Why Are We Honoring Traitors?
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I didn’t know there was a ceremony in which the president sent a wreath to the Confederate war memorial, and I have to say President Obama’s compromise of sending one to the African American Civil War Memorial is pretty weak tea.
The confederate army was a traitorous organization. Their very existence was in defense of the subjugation of millions. The confederate army existed to keep people like myself, my family, and President Obama and his family in shackles forever. Why the heck would we honor that?
We should build a shopping mall there.
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True dat.
True dat.
The Kirk Savage op-ed made some good points. But it’s pretty weird and disturbing that the Confederacy and its generals are somehow accorded a level of devotion that’s pretty out of place for the “principles” under which it fought and opposed the union.
Funny thing is, the same celebrants of the Confederacy and of the Lost Cause are many of the same ones so quick to call liberals and northeastern Americans especially, traitors.
This is something I have long not understood. My impression is that this is one of those things that everybody really knows is wrong, but there are a lot Southerners who have strong ties to their Confederate heritage, and these guys hold political power and/or are really loud. Obama needs to keep his political capital in the bank to use in the coming Health Care/Cap-and-Trade/Labor/Supreme Court fights.
Strategically, it was probably the right thing to do, even if it wasn’t, well…the right thing to do.
it’s pretty weird and disturbing that the Confederacy and its generals are somehow accorded a level of devotion that’s pretty out of place for the “principles” under which it fought and opposed the union.
Yes. It’s one thing to lay a wreath at war dead rank-and-file soldiers of the confederacy. I’m having a hard time avoiding Goodwinning the thread, here, but the point is that we have unreasonably deified the people in charge of the confederacy (Jefferson Davis highway???) while the unwarranted honor of these leaders is cloaked in a guise of veneration of the rank-and-filed soldiers.
We should build a shopping mall there.
Bwaha! Made me laugh.
Make it a memorial to stupidity. Dedicate it to blind obedience to really dumb group thinking.
These traitors shot U.S. soldiers in the face; they are worse than the Iraqi IED makers, as those are not traitors to the U.S.A., just its military enemies.
Oliver, it should be a landfill, not a shopping center.
Like it or not, oppressors or oppressed, they were all Americans.
We need to figure out how to get the South past its need to glorify the oppressors and onto acknowledging their and their ancestors’ complicity and/or outright guilt in the enslavement (and subsequent oppression, even after they lost) of millions of people. Whether or not you think that was what the war was about, it is certain that it was the BEST thing it was about.
Shopping mall? Trivializing it.
Which just might be the right thing.
A lot of people are wrapped up in ancestry worship these days. When that happens, it becomes harder and harder to admit that those idols oft had feet of clay.
Stupid, but understandable. Wrong, but understandable.
And Tyro, if you really, really wanna Godwinize this thread, I have two words for you: “Reagan” and “Bitburg.”
Hell, I’m astonished no one else has brought it up yet…
J.
And Tyro, if you really, really wanna Godwinize this thread, I have two words for you: “Reagan” and “Bitburg.”
You’d have a point there Mr. Tea, if German soldiers were, in fact, Americans and if we routinely honored them year after year. Other than those niggling distinctions, spot on sir!
“The confederate army existed to keep people like myself, my family, and President Obama and his family in shackles forever. Why the heck would we honor that?”
It is perfectly understandable that you would have personal animosity towards the south and that it colors your perception of both this country and the your world view. Such thinking has long dominated human nature and history since the dawn of time. This is your blog and a perfect place for you to vent your emotions.
“it’s pretty weird and disturbing that the Confederacy and its generals are somehow accorded a level of devotion that’s pretty out of place for the “principles” under which it fought and opposed the union.”
Perhaps you would like to expand on what those principles might have been. Besides the obvious of slavery. To understand the past you need to look at it in the context of the times.
The people who provided the military and governing framework of the Confederacy were honorable men behaving honorably fighting a losing cause. Failure to understand what State’s rights meant reveals a basic ignorance of the legal constraints and construction of this nation. You could make a much stronger case for Jane Fonda being a traitor than Jefferson Davis.
