of Madison website an hour ago:
The removal of City-owned monuments to confederate soldiers in Forest Hill Cemetery has minimal or no disruption to the cemetery itself. There is no disrespect to the dead with the removal of the plaque and stone.These were soldiers, not men who made decisions about secession and war. Their graves are here because they surrendered and were brought here as prisoners. They suffered here:
The Civil War was an act of insurrection and treason and a defense of the deplorable practice of slavery. The monuments in question were connected to that action and we do not need them on City property.
Taking down monuments will not erase our shared history. The Confederacy’s legacy will be with us, whether we memorialize it in marble or not. I agree with other Mayors around the country also speaking out and taking action. We are acknowledging there is a difference between remembrance of history and reverence of it. In Madison, we join our brothers and sisters around the country to prove that we, as a people, are able to acknowledge, understand, reconcile, and most importantly, choose a better future for ourselves.
There should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country. That is why I instructed Forest Hills Cemetery staff to remove a Confederate’s Rest commemorative memorial. There is a larger monument, which has not garnered as much attention, which will also be removed.
Despite best efforts, U.S. Army officials deemed camp conditions unsuitable. A May 1 letter written by Assistant Quartermaster J.A. Potter described the soldiers of the 19th Wisconsin as undisciplined, inexperienced and poorly-equipped to guard such a volume of prisoners. He expressed disappointment in hospital conditions, noting that of the roughly 1,200 prisoners held at Camp Randall, some 200 were hospitalized with illness.ADDED: Here's a photograph that shows the stone with the plaque and its position in relation to the graves. I don't believe Soglin is talking about removing the individual headstones or interfering with the buried bodies, though his statement contains no word of assurance about respect for the graves.
The condition of these afflicted prisoners worsened. Despite medical care, more prisoners began to succumb to measles, mumps and pneumonia. A Private Paddock of the 19th Wisconsin Regiment wrote to his family regarding these deaths: “They die off like rotten sheep. There was 11 die off yesterday and today, and there ain’t a day but what there is from two to nine dies.”...
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319 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 319 of 319And once again: You want Senator Kid Rock? This is how you get Senator Kid Rock.
And based on what I've read and seen about him, the Dan Rather interview, etc. I'm pretty much up for Senator Kid Rock. "You run deep, hoss."
Ah, more moronic words from the Moron of Madison, Paul Soglin. Now he wants to vandalize a graveyard? Some things never change, I guess. Since he's been doing his act since the Sixties I have to consider it prima facie that Madison voters totally deserve him. I pity them.
Yes. What I said. You have to own a slave before you can free him. Why are you splitting hairs? Are you some kind of racist?
I am interested in Grant. Hiring free African Americans is not the same as buying a slave. Freeing the slave brought to the marriage by your wife is not the same as purchasing enslaved people to farm.
Why are you insulting random people on the internet? Why is correcting the historical record about Grant racist? Would you say this to me in person? Is this the Trump effect? I think Trump is degrading the mental health of many people, right and left. I've seen people call other people horrible names on these comment sites the last few days. I'm sure many people would be ashamed to say the things they said in person. Yelling slurs at people on the internet is immature, but I suppose that's not news to people. My advice is to take a long run or play a video game or take a long walk or drink a beer with friends. Projecting your anger on other people by calling them names is not healthy.
"Your mistake is in believing the left will observe such distinctions."
-- I don't know if that's the case. I fully acknowledge that, given an inch, we'll be pulling the severed head of the Lincoln memorial out of the reflecting pool if given the chance.
But, just because the left will take advantage doesn't mean that I'm going to change my stance on things. There's a right way to remove the memorials/statues. If they go about it that way, they might find a surprising amount of agreement, even from "the right."
But, why should they bother to do things the right, legal way? They get results when they riot and use violence. We've spent a year or so reinforcing that behavior; Trump canceled a rally. Speakers get called off. Their enemies get labeled Nazis (which is only bad when they aren't actual Nazis.)
So... I don't expect their behavior to change. But, that doesn't mean I should change mine, except to be better prepared for the next move.
The sifting and winnowing has been going on in Madison for a long time.
Steven E. Ambrose is 2002:
In 1996 I was a visiting professor at the University of Wisconsin. The History Club there asked me to participate in a panel discussion on "Political Correctness and the University." The professor seated next to me taught American political thought. I remarked to her that when I began teaching I had required students to read five or six books each semester, but I had cut that back to three or four or else the students would drop my course. She said she had the same problem. She had dropped Thomas Jefferson’s writings from the required reading list.
"You are in Madison, being paid by the citizens of Wisconsin to teach their children American political thought, and you leave out Tom Jefferson?"
"Yes," she replied. "He was a slaveholder." More than half the large audience applauded.
As is generally true these days, the issue du jour is never the actual issue. David Begley says the Civil War ended 152 years ago, and while that is technically true, the actual war has never ended. That is because we are still unsettled about the tension between freedom and equality.
The modern "progressives" are spiritual descendants of the Confederates who wanted to separate their tribe from the universalizers in the North represented by the newly-formed Republican Party. Our Founder Fathers had proposed a republic (if we could keep it) built upon still-fragile Scottish Enlightenment assumptions about actual human progress into what we now call modernity. They envisioned a radically new system based upon the belief that we humans can achieve individual autonomy and then compact with one another to create a government that encourages that autonomy while tamping down the tyrannical impulses of the earlier, much-longer ascendant, premodern tribal cultures.
