"General Lee Statue removed?" Topic

"In any case, its moot. Most (if not all) of the statues in question have more to do with promoting the Lost Cause (and segregation; one of those "Southern Heritage" values…) than honoring the military career of the man depicted."

Again, can you back this up with any statements made when they were dedicated? I've read numerous speeches at dedications and they all revolve around the sacrifice of the men who fought and died.

"Sorry, those "exclusions" had no weight as they were one sided. The government NEVER acknowledged them as having any force of law. And, in any case, the ACW settle the matter once and for all. No less than Antonin Scalia weighed in on that."

Funny you should bring the Supreme Court into this. When Lincoln and, later, Johnson consulted with the Supreme Court about trying Confederate leaders as traitors they were both advised not to do it, because, under the law at the time, they would lose. Just because it was settled by force of arms doesn't make it right.

By the way, I found this today: link

A call to remove the statute of Roger Taney from the statehouse in Md. He didn't fight for the south, (he remained in the Union), he didn't survive to see the end of the war and Jim Crow and segregation. What was his crime? He made a court decision based on the law of the land as he read it as the Chief justice of the supreme court. But, since that decision is unpopular in the modern world, he's gotta go.

Anyone who thinks this controversy has anything to do with anything other than modern politics is fooling themselves.

"Uh, Murphy, I don't think we have to worry about ole TR. He's not going anyplace."

People thought the same thing about the Confederate statues only 5-10 years ago.

"Again, can you back this up with any statements made when they were dedicated? I've read numerous speeches at dedications and they all revolve around the sacrifice of the men who fought and died."

If you're asking if I can find any quotes from the Lost Cause proponents as to their true intentions, I think we both know that would be tough to find. There are plenty of books, articles, and journal pieces on the Lost Cause myth out there. Here is one about a Confederate statue in St. Louis MO. PDF link
__________________________
"George W. Bailey, Union captain of the Sixth Infantry Missouri Volunteers, gave a speech to the Grand Army of the Republic Ransom Post, No. 131, focusing on the inscription written by Dr. R.C. Cave on the northern face of the St. Louis Confederate monument. Bailey said, "This inscription appears indefinite and
unsatisfactory, as stating but half the truth, or as a mere conclusion from connected facts not stated, and apparently well calculated to confuse rather than to educate. It ignores utterly all the essential facts and circumstances inseparably connected with the subject—matter and a consideration of which is absolutely necessary to an intelligent comprehension of the same."42

Bailey began by addressing and dispelling the passage about the Confederacy fighting for the rights declared by Jefferson's pen and won by Washington's sword
by reading quotes from Jefferson and Washington referring to their convictions about the preservation and unity of the national government. Bailey predicted that the public displays of Union and Confederate veterans coming together as friends in peace would be deeply regretted as an unpatriotic blunder. Bailey asked, "What would our people think of the spectacle of monuments erected in our public parks to gratify our British, our Mexican, and our Spanish citizens and proclaiming and teaching that in the wars with their respective countries the respective cause of our enemies were just and necessarily implying that
our government was wrong in defending itself against those who would defeat or destroy it!"43

Bailey also took issue with the passage, "[The Confederacy] battled to perpetuate the Constitutional Government which was established by the Fathers," because it implies that Lincoln and the Union were battling to overthrow the constitutional government of the Founding Fathers. Bailey sarcastically said, "Every encyclopedia and every standard history that have been published and distributed throughout the civilized world during the last half century should be immediately recalled and revised and made to conform to the ‘truth' as sanctified and certified by a select little coterie of individuals on a Confederate Monument in St. Louis!" Bailey believed that the acceptance of that statement would be a very serious matter if it were not so ridiculous that even school children would read it as "a joke, or a laughable historical blunder."44

Bailey then quoted Jefferson Davis, President of the Confederacy, and Vice President Alexander Stephens as saying that their government was founded on the opposite theory of the constitutional government of the Founding Fathers. This speech by George Bailey shows that the influence of the Lost Cause ideology was not all encompassing and that a divided memory of the Civil War remained.

"Lee on the other hand fought so that one man could own another. He could have chosen to see slavery as abhorrent – things had changed, Great Britain had outlawed the slave trade, the Northern states had followed suite. The tide of history was moving in the correct progressive direction. He looked at the situation and decided to defend slavery. Great general, poor moral judgement."

