What are your thoughts on the Confederate memorials being taken down in NOLA?

CaliforniaTide

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I too have no clue if my ancestors owned any slaves. I know my dad's side of the family arrived in colonial North Carolina, fought in the Revolution, and then ended up in Fort Smith, Arkansas by the Great Depression, via Alabama. During the Great Depression, my grandfather was 6 years old when they moved to the San Joaquin Valley (Firebaugh to be exact) for better opportunities. I'm assuming that I had some that fought on the Confederate side, but my mom's side just as well probably had some that fought on the Union side.

It shouldn't make a difference if a family owned slaves during the antebellum period, but obviously to others out there, it does. Just as there were Southerners and non-Southerners that had problems with slavery, there were just as many that had no problem with the economic system at the time. There were race riots in NYC and other Northern cities over the integration of blacks into the Union army, and they were supposedly fighting to make the slaves free!
 

Bodhisattva

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I have no idea if any of my ancestors owned slaves - I suppose if you go back far enough that someone somewhere probably did.

Most of my more recent ancestors (Civl War era) were poor, not the wealthy land-owner types that would have owned slaves.

That said, I couldn't care less either way - it has zero affect on me. I'm not guilty of another man's sins.
Responsibility for what you do? What a quaint notion. You, sir, are supposed to feel responsible for all colonialism, imperialism, racism, and whatnot throughout human history. C'mon, man! I can't shoulder this burden all by myself.
 

TIDE-HSV

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I've noticed when discussions like these come up people who have ancestors from the south feel the need to make it a point to say "but my ancestors didn't own slaves." What if they had? Not directly pointed at you Selma, but what difference does it make for an individual today if their ancestors owned slaves or not? If they did own slaves, is the person living in today's time supposed to carry some sort of guilt for something their ancestors did? I sure hope not.
I just confessed above that my GGF did... :D
 

AUDub

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Give me ambiguity or give me something else.
I too have no clue if my ancestors owned any slaves. I know my dad's side of the family arrived in colonial North Carolina, fought in the Revolution, and then ended up in Fort Smith, Arkansas by the Great Depression, via Alabama. During the Great Depression, my grandfather was 6 years old when they moved to the San Joaquin Valley (Firebaugh to be exact) for better opportunities. I'm assuming that I had some that fought on the Confederate side, but my mom's side just as well probably had some that fought on the Union side.

It shouldn't make a difference if a family owned slaves during the antebellum period, but obviously to others out there, it does. Just as there were Southerners and non-Southerners that had problems with slavery, there were just as many that had no problem with the economic system at the time. There were race riots in NYC and other Northern cities over the integration of blacks into the Union army, and they were supposedly fighting to make the slaves free!
The paramount concern of the Union leadership was preservation of the Union. Pretty much everyone was still racist. Abolition was a big deal amongst the republicans, though, but equality was a long way off (but John Brown was an interesting case. Though he was a murderer and terrorist, he was well ahead of his time regarding equality, even sharing his table with black folks in an era when such a thing was unthinkable. Guy was complicated).

Emancipation was a brilliant maneuver. People in the north at that time understood that our nation did not exist in a vacuum and that there were many powerful nations that would have been delighted with a weakening of the union. Palmerston, for example, who hated Lincoln and who would have dearly loved to see our country weakened, might very well have diplomatically recognized and aided the Confederacy were it not for the prevailing sentiment in Britain regarding slavery and the general public's admiration of Lincoln.

The United States had become a world power by then. In 1862, in under a year, Lincoln had assembled an army of one and half million men. The government was spending two million dollars a day. A ridiculous sum at a time when a skilled laborer was paid a dollar a day. Our Navy was the worlds largest. Nobody was prepared to challenge us as long as we were united. Once the Emancipation Proclamation dropped, it became a war of good vs. evil across the pond and Palmerston's hopes evaporated.
 
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Tidewater

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I have no idea if any of my ancestors owned slaves - I suppose if you go back far enough that someone somewhere probably did.

Most of my more recent ancestors (Civl War era) were poor, not the wealthy land-owner types that would have owned slaves.