They knew that in order for this new system to prevail, citizens would have to develop what they called "civic virtue"--the understanding that we either hang together or we all hang separately. Unfortunately, they had no way of forcing the citizenry to be civically virtuous; thus the subsequent debates about slavery, for instance, suffered in large part from our unwillingness to include universal truths in our deliberations. That's why we ended up in a war, which was among other things a confession of the limits of the Founders' faith.
That's why Lincoln called for "a new birth of freedom" characterized by "malice toward none and charity for all"--a call as barren (so far) of actual results as those of the Founders.
This is ultimately a human evolutionary struggle. Are we individuals fully responsible for our own lives, or are we members of a tribe which alone determines our destinies? The tribe protects our equality (at least within the tribe's confines) and deprives us of freedom. Modernity promotes our freedom from the minimalist but necessary basis of equality before the law, and nothing more.
Our "progressives" have been pushing a retribalizing agenda since the 60s, with the full complicity of rent-seeking global elites who benefit from the divide-and-conquer agenda.
Trump's election is pulling us toward peak fever; all of this excresence will, like the Cultural Revolution and McCarthyism, burn out sooner or later. It has ever been thus. The question is, Après le déluge, quoi?
Put on your glasses, because we're witnessing an earlier than expected eclipse.
The ghoulish left with their extremism is now eclipsing whatever offense Trump instilled.
When the dust settles, people will see the sum of the criticism of Trump amounts to that his condemnation of the beliefs on only one side in a melee wasn't strong enough.
Based on Soglin's logic, the Washington and Jefferson Memorials should be taken down based on their ownership of slaves.
Freeman Hunt wrote: You're part of the problem. They can point at you and say, "See! We all agree that these are the same!"
Some observations:
1) You evidently haven't been paying attention, because events have already passed into that supposedly beyond the pale territory.
2) Whether you realize it, you have been virtual signaling. I expected better things of you.
"England, you're next."
Yep. All those Victorian statues of imperialist administrators and governors will certainly have to come down. Not to mention statues of Vicky herself, the biggest imperialist of them all.
Right, exiled. I'm glad my British husband isn't alive to see this! It would have broken his heart.
wwww
I would say that and more to you in person.
The Civil War was an act of insurrection and treason and a defense of the deplorable practice of slavery.
Hizzoner is just now realizing this, apparently.
AGAIN
Memorial Hall at Harvard University has names of Confederate soldiers and Admiral Yamamoto.
Yes, those nasty Brits brought CRICKET to India! How cruel! And those poor saps still play it to this day!
Just to be clear I think most of the people who instigated secession were as treasonous as one could possibly be. Had they all been hung that would have been fine with me. My sympathies go out to the soldiers and officers who actually fought. As many have pointed out few were slave owners, and few thought they were fighting to preserve slavery. I have always been greatly affected by the symbolism of Joshua Chamberlain's salute to the surrendering Confederates at Appomattax.
Living in Houston, I had never heard of Mayor Soglin. After reading his bio, I am not surprised at his actions. I find that people who served in the military generally (not always) are more forgiving to former opponents. Mayor Soglin was a radical leftist in the 1960s, so desecrating the resting place of soldiers who died in a war last century is not out of character. Or should I say a lack of character.
Incompetent malcontents unhappy with their lives and futures are what makes up the most vociferous and angriest of the Dem base. At some point, their worst of the worst Dems, Antifa, will cross someone's Red Line and as revenge, a grenade will be tossed into a bar frequented by the Antifa schmucks. In retaliation,there will be a Charlie Hebdo-like massacre at a Fox News gathering.
Then it will be major league game on. This statue bullshit is just getting everyone's blood boiling for that big game.
"the Americans who took up arms against America?"
It wasn't as though they set out to invade and destroy America. Their cause was to succeed and strike out on their own. I'm not defending that cause, but the Union cause was to keep them, to make them stay and change their ways and in the process, heal the rift, make the union stronger and better, to go forward. How do you do that?
Respect, forgiveness, a great deal of forbearance and prioritizing. It's amazing it was accomplished at all. A few monuments? A small price to pay.
I submit my vote for a name change from Madison WI because of that evil slaveholder. I am not sure what to replace it with, though "Fantasyland" popped into my head.
Mockturtle: I've been following the "Rhodes Must Fall!" saga at Oxford. The movement was gaining significant traction, as of course it would given the left-leaning nature of the academy globally and not just in America. The Oxford administrators were eating it up with a spoon and licking their statue-downing chops.
Then Oxford alumni and donors threatened to pull 100 million pounds in bequests if the Rhodes statues were removed. That shit got shut down like a bear-trap slamming shut. The South African "Rhodes Must Fall" agitators are still kind of limping along but they've been advised to STFU and now they vaguely talk about spiting Rhodes by taking his scholarship money.
Amazing how money changes things...
Nathan Bedford Forrest is still honored here in the State of Tennessee with his name state park last I heard. I'm guessing that will really cause some outrage if they change the name.
"Just to be clear I think most of the people who instigated secession were as treasonous as one could possibly be. Had they all been hung that would have been fine with me."
Cool beans, but since they're all already dead can we get started on the California secessionists?
I would say that and more to you in person.
I'm a Christian. I hope you may find some peace. I would not or will not say anything negative to you, either in person or on the blog. To anyone who wants to insult: I will not issue any slurs or do any cussing on this blog or in person in response to insults or slurs.
I am interested in historical accuracy about General Grant. I was responding to the substance of your comment. Althouse has a policy that comments should not call out individual people. I think the comments are a more interesting place if we stick to the substance of the subjects and avoid personal insults.