While it is not the supreme law of the land, the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence provides context for the idea of seccessation. Blacks will find it distasteful to acknowledge that they were not univerally held to be human or at best, if human not worthy of human rights.
That no one civilized now would hold such views is a good thing. But historically the condition of slavery has nothing to do with racial views of humanity. Indeed I hear very little from the black community regarding slavery that exists today. One might think that this would be a topic that was loudly debated and a cause prominently championed by organizations like the CBC and NAACP.
Failure to understand what State’s rights meant reveals a basic ignorance of the legal constraints and construction of this nation.
As long as we understand that “states’ rights” is a euphemism for the “right” to enslave other humans, a practice outlawed long earlier in all other civilized nations.
Was there another issue that the South felt it needed to raise an army and defend its “states’ rights” over?
A lot of people are wrapped up in ancestry worship these days.
You see, I don’t see anything wrong with venerating the memory of your grandfather’s grandfather who was a soldier in the Confederate Army and maybe preserving a bit of his memorabilia.
It’s when you create a shrine to Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis that the whole thing goes off the rails and justify it by invoking the need to preserve the memory of the rank-and-file soldiers.
Here’s a non-Goodwin example: I know plenty of people of all sorts of different ethnic backgrounds (who live in the USA) whose ancestors served in the Ottoman Army during WWI. Now, I wouldn’t have any problem with the idea of preserving some WWI memorabilia or laying a wreath to the dead Ottomans (and Allies) at Anzac. But no one in their right mind venerates the Ottoman Sultan. And no one but an ethnic Turk would honor Gen. Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk).
The south has purposely tried to conflate the honoring of the rank-and-file confederate war dead with their veneration of the leaders of the civil war specifically to honor the Confederacy with the plausible deniability of “heritage.”
You know, we liberals criticize the right-wing for turning every single policy issue with respect to terrorism into an WW2 analogy. (everyone who disagreed with Bush was a “Chamberlain”, every war with Iraq or the Taliban was likened to fighting the Nazis) But, you know, it’s kind of hard to make war analogies without reaching immediately for what we’re most familiar with, when it comes to “good” vs. “evil”: you’re immediately going to reach for WW2 and the Nazis.
The people who flew the Confederate Flag fired on the Flag of the United States of America, made war on the United States, and shot at United States soldiers.
It’s time we stopped honoring open treason.
“You could make a much stronger case for Jane Fonda being a traitor than Jefferson Davis.”
Uh, no.
Repack,
The south thought slavery an economic neccessity and saw northern efforts to outlaw it as an attack on both thier State sovereignty and economy. I am not justifing slavery but I understand it in the context of the times.
The “United” States was a political compromise between 13 separate sovereign entities. The States do have rights and would not have joined together without the artful set of checks and balances devised by the founders. Certainly the southern states would not have joined if they thought thier economies would be put in jeopardy several generations into the future. The men of the Confederacy were honorable men with the courage of thier convictions.
Depending on your definition of civilized you are incorrect in claiming that we had slaves in this nation far longer than any other civilized nation. Slavery existed in the western hemisphere under basically european management until 1888. It exists today in parts of Africa and the mideast.
.
Imagine if Dwight Eisenhower (West Point, 1915), at the outbreak of WWII, had turned down a command in the US Army and instead secreted away to his ancestral Germany, accepted a command in the Wehrmacht and eventually rose to Chief of the General Staff.
At the end of the war he would have been tried at Nuremberg and hung.
Well Robert E. Lee (West Point, 1829) at the outbreak of the Civil War refused a command in the Union Army, secreted away to Virgina, accepted a command and eventually rose to be general-in-chief of Confederate forces. I think he should have been tried for treason and hung.
He certainly should not be honored today in any way and his name should only be spoken with a spit.
The men of the Confederacy were honorable men with the courage of thier convictions.
You keep using this word “honorable.” I don’t think it means what you think it means. Holding other humans prisoner because of the economic benefits derived from the practice is not something that could be “honored” then or now.
The south thought slavery an economic neccessity
See. That’s not a feature.
The men of the Confederacy were honorable men with the courage of thier convictions.</i?
Since when is treason honorable?
I am not justifing slavery but I understand it in the context of the times.
