Photos texted to me by Meade, who is observing the ceremonies at Forest Hill Cemetery, where there is a section called Confederate Rest, which I have blogged about before, including last year when the city removed one of the 2 monuments. The second monument, with the names of the dead, and a tribute to the woman who took care of the graves, is what you see in the first photograph. The monument that was summarily removed could be seen as celebrating the South's lost cause because it called the soldiers "valiant" and said they surrendered "after weeks of fighting under extremely difficult conditions" and died in Madison's prison camp "suffering from wounds, malnutrition and various diseases." The second monument is still in contention, defended because it is the only place where all the names of the dead are inscribed.
Recently, Madison's City Council voted to remove it. From May 5th in the Wisconsin State Journal: "Despite the City Council’s decision to remove a second monument to Confederate soldiers at the city-owned Forest Hill Cemetery, the city will still need approval from its own Landmarks Commission and the state historic preservation offices to make the removal a reality, city officials said this week."
ADDED: Here's a longer view, showing the size of the crowd at the service (though I don't know who is there to show support for the Confederacy or the monument and who is there to observe the controversial goings-on):
And here's this attendee, make of him what you will:
Notice that the woman in the top photographs seems to be putting flags on the graves, but I don't think those are any of the flags actually used in the Civil War. Are they some reenvisioned design intended to be less associated with the values of the Confederacy and more distinctly about honoring the men who suffered and died? The man in Confederate costume, however, is staunchly displaying the flag of the Confederacy. Behind him, a man holds the more familiar Confederate battle flag.
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217 comments:
1 – 200 of 217 Newer› Newest»That's leftism for you. Scratch any good progressive and you'll find Trotsky or Stalin underneath.
Next they'll be airbrushing historical photos of "incorrect" persons.
Its touching that someone would keep the grave of these long dead soldiers.
The monument that was summarily removed could be seen as celebrating the South's lost cause because it called the soldiers "valiant" and said they surrendered "after weeks of fighting under extremely difficult conditions"
Are they implying that these men were not valiant? That they weren't fighting under 'extremely difficult conditions'?
Recently, Madison's City Council voted to remove it.
Virtue-signaling ghouls.
I'd love to have talked to the Confederate guy - and know why he shows up on Memorial Day.
And - great uniform and beard. A sort of R.E. Lee beard.
"Are they implying that these men were not valiant? That they weren't fighting under 'extremely difficult conditions'?"
Remember when Reagan tried visiting the graves of dead Nazi soldiers?
There's a sense in which you can say, these poor men, who simply did what soldiers must do and suffered and died, but also the idea that you should leave them alone, uncelebrated, because the cause was evil and we the living should not do anything to keep it alive. The positive words were regarded as stirring the feelings of the living to cling to the values of the Confederacy.
Are they implying that these men were not valiant? That they weren't fighting under 'extremely difficult conditions'?
If you consider the "conditions" of rich, slaveowning planters forcing them to fight and telling them that they'd be even poorer and more oppressed if their slaves were taken away and their expansionist "way of life" ended to be extremely difficult.
Come off it. Their conditions in the prisons may have been uncalled for and worth commemorating but do you offer the same reverence to Soviet solders who died to preserve what their leaders put them through? If you do, do you accept that they were victims of their leaders' cause rather than valiant exponents of it?
Questions that Americans fail to ask themselves and get offended by and before wondering why our country keeps going nowhere and destroying itself all the time.
Recently, Madison's City Council voted to remove it.
Vote to remove them, instead.
Vote to remove them, instead.
So they're not being sufficiently respectful to the Confederacy, Darrell?
Darrell's comments are instructive in the miseducation of Americans. Is it any wonder that these momuments need to be re-thought, removed and/or redone when so many Americans, the Darrells of America, keep perpetuating the indoctrination that Jefferson Davis and his defenders sought so well and so successfully to sow across the land.
At least some folks understand the history behind Memorial Day.
That isn't exactly the Stars and Bars. Another star has been added--for Wisconsin?
rcocean said...
I'd love to have talked to the Confederate guy - and know why he shows up on Memorial Day.
And - great uniform and beard. A sort of R.E. Lee beard.
Lee's beard was much shorter. More of a Longstreet beard.
It's guys' rules vs women's rules.
About 15 years ago, some group put little Stars and Bars on the graves of CSA veterans in our city cemetery. A few years later, they switched them to NC state flags with the colors switched around, a nice compromise.
Longstreet became a Republican, causing some controversy.
Is there a corresponding Union dead memorial in Madison (besides the Memorial Union itself).don’t recall one. There might instead be a obelisk dedicated after the war. People tended to be buried close to where they fell. I hope the Union graveyards in the Deep South are as well tended.
Funny how in Madison you always get a certain number of contrarians bent on celebrating enemies. Makes for good political frisson.
With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.
Lincoln is now obsolete in Madison.
mockturtle: Are they implying that these men were not valiant? That they weren't fighting under 'extremely difficult conditions'?
Attribute any human virtue, or extend understanding, to people on the wrong side of history (dare I say "the Other"), and next thing you know slavery will return, The Handmaid's Tale will become real, and every tree on earth will be chopped down (and burned, for the sweet, sweet CO₂).
This is what is known as having "nuance", "understanding complexity", and "not seeing everything in black and white like those uneducated deplorables", who obviously lack the education that provides progressives with their comprehensive historical erudition. (AKA "pathological presentism".)
The past. It burns. Burn it down. Change the word for everything that can't be burned down. Only then will we be safe.
At least some folks understand the history behind Memorial Day.
Phil promotes a sort of self-supremacy for himself and his fellow neo-confederates.
Can you or Meade explain the odd coloration surrounding the Alice Waterman inscription? I can't tell whether someone attempted chiseling it, someone spray painted it and another cleaned it, or whether someone just cleaned the granite around the letters so they would stand out.
“Lincoln is now obsolete in Madison.”
After Lincoln is successfully rebranded as a Democrat, his good will will be remembered. But not until.
At University of Nebraska football games, the crowd cheers the opponents when they leave the field. It was easy to do when the Corn was a football power. I don’t recall any cheering when the Northern Illinois Huskies won last season.
The modern Russians still make a great deal of their Great Patriotic War and those who served, and that is a popular thing, not state-directed.
And for that matter, there is also a great historical nostalgia for the Tsarist military. They have their hobby re-enactors, of every period from the times of Alexander Nevsky to WWI.
There is a very great deal of this about these days, and you see it all over the world, sometimes in unexpected places and seemingly improbable. It is a direct cultural influence of the Anglo-American re-enactment fad, which seems to get picked up when the economy anywhere gets to the point of supporting sometimes expensive hobbies.
The point is tribal symbolism. The people, the ethnicity, are an entity and a purpose independent of the reasons for any conflict, or the ethics of any cause.
The re-enactor is standing next to a version (9 star) of the National flag. An informative, though dated, book that is about the South and their relationship to the War Between the States including reenacting is “Confederates in the Attic.” Recommended. Also recommended is the
personal history of a Rebel private from Columbia Tennessee Sam Watkins called “Co. Aytch.” He was only one of a few handful out of 3,000 plus of his regiment to survive fighting from Shiloh to the end of the war. Though little known, many experts call it the greatest personal war memoir ever written.
http://confederateflags.org/national/first-national-flag/fotcs_b8-10/
Ritmo, I don't think you can be less intelligent or perceptive. Now show us that pee-pee tape you have on Trump. No, you can't do that, either. I was born in Chicago and have no ties to the South. But I can respect a grave yard marker that lists the names of those lying there. Someone may wish to visit sometime. Unlike your grave.
“Phil promotes a sort of self-supremacy for himself and his fellow neo-confederates.”
Ritmo outs himself as the last surviving Sullivanist from a long lost culture war.
After we finish refighting the memories of the Civil War we can get to refighting the Revolutionary War.
The Revolutionary War gave us the Constitution, which is used to the detriment of women and minorities.
From Vox:
"This July 4, let's not mince words: American independence in 1776 was a monumental mistake. We should be mourning the fact that we left the United Kingdom, not cheering it...
ut I'm reasonably confident a world in which the revolution never happened would be better than the one we live in now, for three main reasons: Slavery would've been abolished earlier, American Indians would've faced rampant persecution but not the outright ethnic cleansing Andrew Jackson and other American leaders perpetrated, and America would have a parliamentary system of government that makes policymaking easier and lessens the risk of democratic collapse....
In the US, activists wanting to put a price on carbon emissions spent years trying to put together a coalition to make it happen, mobilizing sympathetic businesses and philanthropists and attempting to make bipartisan coalition — and they still failed to pass cap and trade, after millions of dollars and man hours. In the UK, the Conservative government decided it wanted a carbon tax. So there was a carbon tax. Just like that. Passing big, necessary legislation — in this case, legislation that's literally necessary to save the planet — is a whole lot easier with parliaments than with presidential systems...
Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man..."
Rudolf Virchow was one of the greatest pioneers of medical science. There are monuments to him, and things named after him.
Virchow was also an “evolution denier” in modern parlance.
We shouldn’t glorify evolution denial should we?
I think we need to pay attention to when and why monuments went up. In the early 20th century there was a lot of building of monuments, as part of a national attempt at reconciling the South. Sops to their pride. Those are different from the ones erected in the wake of Board v Brown.
"The positive words were regarded as stirring the feelings of the living to cling to the values of the Confederacy."
Really? So, 150 years after the Civil War we still have worry about "the values of the Confederacy?" - LOL!
Of course, maybe that's a problem in Madison. It's not been a problem anyplace I lived. I don't think I've met a single person who wants to bring back slavery.
And Reagan didn't honor "nazis" - he honored the men, both German and American who died in WW2. The grave site contained thousands of graves, and a few Waffen-SS, who may or may not have been "Nazis". The Waffen-SS by 1944, contained draftees and average German soldiers.
I was born in Chicago and have no ties to the South.
Other than ideological and political. Happens everywhere all across the country. Happened 165 years ago, too.
Had ancestors from Louisiana and Mississippi who fought in the War. One was killed in Virginia. It is good and right to honor them.