Khesanh 0802 wrote: Just to be clear I think most of the people who instigated secession were as treasonous as one could possibly be.
Clearly, this is what you believe. What isn't clear is the reasoning behind same. Care to elaborate on that arch-treason in light of this?
Just to be clear, I'm not attacking you. I am merely curious.
Anyone have the complete text of whatever is inscribed on the removed plaque and on the second monument? 'Unsung heroes' and 'valiant soldiers' don't seem too inflammatory.
Here in Eugene, there was, last year, a grand piece of theatre at the U. of Oregon over the renaming of a building on campus the titular deity of which was a member of the KKK-- although, if I recall the press reports correctly he hadn't been a very enthusiastic Klansman. Since it's true enough that Oregon has a particularly awful history of anti-Black prejudice, I couldn't get too excited about the business (not that I have anything directly to do with the UO anyway). I wonder what the new academic year will bring, though.
It would entirely too rational to put plaques on all of these offending monuments saying that the person represented fought against the US, lost, and fought in a cause that was both traitorous and evil.
But then that would assume anyone ever looked at these statues closely to begin with, that the population can read and that anyone would have the slightest interest in education versus eradication.
Blogger mockturtle said...
No honor for losers? Then I guess the Vietnam War Memorial must go.
8/17/17, 2:39 PM
What about the Holocaust Museum? Nobody lost more in WWII than the ones pushed into the gas chambers.
And some of the survivors' descendants now live in a horrible racist nation that persecutes poor Palestinians.
Where would you go to find a mayor as vile as the mayor of Madison? Some tiny burg in the former soviet?
Lucien recalls: Then Oxford alumni and donors threatened to pull 100 million pounds in bequests if the Rhodes statues were removed. That shit got shut down like a bear-trap slamming shut. The South African "Rhodes Must Fall" agitators are still kind of limping along but they've been advised to STFU and now they vaguely talk about spiting Rhodes by taking his scholarship money.
Amazing how money changes things...
Yes. An LPGA member slated to play in a recent well-funded tournament at one of Trump's clubs said publicly that she hoped Trump wouldn't be there, she hates him. But she said she couldn't withdraw because the stakes were so high. :-D
For Mr. Puckett
"the Americans who took up arms against America..." describes everyone who fought — North, South, East, and West. To assert otherwise is just appalling ignorance of history.
Michael asks: Where would you go to find a mayor as vile as the mayor of Madison?
London?
Whether you realize it, you have been virtual signaling.
Virtue signaling is holding to one's own view? Since when?
I expected better things of you.
Heh. This reminds me of something. "You, a law professor!"
Forget about trying to change Freeman's mind. It's a Lost Cause.
www.telegraph.co.uk/.../8720214/IKEA-founder-was-Nazi-recruiter.html
Aug 24, 2011 · IKEA founder 'was Nazi recruiter'. IKEA's billionaire founder Ingvar Kamprad was a member of the Swedish Nazi party and was such a concern to secret service they opened a file on him, according to a new book."
How many good little lefties have filled up their basement flats with cheap Billy bookcases and coffee tables over the years, believing their money was going to a cool, progressive, Swedish company, while in fact they were making a real Nazi filthy rich?
Burn IKEA!
Freeman Hunt is honorable and wrong.
Thank you very much, Rabel. It's all pietas, and straightforward descriptive prose. Mayor Soglin is an ass.
Since WWII, the United States has spent billions of dollars in reconstruction and economic aid to our vanquished enemies, despite hundreds of thousands of casualties and trillions of dollars more in financing and conducting wartime operations.
No leftist has a problem with this draining of our treasury, but hell and damnation should be applied to any famous historic figure who had slaves or fought for the state where they lived.
The Civil War was far more complex than the act of freeing slaves, since emancipation took far longer in real time than fighting and ending the war. Other disagreements between the states influenced and became additional causes for the war, including the tariffs imposed by the Federal Government to finance its operations. Since the states involved in foreign trade were the agricultural South, they took the hit when foreign governments raided southern state profits through retaliatory tariffs on tobacco and cotton. I read somewhere where slaves actually made up a third of the population in some parts of the antebellum South, so slavery was a big part of plantation overhead.
So Americans need to respect Americans first and always. Judging the past through rose-colored glasses is easy - but did you notice that the anti-slavery bunch doesn't say a word about today's slavers, which include India (14.3M), China (3.2M), Pakistan (2.1M), Uzbekistan (1.2M) and Russia (1.0M). Uzbekistan is run by Sunnis and their percent of slaves to toal population is almost 4.0%.
Not content with their efforts to restart the Cold War, the Left is now trying to restart the Civil War.
It might help if any of these people had studied any history. Like the reporters at the White House, they know nothing.
They think history began last year or in 2008 when the lightbringer took over.
"Whether you realize it, you have been virtual signaling. I expected better things of you."
I second this with Ms Hunt.
I keep referring to the funeral of William Sherman. Joe Johnston, who had lost every battle to Sherman until he was relieved by Davis, was a pallbearer. It was inclement weather and his aide advised him it was too risky for his own health to attend.
He replied, "Sherman would do it for me." He died a month later of complications of pneumonia.
Other disagreements between the states influenced and became additional causes for the war, including the tariffs imposed by the Federal Government to finance its operations.
Good comment, gadfly. I just wish more people studied history.
I have DS Freeman's four volume biography of Lee and his three volume "Lee's Lieutenants.
I should probably get a had cover version of "Gone With The Wind" before the Red Guards burn all copies.
