When were confederate monuments erected and why?

[ucfengr]

1. Let’s be quite clear: the Confederates were traitors. The Constitution itself defines treason in Article III Section 3:

It’s not at all clear they were traitors. No Confederate, from Jefferson Davis on down was ever tried for treason, let alone convicted, even in the wake of the Lincoln assassination, when it should have been easy to obtain convictions. Contemporary legal and public opinion were very divided on whether or not Confederate leaders were guilty of treason, and even Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase (a Lincoln appointee) was skeptical.

 

[GKC]

Just guessing here, but I think there is going to be considerable difficulty in arresting the defendants.

Especially under the cited reference to treason in the Constitution.

 

[exnihilo]

I’ve read a lot about the “last acceptable prejudice” on CAF being anti-catholicism, but I propose that there is another “last acceptable prejudice” in this country, in which southerners are by default backwards, religiously fundamentalist, closet racists. In fact I remember once being asked, seriously, by a girl from Michigan if we had paved roads in the south.

You are right it is definitely anti-southern prejudice that is the ‘last acceptable’. Southerners are mocked in our media and even here. It is sad. It is particularly sad because I think the reason it is mocked is it is the last remaining decent culture. It isn’t without flaws of course. But whereas the rest of the country thinks smoking or fossil fuels is the greatest sin the South still knows it is sins like SSM or abortion.

 

[tomarin]

Ah, and here it is. The classic “Nixon Southern Strategy”, where it is implied (or straight up boldly stated) that southerners only started voting Republican because Nixon catered to their racism and drew them away from the Democrats. And implicitly all southerners today, or at least the majority who vote Republican, are racists at heart and can therefore be ignored or despised. I’m sure it had nothing to do with an emphasis by the Republican party on “Christian” social values.

I’ve read a lot about the “last acceptable prejudice” on CAF being anti-catholicism, but I propose that there is another “last acceptable prejudice” in this country, in which southerners are by default backwards, religiously fundamentalist, closet racists. In fact I remember once being asked, seriously, by a girl from Michigan if we had paved roads in the south.

I would ask, sir, that you do not paint entire regions of the country based on your prejudices, and I would have you know that the KKK and neo-nazi groups are as despised here as they are everywhere else in the country. Sure, they exist, just as they do in New York, Michigan, Kansas, and California. Living in their trailers where everyone ignores their nonsense. Hint: It wasn’t the residents of Charlottesville, VA waving tiki torches and chanting racist tripe. They wanted nothing to do with those clowns. Perhaps if you visited the south instead of believing in worn out caricatures of it, you would realize this.

You’re right. I don’t know if I’m a Southerner, a quasi-Southerner, a fake Southerner, or a fellow traveler to Southerners, but I’ve often felt the same way.

 

[tomarin]

What is the sound of one hand tipping?

 

[sallybutler]

What is the sound of one hand tipping?

Clink, Clink, Clink

 

[GKC]

Another reason I eschew Starbucks.

 

[cthulhubryan]

Just as well, if you do not have exact change you will be told only that “change must come from within”

 

[dvdjs]

“Traitors” , 'treason" , “despicable”, “immoral”. Hard to miss the ring of hate in those words, particularly when all said in one short post, some repeatedly.

Nobody is advocating putting anyone on a pedestal except that some poster in some post suggested erecting memorial statues to former slaves, and I think that’s fine, just like the one of George Washington Carver just a few miles from where I live. Very dignified and the site gives a lot of information about his life and accomplishments. He was born here, and lived in slavery here during his young life.

What’s being advocated is tearing down memorials, many or most of them put up while the children of those men or those who served under them were still living. Millions of those descendants live today. I think if some organization undertook to tear down the statue to G.W. Carver and did it, (and certainly those to M.L. King) people would consider that a “desecration”; that is, an attempt to visibly and dramatically demean him, his memory, and his descendants. And I have no doubt whatever, that locals would oppose it, some forcefully.

Excuse me: leave me on my pedestal or you hate me. Now can you get to middle ground?

I think think that Benedict Arnold was a traitor and committed depicable acts of treason. At an emotional level, I feel nothing at all for him at all. If he had been placed on a pedestal, I would just as soon leave him alone, but if that gave grave offense for serious reasons to others I would endeavor to respond with empathy rather than by taking offence. And if someone told me of their Benedict Arnold coffee mug, I would ask why they had such a thing.

 

[dvdjs]

I’ve read a lot about the “last acceptable prejudice” on CAF being anti-catholicism, but I propose that there is another “last acceptable prejudice” in this country, in which southerners are by default backwards, religiously fundamentalist, closet racists. In fact I remember once being asked, seriously, by a girl from Michigan if we had paved roads in the south.

I havent seen this at CAF. Can you identify some posts indicative of this prejudice?

 

[GKC]

I have a mug with Chesterton on it.

And a lot with airplanes I worked on, or otherwise military related.

And one with a quote from Stonewall Jackson, totally inoffensive.