Rebs didn't care much for fighting Wisconsinites and Michiganders; those boys were outdoors men, who hunted and could shoot.
AA: Remember when Reagan tried visiting the graves of dead Nazi soldiers?
There's a sense in which you can say...
Yes, that's one sense, the One Right Way of Looking at Things that progs want to shove down everyone's throat. I don't think this needs to be explained to anyone. We get it.
...these poor men, who simply did what soldiers must do and suffered and died, but also the idea that you should leave them alone, uncelebrated, because the cause was evil and we the living should not do anything to keep it alive. The positive words were regarded as stirring the feelings of the living to cling to the values of the Confederacy.
Which is bullshit. That's just the passive-aggressive catlady excuse for their destructive, never-ending Orwellian crusade against the past.
Wisconsinites lived for decades with these alleged monsters (or pathetic tools) in their midst, and I'll bet their understanding and tolerance of monuments to their countrymen, who were once their enemies in a bitter struggle, was far more humane and intelligent than that of today's current crop soul-shriveled, self-righteous cultural revolutionaries.
“Finally, we'd still likely be a monarchy, under the rule of Elizabeth II, and constitutional monarchy is the best system of government known to man..."”
Not to mention the wonderful freedom from speech laws the Brits enjoy. So much time and money could be redirected to healthcare if we could just shut people up like they do.
Comparisons to Nazis and Soviet soldiers are not apt because we are talking about a civil war. After a civil war the people had to get along. Lincoln understood that there had to be a reconciliation. Otherwise, you are looking at low level guerrilla warfare for decades ending up with the eventual break up of the nation. One of the ways that the reconciliation was brought about was by recognizing that the soldiers on both sides fought valiantly, both suffered horribly, and that in the end, they were all still Americans. That's now being thrown out the window, mostly because people are pissed off about Trump winning the presidency and they see this as a way to get back at him and his supporters. I remember seeing a video a few months ago were a confederate monument was toppled and some idiot was kicking it and spitting on it.
The soldiers who actually bore the brunt of the battle were far more forgiving.
http://mentalfloss.com/article/28128/gettysburg-great-reunion-1913
Ritmo outs himself as the last surviving Sullivanist from a long lost culture war.
Not sure what this means (chicken loves to invent his own language and then speak it in public forums as if others were meant to understand it) but I'm supposing it has something to do insufficient love for the confederacy or something. If he's such a slave to that or to those things it's only fair that I should be able to kidnap him and make him my own personal slave. That sort of thing used to be common.
BTW, inventing one's own language and speaking it in front of others is sort of like masturbating in public. At least if you and another speaker of chicken-language were engaging in chicken-speak together we could call you exhibitionists rather than just another pervert.
Ah Pee Pee Tapes, I do celebrate (in a way at least) the literally millions of Soviet troops who died on the Eastern Front in WW II. Yes Stalin was a monster--but then so was Hitler. But for the Soviet's profligate expenditure of lives fighting Hitler, US and British troops would have had a much harder time of it in Europe in WW II.
And to borrow a word from President Trump, many Soviet troops were "animals" when they arrived in Berlin. Some German women had more Soviet "sex partners" than Stormy Daniels has had in her porn career.
War is messy and men (and women) fight for a lot of reasons--the bulk of them personal to the soldier, sailor or airman themself. It's not wrong to say that those Confederate dead were "valiant".
In the old days, the Inquisition used to dig up the bodies of people accused posthumously of heresy, put them on trial, and when found guilty, tie the corpse facing backward on a donkey and parade it through the streets so the villagers could throw offal and manure at it. Then they would burn it.
The bodies of these Confederates deserve nothing else. Hate cannot be tolerated, and intolerance must be hated.
The green sash on the Civil War reenacter should mean that he was in the medical corps. The flags by the tombstones appear to be state flags. But did they have individual state flags in the 1860s? Not sure about that, though most people in most states felt a higher loyalty to their state than to the federal government. Hard for us in the twenty-first century to wrap our minds around that.
I think Ulysses Grant said it best, when he wrote after Appomattox: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse,”
Otherwise, you are looking at low level guerrilla warfare for decades ending up with the eventual break up of the nation.
It's not inaccurate to consider that the terrorism of the same KKK formed by former Confederacy leaders and generals served this very purpose.
Most scholarly opinion still believes that insufficient boldness and longevity of the Reconstruction was what held the south's emergence as a society fit for constitutional union back for over a hundred years.
I was referring to USSR military aims post-WWII though, not during.
I think the progs should comb all of the graveyards across the country to find those who could have been in service to the south during the Civil War and turn over the gravestones like they do in Jewish cemeteries. And find the libraries that house books written by those who fought against the North and burn these libraries to the ground. And vanish the biographies and memoirs of those who fought on the side of the south, find and vanish their pictures, find and vanish their ancestors.
And in a generation find and destroy the monuments to those who fought in Vietnam, erase that war, extinguish it.
The city council of Madison is showing extreme courage, valor, in removing these bits of granite with words written on them. It is as though they are standing at the edge of the Edmund Perttus bridge, steeled against the violence to come, stiffened against the brutality that awaited them. All the progs, all of them, arm in arm, bravely approaching the Edmund Petty's bridge of granite with words written on them.
Blogger Ron Winkleheimer said...
I remember seeing a video a few months ago were a confederate monument was toppled and some idiot was kicking it and spitting on it.
That was because he could not kick and spit on you, Ron Winkleheimer.
"these poor men ... you should leave them alone, uncelebrated"
If thy brother offends thee, cast him down the memory-hole.
“Not sure what this means (chicken loves to invent his own language and then speak it in public forums as if others were meant to understand it) but I'm supposing it has something to do insufficient love for the confederacy or something.”
The “New Confederacy” was neologism first spouted by your hero, Andrew Sullivan, in the wake of an election that went wrong for him. George Will — before succumbing to TDS — publicly humilitated Sullivan on live TV.
Rick, I count 12 stars, one more than the maximum.
The guy in the 4th photo is going to lose his job as Santa Claus at East Towne Mall.
@PP
The original KKK was defeated by 1872. The 2nd KKK wasn't founded until 1915.
“And to borrow a word from President Trump, many Soviet troops were "animals" when they arrived in Berlin. Some German women had more Soviet "sex partners" than Stormy Daniels has had in her porn career.”
Russian soldiers came and left genetic markers. Their government erected one of the first shrines to Soviet war dead in front of the Bundestag . During the Cold War, it became an island within West Berlin which itself was an island within East Germany.
I had family on both sides- with loss of life on both sides. One reason to honor the Confederate dead is humility. Those in the future may view us today as mistaken as we now view the Confederates. We may be also mistaken- just like our Confederate ancestors were mistaken.
Just imagine keeping that white beard so spotless after eating a handful of Cheetos.
Big Mike: I think Ulysses Grant said it best, when he wrote after Appomattox: “I felt like anything rather than rejoicing at the downfall of a foe who had fought so long and valiantly, and had suffered so much for a cause, though that cause was, I believe, one of the worst for which a people ever fought, and one for which there was the least excuse,”
Amazing how men in the past could keep the two ideas expressed above in their heads, without their heads exploding. There's no reason why that shouldn't be possible (they are not contradictory; both are true), but this utterly befuddles the modern prog.
Why, it's almost as if Grant thought of his country as a real place, with a real history and a real culture, and populated by people to whom he had real connections based on all of the above, despite their bitter conflict. As something deeper and broader than a battleground of competing ideologies, where the enemy, as nothing but an instantiantion of an ideology, had to be memory-wiped in order for his victory to be real.
Obviously, Grant is going to have to go, too.
Can't be sure without seeing the entire flag, but the woman appears to be carrying/placing the current Tennessee state flag, which was adopted in 1907.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Tennessee
Perhaps the soldiers buried in those graves were from Tennessee?
Who has standing in this debate? My immediate ancestors--anyway my great grand-uncles--fought and bled for the Union cause. I forgive the men who tried to kill them. I don't honor the Confederate cause, but I respect the men who served under that flag. Why is my opinion on this matter less worthy than yours?
The “New Confederacy” was neologism first spouted by your hero, Andrew Sullivan, in the wake of an election that went wrong for him. George Will — before succumbing to TDS — publicly humilitated Sullivan on live TV.
I heard your people and people with your affliction are detail-oriented, Rain Man. Here are some details for you:
Historian James M. McPherson used the term "neo-Confederate historical committees" in his description of the efforts from 1890 to 1930 to have history textbooks present a version of the Civil War in which secession was not rebellion, the Confederacy did not fight for slavery and the Confederate soldier was defeated by overwhelming numbers and resources.[1] Historian Nancy MacLean used the term "neo-Confederacy" in reference to groups, such as the Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, that formed in the 1950s to oppose U.S. Supreme Court rulings demanding racial integration, in particular Brown v. Board of Education (1954).[2] Former Southern Partisan editor and co-owner Richard Quinn used the term when he referred to Richard T. Hines, former Southern Partisan contributor and Ronald Reagan administration staffer as being "among the first neo-Confederates to resist efforts by the infidels to take down the Confederate flag".[3] It is possibly the earliest use of the term "neo-Confederate" in Southern Partisan.
This definition is not necessarily accepted by neo-Confederates, though Mel Bradford, who was a key figure in the neo-Confederate movement and frequent writer for Southern Partisan from its founding, titled one of his books The Reactionary Imperative: Essays Literary and Political.
An early use of the term came in 1954. In a book review, Leonard Levy (later a winner of the Pulitzer Prize for History in 1968) wrote: "Similar blindness to the moral issue of slavery, plus a resentment against the rise of the Negro and modern industrialism, resulted in the neo-Confederate interpretation of Phillips, Ramsdell and Owsley".[4]
You're welcome. Now stop being an asshole.
Oh, by the way, your emotionally challenged presidential savior, Trump, told me that George Will is not to be trusted and needs to be destroyed - or whatever treatment he dishes out on whomever criticizes him. There goes your whole chain of political followership for the day. So difficult to figure out who you're going to swear allegiance to when they're all at each other's throats, isn't it? But that's what happens when you swear loyalty to an empty house of cards.
