When were confederate monuments erected and why?

[YADA]

Given the ensuing history of friendship, it’s odd to bring this up. But, frankly, the story was malarkey even at the time.

economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2007/01/joe_biden_moron_racist_or_poor
itre.cis.upenn.edu/~myl/languagelog/archives/004131.html#more

I have heard and observed the same attitudes of soft bigotry and racism exhibited by the left … So be an apologist all you want for the Democrats who do not believe “some” people are capable and knowledgeable enough to succeed and prosper without their patronage …

I know people - who are intelligent, prosperous and productive members of society - who do not feel the love of Democratic social policies …many who feel they have been hurt and hindered by those affirmative action policies …

The most racist people I know are Democrats …three bought adjacent properties to prevent minorities from becoming neighbors. One family I know pulled their children out of public schools to keep them from having to sit with the poor unwashed …

The soft bigotry just loves them and wants to provide for them because they are so oppressed they can not succeed … …

I love my family …all of them …the Hispanic, the African, the Native American and European.

My father fought against Hitler and I am no neo Nazi, racist or bigot. I am a proud American and veteran. There is no better country than the USA …no African or European or Asian or South American country that can compare. Are we perfect … No …I am proud to be an American. We are the melting pot that my family models …

After the civil war …our Country needed to heal …the citizens of the South did not loose their citizenship, they rebuilt - their lives and their civil structures …we spend too much time discussing what divides and separates us …we should focus on what unifies

 

[exnihilo]

And I have not argued that the Union fought to end slavery. What I maintain is that one of the chief reasons for the desire of the CSA to gain independence was a concern that the institution of slavery would be threatened apart from independence.

Let’s say the modern North seceded four years ago. Let’s say all of the seceded states had SSM. Let’s say the remaining states were mixed. Some had it and some did not. The remaining states said they had no intention of stopping SSM. They even put forth an amendment to allow perpetually SSM in states that wanted it. There was the a war. Would you say the war was over SSM?

Even if we do accept that slavery per se played no role in the initial declaration of the the war, it certainly became an issue as the war progressed, and becomes how we think of the war afterwards. So it is natural that symbols and memorials of the Civil War would relate to slavery just as symbols of Nazi Germany relate to the Holocaust. Since we are talking about confederate memorials in this thread, this is relevant.

Right, it became how we think about it after the fact. That is because there needed to be some noble cause on the victors side. This was a side that burned cities. This was a side that threatened to imprison the Chief Justice. This was a side that suppressed dissent by stopping newspapers against the war. This was a side that had a US congressman who disagreed deported. It needed some moral cause to redeem its gross immorality. But knowing the lies are lies why would we believe them?

 

[FirstFiveEighth]

What makes no sense is the deflection and denial of the obvious, which is that the CSA was expressly committed to maintaining the evil system of slavery and that its leaders were willing to wage a civil war that was motivated by in part by a desire to remain free to own other human beings as property.

I don’t know that I would say the CSA was willing to wage a civil war. That implies aggression. The South decided it no longer wanted to remain in the Union, and it severed those ties politically and asked that the government of the United States honor them. It did not. An army was raised to bring these states back into the union, and for no other reason.

Let us look at Fort Sumter. South Carolina asked the federal government to vacate what they considered to now no longer be a federal fort, but property of the state. In the same way that the new United States asked the British to abandon its frontier forts along and west of the Appalachians. In fact, Fort Sumter was donated to the federal government to allow the US military to protect the harbor (the most important deep water harbor on the southern Atlantic coast, along with Savannah). The US troops were initially stationed at Fort Moultrie, which sits on Sullivan’s Island on the northern side of the harbor. Sumter is its own little island right smack in the harbor entrance. While SC negotiators went to Washington to work out conditions for assumption of federal property (aka pay for it, and their debts), the US troops moved to Fort Sumter, thereby threatening the harbor and the city. Meanwhile, Lincoln gave his inaugural address in which he expressly stated that he would not allow any state to leave the union. Implication being, he would not vacate Sumter. Lincoln then sent a ship to Fort Sumter to “resupply” the fort. South Carolina understandably took this as a hostile action, and fired on the fort and the resupply ship. Lincoln deliberately baited the South Carolina militia and the cadets at the Citadel into firing on the fort so he could have a casus belli for a war. In the same way that President Polk 12yrs earlier deliberately sent the US Army to camp in territory that Mexico believed and openly claimed was theirs in order to provoke Mexico into attacking US forces (which it saw as a hostile, invading force). The South no more started the Civil War than Mexico started the Mexican-American War. Had Lincoln instead desired peace, he would have had it. He did not.