I'd suggest you read a little history. Lee did not fight because he was defending slavery, he fought because his country, Virginia, was being attacked. His first loyalty was to Virginia, which would not have succeeded had Lincoln not tried to force the original members of the Confederacy back into the Union by force of arms.

Prior to the war the United States was not a single country, it was a federation of independent countries that gave up some of their sovereignty to the central government. When the war was over the united States was well on the way to becoming a single country.

So, you can't find any documents that say, "This statue is being put up to keep black people in their place because we rejected the constitution as written by the founders." But instead come up with a quote by an opponent of a statue in St louis? So, you're basing your statements, or at least those of the people who want them down, on the opinion of one person who opposed a statute.

This is the intellectual equivalent of using a quote by Chuck Schumer to tell me what Donald Trump really meant when he said something.

I found this interesting:

link

It shows the number of Civil War monuments erected in by year.

Many of the Confederate monuments were erected during the 1950s and early 1960s. Now this is period leading up to the Centenary of the Civil War. It is also the period of the Civil Rights movement and fall of Jim Crow in the South.

"So, you can't find any documents that say, "This statue is being put up to keep black people in their place because we rejected the constitution as written by the founders." But instead come up with a quote by an opponent of a statue in St louis? So, you're basing your statements, or at least those of the people who want them down, on the opinion of one person who opposed a statute."

It was one quote, from a Union veteran, to show that even back then, in 1912 when the statue was erected, people were seeing through the Lost Cause myth.

If you'd like more, you can see the intentions behind the UDC (the people putting up most of the statues) here:

"But the UDC's most important and lasting contribution was in shaping the public perceptions of the war, an effort that was begun shortly after the war by a Confederate veterans' group called the United Confederate Veterans (which later became the Sons of Confederate Veterans—also still around, and thirty thousand members strong). The central article of faith in this effort was that the South had not fought to preserve slavery, and that this false accusation was an effort to smear the reputation of the South's gallant leaders. In the early years of the twentieth century the main spokesperson for this point of view was a formidable Athens, Georgia, school principal named Mildred Lewis Rutherford (or Miss Milly, as she is known to UDC members), who traveled the South speaking, organizing essay contests, and soliciting oral histories of the war from veterans, seeking the vindication of the lost cause "with a political fervor that would rival the ministry of propaganda in any 20th century dictatorship," Blight writes.

Miss Milly's burning passion was ensuring that Southern youngsters learned the "correct" version of what the war was all about and why it had happened—a version carefully vetted to exclude "lies" and "distortions" perpetrated by anti-Southern textbook authors. To that end, in 1920 she wrote a book entitled "The Truths of History"—a compendium of cherry-picked facts, friendly opinions, and quotes taken out of context, sprinkled with nuggets of information history books have often found convenient to ignore. Among other things, "The Truths of History" asserts that Abraham Lincoln was a mediocre intellect, that the South's interest in expanding slavery to Western states was its benevolent desire to acquire territory for the slaves it planned to free, and that the Ku Klux Klan was a peaceful group whose only goal was maintaining public order. One of Rutherford's "authorities" on slavery was British writer William Makepeace Thackeray, who visited Richmond on a tour of the Southern states during the 1850s and sent home a buoyant description of the slaves who attended him: "So free, so happy! I saw them dressed on Sunday in their Sunday best—far better dressed than English tenants of the working class are in their holiday attire."

But presenting the "correct" version of history was only half the battle; the other half was preventing "incorrect" versions from ever infiltrating Southern schools. Before the Civil War, education was strictly a private and/or local affair. After the Civil War, it became a subject of federal interest. The first federal agency devoted to education was authorized by President Ulysses S. Grant in 1867, and Congress passed several laws in the 1870s aimed at establishing a national education system. White Southerners reacted to all this with a renewed determination to prevent outsiders from maligning the reputation of their gallant fighting men by writing textbooks especially for Southern students. One postwar author was none other than Alexander Stephens, former vice president of the Confederacy, whose portrayal of the war sounds remarkably like the version you hear from many Southerners and political conservatives today: it was a noble but doomed effort on the part of the South to preserve self-government against federal intrusion, and it had little to do with slavery. (This was the same Alexander Stephens who had proclaimed in 1861 that slavery was the "cornerstone" of Southern society and "the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution.")