Does anyone want to point out to Ritmo that “New Coke” and “neo-Coke” are not actually the same?
“...resulted in the neo-Confederate interpretation of Phillips, Ramsdell and Owsley.”
Not Owsley! Say it ain’t so.
You can have my rifle.
I carried an M1 Garand (actually several) as a drill rifle during my stint in ROTC.
The Philippines has returned its stock of loaned Garands, and these will, eventually, be available for sale through the Civilian Marksmanship Program.
CMP Philippine Garands
Mine, probably, are somewhere in that lot.
For re-enactment or any other purpose.
RichardJohnson: Those in the future may view us today as mistaken as we now view the Confederates. We may be also mistaken- just like our Confederate ancestors were mistaken.
Prog lack of humility is pretty much the crux of the biscuit here.
William: Why is my opinion on this matter less worthy than yours?
Because you're wrong, damn it. Don't you understand? The premise behind your opinion is a premise, the premise behind my opinion is an axiom.
In the old days, the Inquisition used to dig up the bodies of people accused posthumously of heresy, put them on trial, and when found guilty, tie the corpse facing backward on a donkey and parade it through the streets so the villagers could throw offal and manure at it.
China is trying to find some of the relics of ancient dynasties destroyed by the Red Guards.
The French have groups of scientists trying to identify remains of royalty destroyed by the Revolutionaries.
I usually skip by Ritmo's comments but it is interesting to see just how obnoxious and disgusting he can be on this national holiday where regard for the fallen should be the prime sentiment.
I recommend this post at Powerline as a sort of palate cleanser after Ritmo's poo flinging.
Forget the Civil War. We need to honor the Hero of Chappaquiddick...
From a Washington Post editorial:
"Perhaps the most coveted workspace in Washington — that isn’t oval, at least — sits in a beautiful Beaux- Arts building on Constitution Avenue. It’s got a rotunda ringed by Corinthian columns, curved marble staircases and golden eagles. It has been home to some of the most famous hearings in Senate history: the investigations of the Titanic sinking and the Teapot Dome scandal, the Truman Commission and the Army-McCarthy, Teamsters and Watergate hearings.
Yet this extraordinarily important building is named for one whose historical legacy is unworthy of such an honor: the late senator Richard B. Russell (D-Ga.).
It is time to rename this precious building for someone more deserving. We suggest Ted Kennedy..."
To truly honor the Confederate dead.....Meade should order a Negro to make him pancakes.
Lewis Wetzel: In the old days, the Inquisition used to dig up the bodies of people accused posthumously of heresy, put them on trial, and when found guilty, tie the corpse facing backward on a donkey and parade it through the streets so the villagers could throw offal and manure at it. Then they would burn it.
Shhh. Don't give them any ideas. They manage to do enough damage without the aid of having any historical knowledge to speak of floating around in their brains.
(That sort of thing was popular all 'round, not just an Inquisition thing. Cromwell's corpse got the treatment, e.g.)
Memorial Day is a day for reflection. If people spent more time reflecting, I think even though we'd still have the same differences, we'd be more civil about it.
chickelit said: "I hope the Union graveyards in the Deep South are as well tended. "
All the national cemeteries in the country which have Union soldiers from the Civil War are maintained by either the Veterans Administration or the National Park Service. They generally have a standard design, with a low red brick wall around the perimeter and a gated entry with a red brick caretaker's house. Most of these date from the late 1800s. The Union Army had a system during and after the war to collect bodies from their original burial location and move them into a formal national cemetery. The South had no such system and, depending on who held the ground after a battle, many of the Confederate dead remained where they were buried on the field and are still there today. Some were removed to mass graves by the Union army, as at Antietam. Of the 5500 or so Confederate dead at Gettysburg, about 3000 were moved in the 1870s to a mass grave in Hollywood Cemetery in Richmond, but the project was not completed and the remainder are still on the battlefield.
Georgia, where I grew up, has two large national cemeteries. One, in Marietta, is now closed, but was originally the burial ground of most of the dead from Sherman's Atlanta Campaign. The other, at Andersonville, which is still active, holds all the dead from the POW camp there. It is very unique, in that the perimeter wall of the cemetery was built to match exactly the perimeter of the prison camp wall. Clara Barton worked with the Union Army POW record keeper, who survived the camp, to set up the cemetery shortly after the war. Over 300 local volunteers showed up over the weekend to place US flags on all the 12,000+ graves, just as they do every Memorial Day and every year before Christmas, when they place wreaths. I like it the best of all the National Cemeteries I have visited.
The only Confederate graves maintained by the US government are those of Confederate POWs who died in Union prison camps. There are some buried at Arlington and I know there are some in Elmira, NY, where my 3rd great uncle died after being captured at Gettysburg. These graves were ignored for decades and were not cleaned up and made a part of the national cemetery system until the 1910s. I believe this was in response to a desire by McKinley, our last Civll War veteran president, to have the dilapidated and overgrown graveyards cleaned up as he considered them a national disgrace. Confederate soldiers received the same markers, but have a pointed top, while the Union markers are rounded on top.
There is a small Confederate graveyard next to the Point Clear AL Marriott resort. The cemetery is next to the 17th green of the golf course. That site was a Confederate hospital in the war and those that died are buried there.
You could do worse today than to read Walt Whitman's The Million Dead, Too, Summ’d Up
http://www.bartleby.com/229/1100.html
[T]he dead, the dead, the dead—our dead—or South or North, ours all, (all, all, all, finally dear to me)—or East or West—Atlantic coast or Mississippi valley. . . .
And everywhere among these countless graves—everywhere in the many soldier Cemeteries of the Nation, (there are now, I believe, over seventy of them)—as at the time in the vast trenches, the depositories of slain, Northern and Southern, after the great battles—not only where the scathing trail passed those years, but radiating since in all the peaceful quarters of the land—we see, and ages yet may see, on monuments and gravestones, singly or in masses, to thousands or tens of thousands, the significant word Unknown.
De Gaulle was touring the ruins of Stalingrad soon after the war. Finally he said, “what a people.” Someone with him said, “yes, the Russian...” De Gaulle said, “no, the Germans! To have come so far!”
I don’t think he was celebrating Nazi values.
Blogger Ralph L said...
“Rick, I count 12 stars, one more than the maxim”
Ah, thanks. I didn’t bother to count after seeing the distinctive star “tail” so immediately went to that flag. There are several other flags with different numbers of stars which were issued in rapid succession as the states left the Union. After a little searching this appears to be based on a one-off flag made by the family of Lee. Interesting and thank you. Wouldn’t have discovered this otherwise.
https://www.google.com/search?client=safari&hl=en-us&biw=768&bih=899&tbm=isch&sa=1&ei=FigMW7asN4r-zgLuhLTACQ&q=confederate+national+flags+12+stars&oq=confederate+national+flags+12+stars&gs_l=mobile-gws-wiz-img.3...22827.26496..27416...0....235.1242.2j5j2......0....1.........0i30.Qn3TQ83gqr4%3D#imgrc=AcpNRU5NSdxKHM:
“Amazing how men in the past could keep the two ideas expressed above in their heads, without their heads exploding. There's no reason why that shouldn't be possible (they are not contradictory; both are true), but this utterly befuddles the modern prog.”
Well said and a perfect encapsulation of why the Golden Shower Left can’t understand that they are dangerously fascistic and laughably trivial at the same time.
Blogger Lance said...
“Perhaps the soldiers buried in those graves were from Tennessee?”
Looks like the TN flag to me. If these are dead from Camp Randall it is likely so.:
“The men held at Camp Randall were mostly of the lst Alabama Regiment and the consolidated lst Ala, Tenn, and Miss Regiment. There were also quite a few men from the 40th Tenn and the 55th Tenn, plus several from the l2th La
and the 4th Battn Arkansas Infantry. Also confined there were some 38 members of the Washington Artillery of Memphis, Tenn, a militia unit which had never been mustered into Confederate Service. These men wrote to the Federal Government protesting their incarceration as they were a State Militia Unit following the orders of their legitimate commander in chief, the Governor of Tennessee.”
http://www.censusdiggins.com/prison_camp_randall.html
I never understood the people who have a strong aversion to civil war monuments. I could understand better if there was an ongoing movement to revive the confederacy. Or if the Confederate monuments were inspirations to mass amounts of domestic terrorists. But it always struck me that these monuments at least when they were mainly put down served the exact opposite purpose.
The civil war a terribly bloody conflict and only ended with Sherman's march to the sea. At the end of the war proper it could have gone two ways either the North tries to totally subjugate the South in perpetuity as some sort of Federal territory, or the South rejoins the Union as full and equal states. Had it gone the first way, there would have been a long lasting insurgency and a probably ongoing political movement for the South to secede again. But in order to eventually come together again, even if it would a long time, the country, both North and South, needed reconciliation. That's what the purpose of the monuments always seemed to be to me. It isn't saying the South was right secede and it certainly isn't saying that slavery was just, but it is acknowledging that lots of the men who fought and died from the south did so because they wanted to fight and protect what they viewed as their home. Not completely vilifying the South, and allowing them to maintain some self-respect seems a necessary component for the south to have rejoined the Union in full as equal states. Perhaps the fact that the North allowed many civil war monuments that honor confederate soldiers to remain might serve as an example for us today over the humility we are capable of in order to unify our country. Because surely the divisions today are nowhere near the level they were immediately preceding and after the civil war.
I find it sad that the people who fought and killed each other could reconcile and agree to forgive their differences but the modern progressives want their pound of long dead flesh. We all agree now that slavery was and is wrong. Let it go, the monument shows that despite differences, we are one nation. I guess that's not the current position of the modern progressive.
I wonder how confederate dead ended up being buried in Wisconsin? Oh, Camp Randall.
"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.
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.”