One reason was trade concerns. Lincoln when advised to allow the southern states to leave peacefully:

“And open Charleston, etc as ports of entry, with their ten percent tariff. What, then, would become of my tariff?”

Senator Orville Browning to Lincoln:

In any conflict……between the government and seceding States, it is very important that the traitors shall be the aggressors, and that they be kept constantly and palpably in the wrong. The first attempt……to furnish supplies or reinforcements will induce aggression by South Carolina, and then the government will stand justified, before the entire country, in repelling that aggression, and retaking the forts.

Lincoln admitted as much himself (letter to Gustavus Fox, the naval officer who planned the resupply):

You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail, and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result.

The South of 1861 was willing to wage war in the same way that 1938 Poland was willing to wage war.

You will note that the American Civil War is unique to civil wars as the “rebelling” states at no time sought to establish a new government of the United States; they sought only to maintain their status quo and felt that the federal system of government was no longer a beneficial compact for them. This of course revolved around slavery, but with that you had, for the previous 10yrs or so increasingly radicalized political parties. The John Brown saga was particularly disturbing to Southerners. Here you had an avowed terrorist who received financial backing from northern republicans to train a militia whose stated purpose was to murder southerners in their beds and instigate slave insurrection with the purpose of murdering more southerners. John Brown’s deputy actually went to two prominent senators, Senator Sewell (a republican frontrunner for president) and Senator Wilson (republican), and told them all the details of Brown’s planned attack on Harper’s Ferry. Senator Sewell expressed regret not that Brown planned to attack a federal arsonal, but that he had been told of the plan. Neither he nor Wilson reported this incident to the authorities. So here you have sitting Republican senators tacitly encouraging terrorism against their political opponents. And northerners, rather than condemning the violence, applauded it.

So leading up to 1861, the northern Republican party has actively pursued regional policies such as massive tariffs (47%) designed to benefit northern industry while harming the southern economy. This party has also increasingly supported radical terrorists like John Brown and even wrote a song about him as though he were a martyr when he was executed. And so, believing that the writing was on the wall, they elected to get out while the going was good.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

It’s instructive to understand that even the North wasn’t all that willing to prosecute the war. First, 4 different candidates gained electoral votes, the last election in which this would happen. There were considerable numbers of voters in the North who voted against Lincoln.

One should follow the extraordinary lengths to which Lincoln abused the limits of Presidential power in order to prosecute the war. By doing so, he set the example for future presidents to do the same. Examples: he instituted the first federal income tax. That was struck down by the Supreme Court which explains why the income tax proponents went to the Amendment route some 50 years later.

He suspended habeas corpus, first in Baltimore and New York, then eventually across the entire country. Thousands of citizens were jailed with no charges, let alone trials. Some of them remained in jail for years. He openly defied Congress and the Supreme Court to keep doing this. FDR used this precedent to justify his own policy of sending the Japanese-Americans to internment camps in 1942.

Even in modern times, habeas corpus is such a sensitive topic that Bush didn’t feel he could get away with suspending habeas corpus for foreign terrorists held in US jails or prison camps. Instead, he put them in Guantanamo and claimed it was outside the jurisdiction of the US constitution in order to justify the suspension of habeas corpus.

Lincoln instituted the first draft. If the war was so popular, why did Lincoln feel he had to force men to join his army? That led to the anti-draft riots in New York city which were put down brutally.

While the war was ostensibly about slavery in the beginning, it did not become overtly so until Lincoln changed course with the Emancipation Proclamation. When Lincoln gave his Inaugural Address in 1861, he was ready to concede slavery to the South if they would stay in the Union. And then he attempted to resupply Fort Sumter and that is when all hell broke loose.

The Emancipation Proclamation was actually unconstitutional for such a proclamation required the alteration of the Constitution itself to remove the separate definitions of persons and to change the requirement for depriving someone of their property without due process of law. Lincoln justified his Proclamation by holding the Declaration of Independence to be above the Constitution as a law decider, taking that power away from Congress, the Supreme Court and the people, and arrogating that power to himself alone. That wasn’t corrected until the 13th Amendment became law. Whether one realizes it or not, the slaveholders were running businesses and for the purpose of reconciliation and getting the South back on its feet, should have been compensated for the loss of their slaves instead of ruined by it. This might be analogous to farmers growing coca leaves or opium poppies. If their property is destroyed or taken away, one needs to offer those farmers an alternative or they are ruined and will hate you forever. Finally, recall Sherman’s march to the sea, how he executed a scorched earth policy that left every survivor in his wake with bad to really bad memories. Sure the CSA citizens were losers, but how they lost guaranteed they were going to remember it for generations, just as the Irish remembered the English for hundreds of years.

