Remember how the Mainstream Media said they won't be coming for Jefferson and Washington Next?

[Makeshift Python]

Honestly, they're just statues.

No, they are much more. They are symbols and as such part and representation of the public's memories. They are literally history.

Then they belong in museums. If you want something that's "literally history", go read a book. Or better yet, let's put more money into the education budget. American clearly needs more of that than they do of symbols.

[GreyICE]

Then they belong in museums. If you want something that's "literally history", go read a book. Or better yet, let's put more money into the education budget. American clearly needs more of that than they do of symbols.

The problem very much is that lost cause mythology doesn't hold up very well to actual historical analysis. Once you start digging into the facts you realize a few pertinent points very quickly:

- The war was entirely about slavery. Entirely. The Confederate President put it thusly:

Our new Government is founded upon exactly the opposite ideas; its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and moral condition.

Any pretending that it wasn't about slavery is revisionist history.

- Being a slave was AWFUL. The photographs of the whip scars, the slaves who literally drowned trying to join the Union army, the fact that every step of Sherman's march he had slaves volunteering to join his army and take up arms against the slave owners. Slavery was HATED by black people at the time, and was a thoroughly awful, unconscionable institution with nothing to recommend to it.

- The South had no fucking clue what war meant. Robert E. Lee himself told them not to do the stupid thing they were planning to do. They did it. They went to war. War fucking sucks. That's why you don't casually start one. The south believed they were prepared because they shot some guns. They had no idea at all what they were getting in for, and oh boy it showed.

- Sherman and Grant were both good generals and good people, as much as any career military man ever is. Both of them showed considerable restraint in war, and refrained from atrocities to a surprising degree (more so than most armies in history before or since).


So the problem is that if they put them in a museum, the museum will tend to surround the statues with facts, and oh boy facts don't play well with Lost Causers.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

We don't, as a rule, put up statues of the losers in a war. Last time I checked, participation trophies were considered a bad thing.

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

[Dragon Ball Fan]

I have no problem trashing on certain individuals from the Confederacy but even if it's what they're president wanted, it's simplistic to say the Civil War was ONLY about slavery because no war in history was fought over just one thing. for one thing, in the 1860s, only rich people owned slaves.

[Antiboyscout]

Honestly, they're just statues.

No, they are much more. They are symbols and as such part and representation of the public's memories. They are literally history.

Then they belong in museums. If you want something that's "literally history", go read a book. Or better yet, let's put more money into the education budget. American clearly needs more of that than they do of symbols.

They're literally trying to take down the statue of Teddy Roosevelt in front of the MUSEUM of Natural History. It is LITERALLY a museum piece, and they want it brought down.

[Antiboyscout]

- Sherman and Grant were both good generals and good people, as much as any career military man ever is. Both of them showed considerable restraint in war, and refrained from atrocities to a surprising degree (more so than most armies in history before or since).

That didn't stop the "protesters" from toppling his statue did it?

[GreyICE]

I have no problem trashing on certain individuals from the Confederacy but even if it's what they're president wanted, it's simplistic to say the Civil War was ONLY about slavery because no war in history was fought over just one thing. for one thing, in the 1860s, only rich people owned slaves.

Ah, more lost cause mythology:

The 1860 census shows that in the states that would soon secede from the Union, an average of more than 32 percent of white families owned enslaved people.

Upper class, to be sure, but the south was a place where every white family could aspire to one day own another human being!

I guess you could argue that it was also about ensuring that no one thought black people were equal, and that the black person was kept in their "natural place in the order of things." After all, in their own words:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

...

May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

I have no problem trashing on certain individuals from the Confederacy but even if it's what they're president wanted, it's simplistic to say the Civil War was ONLY about slavery because no war in history was fought over just one thing. for one thing, in the 1860s, only rich people owned slaves.

Ah, more lost cause mythology:

The 1860 census shows that in the states that would soon secede from the Union, an average of more than 32 percent of white families owned enslaved people.

Upper class, to be sure, but the south was a place where every white family could aspire to one day own another human being!

I guess you could argue that it was also about ensuring that no one thought black people were equal, and that the black person was kept in their "natural place in the order of things." After all, in their own words:

The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution African slavery as it exists amongst us the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

...

May we not, therefore, look with confidence to the ultimate universal acknowledgment of the truths upon which our system rests? It is the first government ever instituted upon the principles in strict conformity to nature, and the ordination of Providence, in furnishing the materials of human society. Many governments have been founded upon the principle of the subordination and serfdom of certain classes of the same race; such were and are in violation of the laws of nature. Our system commits no such violation of nature's laws. With us, all of the white race, however high or low, rich or poor, are equal in the eye of the law. Not so with the negro. Subordination is his place. He, by nature, or by the curse against Canaan, is fitted for that condition which he occupies in our system.

I'm just saying what I've read and not from sources pandering to confederate nostalgia.

[GreyICE]

I'm just saying what I've read and not from sources pandering to confederate nostalgia.

Yes, the lost cause shit had a way of infiltrating many sources. Back before the internet, you really were limited to what books people put out, and oh boy they put out books. That lead to it creeping in to other stuff. Ripping it all out by the roots has been annoying.

But 32% of the white population being slaveowners isn't exactly this idea that "only a few rich families owned slaves", is it? It's more like "a third of the population."

Toss in that many non-slaveowning white people worked for slaveowners, had customers who were slaveowners, purchased products made by slaves, and wow, it starts to look like most of the economy was directly interacting with and benefiting from slavery. That's not quite the picture that the lost cause narrative paints, is it?