And if you defend the south and its actions, you are in fact defending slavery. This Lost Cause bullshit is the kind of nonsense I was attacking just a few posts ago about the kind of nonsense that still comes out of the south.
Yes, the Civil War was fought for economic reasons. Those reasons being the south wanted free labor from slaves so they could keep making a lot of money. Was the north an equal rights wonderland? Of course not. But the north did not try to destroy the United States by disassembling the union then take up arms against the country, did it?
By any definition it is treason. And those who are treasonous deserve death.
Jane Fonda let herself be used as a tool of the other side when in protest of the war. Jefferson Davis was the leader of a terroristic organization in armed rebellion versus the United States.
Its a little different.
Maybe it has to do with that whole “with malice toward none, with charity for all” thing…
In general I’m a proponent of federalism, but it’s past time to stop pretending that state’s rights in the 1860s or 1950s meant anything but racism.
Those reasons being the south wanted free labor from slaves so they could keep making a lot of money.
Because I know you’re a history guy, OW, I’ll add this little nuance only out of personal interest: treatment of slaves differed wildly throughout the south. Many were well-treated, had their own homes with a relatively high number of personal possessions, treated almost as friends/employees without freedom of movement, as perverse as that might sound.
Southerners from the beginning of the industrial revolution made the argument that workers in the north were more slave than those in the south – as wage slaves, that is. Slaves had to be decently cared for in general because they were a huge investment of time and money; wage slaves toiling in a factory had no such guarantee that their personal needs – the bottom level of Maslow’s heirarchy – would be met by their meager salaries. We of course have those commie unions in the early 20th century to thank for rectifying that situation.
Of course I don’t need to add the caveat that this is in no way condoning the evils of slavery, that I post it just out of interest in the period, but hell, I’ll add it anyway.
The Civil War was fought to preserve the right of some people to own other people. That is it. It is just that simple. Every effort to sugarcoat, every effort to divert the topic to economics, states rights, Jane Fonda, or whatever, is just bullshit.
Slavery violated the very principle this country was founded on. Fighting a war to preserve slavery was both treasonous and stupid. And the top political and military leaders of that effort were traitors, both to their country and to the people they led into that disastrous endeavor.
Slavery was evil. Our treatment of black people from 1865 to 1965 was evil. While we have made progress since, it is inexcusable that there is still work to be done.
In the interest of full disclosure, I am a white male from Tennessee.
Why do we ‘honor’ this? Because Americans died by the hand of other Americans in the bloodiest war this nation has ever seen. I think that’s reason enough.
Americans died by the hand of other Americans
Nope. The ones who fought against the United States stopped being “Americans” when they joined a hostile army. They fought on behalf of a country that the United States defeated.
It amazes me to this day how Confederate apologists REFUSE to flat-out state that the Civil War was about keeping blacks enslaved. Period. THAT was the reason.
Those that fought for the Confederacy shouldn’t be honored. They were traitors.
I found it interesting that “Men of God” in the South used Christianity and the Bible as the basis for their justifications of the practice of slavery.
A little Googling found these nuggets:
“[Slavery] was established by decree of Almighty God…it is sanctioned in the Bible, in both Testaments, from Genesis to Revelation…it has existed in all ages, has been found among the people of the highest civilization, and in nations of the highest proficiency in the arts.” Jefferson Davis, President, Confederate States of America
“The right of holding slaves is clearly established in the Holy Scriptures, both by precept and example.” Rev. R. Furman, D.D., a Baptist pastor from South Carolina
“The Negroes thus imported were generally contented and happy … Careless and mirthful by nature, they were eager to find a master when they reached the shore, and the cruel seperations [sic] to which they were sometimes exposed, and which for the moment gave them excruciating agony, were forgotten at the sound of their rude musical instruments and in the midst of their noisy dances. The great Architect had framed them both physically and mentally to fill the sphere in which they were thrown, and His wisdom and mercy combined in constituting them thus suited to the degraded position they were destined to occupy. Hence, their submissiveness, their obedience, their contentment.” Thomas R. Cobb
According to the Cemetery’s websites, public and private, those first buried at the Memorial were originally scattered around the area, in various smaller cemeteries next to the Old Capitol POW camp or the USA General Hospital, and all of the Confederate dead were brought to that single plot so that the government could look after their remains as a further gesture of postwar national unity. It’s a damn shame that a bunch of Lost Cause nimrods have screwed up this (in the overall scheme of things) small effort too.