@Birkel I was introduced to this blog when a previous discussion brought out that Memorial Hall does not include the names of Harvard Alumni who died fighting for the Confederacy. I was quite sure myself that I had sen CSA names, but I was wrong. It does not. It should have and probably would have had it been constructed 10 years later.
Here's a good article from the Crimson reviewing Harvard's quandary.
"Harvard Men Who Fought for the South" have not been forgotten, however. LINK
Yamamoto attended Harvard but his name was not included on the WWII plaque in Memorial Church.
He replied, "Sherman would do it for me." He died a month later of complications of pneumonia.
North and South, slaveholder and abolitionist, Americans were better people before socialism seeped into our institutions.
@exiled Your comment about the Viet Nam Memorial will be about as welcome as Trump's "both sides are wrong". However you are correct that we did indeed "lose".
Freeman Hunt said...I didn't think extremists would stop at the Confederacy honoring monuments, but I disagree with them beyond those, and I think people should oppose them there.
I wish you luck, Freeman Hunt, I really do. You and Paddy O and everyone else: I really do wish you luck. I wish my own views were tolerable to people like you but I understand why you agree with more-extreme people that they are not.
Jonah Goldberg likes to remind people that "politics is downstream of culture." That's true, and I guess it's part of why I feel so much anger at name-brand conservative leaders today. I know I'm in a minority and I'm ok with that, but when the conservative "cause" has failed so utterly that the big scramble is to see who can more-quickly join the Left in denouncing wrongthink and embracing Leftist moral judgement (esp. w/r/t the validity of using violence against bad groups)--and that scramble includes not just Goldberg & NRO but people like Rubio and Romney!--I don't know how to feel anything but anger.
Symbols mean whatever we decide they mean. "We" have decided that anything referencing Confederate types in a positive manner in any way means a celebration of racism, bigotry, white supremacy, hatred, etc. All such symbols are therefore intolerable. That makes sense. People who disagree with what "we" have decided those symbols mean are, therefore, fighting for racism, bigotry, white supremacy, and hatred and any such people are intolerable--they're not real Americans, they're on the wrong side of history, and they're not "who we are." That makes sense, too.
The rest follows. I understand losing; as a libertarian-leaning small-government desiring conservative I've lost pretty much all of the political battles I've engaged in. I recognize now the futility of trying to change people's mind regarding the wisdom of "free stuff" government--my way feels less nice and I don't think I'll ever be able to overcome that fact. I do still think it's needlessly harmful for the winning side to gratuitously insult the losers as the nice, good winners simultaneously declare any contrary viewpoint out of bounds (since those contrary viewpoints must necessarily be racist/sexist/homophobic/hateful/ugly), but I get that's what we should expect to see from here on out.
Maybe you'll win, though; maybe what you see as an extreme version of your own point of agreement with the Left will be successfully stopped. I doubt it; one has to ask who is more motivated in that contest--you, holding the more moderate position and fearful of being associated with bad immoral people like me, or the extremists themselves, certain of their moral correctness and willing to use any and all weapons available to steamroll over anyone who expresses disagreement or hesitation...but maybe you'll stop 'em.
Like I said: good luck.
Re: Rabel:
Cool beans, but since they're all already dead can we get started on the California secessionists?
Let them take concrete steps towards secession, and then hang them from the sour apple tree.
Oh, bullshit. The Civil War was a war against slavery. You people have been drinking bad, old juice. I'd say "do a little reading", but I know you have. Just reading badly.
So Soglin has his eye on governorship. Maybe he figures this will play well in Milwaukee.
"Virtue signalling" is a term of commentary art. It's a verb that means to advocate something with knowledge that such advocacy is a sham, intended to show virtue, even if the advocate has no opinion or knowledge of the issue in question.
So you can virtue-signal by saying "I hate Nazis!" Good for you. The rest of us love Nazis, right?
Crap.
I'm not a historian, but it was always my understanding that the underlying cause of the civil war was the secession of the south. Lincoln was even willing to allow slavery to continue if a deal could be made. Please correct me if I am wrong on this.
"I am not sure what to replace it with, though "Fantasyland" popped into my head."
How about we go old school Althouse and call it...
Marginalia...?
@Questar There is no question that those in the colonies who rebelled against the crown knew that they were committing treason. Remember Hancock's quote when he signed the Declaration “Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.” It was a huge roll of the dice and had they lost the Sioux hanging in 1863(?) would have looked like a picnic. However the rebels won, got to write the history and, ultimately were proven right.
My view of the Southerners that led the way to rebellion is that it was a minority of the populous who were trying to preserve a position of privilege that swayed the Southern people to secede. Jefferson Davis' claim that the South just wanted to be left alone may have been true for the general populous, but for those in leadership it was a case of wanting to maintain that "peculiar institution" that led them to take up arms.
"... be ourselves denounced and punished by the Woke
I've been bothered by that semi-literate shibboleth ever since Maxine Waters (that paragon of learning) started to promote it."
Imagine the derision from the left that would have been heaped upon some Trumpian hillbilly, and all his redneck ilk, if he'd been the one to come up with "Stay woke". At least the white college-indoctrinated SJWs who espouse the woke lifestyle still have to maneuver the minefield of extolling wokeness without appropriating it, and avoiding the appearance of patronizing the Blacks who are the most wokeful. One false move and it's into the basket of deplorables for you!
PACWest: Yes, and no. If you view things like the Cornerstone speech, it is clear that slavery was *the* issue. There were lots of other issues, but slavery was a festering wound on the nation since its inception. Many, many, many compromises had been attempted, and each put off the inevitable.
