"Restore the Confederate monument to Arlington?" Topic

Restore the "reconciliation monument" to Arlington?

link

Obviously this will or would be a hot fight, and it remains to be seen whether it is one the Trump administration wants to engage in. I personally hope it is put back.

No. Losers and traitors.
Next question?

They waged war on the United States. I understand that the regular foot soldier isn't responsible for the sins of their leaders, and that most fought because pretty much everyone was more loyal to their state than the country as a whole, but they shouldn't be honored by the government.

Consider how black Americans must feel seeing monuments to those who fought to enslave their ancesters. Don't even get me started on the lost cause myth or the States' rights BS.

Just about every American Indian tribe waged war against the United States. There is a massive Crazy Horse monument and not one cares about that.
The Confederates were Americans before and after the war. They generally believed they were fighting for their homes, just like the Indians.
Delaware, Maryland, Kentucky, and Missouri, later joined by West Virginia were slave states that did not join the Confederacy, what were they fighting for?
Many of those monuments were installed as a way to heal the wounds of the war, to reconcile the nation. They were installed to acknowledge the sacrifice of the soldiers, their bravery, and their answer to the call of their home state.
I celebrate their bravery, I celebrate the moral courage of the abolitionists, I celebrate the fighting spirit of the American Indians. They are part of my common heritage as an American.
Put the monuments back.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek

'Reconciliation' seems hollow today, in light of what was left to be done for civil rights at the time.

If the monument was restored, it would need to be updated.

Agree, it's not an either/or. It's a better reasoned honoring.????

Any monument has a context. In this case it followed the Spanish American War in which FOUR former Confederate generals served as US Army generals. Reconciling north and south was a pretty big deal, and people like Grant (see his second inaugural) saw it to be so. Every individual monument need not include every aspect of the subject depicted.

We have Fort Bragg again (yes, different Bragg, but hey . . .)

And Mike is correct.

Thanks doc.

There was much to be done for civil right for all concerned after the ACW era. Discrimination was not just rampant in the South. Even Union states, like California, prohibited inter-racial marriage until the 1950s. Chinese were not exactly welcomed by all into the United States. American Indians were not citizens until 1924; Blacks became citizens in 1868! So it was not just the South that had a legacy of racial discrimination.

You can reconcile with those who left the Union and were forced to come back, and not share all their beliefs. Remember there were five slave states that stayed in the Union so they needed some work on civil rights too.

Mike

Doc, Bunk +1

Arizona had a bounty apaches (like coyotes and wolves) until they gave them the right to vote in 1924.

If the Men who fought against them can forgive and forget, SO can Future Generations.

Erasing history achieves nothing except the loss of knowledge. Those statues that are removed, names that are changed achieve nothing except allow people to feel warm and gooey inside.
We have the same problem with Captain Cook. His statue gets vandalised regularly as an invader and colonist. He did land in Oz to get water, mapped the coast and told the UK of his discovery, which later led to settlement, but did not settle or invade anymore than the Dutch or French did.
If Russia can have war cemeteries for WW2 German soldiers, Turkiye can have ANZACs lying in a friendly country and revere Gallipoli as we do, surely combatants from a civil war can reflect on and honour each other's dead.

"No. Losers and traitors."

So we're tearing down the Vietnam Wall, OFM? And the memorial at Kent State? Certainly no memorial to all those of His Majesty's subjects who seceded in 1775-83.

I say again, if it is treason to resign your commission and take employment with another government--well, that would include pretty much every Indian or Pakistani Army officer of 1949, and leaves us with no word to describe Benedict Arnold. If there's an exemption for having the consent of the Imperial power, it wouldn't include us.

And I'm tired of the vandalism. If both sides behave this way--and if it keeps up, eventually both sides will--we'll have no public artwork left other than abstracts with rapidly-changing plaques.

And I truly hate abstract art.

I dont think its like going to work for another government, like switching jobs in your field.

Its a complex jumble of beliefs, but it boils down to attacking the USA to defend a practice that should have been illegal by its obvious opposition to the self evident truths of the founders – even they could not unscramble their minds on the hypocrisy of slavery. Yea, I know, the rank and file Confederates did not always think about this, they believed what they heard about defending their home states.

At Gettysburg, the South Carolina monument inscription "That men of honor might forever know the responsibilities of freedom. Dedicated South Carolinians stood and were counted for their heritage and convictions. Abiding faith in the sacredness of states' rights provided their creed…"

I find it hard to reconcile this kind of thing with the realities of SC – read the opening statements of its resolution to secede. Slavery is prominent in many states' articles of secession.

So my idea has always been to leave the monuments up but include some sort of plaque that includes the other documents, giving some context to the rebellion and its harsher realities. Let the beholder ponder. If you read the speech of Alexander Stephens, the VP of the Confederacy, you may understand why we have the Lost Cause narrative. Shine some light on it.

In the end we may need a national monument of apology and forgiveness on all sides. What we did to ourselves and what we have lived with ever since should be publicly reconciled to the self-evident truths of the Declaration. Then we can let the monuments stand. All my opinion…

I don't think anyone opposes erecting more monuments, to broaden perspectives.