If you’re joking about screwing with the dead, Oliver, why not disinter all of the dead who are buried on the Lee family farm, the first 600 acres of Arlington National Cemetery, and salt the earth while you’re at it? Then you could put up a theme park. Call it YankeeDisney or something. If you really wanted to sell the product, you could put all those Confederate bones in a big latrine at the park, too.
It’s not like they were Americans or anything. Except that a lot of them were. When they died, they were Americans. They were covered under various pendant and postwar amnesties proposed by Lincoln and Johnson, and they lived for decades after the war was over as citizens of the United States. One of them went on to fight in the Spanish-American War as Teddy Roosevelt’s CO. One served as an official archivist for the War Department, gathering Confederate records for decades. One was a minister in Washington DC for years after the war. A couple of them were Congressmen.
In this day when the Republicans have so effectively shot themselves in the foot – well, both feet, over and over – and to their continuing shame have let some racists have any voice at all in a national party, it’s easy to pick live targets. You don’t kick a man when he’s down, and especially not when he’s six feet down, and you don’t kick his wife buried next to him either. Leave them be, even in words. There are plenty of targets above ground.
Mr Obama is under no obligation to continue this “tradition.” It didn’t take me long to find out that President George H.W. Bush discontinued the laying of a wreath on the Memorial back in 1990, because he was tired of dealing with all the Lost Cause groups too. For the whole decade, no wreath was laid there on Memorial Day by an Administration official, or on his/her orders. The previous President revived that practice in 2001. It can be set aside again. It’s not about national unity anymore; it’s about the Lost Cause. The SCV, the UDOC, and their Republican backers have seen to that.
KC
I think KC said it about as good as it needs to be said.
*****
“treatment of slaves differed wildly throughout the south. Many were well-treated, had their own homes with a relatively high number of personal possessions, treated almost as friends/employees without freedom of movement, as perverse as that might sound.”
*****
I’m always astonished to find adult human beings bringing this up as though it cast the whole institution of slavery in some gentler new light. A certain relatively small percentage of the slave population enjoyed special comforts… how does that in any way redeem the fundamental evil of the institution, or improve the case of the millions that toiled and died in a state of misery?
The power to control a slave, absolutely and arbitrarily, is vile whether or not it is used. The power to inflict limitless cruelty on another human being, on a whim, without any legal or social consequences, is wrong SIMPLY BECAUSE IT FUCKING EXISTS.
Hear, hear, KC.
J.
Again, no acknowledgement from the apologist. They were NOT Americans. They were Confederates. That was the whole point of seceding!
So, can we agree that the Obama ‘gesture’ was purely political?
Oliver,
You’re not going to get away with setting up a strawman about understanding history in the context of the times being the same as condoning slavery. In fact you may be a wee bit hypocritical on the whole subject of slavery. I don’t recall you using your bully pulpit here to worry much about slavery that is going on right now in the modern world, only about the slavery of your relations that ended 150 years ago.
It’s a shame but you are unable to set aside your personal animosity and actually understand both American and world history in the context of the times. It has been said that politics is the art of what’s possible.
Neither you or Repack are willing to acknowledge the concept or validity of States rights. Do you honestly think that the southern states whose economies were based on plantation style agriculture would have agreed to join the Union if they thought they would face economic ruin in 3 or 4 generations time?
Without thier agreement thier would have been no Union to preserve. Or if there was it would be much smaller and not include the south. It is highly unlikely that a United States that consisted of only the north would have done anything to abolish slavery in the “foriegn” lands to the south.
Slavery would have continued perhaps until economics crushed it through the inherant ineffiency that slavery creats. It is damn hard to get consistant effiency out of a workforce whose only recourse to unjust conditions is to withhold as much as possible.
“And those who are treasonous deserve death.”