As the UDC gained in political clout, its members lobbied legislatures in Texas, Mississippi, North and South Carolina, and Florida to ban the purchase of textbooks that portrayed the South in anything less than heroic terms, or that contradicted any of the lost cause's basic assertions. Its reach extended not just to public schools but to tenured academia—a little-known chapter of its propaganda effort is detailed by James Cobb in his 2005 book "Away Down South: A History of Southern Identity." Cobb recounts how in 1911, for instance, University of Florida history professor Enoch Banks wrote an essay for the New York Independent suggesting that slavery was the cause of secession; Banks was forced by the ensuing public outcry to resign. Perhaps Banks should have seen that coming: seven years earlier, William E. Dodd, a history professor at Virginia's Randolph-Macon College, had complained that to merely suggest the confederacy might not have been a noble enterprise led by lofty-minded statesmen "is to invite not only criticism but enforced resignation." Dodd himself would later migrate to the University of Chicago, where he established a Northern outpost for Southerners who were interested in a serious examination of Southern history. Such scholarship was not encouraged back home: the first postwar society of Southern historians was created in 1869 for the explicit purpose of vindicating the confederate cause.

The fear of losing one's job worked to keep most dissenters in line, but if that failed, self-appointed censors in the community were always on the lookout. In 1913, for instance, the sons of confederate Veterans succeeded in banning from the University of Texas history curriculum a book that they felt offered an excessively New England slant on recent history. The UDC industriously compiled lists of textbooks used in schools across the South, sorting them into one of three categories: texts written by Northerners and blatantly unfair to the South; texts that were "apparently fair" but were still suspect because they were written by Northerners; and works by Southern writers. Outside academia, the New South creed, popularized by Atlanta newspaper editor Henry Grady in an effort to spur economic development, also reinforced this new orthodoxy. A big part of Grady's canny public relations was to pay extravagant homage to the imagined splendor of the antebellum South, and to portray the New South as a revival of that genius instead of what it really was: the rise of a whole new class of plutocrats."

well..after all those interesting postings/readings…a lot to learn for me about US History…and also if my military favourite song remain "When Johnny comes marching home"

i think that, in any case, today the winner and most convincing is:

YouTube link

So winning is what determines who should be admired or remembered? Had we lost the revolution, it would be wrong today to admire Thomas Jefferson for what he tried to do?

Moreover, we should admire Stalin because he won?

I taught American History for 25 years. When it came time to teach the Civil War, I always included the Stars and Bars as part of the classroom display of maps, photos, paintings, and quotations. Within that context, I was more than happy to honor the sacrifices of Southern Patriots.

When I taught about the Civil Rights movement, I did not display the Confederate Battle flag because it no longer had the same meaning. In that context, it stood for lynchings, cross-burnings, and resistance to both Christian values and the US Constitution.

It has always seemed very sad to me that Southern Patriots allowed their proudest, and perhaps most pure, symbol to be co-opted by the Klan. They stood idly by while it happened, and sometimes even encouraged it.

The reason the once glorious Stars and Bars are now reviled by so many is because Southerners allowed that flag to be dragged into the dirt by the white supremacists and Neo-Nazis. Now they're allowing it to happen again with their monuments.

My suggestion is to denounce the White nationalists and to disassociate the monuments and commemorations from their cause. Don't let them become a rallying point for hate speech. Show that the Neo-Nazis do not speak for the South or its heritage.

that's a good point Wulfgar

Just for correctness, with no political commentary, the commonly seen today rectangular "Confederate" flag is actually the Second Confederate Navy Jack from 1863–1865.

The true "Stars and Bars" flag, as it was termed, was the first national flag of the Confederate States. If you flew that flag today, few would even know what it was and would probably think it was from the Revolutionary War.

The square Battle flag of the Army of Virginia would be adopted as part of the second and third national flags.

The "modern" rectangular flag is not the Stars and Bars, but it is the one that was co-opt by many radical groups that causes much controversy today.

link

Kim

Should we remove native american monuments because they were an enemy of the federal government, and they lost?

No, they, and their cultural heritage, are still part of our country, and it is good to be reminded of it.

If we consider the Confederate Flag we have a problem.

The one we currently associate with the Confederacy is either linked to the Army of North Virginia or the Confederate States Navy.

The actual flag of the Confederacy did go through three basic forms:

The Stars and Bars.
The 2nd Flag – The "Stainless Banner"
The 3rd Flag = The Modified "Stainless Banner".