Barely a month after their arrival at Camp Randall, the Confederate inmates had to relocate. President Abraham Lincoln’s call for a larger fighting force drew the 19th Wisconsin Regiment back to battle, rendering Camp Randall unsuitable for securely holding prisoners. On May 31, 1862, the majority of the Camp Randall inmates left for Camp Douglas, a larger encampment in Chicago.
By June, the last of the Camp Randall prisoners had left. The only ones who still remain in Madison are 140 Confederate soldiers who died during their stay at Camp Randall, now interred at Confederate Rest.
Dead Confederate prisoners were buried at Forest Hill Cemetery. Initially grouped into a mass grave, the dead were later given their own headstones and a more formally organized plot, now known as Confederate Rest."
One of the surprise benefits to moving to the South at this time has been the ability to pick up many first and special editions of Civil War and other history-related books (ie Churchill’s memoirs) for pittances at the estate sales of people who valued history.
"Despite medical care, more prisoners began to succumb to measles, mumps and pneumonia. "
Measles was a terrible killer of men in camps on both sides in the war.
World War I saw the Influenza epidemic that spread around the world but measles was the equivalent for the Civil War.
World War I was the first war in history in which more men died of wounds than of disease.
the ability to pick up many first and special editions of Civil War and other history-related books
I bought a boxed set of DS Freeman's biography of Lee and his two volume "Lee's Lieutenants" in Birmingham AL on a trip there a few years ago.
(Eaglebeak)
The people there on Memorial Day may not be supporting the Confederacy at all. They may be honoring the dead--American dead.
There is a story--don't know if it is true--about Lincoln visiting Richmond toward the end of the war, and going to the home of the Confederate General George Pickett (of Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg), who had been a friend of Lincoln's before the war (that I think is true).
Mrs. Pickett, upon seeing Lincoln, exclaimed "Mr. President!"
In other words, the very issue -- constitutionally speaking, if not morally -- over which the war was fought, and which she conceded.
The relationships between South and North were tangled and intertwined because, after all, we were one people. So if there are some people today at the Confederate Cemetery, it's perhaps part of that complex family history.
Many Americans are descended from soldiers on both sides--I am. Father's family from the South, mother's family Northerners whose Pennsylvania farm was a station on the Underground Railroad.
Ambrose Bierce of Devil's Dictionary fame wrote a poem about the War and an essay about tending Confederate graves in the North.
One stanza:
If we were victors, then we all must live
With the same flag above us;
'Twas all in vain unless we now forgive
And make them love us.
What I remember from the essay is "the dead are dead, let that be their atonement."
Somewhere in the former chicken house next door there's a print of Lee standing with all the other Confederate generals, obviously not a real life scene. Doubt it's much more than 100 years old, but who knows?
@Lewis Wetzel - Are YOU an intolerant hater?
I’m an American - I think the Southern States had a right to secede and slavery was an unjust cause.
There was a popular saying that it was a rich man's war but a poor man's fight. I imagine a lot of the Confederate dead were just poor slobs who were handed a rifle and told to go fight or else, just as a lot of us were 100-odd years later.
The bigger question is why the Lincoln Memorial is not torn down since Lincoln called for reconciliation. And why were the Southern states even allowed back in the Union? The whole region should have been burned and the ground salted.
If you are going to wage perpetual war -- which is being suggested here -- that is how you do it.
At some point, peace must come. And it is not in the interests of peace to piss all over people's graves.
Remember when Reagan tried visiting the graves of dead Nazi soldiers?
No. I remember when he visited a cemetery of German war dead.
Ralph L said...
About 15 years ago, some group put little Stars and Bars on the graves of CSA veterans in our city cemetery. A few years later, they switched them to NC state flags with the colors switched around, a nice compromise.
Not really. That's the 1861 NC State flag. North Carolina didn't have a state flag and adopted this one after secession. It bore the dates of the Halifax Resolves and of secession. In 1885 the colors were switched around, the lower date was changed to the date of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence, and the letters N and C placed on either side of the star. That flag was officially adopted in 1991.
Moira, I am shamelessly stealing and using this in the future:
"Because you're wrong, damn it. Don't you understand? The premise behind your opinion is a premise, the premise behind my opinion is an axiom."
Leave the dead alone. Whatever side they were on they suffered and died. No need to take down their names and the memory of what happened there. Also no need to glorify or celebrate that they were Confederate soldiers.
I also remember when Reagan and his staff and their German counterparts put wreathes on the tombs of some ordinary German soldiers at Bitburg and reporters moved some of the wreathes to tombs of SS members at a different cemetery nearby so they could take faked pictures and pretend that Reagan had honored the SS.
For the whole earth is the tomb of famous men; not only are they commemorated by columns and inscriptions in their own country, but in foreign lands there dwells also an unwritten memorial of them, graven not on stone but in the hearts of men.
Pericles
Well, like some other commenters here, I had ancestors who fought and died on both sides of the Civil War. And for that matter some of my ancestors fought to overthrow the Hessians and King George III (my namesake was a captain in the Virginia infantry in the Revolutionary War--but my grandchildren were born in England and are British citizens).
And one of the things that I do remember from Ken Burns series on the Civil War was the reply of a Confederate private to a Union officer who asked him, "Why are you fighting?" The answer was, "Because you are here." That is not the answer of "a poor slob who was handed a rifle and told to go fight or else".
Is a person's loyalty to the state where he resides, or to the nation? Considering the fact that many in our bicoastal elite tend to look down on the deplorables in flyover country, I suspect that many in our "elite" owe their allegiance to their peers who reside next to them on the coasts.
Blogger rhhardin said...
It's guys' rules vs women's rules.
Rules are for children
If the Left does not want to include people of other political persuasions among those honored as human, that is acceptable. They can be their own self-excluding beam in the eye of humanity, denouncing mote after mote in everyone else's eyes, and be ignored as the mentally blinkered idiots they demand we treat them as.
Some fought for diversity, to deny individual dignity. Some fought for redistributive change, to consolidate capital and control. Some fought for selective-child, to deny intrinsic value of human life. Some fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
Mark:
The bigger question is why the Lincoln Memorial is not torn down since Lincoln called for reconciliation. And why were the Southern states even allowed back in the Union? The whole region should have been burned and the ground salted.
If you are going to wage perpetual war -- which is being suggested here -- that is how you do it.
At some point, peace must come. And it is not in the interests of peace to piss all over people's graves.
Oh, it's a war all right, but not a continuation of the one the men in the graveyards fought. The people prosecuting it aren't interested in peace; "pissing all over the graves" (in the end, *all* of them) is the point.
I'm astonished at how slow many otherwise intelligent people are in catching on to what's going on here.
Some fought for diversity, to deny individual dignity. Some fought for redistributive change, to consolidate capital and control. Some fought for selective-child, to deny intrinsic value of human life. Some fought for life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
A lot of (the same) people condemned those who fought in Vietnam. Citing similar reasons for their contempt and hate.
The men (and a few women) who served in Vietnam each did so for a multitude of reasons, as is the case in any war on both sides. Some good, some bad. And whatever reason may have led them to join in the first place very often was not the same reason after they had seen combat.
One cause they all share in common throughout though, I am told, is that they fought for the brother next to them.
Fighting for The Word
You would think that those who died for the cause of state nullification and secession would garner some respect from the Left who increasingly assert those principles in nullifying federal immigration and drug laws and as California moves toward a having a referendum on secession..
"No need to take down their names and the memory of what happened there. Also no need to glorify or celebrate that they were Confederate soldiers."
Well said.
-LWL
the reply of a Confederate private to a Union officer who asked him, "Why are you fighting?" The answer was, "Because you are here."
Imagine the nation and government you support and believe in decides to send armed troops and weaponry into your neighborhood. And then they threaten deadly force against anyone who opposes them. And if your neighbors and/or family members decide to resist and open hostilities break out, who are you going to side with?
Are you going to fight against -- and kill -- your own family members, your neighbors? Are you going to wage war against your own infrastructure and economy?
Whatever that person's thoughts about the injustice of society/culture/law around them, it is reasonable to suppose that they would say, "Hey, wait a minute," when a bunch of muskets, rifles and cannon are pointed at them. And they might resent it. And see the "invading" army as the greater threat.
This is not to say that the typical Southern soldier -- who likely was poor, not a slaveowner, and whose life was probably made worse by the existence of slave labor -- was right to decide to fight against Union forces. But it does show that there were a lot of different factors involved in that decision.
Meanwhile, if you did a poll of Northern/Union troops at the beginning of the war, asking if they would fight and possibly die for a bunch of black people enslaved in the South, likely no more than one or two percent would say it would be worth their lives to do so. More likely, the soldiers would say that it would be better for the slaves continue to be slaves, so that they, the soldiers, could live. Their life was definitely more important than the slaves freedom is what they would have said.
Yancey Ward: Moira, I am shamelessly stealing and using this in the future:
Glad you liked it, help yourself.
Btw, I'm Angle-Dyne. Using a different browser and couldn't be arsed to change my login this morning. (Oh noes, it's chrome! I'm dooooooomed.)
Guess I better get back to my pseudonym before any of my goodthinking prog namesakes get anathematized by acquaintances or employers vigilantly googling for wrongthink. I've gotten some mighty peculiar emails in the past.
There are, in the DC area, a large number of Confederate memorials/graves. Indeed, in a church yard on a major DC drag near me, there is a "group" Confederate grave site with a large marker. Each day, tens of thousands of suburbanites drive by it on the way to or from work. There, they have lain for 154 years, in no way disturbing the peace of the living.
What amazes me is that so far been no serious demand that Arlington National Cemetery remove its Confederate dead or at least take down the the Confederate Memorial It & the Confederate graves are tucked away in the back of the cemetery, and someone just doesn't end up there unless you're trying to get there. Nevertheless, there it stands on the nation's hallowed ground.
As a son of the South, I considered it my historical duty to visit the site. I must admit, that I thought it was a damn good attempt by our ancestors to finesse the moral ambiguities involved. On the one hand, there was praise for duty & martial valor, virtues that our ancestors valued more than we do, but there was also the understanding that it was duty & valor in service of a morally dubious cause. In all honesty, we now would steer between Scylla & Charybdis no better than they did.