Tariffs were mentioned either above or another thread, but so to was the degree of closeness with European powers. How to handle expansion westward (beyond just "Should there be slave states there?") was also a point of contention. The thing is, all those other issues could be argued, debated and people could view that as politics.
Slavery though was a moral evil; it is one thing to say "The cotton tariff should be X," while someone else argues for Y. You can walk away from that. But "Yeah, we should be able to sell people," is such an affront to decency that there was eventually a point of no more compromise. Northern abolitionists pushed that point; Lincoln would have compromised, but the South felt that they had already compromised enough on so many other things.
And that's Matt's 2-minute "Slavery was *the* issue, but not the only issue" spiel.
I second this with Ms Hunt.
Who are you? My father?
I live in Arkansas and grew up in a town with a Confederate statue in the middle of the town square. I live near that town now. I have always been of the same opinion on that statue and others like it. I'm glad these monuments are finally being discussed.
The idea of a guy in California telling me what I can and can't talk about regarding an issue about my own hometown--ha!
"there should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country."...
This sounds a lot like the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere.
Oh yeah, we're going to unite baby.
@pacwest You are correct that "secession" was the proximate cause of the war. Lincoln argued essentially that the union of the states was an unbreakable contract. Lincoln felt that he had no legal basis for abolishing slavery in any of the states. Over the years he had been searching for ways to solve the slavery problem and the problem of what to do with the blacks and at the time of the outbreak of the civil war he was in favor of compensated emancipation and "colonization" of freed slaves in Africa. As the war progressed his views obviously changed.
Where are we headed by destroying/rewriting history? The government is destroying American history ostensibly for the greater good and seek to pass a law to destroy even more.
It is astonishing how well they divided us over the past 10 years or so and how precipitously we are now falling.
"If a house is divided against itself, that house cannot stand." From the Book of Mark. Repeated and proven true all too often in world history.
pacwest, Lincoln was an anti-slavery guy. The Republican Party was born from that. Lincoln was the first charismatic leader of the GOP. Lincoln said that slavery should be put on its road to its own ultimate extinction. That was political advice that might have yielded fewer than the 600k deaths America suffered back in the 1860s.
Lincoln did write about moving black slaves to Africa. That was unwise, but thoughtful. He also commented about differences between blacks and whites. Also unwise, especially in the modern age (see Thomas Sowell).
How is the Republican Party, the founder of anti-slavery, the party of American blacks in the late 1800s, now the party of racism?
Democratic lying.
Bob Ellison said...
"Oh, bullshit. The Civil War was a war against slavery."
The Commander in Chief of the winning side said otherwise. As, for that matter, did the Commander in Chief of the losing side. But what would they have known about it?
Thanks Matt. I appreciate the folks (that I trust to give unvarnished facts) on this blog who know a lot more about some (most:) things than I do. The timelines are where I misunderstand this I guess. I'll research.
It's a mob, so many people with a mob like mentality.
@Questar One of the things that we find hard to understand today was the loyalty of the people toward their state at that time. The state was thought of by its citizens more like a country. Lee is probably the best example of this when he left the Union only because his home state of Virginia had finally seceded. Lee could not, as he said, "fight against his own people".
Honoring dead enemy soldiers is apparently not beyond the pale, at least in Japan.
There is a stone, engraved in English, with the names of the 21 American POWs who were killed at the end of WWII in a little harbor town called Hakodate in Hokkaido, Japan. It is on the grounds of a temple, and was erected by "The Society for Recording the Bombing Raids on Hakodate", who also erected another stone engraved with a factual description of the raids, also in English.
Of course, the bombing raids were conducted by American/Allied Forces and resulted in hundreds of dead Japanese and widespread destruction. The POWs were collateral damage, I suppose. But as an American, I was moved by the idea that this small town would spend their resources respectfully memorializing enemy soldiers in those soldiers' native language---so that foreign visitors, perhaps including the families of those soldiers, could learn what happened there.
Considering all that happened during that war, and how controversial it still is in Japan, this somewhat personal memorial struck me as an act of grace.
w4
"I would not or will not say anything negative to you..."
From where I sit, questioning whether someone would not say that to your face can be considered calling them a coward. Then you say people that do the things you accuse him of are "immature"...
Of course, you might not find those to be negatives.... being a Christian and all....
The Commander in Chief issued the Emancipation Proclamation, which was Obama-on-steroids in its executive declaration. The guy in the Confederacy was a place-holder. The South knew they were losing.
What would they have known about it that I don't know?
There is a real SouthEastern thing about thinking the Confederacy had some honorable thing. Well, there were real, thinking humans, soldiers, trying to do what they thought was best. Their leaders were asshole slave-holders and people yielding to the then-current rules.
It is not to be admired.
Virtue signaling happens on both sides. Yay for virtues!
Though I don't live in the South now, my father's side comes from the South, and I have multiple Confederate veterans in my personal family history. And I value my family history, and value where I've come from. I have no idea what was in their heads when they fought. I know at least one owned some slaves. Never rich, but that wasn't necessary. They fought for reasons they thought were good, and yet I can look back and say it was an unfortunate cause because for whatever reason they had, it involved the continued enslavement and dehumanizing of a whole group of people. So, I can both honor my past while thinking it not necessary to celebrate seasons of it. Just like I can do with my own life.
My great-granddaddy left Texas for what he thought were good reasons, and didn't bring any Confederate paraphernalia with him. Apparently he was a rough man, but a good man who helped his neighbors, no matter their race, even farming the land of Japanese who had been interned, saving it for them for when they returned.