I’m not defending the slave holders or the institution, just saying it is important to understand how what we see today was so influenced by how the war and its aftermath was conducted. The Northerners may have freed the slaves, but they were most definitely not saints and their methods left something to be desired.

 

[GKC]

I don’t know that I would say the CSA was willing to wage a civil war. That implies aggression. The South decided it no longer wanted to remain in the Union, and it severed those ties politically and asked that the government of the United States honor them. It did not. An army was raised to bring these states back into the union, and for no other reason.

Let us look at Fort Sumter. South Carolina asked the federal government to vacate what they considered to now no longer be a federal fort, but property of the state. In the same way that the new United States asked the British to abandon its frontier forts along and west of the Appalachians. In fact, Fort Sumter was donated to the federal government to allow the US military to protect the harbor (the most important deep water harbor on the southern Atlantic coast, along with Savannah). The US troops were initially stationed at Fort Moultrie, which sits on Sullivan’s Island on the northern side of the harbor. Sumter is its own little island right smack in the harbor entrance. While SC negotiators went to Washington to work out conditions for assumption of federal property (aka pay for it, and their debts), the US troops moved to Fort Sumter, thereby threatening the harbor and the city. Meanwhile, Lincoln gave his inaugural address in which he expressly stated that he would not allow any state to leave the union. Implication being, he would not vacate Sumter. Lincoln then sent a ship to Fort Sumter to “resupply” the fort. South Carolina understandably took this as a hostile action, and fired on the fort and the resupply ship. Lincoln deliberately baited the South Carolina militia and the cadets at the Citadel into firing on the fort so he could have a casus belli for a war. In the same way that President Polk 12yrs earlier deliberately sent the US Army to camp in territory that Mexico believed and openly claimed was theirs in order to provoke Mexico into attacking US forces (which it saw as a hostile, invading force). The South no more started the Civil War than Mexico started the Mexican-American War. Had Lincoln instead desired peace, he would have had it. He did not.

One reason was trade concerns. Lincoln when advised to allow the southern states to leave peacefully:

Senator Orville Browning to Lincoln:

Lincoln admitted as much himself (letter to Gustavus Fox, the naval officer who planned the resupply):

The South of 1861 was willing to wage war in the same way that 1938 Poland was willing to wage war.

You will note that the American Civil War is unique to civil wars as the “rebelling” states at no time sought to establish a new government of the United States; they sought only to maintain their status quo and felt that the federal system of government was no longer a beneficial compact for them. This of course revolved around slavery, but with that you had, for the previous 10yrs or so increasingly radicalized political parties. The John Brown saga was particularly disturbing to Southerners. Here you had an avowed terrorist who received financial backing from northern republicans to train a militia whose stated purpose was to murder southerners in their beds and instigate slave insurrection with the purpose of murdering more southerners. John Brown’s deputy actually went to two prominent senators, Senator Sewell (a republican frontrunner for president) and Senator Wilson (republican), and told them all the details of Brown’s planned attack on Harper’s Ferry. Senator Sewell expressed regret not that Brown planned to attack a federal arsonal, but that he had been told of the plan. Neither he nor Wilson reported this incident to the authorities. So here you have sitting Republican senators tacitly encouraging terrorism against their political opponents. And northerners, rather than condemning the violence, applauded it.

So leading up to 1861, the northern Republican party has actively pursued regional policies such as massive tariffs (47%) designed to benefit northern industry while harming the southern economy. This party has also increasingly supported radical terrorists like John Brown and even wrote a song about him as though he were a martyr when he was executed. And so, believing that the writing was on the wall, they elected to get out while the going was good.

Well said.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

You see this a beating up. But others are not talking about beating up. The issue is a call for clarity in messaging a national narrative.

There are arguable reasons to memorialize people like Washington and Jefferson despite their slave-holding. But are there good arguments to memorialize people whose only real claim to fame was their work on behalf of slavery? A healthy love of country, just like a decent self- respect, does not risk indulging, championing or glorifying past errors, but is dedicated to examination of conscience, confession, remorse, and a strengthening of will to remember to do better.

So Robert E Lee’s only claim to fame is that he fought for the CSA? Nothing about his exemplary career and service to the USA before that? Or about his service in the interest of reconciliation after that? But no, the response is he did lead the CSA and for that alone, his statues need to be brought down. Well by that same token yes we have to talk about Washington and Jefferson that way, we have to talk about Richard Byrd that way, we have to talk about the first Roosevelt that way, by that logic, all their statues must all go, every last one of them! All those statues in Columbia and Charleston, SC have to go. And so on…

So the response will be I’m being ridiculous here to which I’ll reply we’re already on that slippery slope and logically speaking we’re not close to the bottom because the line isn’t being drawn anymore, it’s just by logic of the first one, they all gotta go. Let’s keep going with this, every city, college, school and street named after Columbus, Jackson, Davis, Lee, heck, after any Confederate figure, has to be renamed so as not to trigger anyone.