That said, I couldn't care less either way - it has zero affect on me. I'm not guilty of another man's sins.
A slave woman came to Stonewall Jackson in Lexington and told him her owner was considering selling her south away from her children (something all slaves had a deadly fear of). She asked Jackson to purchase her to prevent that selling south, so Jackson did. Was this ethical? Would it be more ethical to say, "Not my problem. I'll do nothing." And thus, this poor woman would be "sold south, the very thing she feared most.
This brings up some interesting ethical questions.
Who does bear the responsibility for the existence of the institution? Myself, while the Trans-Atlantic slave trade was still going on, I see a broad spread of blame: the African slave catchers who imprisoned their neighbors to take them down to the coast, the slaveship owners themselves, imperial legislators who did not outlaw the practice, the slave dealers in America (North and South America, most slaves going to the Caribbean and South America where they died out at an alarming rate), the eventual slave owner. After 1808 and international slave trade was outlawed in the US, the chain gets shorter. Either way, plenty of blame to go around.
Toi focus on the end purchaser seems shortsighted.
To expect them to simply give slaves their freedom is a bit unrealistic, akin to asking those who believe in anthropogenic global warming to stop using electricity/oil immediately. It is just not that realistic.
 
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CrimsonProf

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Still not sure how I missed Tidewater in grad school. I do think CaliTide was in McClure's Reformation class with me.

As for slavery - Larry Kohl was always quick to note that racial attitudes in the North were - in the main - no more enlightened than they were in the South, and the ban on the importation of slaves made slavey a far more humane institution than it would have been otherwise.




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Tidewater

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Still not sure how I missed Tidewater in grad school. I do think CaliTide was in McClure's Reformation class with me.

As for slavery - Larry Kohl was always quick to note that racial attitudes in the North were - in the main - no more enlightened than they were in the South, and the ban on the importation of slaves made slavey a far more humane institution than it would have been otherwise.
Larry Kohl is a gentleman. Sadly I believe he retired at the end of the spring 2017 semester.
 

day-day

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Steve Martin in the film All of Me berates a rich woman. "Just because my grandfather didn't rape the environment and exploit the workers doesn't make me a peasant. And it's not that he didn't want to rape the environment and exploit the workers, I'm sure he did. It's just that as a barber, he didn't have that much opportunity."
I have several ancestors who fought in the war (one for the Union, several for the Confederacy). None of them owned slaves, although to paraphrase Steve Martin, I'm sure they would have if they could. Thus, not owning slaves confers no more merit on them than actually owning slaves. It certainly conveys no moral merit on me, in either case.
Even some black folks, especially in early colonial times before slavery became so focused on race, would like to own slaves. Slaves became freemen and bought slaves and not just in cases where they were buying slaves in order to free family members. Once the massive plantations came into play along with the tilt towards African slaves, race became a much bigger factor.

Also, some of the bigtime slave owners thought all poor whites should be slaves.

Just so hard to think on these terms yet it really wasn't that long ago.

One of my grandfathers was born in Radford, VA in 1868 and later in life moved to Alabama and started a 2nd (my mother's) family but I don't know much about his parents. I know even less about most of the other lines of the family but most trace back to Alabama, Georgia and Florida as well as Virginia.
 
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LA4Bama

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Steve Martin in the film All of Me berates a rich woman. "Just because my grandfather didn't rape the environment and exploit the workers doesn't make me a peasant. And it's not that he didn't want to rape the environment and exploit the workers, I'm sure he did. It's just that as a barber, he didn't have that much opportunity."
I have several ancestors who fought in the war (one for the Union, several for the Confederacy). None of them owned slaves, although to paraphrase Steve Martin, I'm sure they would have if they could. Thus, not owning slaves confers no more merit on them than actually owning slaves. It certainly conveys no moral merit on me, in either case.
I have no idea if any of my ancestors owned slaves - I suppose if you go back far enough that someone somewhere probably did.

Most of my more recent ancestors (Civl War era) were poor, not the wealthy land-owner types that would have owned slaves.

That said, I couldn't care less either way - it has zero affect on me. I'm not guilty of another man's sins.
I agree with both of you, what an ancestor did does not confer moral fault directly. However, we are all inheritors of the dysfunctional situation which they left behind, and in that sense we are all responsible for recognizing the present day residual problems and setting them right. That is a different kind of responsibility, not based on moral fault, but based on present day moral decency. I am not at fault for what they did, but if I do nothing to improve the situation, if I let the lingering effects of the past perpetuate, those are my actions and they may be my faults and my own source of guilt.
 

crimsonaudio

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I agree with both of you, what an ancestor did does not confer moral fault directly. However, we are all inheritors of the dysfunctional situation which they left behind, and in that sense we are all responsible for recognizing the present day residual problems and setting them right. That is a different kind of responsibility, not based on moral fault, but based on present day moral decency. I am not at fault for what they did, but if I do nothing to improve the situation, if I let the lingering effects of the past perpetuate, those are my actions and they may be my faults and my own source of guilt.
Sure, I've posted quite a bit on here over the years how the lingering effects of slavery and the resulting laws have hurt generations of black people, and in fact the ripples of those effects continue to this day (and will for some time).