He worked extra hard for people who had everything taken from them, rather than taken everything from people for his own benefit. A new start. I like that. I think that does credit to him and to where he came from. Something in his past led him to be that kind of man. I don't think he'd want a memorial. He was doing a duty. And I can share his story.
Memorials are often put up by people who want to make use of heroes for their own political purposes.
The curious thing is, I don't recall that the Dukes of Hazzard was racist (admittedly I was on the young side back then). It's not like Bo and Luke were going round in the General Lee to beat themselves up some black people.
For the most part blacks didn't appear on the show and when they did they were either bystanders or sympathetic bit players.
But hey, there was a Confederate flag on the roof of the car, so there you go.
@ Matt Sablan Probably the greatest irritant, or perhaps, the last straw was the Kansas-Nebraska act that broke the Missouri Compromise of 1820 that slavery would not be allowed into any of the new territories above 36 degree 30 minutes N. I have never heard of tariffs being an issue that might have ignited the war - the Revolution, no question. Certainly the industrialization of the North and the "free labor" movement had a negative impact on the South.
@pacwest For a good quick summary of the differences between North and South prior to the Civil War see the early sections of "Battle Cry of Freedom" by James McPherson.
@Bob Ellison The Emancipation Proclamation was actually limited. It was not an executive order as we think of them. It was an order issued by the Commander in Chief to his field commanders that wherever they had control of territory the slaves there were to be freed. Lincoln at that time still felt that he did not have the Constitutional power to free the slaves in all the states ( see Kentucky, for example). He felt that he could only justify freeing the slaves a a military matter.
@3rdGradePB_GoodPerson,
I hate to engage such a lump of putridness, but you know, you really are such. Why not start your own blog and let others come and attack you, you filthy lump of putridness?
Oh, I know why ... because nobody would read it.
Not content with their efforts to restart the Cold War, the Left is now trying to restart the Civil War.
England, you're next.
Don't forget the Mexicans in 1846.
Kennesaw Mountain is a great place to take a cleansing forest bath among the artillery positions. The left won't be satisfied until the mountain is leveled because slippery slope.
I wonder if reenactments will be outlawed? Perhaps not because Jonny Reb always loses.
The idea of a guy in California telling me what I can and can't talk about regarding an issue about my own hometown--ha!
I don't care what you do or say. I merely expressed disappointment that you were so hostile to the common consent that all Americans on either side should resume their lives and continuing the war 150 years layer is a bad idea.
Joe Johnston and William Sherman were able to get over it. It's too bad you can't.
Oh, and I live in Arizona.
"There is a real SouthEastern thing about thinking the Confederacy had some honorable thing."
I wouldn't know. I was born and raised in Oregon, and I believed what I was taught in the public schools; essentially, the Battle Hymn of the Republic as history. Until I started to look into the matter.
It is certainly true that Lincoln would have allowed slavery to continue indefinitely if he could have avoided secession thereby. As mentioned above, he did not see the ending of slavery as a thing within the power of Presidential decree, until he was able to frame it as a war measure. Had the Southerners believed it was in his power to deliver the compromise he offered, they might well have taken it up. Which gives some support to the idea that the South seceded in order to retain slavery.
But it is questionable whether the men who followed Lee, to preserve the rights of their States within the Union, would have done so in support of the right of slaveowners to refuse compensation.
As to the notion that there wasn't money to pay compensation, nonsense. The country has never had enough money to pay its debts, but that has never stopped it from incurring them. Once the matter was settled in principle, no amount of haggling could have resulted in war. Perhaps the debt would not have been paid. But the slaves would nonetheless have been free. Who goes to war because his rich neighbor is owed an unpaid debt?
Freeman's crime is triggering racists in what they believe is their safe space. Actually, Althouse is a rat maze that humans use to observe the Trumpsters rodent behavior. Please exit through the Amazon Porthole to purchase the latest edition of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion with a forward by Steve Bannon. Joe Bob says Check it Out!
Hey Doc Mike, not every female is a nurse you can bend over the exam table.
“Yes, we must indeed all hang together, or most assuredly we shall all hang separately.”
Scholars generally attribute that quote to Franklin, but that's irrelevant. So is the quote. The Founders they risked death, and they knew Englishmen would label them as traitors (Not all, surprisingly. Lord Chatham and many others in the Commons and the House of Lords sympathized with the rebels, knowing their history their own history of rebellion and revolution.) The men who signed the Declaration of Independence considered themselves to be representatives of the aggrieved party, the American People, and their document is largely a list of supposed crimes, abuses, and impositions free-born Englishmen were not bound to tolerate. (It is quite interesting to consider how the British were admired by Enlightenment figures like Voltaire and Diderot as the freest people in Europe.) However, the most potent clause of the Declaration is this:
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The founders of the Confederacy interpreted this clause to be universal, and not bound to the circumstances of 1776. A majority of Southern policymakers concluded for a variety of reasons that the national government had become repugnant and intolerable. Since the Consitution is silent on the subject of secession these same men concluded that their States had the right and duty to separate from the Union, and their justification was Amendment X: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people.
Whether Lee, Jackson, etc. were traitors is purely a matter of opinion. The Law in 1865 could not convict them of that crime, which is why they were subjected to frankly un-Constitutional attainder legislation passed by a rather nasty revenge-minded Congress under the malignant influence of Edwin M. Stanton.
typo alert: The Founders knew they risked death...
I'm not sure how I dropped that word, but I did.
"I hate to engage such a lump of putridness, but you know, you really are such. Why not start your own blog and let others come and attack you, you filthy lump of putridness?"
