"ACW Battlefields: Next Target In The War On History" Topic

Civil War Battlefields: The Next Target In The War On History

A bill sponsored by Rep. Nita Lowey (D-NY) has passed the House and is currently in the Senate for committee review and an eventual vote. H.R. 7608 is entitled the "State, Foreign Operations, Agriculture, Rural Development, Interior, Environment, Military Construction, and Veterans Affairs Appropriations Act."
The bill provides fiscal year 2021 appropriations for the Department of State, Department of Agriculture, the EPA, various foreign relations initiatives, and related programs. It is the "related programs" that has those who care about American history concerned. If one peruses the 772-page bill, they will find buried way down in the middle somewhere Sec. 442. It reads as follows:
REMOVAL OF COMMEMORATIVE CONFEDERATE WORKS
Notwithstanding any other provision of law or policy to the contrary, within 180 days of enactment of this Act, the National Park Service shall remove from display all physical Confederate commemorative works, such as statues, monuments, sculptures, memorials, and plaques, as defined by NPS, Management Policies 2006.

On the surface, this appears to be just an implementation of the drive to remove Confederate monuments and memorials from the public square.

Link to full article

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When will it end? The insanity!

How does removing a statue help people? It doesn't; it just wastes government resources that could be spent on actually helping people.

"All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others." we are witnessing it now……

Not just now. That has been always been the case.

And the governments job is not to "help people"; it is to facilitate the distribution of wealth.

Appalling but not surprising at all. I wondered when it would happen. Turns out sooner rather than later. Hopefully New York citizens who value history will mount a campaign against this attack on our history. One of my ancestors served in the 7th Wisconsin and was killed at South Mountain far from his farm in Wisconsin. One of my favorite pastimes has been touring Civil War battlefields and viewing the monuments and statues there. I'm sickened.

What a disgrace. I'm a Yankee, born and raised in the Northeast, but I feel it's a travesty to treat long dead opponents like this. What have we become? Bolsheviks?

Take it to it's logical conclusion and the American Civil War was fought by the gallant Union troops … against nobody …

I received an email from my licensed battlefield guide friends, with details about the Bill:

"Here is the text and a link to the HR-7608:
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Removal of confederate commemorative works

Sec. 442. Notwithstanding any other provision of law or policy to the contrary, within 180 days of enactment of this Act, the National Park Service shall remove from display all physical Confederate commemorative works, such as statues, monuments, sculptures, memorials, and plaques, as defined by NPS, Management Policies 2006, §9.6.1.

Inventory of assets with confederate names

Sec. 443. Within 90 days of enactment of this Act, the Secretary of the Interior shall submit to the Committee on Appropriations an inventory of all assets under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior with Confederate names.
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Link to the text of the bill:
link

Just hit CTRL+F (Windows) while on that web page and search on "confederate" to find this section of the bill. Also, these provisions do NOT appear in any of the summaries of this bill."

I contacted my Senator and expressed my opinion. Larry

Just the next step in the marxist march to destroy our history so they can rewrite it to their liking.

So yes, it is appropriate to post the information.

George Orwell was right.

Next Stop in this Twilight-Zone odyssey, a new national flag under the argument that slavery existed longer under the Stars and Stripes than under the Stars and Bars.

Don't think so? Just wait.

It will not get past the Senate. More importantly now is the time to stop your clever little comments on this forum and actually do the hard part. The hard part is a hand written letter explaining politely and at length to your member of Congress why this is simple minded knee jerk reaction. The argument made by most public historians and academics is subtraction by addition. Do not remove the statue but add information to give the visitor additional information. Battlefields are an appropriate place to have statuary and present information to give additional content and context. Everybody contact your member of Congress. Enlist the local Civil War Roundtable. Write to the National Park Service. H

Comment from sock puppet removed. Three sock puppet accounts locked.

This article raised a few issues with me.

I'm curious why the name of the article had to have one word from its title removed. [It seems odd, the word is not a profanity. Part of the title of one of my submissions to TMP (the name of an ACW ruleset) was once removed but I understand that as although it was the name of those rules it contained a low-level profanity.]

I immediately thought of the Stone Mountain Memorial and thought they would have a hard time removing that one within 180 days. However, I have now learned that this is in a state, not national, park of Georgia and that:
"When Georgia lawmakers voted in 2001 to change the state flag that had been dominated by the Confederate battle emblem since 1956, language to guarantee the preservation of the Stone Mountain sculpture was included as a bargaining chip.
The law states that "the memorial to the heroes of the Confederate States of America graven upon the face of Stone Mountain shall never be altered, removed, concealed, or obscured in any fashion." see denverpost.com/2020/07/04/confederate-monument-georgia-stone-mountain.

