Confederate Monuments

[Julio3000]

I thought this deserved its own thread, since we're discussing it in one that's ostensibly about the Trump presidency. It seems like there's an interesting diversity of opinion on the issue.

[The Chosen One]

I'm ok with individual cities wanting to get rid of them if that's what the city councils decide. Move them to a museum where people can learn the history. All proceeds go to some charity.

I'm personally not offended by Stone Mountain. Been there thrice. It would be cool if we go this though:

[nsacpi]

shouldn't we also have a thread for the southerners who stayed loyal to the country

[Julio3000]

shouldn't we also have a thread for the southerners who stayed loyal to the country

I think that's an important historical fact which is easily glossed over in Lost Cause mythmaking. There was a choice. It's fair to say that choosing loyalty to the republic might have meant dispossession and disconnection from family and friends, but let's not forget that the choice existed.

[Julio3000]

I'm ok with individual cities wanting to get rid of them if that's what the city councils decide. Move them to a museum where people can learn the history. All proceeds go to some charity.

I'm personally not offended by Stone Mountain. Been there thrice. It would be cool if we go this though:

Cosign.

[The Chosen One]

I just caught Free State of Jones late the other night.

[Julio3000]

[57Brave]

http://www.motherjones.com/kevin-dru...erate-statues/

[Julio3000]

The comment about Teddy Roosevelt in the other thread brought to mind a local controversy.

Clemson University (40 min up the road from me) has a prominent building named Tillman Hall. It's named in honor of Ben Tillman, a SC governor and senator (and, of course, a populist Democrat), postbellum paramilitary leader, and a founding trustee of the university.

Upon the occasion of Teddy Roosevelt's dining with Booker T. Washington at the White House, Ben Tillman said this:

"The action of President Roosevelt in entertaining that n***** will necessitate our killing a thousand n***** in the South before they learn their place again."

He's also the author of such gems as:

"We of the South have never recognized the right of the Negro to govern white men, and we never will. We have never believed him to be the equal of the white man, and we will not submit to his gratifying his lust on our wives and daughters without lynching him." (on the Senate floor, no less)

...and many, many others just as vile.

The building was originally known as Main Hall or Old Main Hall until 1946, when it was renamed for Tillman. Why is it considered to be an unconscionable revision of history to rename the building in 2017, but not in 1946?

What was happening in 1946? I can think of a few things. Black Americans were returning from Europe to a country that denied them basic rights. The germ of the modern Civil Rights movement was coalescing. White supremacist voting practices were being challenged in court, and blacks were being killed and menaced for attempting to vote. That year, President Truman established the Commission on Civil Rights. Within two years he ordered the desegregation of the army.

In that context, in South Carolina, what did naming a prominent public building after Pitchfork Ben Tillman signify? Why is it an unforgivable sin against history to consider undoing it?

[bravesnumberone]

I'm ok with individual cities wanting to get rid of them if that's what the city councils decide. Move them to a museum where people can learn the history. All proceeds go to some charity.

I'm personally not offended by Stone Mountain. Been there thrice. It would be cool if we go this though:

Gotta put Bobby on there.

[57Brave]

The strangest part about the continued personality cult of Robert E. Lee is how few of the qualities his admirers profess to see in him he actually possessed.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics...al-lee/529038/


When two of his slaves escaped and were recaptured, Lee either beat them himself or ordered the overseer to "lay it on well." Wesley Norris, one of the slaves who was whipped, recalled that “not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.”
.................................................. .................................................. ............................


This article is chilling

[cajunrevenge]

And what might the rest of you have done if you were born at the time and owned slaves? There were abolitionists but they were hated so much their meetings were often attacked by angry mobs. Everyone wants to think they would have been the abolitionist when reality is most would be the angry mob.

[57Brave]

"And what might the rest of you have done if you were born at the time and owned slaves?"

Not laid claim to other human beings.