LOL, oh my such passion!
A minor point, it was Pope at Island No. 10, not Grant.
How many months of posts on this is it going to take until Ann finally discovers the apparently little-known facts that:
1. People don't need statues of bad causes and despotic leaders to know the history of them: cf. Hitler.
2. Washington and Jefferson never took up arms against the United States.
These really are the only points that matter. Right-wing Nazi-simps are completely powerless to make their confederate apologist points when confronted with them. It's pretty simple.
"there should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country."
Bovine scatology
Those monuments were not "hurtful" for their long life.
This is nothing but the left using this as a way to gain power lost at the ballot box. Naked political play.
Washington and Jefferson never took up arms against the United States.
TTR is completely powerless to realize the irrelevance of that triviality.
But that's no surprise, is it?
Someday you'll make sense to normal people, Quaestor. Someday.
Someday you'll maybe even make sense to yourself.
"Whether Lee, Jackson, etc. were traitors is purely a matter of opinion."
Yes and ignorant leftists who know no history are using this as a rallying cry to take power.
The racist black vice Mayor of Charlottesville is the one starting the agitation. He probably has further political ambitions.
Democrats are desperate to get black voters to turn out so I guess this could be part of it.
He is a piece of work.
Just a tip, but this thread is a lot better if you play some meloncholy fiddle music in the background.
Democrats are desperate to get black voters to turn out so I guess this could be part of it.
I think it's less black voters than virtue signaling whites.
The monument toppers went after the cemetery because they have no rationale, no underlying philosophy about what they are doing. Therefore they have no guide to judge of when enough is enough, of when to stop. They are the baying mob demanding blood.
For now it is someone else's blood. Enjoy that detail while it lasts.
TTR wrote: Washington and Jefferson never took up arms against the United States.
Trivial and irrelevant. This is why.
Brainless won't even attempt to explain it.
"Joe Johnston and William Sherman were able to get over it. It's too bad you can't."
Joe Johnston and Sherman were allowed to live successful lives of freedom afterward. The cold war against blacks that followed the Civil War, yet another promise of freedom for all that never materialized, lasted for another century.
People here can't even get over a monument in a different state getting taken out, imagine your whole history erased and told you don't matter. It sucks.
Actually there were black civil service people and even black Senators until Woodrow Wilson resegregated the government.
You really should study history, You're ind of embarrassing us Irish.
I feel like that words such as "tomorrow" and "consequences" have been forgotten. But will soon be remembered.
What a despicable act. Really.
The Democrats in Wisconsin just voted against Foxconn and 22,000 good jobs for Wisconsin workers. But they just defaced a plaque in graveyard that mentions dead Confederates. So there's the 2018 campaign. Walker brought you jobs and prosperity; Soglin defaced Confederate POW graves.
Will we be razing the Arlington House?
@Quaestor I don't think we disagree that both the Colonists and the CSA folk were treasonous. Lincoln's interpretation was that the Constitution incorporated the Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union. Perpetual union being the key phrase. As I am sure you know Southerners had been threatening "nullification' practically since the signing of the Constitution. Ultimately the disagreement was settled by force of arms and Lincoln's interpretation held sway. My knowledge of the pre- civil war period is not very deep, but my impression is that much of the Southern talk of "principles" was really a means of getting enough leverage to get their own way.
The passage of the Kansas -Nebraska act essentially indicated that the South could not be trusted to adhere to their agreements when it did not suit them.
"Vigilante protesters start DIGGING UP body of Confederate general and KKK leader Nathan Forrest from his grave"
Digging up Bedford Forrest might be a very bad idea, especially if you get the willies about the Living Dead. Grant was the one who called him "That Devil Forrest." Sherman considered him the south's most able general, and certainly the most dangerous to Sherman's flanks and rear when Sherman was sweeping through the south. Fortunately for the Union, Forrest's many talents were probably not best suited to command large armies, or even to work as a subordinate in such armies. He was smart, daring, brave, ruthless and decisive but he did not play well with others.
But he might be just the man to lead the Confederate Zombie Cavalry while equipped with modern technology and weapons. Leave him in the ground, I say.
This hurts my heart as a daughter of the Confederacy and the GAR. Unimaginable.
"Actually there were black civil service people and even black Senators until Woodrow Wilson resegregated the government"
I'm embarrassing by saying this is about the 20th century? (which I think I've said in some of the posts I've left up). If not, that's really what I've meant. I'll have to check but I think Wilson was early in the 20th century. There was a good trend immediately after the Civil War, and had that continued we wouldn't have this problem. And there was certainly embedded racism in the late 19th century throughout, which is ignorant to overlook by saying that there are exceptions to the rule.
Which again goes to the point I've been making throughout, it's not the Civil War that is the issue, is the way the symbols of the Civil War were used, and those symbols have a meaning that is now part of the national psyche.
"The fact the Confederate POWs were treated with respect in the North is worth remembering and honoring."
Tell that to my great-great grandfather's brother who died of malnutrition and typhus at Andersonville of the North.
Paddy O, I'm not sure what point you are making but have a nice weekend.
Well it turns out the cemetery Soglin had defaced today s a VA administered National Cemetery, not a city cemetery. I thought that might be the case. Commenter "D" on Prof. Althouse's follow up post today with the photos of the desecration will file a complaint tomorrow with the Federal DA for the Eastern District of Wisconsin. Soglin has broken Federal law. "D" quotes the Title And Section of US code in that thread.
Soglin is an idiot. Hope he gets what he deserves.