Presumably if you remove all "Confederate commemorative works…" (including plaques) then the ACW was a war where the Union fought against 'no-one'.

I love the references to George Orwell. Animal Farm and 1984 are books that I have read a few times and just last month watched the film 1984 (John Hurt and, in his last film, Richard Burton). To me, 1984 is the general direction the world seems to be heading.

2 articles to show the reasoning about southern Monuments

The Lee Controversy of 1903

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North Carolina and Virginia Memorials at Gettysburg: A Study in Contrasts
link

Although I appreciate that it may not have been the majority view, I like the quote from the first link where it says:
"… in the absence of other Confederate memorials on the battlefield and the difficulty of understanding the fight from the Confederate perspective. One Union veteran wrote to the Philadelphia Ledger explaining that, "The battlefield of Gettysburg, as it now stands, is a beautiful, one-sided picture. There is not a monument or inscription to show that an army of equal in numbers and valor to our own struggled fiercely for three days to destroy it.""

That quote from a union veteran aligns with my previous thought on the removal of all "Confederate commemorative works…" (including plaques). Any visitor to battlefields would be at a loss as to who fought who or what actually happened. Essentially, this would be a complete whitewash of history such as Orwell's 1984 where it says:
"Every record has been destroyed or falsified, every book rewritten, every picture has been repainted, every statue and street building has been renamed, every date has been altered. And the process is continuing day by day and minute by minute. History has stopped."

With all the Confederate monuments gone, future generations will wonder who on earth the Civil War was actually fought against.

Yep ! The whole thing is like out of Orwell's "1984" !

Who controls the past controls the future. Who controls the present controls the past. George Orwell

Well, look at it as a long overdue return to the truism that the winners write history. :)

You guys dont see the simple solution right in front of you? All the confederate monuments and Southern battlefield events have to do is donate all proceeds to some African-American charity or neighborhood improvement plan and it'll be a marvelous way to preserve these relics and historical sites.

Wouldnt that be marvelous?

Ah … ? 🤔 Sounds a little like "Reparations" … and that becomes a bit of a slippery slope, IMO … 🤔

Where does that end ? 🤑🤑🤑🤑

MiniPigs, you DO realize, don't you, that no one makes any money off, say, the Longstreet statue or the Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg? "All the proceeds," being zero, is less than the neighborhood got from looting the local convenience store.

The ACW was fought over nothing since those who are trying to remove history say that systemic racism currently exists. (BLM) Freeing the slaves, gaining the right to vote, etc did not matter.( no matter how imperfectly our society implemented these changes.) The Union troops were just pawns of the white patriarchy. General Order number 11 never happened, although my forefathers farm was still burned. Removing black populations at the point of the bayonet after the war from the counties where they lived, did not happen either.

Which General Order 11?

As mildbill seems to be from Kansas and his forefathers farm was burned I'm thinking it was General Order 11 (1863) – see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_(1863). I was interested to read that "More than 140 years later, towns impacted by General Order No. 11 are still less developed than their neighbors." [Edit – I'm unsure how true that statement is in reality.]

Alternatively, General Order 11 (1862) (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_Order_No._11_%281862%29) was issued by Gen Grant and only targeted Jews. Interesting here was that only the actions of the CSA (Gen van Dorn) "resulted in many Jewish persons being spared from potential removal, and delayed full enforcement of Grant's order."

@robert piepenbrink

MiniPigs, you DO realize, don't you, that no one makes any money off, say, the Longstreet statue or the Virginia Memorial at Gettysburg? "All the proceeds," being zero, is less than the neighborhood got from looting the local convenience store.

No, I know very little about that site. Maybe it is time to ask for donations and announce that the cause would be a worthy charity like the sons of grave diggers of the ACW?

Maybe the looters can kick in a little bit too.

The bill is talking about removing confederate commemorative items. Plaques and displays about actual battle history are not being removed. If the bill passes, which something of the sort will pass one day. And maybe you can actually see the battlefield at Gettysburg. Just need to get rid of the Yankee commemorative statues next.

more bull fake news politics on as supposed non-political page. Whats new?

The bill is talking about removing confederate commemorative items. Plaques and displays about actual battle history are not being removed.

Unfortunately, that is not what the proposed law says, which is:

"Sec. 442. Notwithstanding any other provision of law or policy to the contrary, within 180 days of enactment of this Act, the National Park Service shall remove from display all physical Confederate commemorative works, such as statues, monuments, sculptures, memorials, and plaques, as defined by NPS, Management Policies 2006, §9.6.1."