LOL Oliver, a bit of a drama queen moment. If you actually know what giving aid and comfort to an enemy in a time of war means you can’t possibly believe anyone is going to take your statement seriously. You are in effect saying Jane Fonda deserves death. She may very well do so but you don’t believe it.
As I said earlier I understand you personaly have a hard on about the south for enslaving your ancesters. That is an understandable human emotion. But when you let it color your perception of history so much you destroy your credibility. Regardless of what you think it’s not all about you.
You push hard against those you perceive as your political enemies. When you push so hard you have to expect some of your fellow Americans to push back.
“
You’re not going to get away with setting up a strawman about understanding history in the context of the times being the same as condoning slavery. In fact you may be a wee bit hypocritical on the whole subject of slavery. I don’t recall you using your bully pulpit here to worry much about slavery that is going on right now in the modern world, only about the slavery of your relations that ended 150 years ago.
Gee, Amused, if there was a context for understanding slavery 150 years ago, surely there must be a context for understanding it today.
Would you care to enlighten us as to why modern slave traders are “honorable men”?
I don’t remember her name off hand, but the female African-American historian interviewed in Ken Burns’ Civil War essentially asked, in what f’ing context can it ever be acceptable for one group of people to assert property rights over another?
Neither you or Repack are willing to acknowledge the concept or validity of States rights. Do you honestly think that the southern states whose economies were based on plantation style agriculture would have agreed to join the Union if they thought they would face economic ruin in 3 or 4 generations time?
There’s the problem with “Originalism” in a nutshell.
AO, your cherished “states’ rights” seem to include the right for one human being to hold another against his or her will for profit. That’s indefensible in any context. As a matter of fact, we had a war about it and the “states’ rights” side lost.
It was in the papers. Maybe you read about it.
And in the South’s abandonment of the United States and the Constitution in the aftermath of the 1860 election, which was fairly contested and settled, we see the basic “principles” of today’s conservative movement. When they lose, they just decide the winning side isn’t legitimate, and that it’s OK for them to begin talk of secession, try to pass “sovereignty” resolutions, hold “tea parties”, and other such nonsense.
Best line I’ve ever heard about this subject:
“The crime of slavery as practiced in the United
States was not that slaves were badly treated – although
they undoubtedly were. The crime was that it existed
at all.” Anyone who does not recognize this either does
not understand, or refuses to understand, the issue.
That said, the whole point to ‘post-war reconcilation’
as proposed by Lincoln and imperfectly executed by his
successors was to assist the (white) South in getting
over its big bad self and joining the rest of the
country. We all see how well THAT worked out. Granted,
almost everything else (no Reconstruction at all, radical
Reconstruction, etc.) might have been worse, but let’s
not fool ourselves about how things went 1865-1965.
I think its also important to remember that many soldiers in the Confederate army weren’t there by choice. Although formal conscription came late to the Confederacy, informal conscription was quite common, via societal pressure especially. A rich man’s war and a poor man’s fight comes to mind. Of course that doesn’t erase the historic fact that the south fought to preserve slavery, but the landholding plantation class was also the political class, and not the poor or tenant farmer.
But they weren’t successful in their attempt to secede. I’m far, very, very far, from being a Civil War scholar, but isn’t the actual status of the states in the Confereracy that they were always part of the USA, even though they were in open rebellion? No nation recognized the CSA, and the states of the Confederacy didn’t have to go through the actual process of applying to join the USA that potentional new states need to go through.
I think Lincoln’s Secretary of State put it pretty well.
“Treason” is a very popular term these days. Too popular for our own good, I think. Too easy.
The fact is that, as usual, both sides are partly right. The Civil War was fought over slavery, and it was fought over State’s Rights. Specifically, it was fought over the right of individual states to determine whether slavery would be permitted, even if that went against federal law. Federal supremacy won out in the end.
So what is “treason?” Is treason decided by the victors, and all who fought against them traitors? I suppose that’s one way to look at it. By that measure, every citizen who voted for secession could be seen as guilty of treason. Perhaps Oliver would like to have seen the white residents of the South rounded up into death camps and exterminated in their hundreds of thousands. Certainly there were pogroms before, and since; it wouldn’t have been unprecedented to massacre so many after a failed revolution. And certainly the former slaves would have had ample cause to see such a thing as justice too long delayed. But would that have been in keeping with the ideals of America? President Lincoln didn’t seem to think so.