What's wrong with the Left? It is the insufficient rage coming from the rest of us, that's what's wrong. It the most despicable case of Minority Rules that I have ever come across, save Pol Pot; I wasn't around for WWII or Stalin's purges. Guess we'll be seeing that soon, the way Progressive things are progressing.
Mountain Man: Wow! Defacing federal property should mean jail time, no?
Woodrow Wilson was easily the most overtly racist President America has ever had.
@mockturtle, for Wilson's time (early 20th century), true. Numerous 19th century presidents assumed the natural superiority of the white race over the black. Even Lincoln did -- at first. As a young man he had traveled down the Mississippi and was not much impressed with the intelligence or industry of the black slaves he saw. Perhaps after meeting with Frederick Douglas, or for whatever reason, Lincoln seems to have asked himself the questions "If I was a slave, how hard would I work?" and "If I was going to be beaten for exhibiting too much intelligence, how smart would I act?" And the answers came back "Only hard enough to avoid a beating" and "No brighter than it takes to avoid a beating." He evolved. A great man, Lincoln.
ARM and Toothless will never evolve.
@Sukie Tawdry, there was an earthquake in 2011 that severely damaged Arlington House (more properly the Custis-Lee Mansion) and it's going to be expensive to repair.
This is the left.
True. They think they're so wise and good - but really just emotional people needing 'causes' in order to feel good about themselves.
mockturtle said...Mountain Man: Wow! Defacing federal property should mean jail time, no?
Better still would be a humiliating defeat in the next gubernatorial election -- if Wisconsin Dems are stupid enough to run him. Betcha they won't though. This will not end well for him.
"Woodrow Wilson was easily the most overtly racist President America has ever had. "
Read Thomas Jefferson's Notes On the State of Virginia. Codified racism in order to legitimize and legalize slavery. The city of Madison named a street after him. Residents live on that street as I type. And speaking of the city of Madison -- it was named to honor the slaveholder who crafted the compromise of the infamous 3/5th clause into the US constitution. Shameful.
And most recently, the electorate of this city voted overwhelmingly for Hillary Clinton, a candidate for president who unapologetically referred to a former leader in the KKK as her "political mentor." Where is the outrage?
Paul Soglin is a hypocrite with a law degree and government authority. His form of racism is the most evil of all -- self-denied and covert.
All these men being disgraced by the leftists have a few things in common:
1) They fought for the South, against the North
2) They were part of a force intending to preserve slavery
3) None were Republicans
4) All were likely Democrats
"... there should be no place in our country for bigotry, hatred or violence against those who seek to unite our communities and our country."...
Logic calls for the disbanding and banning of the Democratic Party. Slavery was a horrible stain on this country perpetrated and protected by that party. It's time to wash away that stain once and for all. Ban the party of slavery. Ban the Democrats.
Matt Sablan said...
"But, just because the left will take advantage doesn't mean that I'm going to change my stance on things. There's a right way to remove the memorials/statues. If they go about it that way, they might find a surprising amount of agreement, even from "the right.""
Make sure you let the scorpions know you only plan to carry them a little ways.
Meade:
The 3/5th clause was aimed at limiting the power of slave states by limiting their representation in the House. If each black slave had been counted as a "full person" the slave states would have enjoyed a vast increase in the number of House representatives. It is important to grasp that the 3/5 clause was a bold first step by the young United States on the long hard road toward abolishing slavery.
The Civil War was indeed about slavery. States' rights was a slavery issue and anyone who denies this is either delusional, stupid, or an ignorant fool. The slave states wanted the right to keep slavery, and they wanted to expand slavery into new territories. As well, they wanted the power to compel the vastly more populous free states to enforce the laws of slave states concerning runaway slaves. The Dredd Scott decision amounted to a judicial putsch by the South to dominate the political life of the nation and maintain a system that the rest of the nation rightly found morally odious and evil.
wwww said...
Why are you insulting random people on the internet?
Gee,I'm sorry. I didn't realize you were random. In future, I will reserve my sarcasm for people who get it.
Meade said...
Read Thomas Jefferson's Notes On the State of Virginia. Codified racism in order to legitimize and legalize slavery. The city of Madison named a street after him. Residents live on that street as I type. And speaking of the city of Madison -- it was named to honor the slaveholder who crafted the compromise of the infamous 3/5th clause into the US constitution. Shameful.
Yeah. Shoulda let the southern states count all of the Slaves that couldn't vote fully in the census and boost their representation more than it was.
Democrats have almost completely segregated our public schools in 2017. No time to deal with that though we must go back over 200 years and discuss actions in history as if the context was the same then as it is today.
You know slavery exists to this day in many countries around the world? Shenanigans! Who cares about that the US was uniquely evil in 1776. Uniquely. The source of slavery. The only place it happened.
We must tear down every aspect of our society and history because by the standards of 2017 it was horrible in 1776. Horrible! We haven't accomplished anything good. Ever. Horrible country. Tear it all down. Yesterday.
@Paul Soglin: Stare into the decisis. Visualize the abyss.
"Tyrone Slothrop said...
Island No. 10 was Grant's first big victory. Grant owned a couple of slaves for a while.
8/17/17, 12:09 PM"
Actually, Grant owned slaves in KY until the 13th Amendment was ratified almost a year after the war; since KY didn't secede, the Emancipation Proclamation didn't apply there.
People who want to claim the Civil War was all about slavery have to deal with Lincoln's repeated statements that it wasn't. But what did he know?
"Making cheap political points over POWs who died while in your state's care and custody is a new low."
Well said. Sad times.
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