I've long thought that, yes, slavery was a precipitating cause, together with some other issues where the federal government was perceived as interfering in local matters and concerns. After all, what business is it of a bunch of people in Massachusetts to tell the people of South Carolina how to live? Nobody likes being pushed around, even if it is to be pushed to do the right thing.
But even with all that, war could have been avoided. Even with secession, eventual reunification of the Union could have been obtained without war -- and economics would soon end slavery any way.
What was the proximate cause of the war, I would content, is the war itself. That is, the continual and steady escalation, including the decisions to start raising armies. Lincoln's call for troops before a shot was fired was itself seen as a hostile provocation, which led to a response. And so, step by step on each side led to the Union army crossing the Potomac to march on Manassas to take control of the railroad, etc., there to be met by an army that would bloody them up -- and then there was no turning back.
Althouse asks: Remember when Reagan tried visiting the graves of dead Nazi soldiers?
Actually, no. Do you?
But even if he had, it would not be quite the same as dishonoring our own fellow countrymen. If we were to engage in a Civil War today, and I had to kill Progs, let's say, they could be my cousins or siblings, as often happened in the WBTS. It was an unfortunate war and I think it's high time to forgive and forget.
We have in recent years had many morally superior people tell us that it was wrong for the United States to use their military to protect and liberate people being subjected to ISIS genocide or the torture and crimes against humanity of the Sadaam Hussein and Taliban regimes in the Middle East .
Don't tell me that if we were to jump into the WayBack Machine that they would enlist in the Union Army to free the slaves. No, they would say, "Fuck 'em, they're on their own," just as they have said to all the people suffering horrific evils today (including slavery).
So the left has now resorted to shaming dead veterans from a war more than 150 years ago.
You must be so proud.
My buddy and I go over year to Union Hill Cemetary in Kansas City where each year a Scout troop marks the graves of Civil War veterans with either a US flag or the Tennessee Battle Flag. He is a Civil War re enactor and wears his United States blues. We then have a moment of observance at the monument dedicated to fourteen CSA soldiers who died in prison in KC. We read Psalm 46, Longfellow, he recites the Gettysburg Address and I read a prayer offered on behalf of troops of both armies. This year we read a speech given in 1857 by Ellen Watkins Harper on slavery.
This year for the first time the graves of the Confederate veterans were not marked at all. Not even with American flags.
Jim at: "So the left has now resorted to shaming dead veterans from a war more than 150 years ago."
"Valiantly" shaming dead veterans from a war more than 150 years ago.
"Valiantly" and "courageously" shaming dead veterans from a war more than 150 years ago.
Today's leftists are MORE courageous than those deplorables who stormed the beaches at Normandy a few decades ago.
Just ask them and they'll tell you so, as the following examples demonstrate:
"Watching 'Saving Private Ryan,' a movie about a group of very aggressive alt-left protesters invading a beach without a permit."
— Jeffrey Goldberg (@JeffreyGoldberg) August 16, 2017
https://www.dailywire.com/news/19800/atlantic-editor-compares-antifa-wwii-allies-um-no-hank-berrien
And be sure to check out Brian Fallon's and Chris Cuomo's tweets as well here:
http://dailycaller.com/2017/08/16/major-figures-work-to-mainstream-violent-antifa-protesters/
Our pajama boys literally awarding themselves the courage of D-Day invaders.
Will Brown:"It's not their cause that we honor, but their courage."
The lefties have forbidden praising the courage of confederate soldiers.
Praising the courage of islamic supremacist fighters who purposely set out to murder civilians?
Oh, the lefties are ALL OVER praising that....
"An alternative view came from Bill Maher, host of the ABC late-night talk show Politically Incorrect. "We have been the cowards, lobbing cruise missiles from 2,000 miles away. That's cowardly," Maher said on the show last week. "Staying in the airplane when it hits the building, say what you want about it, it's not cowardly."
YoungHegelian said...
What amazes me is that so far been no serious demand that Arlington National Cemetery remove its Confederate dead or at least take down the the Confederate Memorial It & the Confederate graves are tucked away in the back of the cemetery, and someone just doesn't end up there unless you're trying to get there. Nevertheless, there it stands on the nation's hallowed ground.
Considering that Arlington was once a plantation inherited by Robert E. Lee (through his wife, Mary Custis Lee) along with large number of slaves (that he eventually freed as was his father-in-laws wish); I'm surprised there's been no demand that the entire place be bulldozed and made into a shrine to Ta-Nehisi Coates!
YoungHegelian: What amazes me is that so far been no serious demand that Arlington National Cemetery remove its Confederate dead or at least take down the the Confederate Memorial It & the Confederate graves are tucked away in the back of the cemetery, and someone just doesn't end up there unless you're trying to get there.
They're probably overwhelmed right now by the magnitude of the memory-holing job awaiting them among all the monuments and memorials at Gettysburg NP. Let alone the Mall. My God, how do they sleep at night?
Nevertheless, there it stands on the nation's hallowed ground.
...and not bothering me in the slightest that it shares the hallowed ground of Arlington with my forebears. Teddy Kennedy's grave, on the other hand...
More likely, the soldiers would say that it would be better for the slaves continue to be slaves, so that they, the soldiers, could live. Their life was definitely more important than the slaves freedom is what they would have said.
How do you know this ?
I have a series of letters written by my great great uncle to his wife in 1862-1863. He died after a wound at Vicksburg. This letter was written May 19, 1862, a year before his fatal wound.
All I have to say is that it would be a Blessing to the army and cause we are engaged in had more such men staid at home it is not as you say because they love their families, a man that loves his Family and expects they will live after he is gone must love his country and that of his childrin. Men that remain at home finding fault with everything that is done by the President and all others in power even down to the poor private in the army discouraging his wife and children at home, not trying to give the little ones even a mouthful to eat but consoling them by telling them that their father did not love them or he never would have gone to fight for niggers. In my opinion such men are the biggest enemys we have to encounter and with men that ought to be arrested tried and shot for treason. I care not who he is if my Brother I would say
shoot him, I thought you would have more sense than to think that we were fighting for the Negro It is something I never thought of or intended to do. We all know that the war was brought on by those that hold the Negro in bondage. The North were compeldto defend them selves and the laws we live under I do not expect the north is going to gain anything in the end, but I do think the south is going to lose everything – and if the Negro is benifited by the operation what do I care. I don’t like the blacks any better than you do or others I have seen plenty whits that was almost dispised Still I would not try to deprive one man black or white of rights that all are intitled to.
Transcribed from his written letters without correcting his spelling or grammar. Emphasis added.
“Someone may wish to visit sometime. Unlike your grave.”
Someone may want to piss on it.
I say again, because events have proved me right:
Slippery slope arguments are good forms of argument. The questions are how steep,how slippery, and are there accessible offramps on the way down?
The Left has taken an especially slippery, very steep route. Some who should know better (Freeman Hunt) would not see the truth. The Left means to rewrite history so that it might control the future. This is NOT about the Civil War.
This is what the Left learned from Soviet Russia.
(Eaglebeak)
Reagan visited the German military cemetery at Bitburg in May 1985. In that cemetery were the graves of 49 SS officers--Waffen SS, that is to say, in the military--which was the source of the controversy.
The Confederates were just as patriotic as the revolutionaries of 1776.
Lincoln's call for troops before a shot was fired was itself seen as a hostile provocation,
Not true.
History would be good for you.
On April 15, 1861, at the start of the American Civil War, the President of the United States, Abraham Lincoln, called for a 75,000-man militia to serve for three months following the bombardment and surrender of Fort Sumter.
I think had the South avoided attacking northern facilities, like armories and the Fort, they might have pulled it off. They were far too confident that they would defeat the North.
A very nice thing for the folks of Madison to do. Desecrating the place by removing the monuments, not so nice.
@Michael K. Thanks for sharing that letter. I suspect that the majority of the Union men felt the same way.
If only someone could convince Michael K to die for a bad cause.
Maybe entice him with promises of how his "sacrifice won't be forgotten" or whatever.
Drago gives honor and praise to those who do the dirty work of fighting by video console from a remote "bunker" in Las Vegas - it's really just the same as going out in the field and really sacrificing something. Well, he's a Republican after all; even his president Trump said avoiding venereal disease was his own personal Vietnam.
Is a person's loyalty to the state where he resides, or to the nation? Considering the fact that many in our bicoastal elite tend to look down on the deplorables in flyover country, I suspect that many in our "elite" owe their allegiance to their peers who reside next to them on the coasts.
Well, their taxes do disproportionately fund the welfare and warfare make-work contract programs that our layabout friends in the south and center of the country rely on so the least they could do is offer up some of that good old fashioned "honor and loyalty" they're always talking about and show some gratitude for the folks in the states that butter their bread.
Thanks for sharing that letter. I suspect that the majority of the Union men felt the same way.
There are quite a few of his letters and most are about family and annoyance about poor pay and his wife having to manage at home.
No allotments in those days.
Why in the world he volunteered with a wife and three kids is a mystery. He did survive Shiloh and was in Sherman's division.
He was wounded in Grant's last attempt to take Vicksburg by storm on May 22, 1863. They had to run the wounded past Vicksburg to get to the hospital at Memphis. He died June 2, 1863. The sister of the man in the next bed write to his wife to tell her.
She wrote some pretty good poetry. His grave is unmarked in Memphis.
My Husband’s Grave
I’ve shed no tear, I’ve breathed no sigh
Where my husband takes his rest
I’ve never knelt upon the sod
That lies above his breast
He sleeps afar from his lovely home
In a stranger grave alone
And they who say that lowly mound
Repeat the word “Unknown “
Unknown to them his children’s love
That centered all in him
Unknown to them my ceaseless love
Not death itself can dim
Oh could I but have closed his eyes
Received his parting breath
And heard him speak on sad good-bye
Before he slept in death
I had hopes I could find his grave but the latest I heard was that the unit and date of death are not on the gravestone.
I see the poo flinger is back.