 

[jtauke]

It’s not at all clear they were traitors. No Confederate, from Jefferson Davis on down was ever tried for treason, let alone convicted, even in the wake of the Lincoln assassination, when it should have been easy to obtain convictions. Contemporary legal and public opinion were very divided on whether or not Confederate leaders were guilty of treason, and even Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Salmon P. Chase (a Lincoln appointee) was skeptical.

Legal backflips abound.

How can a part of the United States wage war on the other, and have it not be treason.

If California ceded from the union, then invaded a neighboring state…is that not an act of war (and thereby treason).

Just because they weren’t brought up on charges and found guilty does not mean a crime wasn’t committed against the United States.

 

[GKC]

I will give them my “I hate Mornings” mug. Came from the same source: a gift from my mother. She liked giving me mugs. And books.

 

[exnihilo]

And one with a quote from Stonewall Jackson, totally inoffensive.

Lee and Jackson were very quotable men.

Lee in corresponding to the Catholic Lord Acton wrote:

I can only say that while I have considered the preservation of the constitutional power of the General Government to be the foundation of our peace and safety at home and abroad, I yet believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people, not only essential to the adjustment and balance of the general system, but the safeguard to the continuance of a free government. I consider it as the chief source of stability to our political system, whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it. I need not refer one so well acquainted as you are with American history, to the State papers of Washington and Jefferson, the representatives of the federal and democratic parties, denouncing consolidation and centralization of power, as tending to the subversion of State Governments, and to despotism.

Despotic at home and aggressive abroad captures what we got. The same happened in Germany and Italy with consolidation of power.

How can a part of the United States wage war on the other, and have it not be treason.

You may be right. But the side waging war was the Union. They are the ones who brought the war. Any treason was to the concept of the rights of men to freely form their government.

 

[exnihilo]

My favorite is a story where a young mother came to Lee and asked for wisdom for raising her child. His simple response, ‘teach him to deny himself’.

 

[GKC]

Legal backflips abound.

How can a part of the United States wage war on the other, and have it not be treason.

If California ceded from the union, then invaded a neighboring state…is that not an act of war (and thereby treason).

Just because they weren’t brought up on charges and found guilty does not mean a crime wasn’t committed against the United States.

As noted above, the question of whether a state could secede from the Union, and hence not be a part of it, but independent, was an open one at the time of the war. And opinions on that varied. The war brought that debate to a practical close. But until 1868 there was no formal binding rule on it. Until, that is, the Supreme Court ruled in TEXAS vs. WHITE.

Since ex post facto charges were constitutionally prohibited, and there was no ruling statute at the time, the seceding states were not in the position of owing allegiance to the United States,per the 1790 Congressional Act on crimes against the United States.

 

[GKC]

Yeah, but…it’s useful and soothing to think as some folk do.

 

[dvdjs]

You are entitled to your opinion about Lee. It should not be difficult to imagine, however, that the descendants of those who because of his defeat escaped the yoke slavery might feel differently. They might even be shocked by insouciance over his choice in the civil war. Shocked but not surprised.

 

[GKC]

We be of one blood, ye and I.

Save that my father inculcated in me the vice (?) of purchasing and keeping every book I got my hands on. Supplemented by all those he gave me at Christmas.

I have followed suit, with my wife, child, and son-in-law.

You should see the house.

 

[exnihilo]

The narrative has been put forth since the war. The war, like all, needed a good reason. People lap up lies. Just look at recent history where Bush II said they hate us for our freedom. People will suspend all common sense and understanding of humanity to believe in a cause, especially when if it were a lie they’d turn out to be great monsters rather than slayers of monsters.

As H. L. Mencken said of the Gettysburg address:

The Gettysburg speech is at once the shortest and the most famous oration in American history. Put beside it, all the whoopings of the Websters, Sumners and Everetts seem gaudy and silly. It is eloquence brought to a pellucid and almost child-like perfection—the highest emotion reduced to one graceful and irresistible gesture. Nothing else precisely like it is to be found in the whole range of oratory. Lincoln himself never even remotely approached it. It is genuinely stupendous.

But let us not forget that it is oratory, not logic; beauty, not sense. Think of the argument in it! Put it into the cold words of everyday! The doctrine is simply this: that the Union soldiers who died at Gettysburg sacrificed their lives to the cause of self-determination — “that government of the people, by the people, for the people,” should not perish from the earth. It is difficult to imagine anything more untrue. The Union soldiers in that battle actually fought against self-determination; it was the Confederates who fought for the right of their people to govern themselves. What was the practical effect of the battle of Gettysburg? What else than the destruction of the old sovereignty of the States, i. e., of the people of the States? The Confederates went into battle an absolutely free people; they came out with their freedom subject to the supervision and vote of the rest of the country—and for nearly twenty years that vote was so effective that they enjoyed scarcely any freedom at all. Am I the first American to note the fundamental nonsensicality of the Gettysburg address? If so, I plead my aesthetic joy in it in amelioration of the sacrilege.