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.
Posts
217 comments:
«Oldest ‹Older 201 – 217 of 217Why are all the left wingers who post here such disgusting people?
Because all left winger are disgusting people, period. Some hide it better than others. They enjoy being disgusting. They revel in provoking feelings of disgust. Sheesh. You must not know many lefties if you haven't broken that code before today.
"They enjoy being disgusting."
I think that is really a big part of it, especially for creeps like R***o.
Blogger Michael K said...
“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.”
There should be three volumes of “Lee’s Lieutenants.”. There is also an abridged single-volume paperback edition. I was also able to get a first edition of the Lee biography. The conundrum is whether to read these or get them to read from our well-stocked public library.
https://www.biblio.com/book/lees-lieutenants-vol-1-3-study/d/923085574?aid=frg&utm_source=google&utm_medium=product&utm_campaign=feed-details&gclid=Cj0KCQjw0a7YBRDnARIsAJgsF3N05fezKrcXZzB5DMdFHPRfDFsERPjWtf7-03pRUahdGUcPXeAPhyQaAp5tEALw_wcB
CWJ said: "The ironic thing is that once all Confederate monuments have been eliminated, future generations may have no idea why the Union monuments exist."
That's a very good point and one I have tried to make repeatedly to my progressive friends who are eagerly anticipating the elimination of any sign of the Confederacy from public life. That is one problem with Gettysburg. All those monuments there tell the Union story, but what was happening on the Confederate side of the battle is pretty much hard to know unless you have a good book or hire one of the guides. Being a baseball fan I have tried to explain to them it is like trying to read a box score with the data only for one team.
Many of the NPS people will tell you they wish there were more monuments in the parks, and especially more Confederate monuments, as it makes understanding the battle for the average person much easier. If you want to actually walk a battlefield and study it, Chickamauga is much better than Gettysburg. That park was jointly developed by Union and Confederate veterans in the 1890's, with monuments placed by the veterans themselves. Gettysburg was controlled by a Union veterans group for years before the War Deparment took it over and they would not allow Confederate monuments. By the time the NPS got control of it in the 1930s they wanted Confederate monuments but most of the veterans were dead and it was too late.
I’m breaking my own rule and late to respond
But to him who shall not be named, here’s the history behind Memorial Day and its honoring of both Union and Confederate dead
Mark said...
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).
If our forefathers had had the advantage of a Wayback machine to show them the future, I'm sure that the constitution would have placed the death penalty on anyone importing people from Africa, and it would have been approved unanimously.
@Mockturtle - Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the just wages for Pearl Harbor.
Blogger Oso Negro said...
@Mockturtle - Hiroshima and Nagasaki were the just wages for Pearl Harbor.
And that's just what they owe(d?) us. The Japanese really don't want to pay off what they owe China and the Philippines to name two.
"There should be three volumes of “Lee’s Lieutenants.”.
There are. I walked in the other room and checked.
What I missed out on was Freeman's Washington biography. When I was in college it was selling for $10 a volume and there are 6 volumes. I could not afford it.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, besides being payback for Pearl Harbor and many atrocities committed by the Japanese in the war, saved maybe a million Japanese lives.
An invasion would have been horrendous and, perhaps, the other, starvation option might have been chose.
US submarines had done to Japan what Germany tried to do to Britain.
The B 29 fire raids killed more civilians than the two a bombs.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, besides being payback for Pearl Harbor and many atrocities committed by the Japanese in the war, saved maybe a million Japanese lives.
I wasn't implying it wasn't justified or effective. But I may have felt differently had I been a citizen of Hiroshima. The Japanese leader of the Pearl Harbor air strike [Fuchida] wrote in his book that he believed the bombings should have been considered war crimes.
War is hell and all measures can be justified somehow. The problem is that ordinary citizens--and soldiers--do not make policy and yet bear the cost.
The Japanese leader of the Pearl Harbor air strike [Fuchida] wrote in his book that he believed the bombings should have been considered war crimes.
I wonder about what he felt of his countrymen eating prisoners in the Owen Stanley Mountain Range.
Some they kept alive so their meat would not spoil in the hot climate.
@Mockturtle - The people killed in Hiroshima and Nagasaki were no more or less dead than the ones we bombed to death in sixty-odd other Japanese cities that we had already destroyed. They shouldn't have gone to war with us. Admiral Yamamoto knew this and warned them. They should have listened.
Again, Oso, I didn't say it was wrong. I think Truman made a good and gutsy decision to bring the war to a speedier halt. My point was that, from the point of view of those suffering from radiation sickness and families of the dead and sick, it may have seemed reprehensible and yet the Japanese have never--to my knowledge--held a grudge. It is inconceivable to me that there is still bitterness in the US between North and South regarding the Civil War.
I wonder about what he felt of his countrymen eating prisoners in the Owen Stanley Mountain Range.
Fuchida was very sorry for the behavior in Japanese prison camps and was glad to see some of the officials tried for war crimes. You might enjoy reading his book, For That One Day: The Memoirs of Mitsuo Fuchida.
The Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombs, besides being payback for Pearl Harbor and many atrocities committed by the Japanese in the war, saved maybe a million Japanese lives.
Quite true; not to speak of (at least!) tens of thousands of American soldiers' lives. But way beyond that, during the timeframe of the closing months of the war there were still between 250,000 and 400,000 Asians dying, in theaters of the war far from Japan proper, every month that the war continued. Having the war come to an end in August 1945 as it did* saved millions of (non-Japanese) Asian lives.
––––
*Note that had Japan not surrendered when it did, the plan was for Allied forces to invade (only) the relatively small Japanese island of Kyushu in November 1945. If that invasion was successful (in retrospect somewhat doubtful due to there actually being far greater Japanese forces on the island than Allied planners accounted for), then the invasion of the principal Japanese island of Honshu wasn't scheduled to occur until November 1946.
All the while many hundreds of thousands of Asians would be dying at the hands of the Japanese military every month. You do the math.
Post a Comment