 

[exnihilo]

So leading up to 1861, the northern Republican party has actively pursued regional policies such as massive tariffs (47%) designed to benefit northern industry while harming the southern economy. This party has also increasingly supported radical terrorists like John Brown and even wrote a song about him as though he were a martyr when he was executed. And so, believing that the writing was on the wall, they elected to get out while the going was good.

Excellent post. Tariffs were a huge issue. The Morill Tariff would have been terrible for southerners. Of course the southern states paid for most of the federal taxes through tariffs. Lincoln knew that. He said in his inaugural speech that he intended to collect those tariffs and he would use force to do so.

Which makes more sense for a war, freeing slaves or collecting taxes? I would say collecting taxes, but you still can convince people today that our invading army is doing so out of goodwill for the people we kill so that they can be free.

 

[Zzyzx_Road]

Excellent post. Tariffs were a huge issue. The Morill Tariff would have been terrible for southerners. Of course the southern states paid for most of the federal taxes through tariffs. Lincoln knew that. He said in his inaugural speech that he intended to collect those tariffs and he would use force to do so.

Which makes more sense for a war, freeing slaves or collecting taxes? I would say collecting taxes, but you still can convince people today that our invading army is doing so out of goodwill for the people we kill so that they can be free.

Had forgotten about this: this is another aspect of the conflict that gets hardly any ink in today’s history books. Follow the money. It wasn’t just vitally important for the federal government to reclaim that income; like all governments, they had to have that income to survive with their power intact and would not brook losing it without a fight. Kind of like that era’s equivalent of some state today getting back nowhere near what taxes they send to DC. Check into Lincoln’s attempts to raise revenue and funding after the severe cutbacks in tariff income that followed the secession.

 

[Ridgerunner]

The invasion of Missouri by the Union wasn’t entirely about money, but it mattered. Missouri was, at the time, the most industrialized southern state other than Virginia. It was also a very major food producer. Much of the South was dedicated to cash crop “agribusiness” for the export market; cotton, indigo, tobacco, rice. Missouri was the major producer of beef and pork and (no surprise) mules. It was also the major producer of lead and zinc, both of which were much more valuable then than they are now. On the negative side, the prospect of selling product to both the north and the south probably had at least something to do with Missouri’s desire to remain neutral. But invasion by the Union ended neutrality.

 

[petra22]

This party has also increasingly supported radical terrorists like John Brown and even wrote a song about him as though he were a martyr when he was executed. And so, believing that the writing was on the wall, they elected to get out while the going was good.

Left the last paragraph, but man, that was some history lesson…!

 

[petra22]

Zzyzx_Road:
So much history, thanks!

 

[randomuser]

So much history, thanks!

All the more reason that some history belongs in BOOKS and museums.

When did “reading” become a bad thing? I can’t think of anything I ever learned from looking at a statue.

 

[GKC]

All the more reason that some history belongs in BOOKS and museums.

When did “reading” become a bad thing? I can’t think of anything I ever learned from looking at a statue.

I can.

And that doesn’t detract from the 30,000 books (approx.) I own.

Reading is fundamental. Looking at things is supplemental. I can do both.

 

[dvdjs]

So Robert E Lee’s only claim to fame is that he fought for the CSA? Nothing about his exemplary career and service to the USA before that? Or about his service in the interest of reconciliation after that? But no, the response is he did lead the CSA and for that alone, his statues need to be brought down. Well by that same token yes we have to talk about Washington and Jefferson that way, we have to talk about Richard Byrd that way, we have to talk about the first Roosevelt that way, by that logic, all their statues must all go, every last one of them! All those statues in Columbia and Charleston, SC have to go. And so on…

It’s nice tht you can find other aspects of Lee’s life. But I think that it is clear that these do not figure into his memorials. He is memorialized as a civil war general. We should not memorialize secessionist traitors who fought for the cause of slavery.

So the response will be I’m being ridiculous here to which I’ll reply we’re already on that slippery slope and logically speaking we’re not close to the bottom because the line isn’t being drawn anymore

The answer to a slippery slope is to define standards, not to oppose everything - even things that make perfect sense.

 

[dvdjs]

Lots of nice revisionist history on the thread. Lipstick on a pig. The secession was about slavery.