The "Stainless Banner" was designed by William T. Thompson. Here is what he said of the design:

"As a people, we are fighting to maintain the Heaven-ordained supremacy of the white man over the inferior or colored race; a white flag would thus be emblematical of our cause.[*]… Such a flag…would soon take rank among the proudest ensigns of the nations, and be hailed by the civilized world as THE WHITE MAN'S FLAG [sic].[*]"

[*] Source from the "Daily Morning News". Savannah, Georgia 28th April 1863.

So some Confederates made no bones about the role race played in their cause. The "Stainless Banner" did incorporate the blue St. Andres Cross on a red field.

Make of this what you will.

I read some posts that said the Confederacy goal was to destroy the Union. Couldn't be further from the truth. It is the Union, the Lincoln Administration that wanted to fight. All the South wanted was to be left alone.

(And keep their enslaved people)

muggins +1

And expand slavery.

One of these days I really am going to book mark the pages on Google because I often doubt I'm believed and that those I respond to bother to take me up on the suggestion whenever we get into this on TMP but here we go again!

On the Internet there is freely available the actual transcripts of State Legislatures of the Succeding States clearly stating their reason for leaving the Union as the Federal Government not allowing the westward expansion of Slavery and a conviction that this was a means to an end, to strangle the Southern economy.

Not to be "left alone" but to be allowed to inflict slavery on other territories.

Question… after the Confederate statues… every city/town have to change the names of the streets too?…

Amicalement
Armand

Not sure My Dear Cousin.

Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis was named after the former secretary of war and 7th Vice President of the US. This was because of his role in establish Ft. Snelling at the confluence of the Minnesota and Mississippi rivers. This was to grow into the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul.

There is mounting pressure to remain the lake because of his role in maintaining slavery. Minnesota was, however, a "Free State" and an ardent supporter of the Union.

link

There are better founders of Minnesota than Calhoun whom they could name the lake after.

It was bringing the slave Dred Scott to Ft. Snelling that led to the infamous Supreme Court decision

link

I have nothing to contribute to this thread other than the link I posted before, about a book called Thirteen, and my personal observation that

""with a political fervor that would rival the ministry of propaganda in any 20th century dictatorship," Blight writes."

Muggins, this statement seems a bit over the top to me and brings into question anything the author writes.

That said, it has no bearing what so ever on this discussion. I have posited that those statues were put up to honor the men who fought and died to defend their homes. Others maintain that they were put up to oppress black people and were designed to reinforce jim crow. No one has shown any evidence that they were out up for any reason other than to honor the fallen.

"Just for correctness, with no political commentary, the commonly seen today rectangular "Confederate" flag is actually the Second Confederate Navy Jack from 1863–1865."

Some troops in the western theatre did carry a rectangular version of the battle flag.

"The true "Stars and Bars" flag, as it was termed, was the first national flag of the Confederate States. If you flew that flag today, few would even know what it was and would probably think it was from the Revolutionary War."

The state of Georgia has a version of the first national as their state flag and no one has a clue…

Perhaps you should have another civil war about it. A civil war about the previous civil wars losers statues. Any country that in a civil war allows its beaten foes to erect monuments to its beaten generals deserves all it gets.

I have posited that those statues were put up to honor the men who fought and died to defend their homes. Others maintain that they were put up to oppress black people and were designed to reinforce jim crow. No one has shown any evidence that they were out up for any reason other than to honor the fallen.

Fine, then answer my question posted above: If the statues are to honor the men who fought (and ONLY that), then why no statues of Lee's foremost subordinate, James Longstreet? You seem unable to answer (which speaks volumes)…

As to the rest: Well, you seem firmly locked into the "Old Southern Heritage" mode (you know, the same "Southern Heritage" that had institutional racism, lynchings, suppression of voting rights, etc). Yes, DN, I grew up in the South and learned it all. And it took waaay too long to unlearn it…

Question… after the Confederate statues… every city/town have to change the names of the streets too?…

Some have some haven't. At the behest of LOCAL governments. (Something to do with locals making local decisions impacting their local lives….)

Funny you should bring the Supreme Court into this. When Lincoln and, later, Johnson consulted with the Supreme Court about trying Confederate leaders as traitors they were both advised not to do it, because, under the law at the time, they would lose. Just because it was settled by force of arms doesn't make it right.

Lincoln had no intention of bringing Southern leaders to trial. His whole thrust was towards reconciliation, not retribution (his Second Inaugural makes that clear). That he didn't live to see it through is the true tragedy.

Well, we're so wrapped in Gen'l Lee's statue, lets see what the man HIMSELF thought of such things:

"In June 1866, he wrote that he couldn't support a monument of one of his best generals, Thomas "Stonewall" Jackson, saying it wasn't "feasible at this time."