Tort and Doc, reasonable.

As Bunk said, we have monuments and tablets to others who fought against us, and yes, even traitors. Benedict Arnold of course has his leg monument, but also has tablets in locations associated with his life. I had to post them in a previous TMP posting.

There are plaques to Aaron Burr who many believe a traitor.

Also believe it's fair to point out, 4 States held back until …

"After President Lincoln called for volunteers following the attack on Fort Sumter, the states of Virginia, Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina seceded from the Union and joined the Confederacy"

Hoping for a compromise.

President McKinley reportedly appreciated the former Southern and Northern soldiers fighting a foreign enemy side by side for the first time since the War Between the States.

I'm confused. Who was the foreign enemy against whom southern and northern soldiers fought side by side during the Civil War?

Maybe this will become a prequel to the Cowboys vs. Aliens movie of a few years ago.

All right, Oberlindes, have it your way. Try to rephrase that quote to squeeze out the possibility of wilful mininterpretation without making even more awkward prose.

Looked at the other way, read Turtledove.

This is about putting back Ezekiel's Confederate reconciliation monument at Arlington. Most of the comparisons in this thread are irrelevant at best or simply "whataboutisms". The monument itself perpetuates the lost cause myth as did the sculptor.

I suggest this is not a good case to use for a poll. There is the issue of the monument as an actual grave marker which is different to say a statute of a general on a public square. Also, I should point out that the authors of the referenced article are heavily biased, and one is a Confederate apologist and lost cause believer which is the history she wants to perpetuate.
<url> link </url>

Reconciliation was not what it seemed, and each side had different motivations. What it clearly did was win the peace for the South. Here is a fairly balance article on that by an Army officer who quotes Union officers contemporary ideas about it.

<url> link </url>

I do find it ironic and sad that the juvenile move by the SOD to rename Ft Moore to Bragg again removes the name of a distinguished soldier and hero who fought for his country and served the US Army for over 30 years. LTG Moore was even from the South!

DeRuyter – agree about the SOD – childish, and Moore deserved his place.

I'd be glad to see Moore honored.

Oberloindes, I assume you are attempting humor? Four former Confederate generals, and a lot of lesser ranks, served in the US Army during the Spanish-American War, under McKinley. Surely that was obvious?

Well, here is what one Union soldier thought:

from Grant's second inaugural, March 4, 1873:

The effects of the late civil strife have been to free the slave and make him a citizen. Yet he is not possessed of the civil rights which citizenship should carry with it. This is wrong, and should be corrected. To this correction, I stand committed, so far as Executive influence can avail.

Social equality is not a subject to be legislated upon, nor shall I ask that anything be done to advance the social status of the colored man, except to give him a fair chance to develop what there is good in him, give him access to the schools, and when he travels let him feel assured that his conduct will regulate the treatment and fare he will receive.

The States lately at war with the General Government are now happily rehabilitated, and no Executive control is exercised in any one of them that would not be exercised in any other State under like circumstances.

Grant went about as far as the north was interested in going, and one suspects that he, and they, gave a higher priority to the good will of southern whites than to continued elevation of blacks. Of course our view of these matters has changed, and (for the most part) rightly so. But reconciliation mattered, mattered a lot, and is not to be taken for granted, but to be celebrated. As the Arlington monument did and does.

I find it despicable that we erase history simply because we don't agree with it.

All nations should honor their treasonous fellow "citizens", and pay tribute. Particularly if they lost.

This case has no impact on me whether it is replaced or not.

I always find the new iconoclasts tiresome. They use the same arguments as Osis, the Taliban, and every other band of psychos whose response to art they don't like is, "destroy it."

They have already been coming for the founding fathers; Stop Oil is already steadily eradicating masterpieces of the past. Stop the destruction now, before they move on to what you hold dear. If you don't stand up for speech you don't agree with, you are worthless, and no one will stand up for you.

+1 to the Dave above.
And, yes, bring back the monuments.

The art of compromise is long gone unfortunately.

I believe that any monument has to be viewed and judged in the context of when it was erected. The wholesale removal of Confederate monuments was, in my opinion, simply a symptom of identity politics. Just about any monument could easily be objected to by some group. Should we remove any monument commemorating a male erected before 1920, when the 19th Amendment gave women the right to vote if they were not favor of female suffrage? One man's hero is always going to be another's villain. Certainly, if a constituency wants to change or remove historical monuments, it should be able to do so. Any removal should be the result of a process, not a knee-jerk response to something where there is a perceived political benefit. We are not a pure democracy for a reason.

How do we address monuments to people like Gen. Joe Wheeler, a hero of both the Confederacy and the post-war United States? How about ex-Confederates who undertook to try to reunite the sections after the war? How about those Confederates who were pardoned after the war? One of the greatest attributes of our national character is our belief in redemption. Gerald Ford pardoned R.E. Lee effective June 13, 1865, following a joint resolution of Congress. The signing statement read in part: "General Lee's character has been an example to succeeding generations, making the restoration of his citizenship an event in which every American can take pride." There are certainly "unreconstructed" rebels who cannot be forgiven, however, there are former rebels who can certainly be admired. Even Jefferson Davis was pardoned by Jimmy Carter in 1978 as an act of reconciliation.