What pleasure he gets from dirtying others' thoughts and comments is a mystery that only forensic psychiatrists could understand.
Oh Michael K. You'd do it too, if only your lance could spear right and wasn't so soft, off-target and wobbly.
"I thought you would have more sense than to think that we were fighting for the Negro It is something I never thought of or intended to do. . . . I do think the south is going to lose everything – and if the Negro is benifited by the operation what do I care. I don’t like the blacks any better than you do or others"
You highlighted the wrong part, MK.
The Vicksburg vet here explicitly shows that at the beginning of the war, the North did not fight to free the slaves, and would not have fought at all if that were the objective at the time. It was only later that the Union soldiers began to comprehend the moral cause too.
It was only later that the Union soldiers began to comprehend the moral cause too.
No there are other letters indicating why he volunteered but the comment I bolded explains enough.
Ritmo, I would think you would be over jerking off to the Muppets.
Adults are here. No place for you.
On this Memorial Day, let us take a moment to reflect on all the taxes paid disproportionately by blue states to fund our $700 billion imperial defense budget - more than the Pentagon asks for, more than then next eight countries combined, and more than enough to keep our nearly $1 trillion budget deficit growing into 2020. War and fighting and killing are important things to do, as the solemnity of the commenters here and in other places attest, and let's be thankful that there is sufficient imperial "war stimulus" spending to go on making that the reality that so many people hope for. Much more so than the reality hoped for by anyone who wants to end poverty, homelessness or bankrupted personal medical expense accounts in America.
Well, Ritmo, if any blue states wish not to be defended in the event of an attack, they should just let the DoD know and they can train their anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs, the "Star Wars" that Democrats fought against so passionately and insisted would never work) to defend other cities and let places like San Francisco and New York City just blow up.
Funny to see a Democrat crying crocodile tears over the deficits after 8 years of the idiot from Hyde Park.
I enjoy that yarn Leftist Collectivists tell each other about paying more in taxes than they receive. I guess that is why so many are moving.
I also like that crazy tale Leftist Collectivists tell in which the yearly increase in the federal debt was less than a trillion per year under Obama.
The lessons of Stalin, erasing history and the Big Lie, are faithfully remembered.
Reagan visiting the graves of Nazis is a bad analogy. Germans recognizing the graves of Nazis would be more apt.
Ritmo posts here to get a reaction, and get it he does. But what if everybody just ignored him ? Or is the back-and-forth part of the fun ?
Or is the back-and-forth part of the fun ?
What do you think?
Apparently, according to PPT, the pajama boy lefties self-assert courage levels equal to normandy invaders due to some strange and unexplained las vegas/video monitor connection.
Sounds very X-files-ish.
Its interesting watching PPT work thru some personal issues on a public forum.
I think military service would have done him a world of good.
”But what if everybody just ignored him ? Or is the back-and-forth part of the fun ?”
He’s the most ignorable commenter this blog has ever had. Clearly those engaging him get a kick out of it.
Still I would not try to deprive one man black or white of rights that all are intitled to.
American conservative: classical liberal tempered by Judeo-Christian religious/moral philosophy, by principles of individual dignity and intrinsic value. Noticeably lacking [color] diversity, selective rights, and progressive rites.
I think military service would have done him a world of good.
Do you think he could have passed the physical? Do you think he'd have lasted a week in BCT?
One would be hard pressed to identify a more valiant stand against impossible odds and almost certain death than the Great Leftist P****-Hat Campaign of 2017.
Like the US Marines progressing on the beaches Iwo Jima, these pink-hatted modern day Charlemagne's stood up to that arm of fascist tyranny (the DC police) and delivered a blow that will echo through the ages. Centuries from now little children in their SmartFabric camping outfits and solar tents will sing songs of these newly minted American heroes, displacing those horrible white male founding fathers.
Big Mike: "Do you think he could have passed the physical?"
I think PPT has demonstrated extraordinary ability to procure whatever chemical assistance is necessary to achieve his objectives.
One cause they all share in common throughout though, I am told, is that they fought for the brother next to them.
That's a good place to start. Followed by a routing or messaging protocol, where neighbor reconciles with neighbor, and discovery of principles that are internally, externally, and mutually consistent.
if any blue states wish not to be defended in the event of an attack, they should just let the DoD know and they can train their anti-ballistic missiles to defend other cities and let places like San Francisco and New York City just blow up
Or there is another alternative. Remember the movie Fail Safe? Where, after Moscow gets mistakenly nuked, President Henry Fonda orders the bomb dropped on New York City?
the North did not fight to free the slaves, and would not have fought at all if that were the objective at the time.
I think you have a point but miss the other point, which is that the Union soldiers were fighting for the freedom of all, black and white.
The Fugitive Slave Laws were a big part of the issue. Lincoln even proposed some sort of compensation to the slave owners.
In one of the letters, William Kennedy, my ancestor, expressed frustration with "Abolitionists." He also expressed frustration with officers who treated volunteers as lesser men.
There is a difference between "freeing the slaves" and resisting impositions like the Fugitive Slave Laws on free men.
I know it is kind of subtle but you did not have to love blacks to want them free.
Well, Ritmo, if any blue states wish not to be defended in the event of an attack, they should just let the DoD know and they can train their anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs, the "Star Wars" that Democrats fought against so passionately and insisted would never work) to defend other cities and let places like San Francisco and New York City just blow up.
First pay us back for all the monies you spent not defending America from attack, from being in Vietnam and from playing Yankee Doodle Dandy for the benefit of your friends in Iraq. And Kuwait. I'm sure the balance will work itself out - especially given how shitty a job your frat boy wonder of of president did NOT defending New York on Sept. 11 2001. But then, that didn't require any military resources any way so try contacting your political accountant and telling him that he left you ill-informed in figuring out how to settle scores.
Funny to see a Democrat crying crocodile tears over the deficits after 8 years of the idiot from Hyde Park.except when the depression that his Republican president gave us in 2008 made them inevitable.
Any more feats of irrational unintelligence you wanted to exhibit today?
But what if everybody just ignored him ?
Then they'd be even more ignorant than before. But less blissfully so.
Q. What if everyone ignored your strange spaces before question marks?
A. We'd actually know the difference between your real questions and your rhetorical questions. Even if you don't.
the Union soldiers were fighting for the freedom of all, black and white
Sorry, MK, the soldier you quote belies that assertion when he says, "I thought you would have more sense than to think that we were fighting for the Negro It is something I never thought of or intended to do".
Look, the people of the North were not pure angels, just as the people of the South were not all evil demons. The fact is that they were all imperfect humans -- all of them capable of great good, but all also capable of horrific wrong and blind bigotry. It cannot be denied. And there is no shame in admitting. It's human nature.
In time, however, people of both sides changed for the better. But the one side was not perfect at the beginning, the other side did have a few good people too.
I think military service would have done him a world of good.
That's because you associate "good" with the individual sense of self and self-respect that it beat out of you.
I went all the way through the BSA and that was as much character and strength-building as you cannon-fodders could have benefited from before the fascist shout-leaders beat any hope or capacity for those things out of you.
I agree Will Brown. The other benefit of a draftee service is it would reduce the ability of the President from going to war without a high political cost. If instead of telling the American people to go shopping in response to 911, Bush instituted a draft, we wouldn't still be fucking the dog in Iraq and Afghanistan
Sorry, MK, the soldier you quote belies that assertion when he says,
OK I provided the letter to show that, while ambivalent, he wanted freedom for all.
I guess we just disagree. I'm not going to post all the letters over two years.
Do you think he could have passed the physical? Do you think he'd have lasted a week in BCT?
Well, your leader Trump got a doctor to fail him out of that with a claim of "bone spurs" (on a foot that he's as of yet unsure of). My own parents were successful enough to have found more ways out of the cannon-fodder loser-bully-groupthink enterprise to protect their investment in their kids much more than yours either would/could have or cared to do. Maybe not of as much means and concern as Fred Trump - but certainly of more than your parents either had or exhibited.
But don't worry, I'm sure someone would have consoled them - even if you'd been lost to fragging, which Big Mike condones. It's funny how he sort of admits that the military is basically a place for the murders of America to find a sense of purpose and (phony) legitimacy.
PPT: "I went all the way through the BSA ..."
Wow.
Did you bat cleanup for your T-Ball team as well?
Did you make the best clay planter in 3rd grade?
Hard to believe the leadership skills you developed early on didnt land you in a more appropriately rspected position in life.
Perhaps thats where the anger and chemical dependence cones in.
Between you and LLR Chuck, who once briefly yet bravely pondered joining the military but didnt 'cuz no draft, I dont think running a coup in some small out of the way third world nation is out of the question yet.
Though the clock is ticking....
Murderers*
What was the lowest yearly increase in the debt under Obama?
I see there’s at least one piss-ignorant waste of oxygen commenting here who thinks Obama’s economic policies addressed and alleviated the crash of 2008. Now if only the numbers agreed with him. Alas, those numbers say Obsma’s policies unnecessarily prolonged the recession. Not that Ritmo will ever believe it. Reality is different wherever he lives.
In my opinion ending the draft was a mistake. I always thought it came about because they started drafting the rich kids during Viet Nam.
I agree but for a different reason. Johnson allowed forever draft exemption for students.He also avoided activating reserves.
Had Edward Lansdale had enough influence, there would have been no more than about 15,000 advisers in VN. He was opposed to American combat troops and wanted to send about 20,000 advisers home.
Student deferments should have been for two years only and everybody should have been drafted, as was the case in WWII.
The volunteer army was a result of the drug use and bad behavior of draftees after the VN war was over for the US.
Hard to believe the leadership skills you developed early on didnt land you in a more appropriately rspected position in life.
Not sure where a liar like you got to finding out what I do in life but don't let that restrain your resentment. Bashing scouting. Where will it go next? Did your employers realize that legalized killing was not as wonderful a resume builder as you'd hoped? I know what the people doing the hiring think when comparing resumes from people who got to do the leadership thing without the killing with those with. They know you psychos are more likely to be unhinged, uncreative, subservient to authority, and likely to go off half-cocked. How lucky for you that the government has to pay subsidies to hire you folks. I guess that will go a little ways in at least making sure that you shit-eating orders-followers don't keep swelling the ranks of the homeless that I see so many veterans doing their best to contribute to.