"As regards the erection of such a monument as is contemplated," Lee wrote in December 1866 about another proposed Confederate monument, "my conviction is, that however grateful it would be to the feelings of the South, the attempt in the present condition of the Country, would have the effect of retarding, instead of accelerating its accomplishment; [and] of continuing, if not adding to, the difficulties under which the Southern people labour.""

He also supported getting rid of the Confederate flag after the Civil War ended, and didn't want them them flying above Washington College, which he was president of after the war.

Its noteworthy that Lee was buried in a common civilian suit and that he forbade any flags or uniforms at his funeral.

So thought the man in question….

First they tear down the monuments, then they start burning books and then………………………

Stone mountain miniatures has my vote. Washington and Jefferson will be next.

First they tear down the monuments, then they start burning books and then…

Muggins put it best:

no, we don't, because this isn't kindergarten and we have real logic capabilities.

Charlie 12,

That sums up Lee. A man who did all that personal honour required of him, lost and saw the national importance of moving on. It's also worth remembering that he flat out rejected any notion of armed resistance after the formal hostilities had ended.

Honour required him to be a traitor?

And I suspect his rejection of continued armed resistance was to avoid the south getting burned to the ground.

Wonder how long it will be before Fort Bragg, Fort Hood & Fort Benning are renamed? All three U.S. Army institutions and a substantial part of U.S. Army operations today.

I thought the same … And don't forget Ft. Lee and Ft. A.P. Hill in Va., IIRC.

Regardless … I think those Forts and others should keep their original names. If for nothing else historical purposes. We can't forget where we came from and hopefully guide where we may be going.

Perhaps you should have another civil war about it.

It seems according some media, etc. that is occurring or about to.

Washington and Jefferson will be next.

I certainly hope not.

Regardless I truly wonder if many involved in recent events even really understand or know anything about the ACW, etc. Other than what the hear in the various medias and word of mouth by others, etc., that really don't know anymore than they themselves do ?
Based on some the interviews with the "man or woman" on the street, articles, etc. I've seen this for quite sometime now … The majority of US denizens really don't have much or any idea.

And I firmly believe that is probably generally true in most cases on either/all sides of the argument.

If being a slaveholder means you would have been a Confederate, 41 out of 56 signatories of the Declaration of Independence would have been on the Grey Team!

Yes that sometimes happens when turning over stones and digging around … one might not like what is found … For better or worse …

Ah Legion 4 you haven't even scratched the surface. Next will be calls to dynamite Stone Mountain Georgia, and Mount Rushmore. Remember there are two slave-holders there, a republican who favored emigration for blacks (Lincoln). and a White nationalist (Roosevelt.)

About 35 years ago I held up my right hand and did solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I actually meant that when I did swear, and still do. Lee apparently crossed his fingers or just flat did not mean it, because when the crunch came, he did not honor that oath. He did not swear to the state of Virginia, he swore the the US. And he broke that oath. Such a man is not deserving of a statue on Government soil.

Getting back to the original question-Charlottesville's city council voted 3-2 to remove the statue of General Lee. Yesterday Baltimore removed four Confederate statues on a unanimous vote of their city council. After a lengthy legal battle, the courts ruled the city of New Orleans could remove three statues of Confederate leaders from public viewing.

These statues/monuments are being removed with decisions made at the local level in the interest of citizens who are most affected by them. I haven't heard stories of statues being melted down for musket balls, and it will be interesting to see what happens to them. But it's just as important to note that these decisions are not mandated by the federal government or the states.

As demographics change, and fewer people are attached to that very brief snapshot in time occupied by the CSA--and this is a Civil War/CSA issue, not a Washington and Jefferson issue--I expect more local governments will make the decision, especially if incidents of race hatred continue to dot the evening news.

As to renaming streets, schools and military bases, I'd guess that is also up to those affected by those decisions. Streets get renamed all the time, according to the whims and interests of local politicians and citizens. Seattle is located in King county. Originally named for William King, Franklin Pierce's vice president. It has since been renamed for Martin Luther King,Jr. That they have the same last name did save on stationary and sign replacement. Not the only such changes in the Puget Sound area.

KSmyth, I think that is the most sensible thing that has been said on this subject. Largely those statues are there because there were people whose cultural identity involved an attachment to those historical figures (for whatever reason). As time goes on, there are fewer and fewer of those, and these statues will not resonate much with most people in any given area, and they surely have every right to take them down and replace them with something more representative of the culture of the current majority of people.

