Erasing the Confederacy -How Far Would you Go?

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

I can't change my vote, but at this point I am okay with all of the first five, assuming museums and such don't count under "public grounds". However, I very firmly draw the line at 6, I would consider that be a very blatant violation of free speech and completely unacceptable.

This exactly.

With all due respect to those arguing the opposing position, I don't really comprehend how removing monuments to the Confederacy – and yes, they were very much erected to celebrate the myth of the "Lost Cause" – qualifies as "erasing history." Perhaps, if the proposal were to close all battlefields, historic sites, and museums that preserve the history of the Confederacy, I would agree with you; but that is not the debate. There are far better, more appropriate mediums in which to address this dark chapter of our history than a statue in a public park – where it is devoid of context and therefore represents a lost opportunity to have a calm and reasonable discussion of the enduring legacy of the events it commemorates. These monuments should not be destroyed; they should be relocated to museums and historic areas where they may be viewed and understood in the broader context of the history of the Civil War, instead of being ignored by 99% of Americans until a bunch of crazies show up with torches and swastika flags to set the world on fire.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

Where does it stop? Because it's fairly obvious that once the Confederate statues are gone, they will find something else that makes them feel "oppressed". And there have been many instances of people pushing to remove statues and rename things after ALL slave owners, which include America's founding fathers.

I mean, activists are silly, but it doesn't take a particularly deep knowledge of history to recognize the difference between a group of individuals who created a country that would one day abolish slavery and a group of individuals who fought to destroy that country in hopes of preserving slavery.

Personally, I'm not fussed about the monuments, because it seems to me vaguely humanoid pieces of rock are not the gravest threat to constructive race relations in America today. This is a matter, as diptheridan said, that ought to be left to the relevant municipalities themselves, who can then decide how best to respectfully and honestly commemorate this period of American history. With that said, it is simply bad historianship to draw any sort of equivalency between the founding fathers and the leaders of the Confederacy, whether as an argument for preserving monuments to the latter or disassembling monuments to the former.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

There are so, so many bad arguments drawing false equivalencies between Abraham Lincoln and the leaders of the Confederacy that I honestly do not have the energy to compose a fresh response to the above post... so I will instead reiterate what I said two months ago in course of a similar discussion:

Personally, I'm not a huge fan of judging historical figures by their private opinions more than by their public actions. The fact of the matter is that, at the end of the day, Lincoln freed the slaves (you can argue about the why, but at the end of the day the result was the same) whereas [the Confederacy led a rebellion] whose stated goal was the preservation of chattel slavery in America. Their own moral rectitude is not really a relevant consideration, unless you're in the position of weighing souls, which a historian most certainly should not be. I will add, though, that there's a definite difference between believing blacks to be of an inferior race (which was a pretty standard view nationally in the 1850s) and believing that they were better off enslaved than free (which Lincoln, for all his hedging and evolutions on the issue, never contended).

and Yankee's response (emphasis is my own):

Weighing past figures against the modern standard, will distort the vantage point and the most important takeaway.

There is no such thing as perfectionism in history, there is only the constant quest for betterment. I am so tired of these revisionists like that idiot in the NC legislature a few weeks back who attacked Lincoln. Lincoln is hero in our history because relative to the times, he moved the ball 20 yards, while Lee was playing defense. Did Lincoln violate civil liberties? Yes, but so did the damn South many times over. A slave society is by nature a totalitarian society because of the constant few of servile insurrection.

The South didn't become more extreme because of Northern pressure. The south led most every argument, every demand, demanded the breaking of every past agreement, because they concentration of slaves in growing numbers posed a severe threat to public safety and the constant fear, that motivated the increasing extremism, was that worry that tomorrow the South will look like something out of the movie Spartacus (and these people knew classical history).

As this become a more pressing fear, more repressive laws were passed making it illegal to teach blacks to read, making it illegal to espouse religious beliefs that opposed slavery and made it illegal to campaign against it or organize against it. And if a slave runs a away you could be compelled to join a posse to track them down. That is violations of freedom of speech, religion, association and press.

Along with this heightened fear of the concentration of slavery in the slave states, came increasing demands for lands. Suddenly the Missouri Compromise is anti-Southern and has to be repealed. Suddenly you have to force Northerners to help catch runaway slaves (Fugitive Slave Act) and trample all over Northern State's rights, in order for the South's state's rights to be preserved. Finally, the courts start throwing out decades of precedence, to make rulings favorable to South and finally the Supreme Court has to violate all sorts of precedent, norms and the constitution to rule that it is unconstitutional to deny anyone's right to own slaves. It took the Fugitive Slave Act and the Dred Scott decision to unify the North behind a Slavery Restrictionist like Lincoln.

The south didn't become more extreme because they annoyed by a few posters sent south from New England. The South became more extreme because they were scared crapless that they would wake up to find their throats being cut by machetes. The south literally wanted "breathing space" or if you prefer "lebensraum" to spread the slaves out and reduce the risk of servile insurrection, them constantly demanding more and more, and getting it at many stages, pushed the North to unify behind a single party and candidate opposed to the expansion of Slavery. Lincoln would not have won in 1856 or any prior election.

Its hilarious when you consider the parallel that Kalwejt made, because the political evolution of the south is fairly similar (Though much elongated over time) to the ever increasing demands by Hitler in order for him to to be "satisfied".

One final thought: instead of dedicating our energy to a century-old argument over whether a defeated 19th century slaveholder's rebellion represented an exceptional evil or an ordinary evil in the context of the times, perhaps we could commemorate the actual slaves who took it upon themselves to achieve emancipation before and during the Civil War? As much as I firmly believe Lincoln's presidency moved the country in the right direction, and was absolutely transformational in terms of the continuing realization and expansion of the ideals of the American Revolution, it has always struck me as a little odd that we give so little attention to people like Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman who were actively abolishing their own condition of slavery long before the Emancipation Proclamation was even conceived of.

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

4,5, and 6, but definitely would consider implementing the other ones

#6 would be a violation of the 1st amendment. Is the 1st amendment an "antiquated piece of trash" just like you think the 2nd amendment is?

Deleted post

You know who REALLY thought the Constitution was trash?

... the Confederates.

Why did the care so much about the Tenth Amendment then? The Confederates were trying to break away from the tyrannical government in Washington because Washington didn't care about the Constitution including their Tenth Amendment rights.

LOL. Literally nobody argued secession was legal because of the Tenth Amendment in 1861. Most Confederate politicians agreed secession was illegal, they just didn't care, because their right to continue buying and selling human beings was more important to them. You should read the actual secession ordinances published by the Confederate states instead of parroting ahistorical talking points invented decades after the war to justify a failed rebellion.

(Also, LOL at implying Tom is part of the "radical left.")

[Unconditional Surrender Truman]

It is a common misconception that the Confederacy is about slavery. That is simply not the case.

It simply is the case. Documentary sources written by actual Confederates (not Lost Causers inventing justifications for a failed uprising decades after the fact) show definitively that the men who created the Confederate States of America did so to preserve their right to own slaves. This is a matter of historical record.