We need to remember that our esteemed hostess was appalled that an Olympic champion German athlete had the temerity to carry the German flag in the closing ceremonies. The horror! The horror!
I see there’s at least one piss-ignorant waste of oxygen commenting here who thinks Obama’s economic policies addressed and alleviated the crash of 2008. Now if only the numbers agreed with him. Alas, those numbers say Obsma’s policies unnecessarily prolonged the recession. Not that Ritmo will ever believe it. Reality is different wherever he lives.
First of all, the HTML (or Blogger) cut off the first part of my comment: Glad to see you imply that you agree with Cheney that "deficits don't matter." Always nice to see when right-wingers call themselves and their pretend concerns out.
Second of all, if you think stimulus is bad, why not run the experiment again - this time without. After all, you've already given us 1929 and 2008... so why not try it again?
But we do have evidence on the velocity of recovery here as opposed to the austerity countries, whom we obviously beat. There's actual data on that. Real world examples that tried austerity. It didn't work - except to prolong the rates of unemployment. If Britain's route is the way you would have preferred to go, then go trot out the proofs of how well that worked and when you give us your next Republican Recession (since your party does that so well) you can try it out then.
Blogger President Pee-Pee Tape said.....
That's because you associate "good" with the individual sense of self and self-respect that it beat out of you.
That's right, Boot Camp teaches you to subordinate your petty wants and desires to the benefit of the tribal group. IOW, it is egalitarianism indoctrination. It also teaches you to shoulder heaps of discomfort and adversity while remaining calm and focused in a zen-like state.
I went all the way through the BSA and that was as much character and strength-building as you cannon-fodders could have benefited from before the fascist shout-leaders beat any hope or capacity for those things out of you.
Is this what your rapists taught you in the BSA?? Cannon fodder is what other countries military service make. The US uses the principles of Anti-Fragile "next man up" in the enlisted ranks. Fascist shout-leaders? You mean fragging victims.
I think its pretty clear PPT's parents knew he wouldnt make it thru the psych eval.
I wonder if they were sufficiently "delicate" in hiding that from PPT?
Their cover story about PPT being far too important to join the service was a great cover story. I wonder if PPTs mom told him that as a teenager as she rubbed baby oil on his buttocks.
So, kudos to them for that.
IOW, it is egalitarianism indoctrination.
Yeah, but only for the sake of violence. If it believed that all the socialism that it imposes on its members were real, then they would come back and do less useless things in America once here than pushing for discredited Republicans projects and their war machine.
Cannon fodder is what other countries military service make.
Oh, really? No Americans died too early in war after 1945? Ok, then I won't mourn them.
The US uses the principles of Anti-Fragile "next man up" in the enlisted ranks. Fascist shout-leaders? You mean fragging victims.
Not sure what point you're trying to make here but if it's a justification of fragging then I'll stick to my contention that American armed service members are far from being any more moral than their corrupt civilian leaders or other countries' armed forces.
Yep. It's just an exercise in violence for its own sake. Violence against the integrity of the individual and violence for the sake of a corrupt American empire abroad. And to keep indebting ourselves to our Chinese creditors. I have yet to hear from a single "proud" service member on this comment board that makes me think, "Hmm. That's a decent person who has principles I can respect." Nope, every time, they reveal themselves to be a violent automaton who simply found meaning being told to be a violent automaton. They'll get no respect from me in this blessedly civilian-run country and they can look inside themselves to their own lack of integrity and belief in violence as a religion when they ask themselves why. But of course they won't - because as you all keep telling me, there's nothing inside them. Their officers drilled that (and any independent, personal morality along with it) out of them. They're robots of a socialism of violence.
I think its pretty clear PPT's parents knew he wouldnt make it thru the psych eval.
I wonder if they were sufficiently "delicate" in hiding that from PPT?
Their cover story about PPT being far too important to join the service was a great cover story. I wonder if PPTs mom told him that as a teenager as she rubbed baby oil on his buttocks.
So, kudos to them for that.
Pretty funny coming from a snake who supports a training mission of psychological disintegration. I'm just saying your parents either hated you or had less means than Fred Trump's parents to buy you the deferments that he could get. You fuckers believe in mammonism and wealth so why are you so afraid to admit that rich kids never go to war for a reason? They're parents are the ones pulling the strings and getting you to do their dirty work for them. I still see you voting them in as presidents for you to worship so what's the difference?
ANd in any event, go say hi to all those epidemic-level proportion vets with PTSD. It seems to be all the rage these days. But I'm sure you'll have some smart-ass shit-eating answer about how none of them were good enough, either. Right. I'm sure they also just happen to know something (as do I) that you don't. You are blind to how corrupt a cause you can be used for - the very antithesis of what individual liberty and freedom mean.
bore the dates of the Halifax Resolves and of secession. In 1885 the colors were switched around, the lower date was changed to the date of the Mecklenburg Declaration of Independence,
Thanks, I didn't know the history of the NC flag (didn't go to school here), but I do know you've got the Halifax (added later) and Mecklenburg (original date) events reversed. My ggg gfather witnessed the latter at 16 and spoke at the 50th anniversary. My gg gf spoke at the 100th 3 months before he died.
I haven't heard that the 1861 flags triggered anyone at the cemetery. Pokemon Go used to send people 2 plots over from ours, which pissed me off.
@Mark
What was the proximate cause of the war, I would content, is the war itself. That is, the continual and steady escalation, including the decisions to start raising armies. Lincoln's call for troops before a shot was fired was itself seen as a hostile provocation, which led to a response. And so, step by step on each side led to the Union army crossing the Potomac to march on Manassas to take control of the railroad, etc., there to be met by an army that would bloody them up -- and then there was no turning back.
It's like everybody here (almost — see below) is living in an alternative universe where historically the North attacked the seceding South. Not so!
Indeed, Lincoln had promised that the Union would not be the party which opened military hostilities. Then the South — specifically the State of South Carolina — deliberately chose to launch a military assault on the American forces occupying an installation (Ft. Sumter) which was the recognized legal property of the United States (which had indeed been purchased by the U.S. under its Constitution from that self-same State of South Carolina).
The Southern assault and humiliation of the Fort's complement sent a lightning bolt through public opinion in the North, which by itself had an effect which allowed Lincoln thereafter to prosecute the war — whether he would have otherwise (given his promise) or not — now Lincoln had the political capital making the long slow grind of the war possible.
––––
@Michael K
I think had the South avoided attacking northern facilities, like armories and the Fort, they might have pulled it off. They were far too confident that they would defeat the North.
Finally someone breathes word of the truth. Thanks, Michael. Yes, I agree. Had the South been less suffused with insane hubris concerning their capabilities vis-à-vis the North and hence chosen to avoid opening the war, then they might well have succeeded in their quest to secede.
One might note, however (as the book First Blood about the Ft. Sumter episode points out), that many influential Confederates at that moment in history believed that the fledgling Confederacy had to win its independence in blood — in war — or else lose momentum and see many of the seceding states lose interest and drift back into the old Union. Likely dooming the incipient Confederate States before they even got going good. According to this way of thinking — their thinking — they really had no choice.
Had secession succeeded, it's possible that eventually the territorial ambitions of the Confederacy would have come into conflict with those of the USA.
Had the South been less suffused with insane hubris concerning their capabilities vis-à-vis the North and hence chosen to avoid opening the war, then they might well have succeeded in their quest to secede.
Heaven knows, Rhett Butler tried to talk some sense into them. ;-)
The federals had abandoned all of the coastal forts except Fort Sumter, which Lincoln moved to reinforce. This prompted the attack. Lincoln wanted war "to preserve the Union". Was it worth the cost? Good question.
Wow. PPT is setting a new standard for overcompensation.
Im sure Inga will not be pleased to learn that PPT considers her daughter a loser whose parent (Inga) was also too much of a loser to see to it that her daughter had no choice but to join up with the "legal murderers"!
Too funny.
Blogger Drago said...
Wow. PPT is setting a new standard for overcompensation.
Im sure Inga will not be pleased to learn that PPT considers her daughter a loser whose parent (Inga) was also too much of a loser to see to it that her daughter had no choice but to join up with the "legal murderers"!
Too funny.
His moniker should be Commenter Colostomy Bag.
PPT triggers pretty easy giving some of the hard corps trumpisitas a run for their food stamps.
Just wait until PPT hears about the murder and blood drinking quotas!
He's going to flip!
Lincoln wanted war "to preserve the Union". Was it worth the cost? Good question.
I disagree. He was not wiling to give up Sumpter without a fight. That is not the same thing.
Sherman tried to warn the people he knew in New Orleans.
I see Ritmo has one fan in Howard. No surprise. Have you ever thought of doing your own blog ? It would satisfy a lot of people.
sent a lightning bolt through public opinion in the North
Just as Lincoln's election had earlier done through much of the South.
I had direct ancestors who fought in the Revolution (one was left for dead but lived) but no other wars until my Dad took his ship (carrying Swift? boats) up the Mekong in 1969. Dad's 19 y.o. great uncle drove his train through the lines so my Mom's g-gf could surrender Raleigh to Sherman. IIRC, they learned of Lincoln's assassination while they were there, which made Uncle Dallas even more nervous.
My siblings inherited some land on which in 1781 the left-for-dead cavalryman led men in battle (of Clapp's Mill, built by the family I used to work for), which I think is cool but they don't care a whit about.
Today is a good day to watch "Gettysburg" and/or "Gods and Generals", directed by Ron Maxwell and financed by Ted Turner.
Unfortunately, I am in the process of moving to Arizona and all my books and CDs are in a Tucson warehouse. If I could, I would re-read Shelby Foote's 4 part series and James McPherson's overview of the Civil War. Neil Winick's "April 1865" is also a must read.