I can see a difference between a Robert E. Lee and a Benedict Arnold. While they both turned on their country, at least Lee did so out of a feeling of obligation to his state as opposed to Arnold who sought personal aggrandizement and wealth. The 1861 U.S. was still thought of as an amalgamation of sovereign states, "these United States" as opposed to a one entity, "the United States." We tend to disregard the proponents of secession as having disreputable reasons, however, there was no real answer to the question of whether a State could leave the Union. It cost a lot of wealth and a lot of lives to definitively answer that question. The Constitution provides that the federal government cannot recognize the breaking-up of a state, it does not say that a state cannot leave. Even if the underlying cause was slavery, the Constitution protected slavery, so under the belief that Lincoln was going to seek to abolish slavery, the South tried to take their ball and go home. I have always believed that civil war was inevitable, unless slavery died of its own volition.

Red Jacket, yes to all of that. The Constitution DID protect slavery, which is why Lincoln acted as he did throughout the war, from the Emancipation Proc to the 13th Amendment. And was willing to accept the existence of slavery in the states as long as it was kept from the territories, if he could thereby avoid war. Of course he hated slavery and was glad to act against it where he could, but he understood the complexity of the issue in ways that ill-educated moderns mostly do not. Moral indignation, even where appropriate as it is with regards to slavery, produces more heat than light. And northern churches, e.g. with their no-communion-with-slave-owners, bear some of the responsibility for our bloodiest war.

For those who thought this kind of stuff had gone as far as it could, you were wrong.

"New York school district hit with lawsuit over 'Spartans' mascot deemed symbol of 'White supremacy'"

They had changed to Spartans after they were forced to "change their Native American" mascot.

"A Long Island, New York school district is facing a lawsuit from a father and local civil rights leader who claims the school district's new mascot is a symbol of White supremacy.

William King Moss III, Islip Town NAACP President, former mathematics teacher in Brentwood Union Free School District and father of two Brentwood students, filed the complaint against the district on March 26.

Moss's complaint accuses the district of selecting the "Spartans" as their new mascot, despite it being "racially problematic," claiming the ancient Greek warrior is a "symbol of hate" banned by state law. "

Look out Michigan State University. 😉

Subject: Lawsuit claims new Brentwood school mascot is a ‘symbol of white supremacy'


link

Somebody needs to sue Wyoming Valley West school district in NEPA.
They've been the Spartans for thousands of years.
And let's not forget those bastards at Michigan State!

I'm against this topic even being part of the discussion at TMP, (unless it is set aside as one of those designated areas for subjects that might be political or contentious) on the grounds of, "What has this got to do with toy soldiers?"

There's a fine line between historical discussion and contemporary politics sometimes. Does this topic serve any purpose other than raising hackles on all sides? (And I think excellent points are raised above by lots of commentators, from perspectives that are not resolvable on a hobby forum, so is this a waste of our energies?)

Piper, I respectfully disagree.

This has much more to do with "history", than do topics on tariff policies and trade policies.

All right, Oberlindes, have it your way. Try to rephrase that quote to squeeze out the possibility of wilful mininterpretation without making even more awkward prose.

It's not willful misinterpretation. The sentence is inaccurate because it says that Southern and Northern soldiers were last fighting a foreign enemy side by side during the Civil War, when in fact the last time they fought a foreign enemy side by side was during the Mexican-American War nearly 20 years before the Civil War.

I think that neither the writer of the quote nor President McKinley thought of the Native Americans as a "foreign enemy", but it should be noted that Confederate prisoners of war served on the western frontier as US Army soldiers. (The so-called "Galvanized Yankees".) There was substantial fighting on the plains during the Civil War.

The quote:

President McKinley reportedly appreciated the former Southern and Northern soldiers fighting a foreign enemy side by side for the first time since the War Between the States.

Changed to be accurate, and assuming that the Native Americans are not a foreign enemy:
"President McKinley reportedly appreciated the former Southern and Northern soldiers fighting a foreign enemy side by side for the first time since the Mexican-American War."

Oberloindes [sic], I assume you are attempting humor? Four former Confederate generals, and a lot of lesser ranks, served in the US Army during the Spanish-American War, under McKinley. Surely that was obvious?

I am only objecting to the writing of the actual quoted text, discussed above.

President McKinley actually said the following in this 1900 Antietam Address:

"when we went to war two years ago the men of the South and the men of the North vied with each other in showing their devotion to the United States. The followers of the Confederate generals with the follower of the Federal generals fought side by side in Cuba, in Porto Rico, and in the Philippines, and together in those far off islands are standing today fighting and dying for the flag that represents more than any other banner in the world the best hopes and aspirations of mankind."

Trump reverts 7 Army bases to former names with new honorees, including Delta Force soldier

link

Armand