**** I feel funny laying claim to land
..

I am sorry but I don't feel the moral ambiguity some here feel . Few things in life are black and white - right and wrong
seceding from the USA then fighting a war over slavery is clearly a wrong.
Participating in that war is unimaginable. Being a leader to uphold slavery is --- I dont even have a word
150 years later trying to rationalize the morality of that war to obtain tax cuts for the 1% is --- again. I dont have a word
That word hasn't been invented yet

[goldfly]

if the thought is we are putting outkast on stone mountain instead of the stupid carving up there now

where do i sign to start that right now?

[Oklahomahawk]

Not laid claim to other human beings.

**** I feel funny laying claim to land

Two quick things, though I am not in any way, shape, form, or fashion defending slavery or anything close to it, but are you sure you aren't?

1.) You do know that at the beginning of the Civil War only 25% or 1 in 4 southerners owned ANY slaves at all? Now obviously any is too many but it's not like the usual Harriet Beecher Stowe stuff.

2.) Do you only hate southern antebellum slavery, the old school stuff or will you condemn all forms of slavery?

[57Brave]

1 and 2 of course

2 I fidn slavery abhorrent in Yemen.
What difference does that make ?
One side of the war fought to eradicate slavery in N America and the other didn't

I am tire of hypotheticals. The reality pf the past year is enough to deal with without a bunch of what if's

[Oklahomahawk]

1 and 2 of course

2 I fidn slavery abhorrent in Yemen.
What difference does that make ?
One side of the war fought to eradicate slavery in N America and the other didn't

I am tire of hypotheticals. The reality pf the past year is enough to deal with without a bunch of what if's

Because there are all sorts of slavery, there's the old school kind that's easy (and rightly) condemn, but what about what the northern industrialists did to the millions of immigrants who came here during and after that period of our history? You can work here for pennies, long hours, low pay, terrible and dangerous working conditions, make them live in the terrible and disease ridden tenement houses where their children died of disease from playing in the filthy streets and living in the drafty houses. To me the Gilded Age was even more about slavery than the antebellum South but the type of slavery they practiced was more subtle and well gilded.

[Tapate50]

I'm ok with individual cities wanting to get rid of them if that's what the city councils decide. Move them to a museum where people can learn the history. All proceeds go to some charity.

I'm personally not offended by Stone Mountain. Been there thrice. It would be cool if we go this though:

I know he may be from Texas, but how about we change the name to Stone "COLD" Mountain and put the rattlesnake up there ? I think everyone can identify with guzzling a Coors light as fast as possible ?

[Julio3000]

I know he may be from Texas, but how about we change the name to Stone "COLD" Mountain and put the rattlesnake up there ? I think everyone can identify with guzzling a Coors light as fast as possible ?

That is a branding opportunity not to be missed.

[57Brave]

Because there are all sorts of slavery, there's the old school kind that's easy (and rightly) condemn, but what about what the northern industrialists did to the millions of immigrants who came here during and after that period of our history? You can work here for pennies, long hours, low pay, terrible and dangerous working conditions, make them live in the terrible and disease ridden tenement houses where their children died of disease from playing in the filthy streets and living in the drafty houses. To me the Gilded Age was even more about slavery than the antebellum South but the type of slavery they practiced was more subtle and well gilded.

That too was eradicated.
Your point -- that the North had their form of slavery too ?
More of that ole time both sides ....
C'mon Hawk ...
How's about reports of Trump's Eastern European models -- I mean we could go on.
Wasn't that at the heart of HRC's child porography ring, that she held child slaves ?

Unions ?
Wasn't that the cure to the situations you gave above, at least in US. Then the monied argued that belonging to a union too was a form of slavery ... College Republicans and the John Birchers and the Libertarians bought on to that because they didnt have to bargain for labor and could pay whatever they liked with no repurcussions
Does taking out a mortgage a form of slavery. I once had a boss that told me he didn't know how to motivate me because I didnt own anything or owe anything.
Is holding ones roof over his head a form of slavery ?

Owning by deed, bartering with, putting a price on humans = slavery

Please, no more hypotheticals or what if's or whatabouts //
reality is ****ed up and complicated enough right now