As far as honoring the Confederate dead, I think Obama’s compromise struck exactly the right balance. ALL who fought in the Civil War (save those who did it for the money only) ultimately did so out of conviction that their side was right. Robert E. Lee was one of the best generals in American history; he fought for the Confederacy because his home state, Virginia, seceded and he felt his duty lay there, with his family and the people of whose community he had always been a part. We may dispute whether his choice was wise, but to demand his death as a traitor when all he did was try to do his duty as he saw it strikes me as a desire for simple revenge. That’s the spirit behind the tumbrels and guillotine of the Reign of Terror, not America.
The Civil War is part of our history. It put an end to an odious and barbaric practice and reaffirmed the concept of federal supremacy, as well as preserving the union. Those who fought on both sides are deserving of remembrance; they fought and died with honor, even if the cause of the Confederacy was less then noble. By all means stress that point, that it was good that the Confederacy failed; that’s part of understanding history, so hopefully we do not repeat it.
The Civil War is part of our history. It put an end to an odious and barbaric practice and reaffirmed the concept of federal supremacy, as well as preserving the union. Those who fought on both sides are deserving of remembrance; they fought and died with honor,
They died with honor defending an odious and barbaric practice.
Got it.
What odious and barbaric practice did the Union defend? Scorched earth tactics?
It’s not something which keeps me up at night because, frankly, I’d be long dead. But it does give me pause to think that well-intentioned people will decide that disinterring my remains and building a shopping mall is a good idea because I happened to have been in a military which found itself on the wrong side of history.
Assuming that they’d even both disinterring me. In that case I guarantee some serious haunting of the food court.
And in the South’s abandonment of the United States and the Constitution in the aftermath of the 1860 election, which was fairly contested and settled, we see the basic “principles” of today’s conservative movement. When they lose, they just decide the winning side isn’t legitimate, and that it’s OK for them to begin talk of secession, try to pass “sovereignty” resolutions, hold “tea parties”, and other such nonsense.
Actually, Bulworth, I think you’d find a better comparison to how many Democrats reacted after the 2000 election. “He’s not my president.” “Let’s not elect him again in 2004.” “Selected, not elected.” “Jesusland.”
Considerably less extreme, of course, but much the same sentiment.
J.
“I think you’d find a better comparison to how many Democrats reacted after the 2000 election”
Ah yes, that perfectly normal, unobtrusive election in 2000 where the Dem won a majority of the vote and had his election stolen by Republican lawyers in Florida.
Nothing to see here, moving right along.
When the modern conservative movement doesn’t get what it wants, it tries to change the rules. Can’t argue against the factual basis of evolution? Let’s start our own universities in Jesus/Bizarro-land!
I don’t want to get into the Confederate discussion (save for noting that all my ancestors who served in the Civil War were on the Union side, and the Southern half of my family began with my Swiss-born immigrant grandfather settling in Kentucky) but I’m fond of a story that’s probably apocryphal but still, I think, illustrates a certain Truth.
They say that an American War Veterans group in Oklahoma got into Big Trouble with their parent organization because, though overwhelmingly Indian, they elected one of their White members as Post Commander because he was really good at Organizing things, got along well with just about everyone, and had fought bravely and honorably for his country during World War II. The problem was that, during the war, he was a German citizen, and fought on what we’d consider (and what he now considered) The Wrong Side.
(Disclaimer: I may be somewhat prejudiced, here, because my paternal grandmother’s grandfather had been press-ganged into the British navy during the War of 1812, and didn’t settle in Upper New York state until a few years after that.)
Accounts of how that Veterans Post handled the situation vary, though I prefer the one that says they followed the National Organization’s directives, but kept the guy doing just what he’d been doing before, though with other (U.S. Veterans) names in the spaces on the paperwork.
The point here, and in these various commemorations of past wars, seems to me to be that we honor people who fought bravely, even though their allegiance may have been misguided, and that we mourn the fact that there were, are, and continue to be, wars at all.