My response was entirely in response to BB's post about people feeling the need to clarify that their forefathers didn't own slaves. I don't know and frankly, couldn't care less. That doesn't mean I have no empathy for those affected by slavery and laws that followed emancipation, but it does mean I carry zero guilt over it.
 

TIDE-HSV

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One thing which has always interested me is the evolution of the institution. In ancient times, being a slave just meant you were unlucky because your tribe lost the battle. The Romans didn't really look down on their Greek slaves as being inferior. On the contrary, they had them teaching their children - Greek. As the worldwide (almost) sensitivity to the moral indefensibility of it became clearer, an odd side effect was the degrading of the slave to some subhuman being in order to justify his slavery. As Brad says, there remain downstream effects of that. I have good friends who are African American and I have good friends who are Africans. At some point, I became aware there was a difference in my interaction with each class. I don't really think it's me, but maybe it is to some degree. Maybe it is the lingering effect Brad is talking about...
 

TrampLineman

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I have one daughter with a PHD and one with a Masters, neither knew about Saigon, the DMZ, Da Nang, TET, Haiphong, Hanoi or the Hanoi Hilton. I told them I wasted a bunch of cash.
Sadly it will be gone from the books in 10-15 years. I would bet a ton of money on it too. And what a shame. Vietnam Vets were just as brave and honorable as WWI and WWII Vets, but since it was a political war they will never get the credit they deserve. I asked my son the other night to tell me what all they've learned in history this year (he is fixing to be junior high age) and it was sickening what little they have learned. It wouldn't surprise me to see history taken out altogether one of these years and it makes me want to puke.
 

TrampLineman

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Since my ancestors, native north Alabamians, fought for the Union, I can't say as I have really strong feelings about it...
Oddly enough I can trace Grandparents back to both sides of the war. One family an Uncle and his sons were facing his brothers in the South. I had one Grandfather lose his leg on Malvern Hill who was in a Pennsylvania Zouave unit. My Confederate Grandfather was KIA on Missionary Ridge after being paroled from Vicksburg after Pemberton surrendered. They were outfitted with outdated gear and sent to Chattanooga to fight Rosecrans and he didn't come back home. But even after all of that, there is no way I could say one was wrong and one was right for the side they chose (I know you didn't say you was for or against one, I'm just saying). It's not that black and white (no pun intended)
 

81usaf92

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One thing which has always interested me is the evolution of the institution. In ancient times, being a slave just meant you were unlucky because your tribe lost the battle. The Romans didn't really look down on their Greek slaves as being inferior. On the contrary, they had them teaching their children - Greek. As the worldwide (almost) sensitivity to the moral indefensibility of it became clearer, an odd side effect was the degrading of the slave to some subhuman being in order to justify his slavery. As Brad says, there remain downstream effects of that. I have good friends who are African American and I have good friends who are Africans. At some point, I became aware there was a difference in my interaction with each class. I don't really think it's me, but maybe it is to some degree. Maybe it is the lingering effect Brad is talking about...
But the Romans sure treated their African and Gaul slaves harshly. Greeks were more valuable due to the fact that the whole Mediterranean, Egypt, and the lands of the former Persian Empire spoke Greek due to Alexander's conquests.
 

CrimsonProf

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20 years from now everyone will look back on all of this and wonder why anyone would oppose it. Our treatment of the Indians, of the slaves, and even of the Japanese/Americans was deplorable and shouldn't be commemorated in statues.
Mary and Joseph - those statues aren't about "our treatment of the slaves."
 

Tidewater

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20 years from now everyone will look back on all of this and wonder why anyone would oppose it. Our treatment of the Indians, of the slaves, and even of the Japanese/Americans was deplorable and shouldn't be commemorated in statues.
Once again, the monument was not erected to celebrate the mistreatment of slaves.

The day after the unveiling, the New Orleans Times-Picayune of February 23, 1884 (page 10, col. 1) said this:
"Veteran soldiers who had fought in the Federal Army, and those who had been in the Confederate ranks marched together yesterday to the unveiling of the Lee statue. It was the soldier's tribute to a great soldier."
Are you seriously arguing that Union veterans were marching to "commemorate" the "[mis]treatment of slaves?"

"Those poor Union veterans. They did not even know they were celebrating slavery."
 

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