A Declaration of the Immediate Causes which Induce and Justify the Secession of the State of Mississippi from the Federal Union.

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world.

Virginia

THE SECESSION ORDINANCE.
AN ORDINANCE TO REPEAL THE RATIFICATION OF THE CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA BY THE STATE OF VIRGINIA, AND TO RESUME ALL THE RIGHTS AND POWERS GRANTED UNDER SAID CONSTITUTION.

The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.

Georgia

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery.

South Carolina

Declaration of the Immediate Causes Which Induce and Justify the Secession of South Carolina from the Federal Union

The people of the State of South Carolina, in Convention assembled, on the 26th day of April, A.D., 1852, declared that the frequent violations of the Constitution of the United States, by the Federal Government, and its encroachments upon the reserved rights of the States, fully justified this State in then withdrawing from the Federal Union; but in deference to the opinions and wishes of the other slaveholding States, she forbore at that time to exercise this right. Since that time, these encroachments have continued to increase, and further forbearance ceases to be a virtue.

…

The Constitution of the United States, in its fourth Article, provides as follows: “No person held to service or labor in one State, under the laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in consequence of any law or regulation therein, be discharged from such service or labor, but shall be delivered up, on claim of the party to whom such service or labor may be due.”

This stipulation was so material to the compact, that without it that compact would not have been made. The greater number of the contracting parties held slaves, and they had previously evinced their estimate of the value of such a stipulation by making it a condition in the Ordinance for the government of the territory ceded by Virginia, which now composes the States north of the Ohio River.

The same article of the Constitution stipulates also for rendition by the several States of fugitives from justice from the other States.

The General Government, as the common agent, passed laws to carry into effect these stipulations of the States. For many years these laws were executed. But an increasing hostility on the part of the non-slaveholding States to the institution of slavery, has led to a disregard of their obligations, and the laws of the General Government have ceased to effect the objects of the Constitution. The States of Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Connecticut, Rhode Island, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Wisconsin and Iowa, have enacted laws which either nullify the Acts of Congress or render useless any attempt to execute them. In many of these States the fugitive is discharged from service or labor claimed, and in none of them has the State Government complied with the stipulation made in the Constitution. The State of New Jersey, at an early day, passed a law in conformity with her constitutional obligation; but the current of anti-slavery feeling has led her more recently to enact laws which render inoperative the remedies provided by her own law and by the laws of Congress. In the State of New York even the right of transit for a slave has been denied by her tribunals; and the States of Ohio and Iowa have refused to surrender to justice fugitives charged with murder, and with inciting servile insurrection in the State of Virginia. Thus the constituted compact has been deliberately broken and disregarded by the non-slaveholding States, and the consequence follows that South Carolina is released from her obligation…

 

[GKC]

Lots of nice revisionist history on the thread. Lipstick on a pig. The secession was about slavery.

The secession was, overwhelmingly, about slavery.

The war was about the secession.

 

[exnihilo]

Lots of nice revisionist history on the thread. Lipstick on a pig. The secession was about slavery.

There were more states than four. Please list their causes of secession.

One side consistently says slavery is part of the story but there is a lot more to it than just slavery. The other side just says, no there’s not and trots out a few pieces of evidence, while ignoring all the other, and thinks a point had been made.

 

[dvdjs]

There were more states than four. Please list their causes of secession.

One side consistently says slavery is part of the story but there is a lot more to it than just slavery. The other side just says, no there’s not and trots out a few pieces of evidence, while ignoring all the other, and thinks a point had been made.

Slavery was fundamental. I have posted from documents of secession, not re-imagined ideas, but form the documents of secession. I invite you to do the same in this effort to exculpate the Confederacy from treason in the cause of slavery.

 

[GKC]

Slavery was fundamental. I have posted from documents of secession, not re-imagined ideas, but form the documents of secession. I invite you to do the same in this effort to exculpate the Confederacy from treason in the cause of slavery.

The question of the legality of secession was an open one, until 1869. One way to look at the war was that it took the question, and after a few years of politics, by other means, back and forth, answered it.

Treason it wasn’t, if seceding was constitutional. We took the hard way, as a country, to settle the matter.

 

[exnihilo]

Slavery was fundamental. I have posted from documents of secession, not re-imagined ideas, but form the documents of secession. I invite you to do the same in this effort to exculpate the Confederacy from treason in the cause of slavery.

Right, but what about the rest of the states? Can you post their documents? See, I know your evidence. It is the copy and paste simple explanation for the war. If the history of the CSA, comprised of eleven states, can be summed up by four documents then why are their numerous books written on the subject? Is history really that easy?