I am unsure of the intricacies of USA law but my limited experience with legislation is that:
shall means must; and
where a word such as 'plaques' is used without specifying any exceptions (which are not specified in the proposed s442) then it shall be taken as inclusive of all such items.
You may be able to have a battle history of sorts on a plaque but I suppose that would rely to some degree on who had the better lawyers and who was the judge ruling on the matter. [Basically, can any wording, image or thing be seen as 'commemorative'. (E.g. Would it be possible to mention the valour of a CSA unit? Could a likeness of a Confederate soldier be used? Could a gravesite mentioning a CSA unit or state be seen as a 'memorial'?) Quite frankly, an infinite list of possible things that must be removed.]

the context for the words is in the NPS policy document. It is available with a simple google.

the context for the words is in the NPS policy document. It is available with a simple google.

I did look at s9.6.1 of the NPS Management Policies 2006 as few days ago. It defines 'commemorative work' as:
"any statue, monument, sculpture, memorial, plaque, or other structure or landscape feature, including a garden or memorial grove, designed to perpetuate in a permanent manner the memory of a person, group, event, or other significant element of history."

That looks pretty open-ended to me as "designed to perpetuate" would be very much 'in the eye of the beholder'.

Having worked in Gov't and policy and knowing that there are lawyers under every bush, I would assume, as a starting point, the narrowest interpretation of commemorative work. Commemorative works, in the NPS Policy, can't really be touched by the NPS (congressional action req'd) but informative and historical markers and displays are certainly in their scope to take action on any time they want. The primary target of the proposed bill being monuments to confederate generals or confederate groups erected by groups outside of the national park system, i.e. all the southern state sponsored monuments. But of course one has to wait and see as things do change and I doubt this is the last shoe to drop.

Personally I would far sooner visit a battlefield like Perryville which is largely devoid of monuments but is also largely unchanged since 1862 than I would something like Gettysburg that is littered with monuments. For me it's a matter of aesthetics rather than an historical distaste.

As an aside I took my wife to Henry House Hill a few years back and she kept laughing at the statue of "Stonewall" Jackson because of the model used for the body appears to have been Arnold Schwarzenegger.

The Shiloh battlefield to me is the model of a battlefield park. They have a rule of nothing being over 4-5 ft high, or something like that. So the markers are low and monuments are few. I haven't seen Perryville site but would like to one day.

… I would assume, as a starting point, the narrowest interpretation of commemorative work …

I basically agree with all you say as I also worked in Gov't in a variety of areas including policy and other matters. I would expect minimal changes at first with only the more obvious examples removed. Over time, more things will be removed until, in the words of the Union veteran I quoted earlier:
"There is not a monument or inscription to show that an army of equal in numbers and valor to our own struggled fiercely for three days to destroy it."

As an aside I took my wife to Henry House Hill a few years back and she kept laughing at the statue of "Stonewall" Jackson because of the model used for the body appears to have been Arnold Schwarzenegger.

It is laughable: looks like his horse was allowed to undergo a similar workout.

Leave the statues … place historical markers that explain who, what, why, etc. We can't forget our history … the good, the bad and the ugly.

European battlefields tend not to be littered with irrelevant clutter. And where they are, such as Waterloo, they destroy the battleground. The memorials scattered around the Somme for example are poignant enough.

European battlefields tend not to be littered with irrelevant clutter. And where they are, such as Waterloo, they destroy the battleground. The memorials scattered around the Somme for example are poignant enough.

Exactly. I grew up near Lansdown (1643) and the battlefield is largely unchanged. Roundway Down is the same as it was without even a marker.

The largest monument I've visited was Leipzig but the city has expanded over must of the ground.

link

Ive never been to the battlefield and I never intend to go. I know lots about the battle. I wonder if individual arrangements on the battlefield really teach anyone who doesn't already know about the battle. Are we really to believe that large numbers of non civil war enthusiasts travel to the battlefield for education about the subject?

If someone doesn't want something to change just because they're against change, just come out and say that. Let's not pretend this is about erasing history because let's face it, the spirit of the confederacy is unfortunately still with us.

If you have not walked a battlefield, Minipigs, you only assume you "know lots about the battle".

"Let's not pretend this is about erasing history …"
Really? How do you know that? Are you in close correspondence with the leadership of BLM and Antifa and the parties who fund them? Why do you suppose they toppled George Washington's statue? Frederick Douglass's statue? vandalized the Vietnam Veterans memorial?

None so blind as those who will not see.

B

None so blind as those who will not see.

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It doesnt look like either of those activist groups are behind this statue and plaque removal. Is there any solid evidence that they got these provisions put into that bill; which will, in any case, get buried in committee.