Having said that, I think that if ever there was a time to forget about the history of the Civil War, now would definitely not be it. We could probably do with more reminders of it. But that only helps if people actually learn about it and seek to understand what happened and why.

About 35 years ago I held up my right hand and did solemnly swear to support and defend the Constitution of the United States. I actually meant that Bleeped text when I did swear, and still do. Lee apparently crossed his fingers or just flat did not mean it, because when the crunch came, he did not honor that oath. He did not swear to the state of Virginia, he swore the the US. And he broke that oath. Such a man is not deserving of a statue on Government soil.

Badger22 nice of you to take that oath…
Now please learn your history.
R.E. Lee did not "do so with crossed fingers". He resigned his military commission from the US Army when he realized he would be invading his own native home state. There was no breaking of "that oath". He was no longer a US Army Officer.

And well, well, well…looks like it's not just "Confederate statues" they're after now…(besides the TR one I posted earlier)..
Looks like The Peace Monument in Atlanta got hit…
link

And even old Abe Lincoln's statue in Chicago was burned…
link

So do any of you folks want to still believe that "it's just going to be "Confederate stuff?"….

Threads like this make me ashamed of my hobby.

I think this thread should be removed. When I come to this site it is for information on miniatures and perhaps even a respite from what is going on in the real world.

I think this thread should be removed. When I come to this site it is for information on miniatures and perhaps even a respite from what is going on in the real world.

On the contrary, this thread should remain. This seems to be the only place on the internet where this issue is being discussed civilly. (At least far more civilly than other forums.)

R.E. Lee did not "do so with crossed fingers". He resigned his military commission from the US Army when he realized he would be invading his own native home state. There was no breaking of "that oath". He was no longer a US Army Officer.

His oath to his country doesn't end when his commission ends. If he didn't want to fight Virginia, he could have resigned his commission and retired. He chose to take up arms against his country. By definition a traitor.

I have very strong feelings on this subject and what happened in Charlottesville and other places around the country. I had relatives that fought on both sides of the ACW and think recent events are much more complex and go far beyond the simplistic reporting of the American press.

The lunatic fringe from both ends of the American political spectrum are bent on the destruction of the country. That said, my point is that this site is not the place for the discussion unless the purpose of TMP is moving beyond miniatures and miniature gaming.

Now, I've said my part so maybe you're right Wolverine. Maybe it is an outlet for somewhat rational discussion. I was just dismayed to see the thread. I'll shut up now..

"Threads like this make me ashamed of my hobby."

It is unfortunate that many are turned off of ACW gaming because they don't want to have to deal with the drunk uncle showing up at their game spouting off about 'well it wasn't about slavery' and 'y'know slaves weren't treated that badly'. I know folks that don't want to have to deal with it. I wish we could game the ACW in a post-Lost Cause era.

His oath to his country doesn't end when his commission ends. If he didn't want to fight Virginia, he could have resigned his commission and retired. He chose to take up arms against his country. By definition a traitor.

No..that is NOT "by definition", GF.
You might want to go back and look at it again.

It is unfortunate that many are turned off of ACW gaming because they don't want to have to deal with the drunk uncle showing up at their game spouting off about 'well it wasn't about slavery' and 'y'know slaves weren't treated that badly'. I know folks that don't want to have to deal with it. I wish we could game the ACW in a post-Lost Cause era.

Not just at our gaming tables; although I suspect that a problem more for the 'Merkins in the South. Not really an issue out side the US.

What disappoints me that 'The Lost Cause' is alive and well on TMP where people ought to know better.

We English at least can laugh about the two sides in our civil war. One side was described a "Wrong but Womantic" and the other "Right but Repulsive."

Unfortunately you 'Merkins are much more like the bloody Irish and the Glorious Revolution of 1688, still refighting the thing thee hundred years later.

It is unfortunate that many are turned off of ACW gaming because they don't want to have to deal with the drunk uncle showing up at their game spouting off about 'well it wasn't about slavery' and 'y'know slaves weren't treated that badly'. I know folks that don't want to have to deal with it. I wish we could game the ACW in a post-Lost Cause era.

Muggins, if you have that many issues with a drunk uncle showing up at your games spouting stuff off like this, may I suggest you either A: Lock the door, or B: Keep him from finding out where you play at.

Sounds like you have some problems that need to be addressed.