For liberals, please understand that history did not begin yesterday. It is never a simple question of right or wrong. There are noble people on both sides. Watch Pickett's Charge in "Gettysburg".
The federals had abandoned all of the coastal forts except Fort Sumter, which Lincoln moved to reinforce. This prompted the attack.
Yes it did. So what? See what it got the South to knock that chip off Lincoln's shoulder?
What could and should the South have done? (Other than: not secede.) They could have militarily surrounded and politically isolated Ft. Sumter as an enclave — then forgotten about it until the U.S. Congress cuts off Lincoln's funding for supporting it, perhaps a few years down the road. Voila! No war.
Lincoln wanted war “to preserve the Union.”
Did he? He wanted to preserve the Union. But war was forced on him — by the South.
"all my books and CDs are in a Tucson warehouse."
When you get settled, come by for a drink.
I have DS Freeman's "RE Lee" boxed set and his "Lee's Lieutenants."
@Michael K.
It's a deal. We are closing at the end of June,
Douglas Southall Freeman (sp?) is the authority on Lee.
It's a deal. We are closing at the end of June,
June is the worst month (We are planning tow trips) but July is better and Monsoon season comes soon after.
Oh well, two trips.
Moira Breen said: "They're probably overwhelmed right now by the magnitude of the memory-holing job awaiting them among all the monuments and memorials at Gettysburg NP. Let alone the Mall. My God, how do they sleep at night?"
There are over 1400 monuments at Gettysburg, far and way more than any other park, but only 14 are Confederate. These are the 12 state monuments along Confederate Ave at the base of Cemetery Ridge; a statue of Longstreet that stands near his position during Pickett's Charge; and I think one NC regimental monument. All the rest are Union.
However, I think everyone should be concerned about all the Confederate monuments that do exist in the National Parks, like Chickamauga, Shiloh, etc., as well as the future of the parks themselves. I was talking to one of the NPS historians at a military park last weekend and he thinks the days of all the Confederate monuments, as few as they are, in the parks are numbered, it is just a matter of time. I think if the progressives eventually get enough control of Congress and a president of the likes of Kamala Harris you can consider them as good as gone. NPS Civil War historians seem to be a pretty gloomy lot these days as are some of the guides at Gettysburg. One of the guides told me last year he had informed NPS and the guides association he would no longer do school groups. He said the students and teachers that visit G'burg on their annual spring school trips as the most historically ignorant he has ever seen and they were just wasting his time.
I read the Manchester bio of MacArthur. When MacArthur returned to the Phillipines, he pardoned all the Filipinos who had collaborated with the Japanese. When he headed the US occupation of Japan, he tried and executed only six Japanese for war crimes. There were some others who were given relatively brief prison stays, but the numbers were few. He came in for a lot of criticism, particularly from the left, for this leniency. It must be noted, however, that the occupation of Japan went a lot smoother than anyone expected.......If we can give the WWII Japanese war criminals a pass, how about showing a little courtesy towards the Confederate dead.
He said the students and teachers that visit G'burg on their annual spring school trips as the most historically ignorant he has ever seen and they were just wasting his time.
He should visit Warwick Castle in Britain. Not even the guides know the stories. They sold it to Madame Tussaud's Waxworks and it is now Disneyland.
Taxes paid by the hard-working Blue Staters.
So, you have many corporations headquartered in NY but whose entire workforce (except the corner office folks) is in heartland America and virtually of whose domestic revenues are generated in heartland America. But based solely on the corporate headquarters, all of the taxes they pay are attributed to hard-working Blue State residents. Right.
MountainMan: However, I think everyone should be concerned about all the Confederate monuments that do exist in the National Parks, like Chickamauga, Shiloh, etc., as well as the future of the parks themselves.
We should all be concerned not only for the Confederate monuments in themselves, but because this isn't only about the Confederate monuments. They just represent a weak point in the enemy's line, during a particular battle that is part of the larger war.
I was talking to one of the NPS historians at a military park last weekend and he thinks the days of all the Confederate monuments, as few as they are, in the parks are numbered, it is just a matter of time. I think if the progressives eventually get enough control of Congress and a president of the likes of Kamala Harris you can consider them as good as gone.
The rest will go, too. Not necessarily physically, but "re-interpreted" into oblivion. It's already started, as you note. The point is that people like Kamala Harris don't give a crap about anything in American history that isn't all about the prog vision.
Despite its ending the enslavement of black Americans, the Civil War, as memorialized in places like Shiloh and Appomattox and Gettysburg, is to them just white man's history about a white man's nation that's going to be superseded by the glorious rainbow nation to come, and links to it need to be erased. You can keep Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, but only in a fundamentally a-historical context, in which anything and anyone that doesn't promote their shabby dishonest "narrative" has to be airbrushed out.
NPS Civil War historians seem to be a pretty gloomy lot these days as are some of the guides at Gettysburg. One of the guides told me last year he had informed NPS and the guides association he would no longer do school groups. He said the students and teachers that visit G'burg on their annual spring school trips as the most historically ignorant he has ever seen and they were just wasting his time.
Sounds like everything's proceeding according to plan, then. "Why should I care about this? These aren't my people, this isn't my history", as one young student complained (after bitching about being expected to speak English, "the oppressor's language".) Heckuva job, proggies.
If we can give the WWII Japanese war criminals a pass, how about showing a little courtesy towards the Confederate dead.
And if the Japanese can forgive us Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Michael K: He should visit Warwick Castle in Britain. Not even the guides know the stories. They sold it to Madame Tussaud's Waxworks and it is now Disneyland.
That reminds me of a a city guide for York I came upon a while back, which informed its readers that the lady chapel of York Minster was so-called because that's where the women had to worship, separately from the main church.
Im sure Inga will not be pleased to learn that PPT considers her daughter a loser whose parent (Inga) was also too much of a loser to see to it that her daughter had no choice but to join up with the "legal murderers"!
I don't think the women who enlist have to contend with as much of the hard-core abuse that Crowd Testosterone does. It seems they're more likely to enlist with defensible goals and ideals (even if misplaced in how the U.S. gov't will misuse them) and actually intact personalities that they're also more likely to take from the service with them, intact. That is, assuming that not too many of their "brothers in arms" raped them, as rampant as that sort of thing is.
I think the Central Lie of the Day to learn about is why it is that people who think the U.S. gov't can't do anything right are so willing to believe that the killing they're doing on its demand is right.
Something doesn't add up.
Either they don't believe their anti-government rhetoric or they really do have such weak egos that they need demolishing in order to redirect into a cult of violence, reinforcing their instinct to believe that "might alone makes right."
?"However, I think everyone should be concerned about all the Confederate monuments that do exist in the National Parks, like Chickamauga, Shiloh, etc., as well as the future of the parks themselves."
I agree. But who's going to stop the Left in their cultural/historical vandalism?
The Chamber of Commerce? Peeps like Jeff Flake or Turkey McConnell ?
Turn your schools over to a bunch of American-hating illiterates, and you get a bunch of Dumbos who don't care about what happened yesterday - let alone 150 years ago.
The Soviets did a pretty good job of erasing Russian "Bourgeois" History. We're gong through the same process - only in slow motion.
Those who know no history, and we see some here, are condemned not to repeat it but to erase it.
To Michael McNeil;
In those times you didn't spit on someone who was angry to begin with and not expected to get punched back. Lincoln could have abandoned Sumter like the federals had done with the other forts. Perhaps a compromise could have been negotiated after some cooling off had taken place. Perhaps not. In that was the case, Lincoln could have let the Southern states break away and form a new nation as the 13 colonies had done a century before. He chose war instead. And you can believe he went to war to end slavery.
William wrote If we can give the WWII Japanese war criminals a pass, how about showing a little courtesy towards the Confederate dead.leniency.<\i>
My sense is that no, that cannot happen. Events in Charlottesville recently showed that anyone sympathetic with the preservation of southern history is racist. Besides, the South is icky, just like guns and the military are icky.
Go ask Titus, when he’s 10 feet tall.
Spaceman,
Do you realiize that South Carolina had seceded December of the previous year? Seems to me that was the spitting, not Lincoln who had not even taken office yet. Four further months had not cooled anything off.
The ironic thing is that once all Confederate monuments have been eliminated, future generations may have no idea why the Union monuments exist.
As the direct descendant on a CSA soldier, and a member of the Son's of Confederate Veterans, I must say that this is a huge disgrace and a abomination. Following the end of Reconstruction, a healing began with mutual respect for the old foes. Now, radical leftist racist haters want to pick the scars open and let the bleeding and hurt return. This is a graveyard for God's sake! Leave it alone! I never imagined I would witness such a vile action take place. I grew up in Rockford and became enamored by Lincoln and the Union victory. Then I read history apart from the winners history and learned that the Civil War was much different that what I had been told. There was never any question that the South fought valiently and sacrificially to retain its rights and freedoms against a stronger power that came to force them to return to a nation they no longer wanted to be a part of. The North was willing to kill southerners in large numbers to subjugated them to the North. This is not about freedom, it's about tyranny and war crimes.and it continues today.
If we can give the WWII Japanese war criminals a pass, how about showing a little courtesy towards the Confederate dead.
And if the Japanese can forgive us Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Forgiveness is not a secularist virtue.
Lincoln could have abandoned Sumter like the federals had done with the other forts.
The Confederates and treasonous Union officials, including Buchanan, had been shipping arms to the South and surrendering Union armories for months.
Do you think think this would have been enough ?
I think that Lincoln had had enough. Washington City, as it was called, was very close to Confederate units in Virginia.
Had the Southerners expressed peaceful intentions, there might have been more room for compromise.
Instead they, beginning with Preston Brooks, had chosen violence.
Sherman warned them.
Regarding the rabid rebels of South Carolina who started that hell, Virginia stands in a different position, especially since so much of the fight in the east was conducted there in the Virginia homeland.
And don't get me started on that Mississippian Jefferson Davis guaranteeing that the fight would be here by putting the Confederate capitol here.
Howard said...
Is this what your rapists taught you in the BSA?
Why are all the left wingers who post here such disgusting people?
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