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

81usaf92 · May 22, 2017

Bamaro said:
MLK was a loyal American. Lee was not.

Lets get rid of these since they stood by and allowed South Carolina and Georgia to continue the institution of Slavery while owning slaves themselves

Relayer · May 22, 2017

81usaf92 said:
Lets get rid of these since they stood by and allowed South Carolina and Georgia to continue the institution of Slavery while owning slaves themselves

Don't think for one minute that there aren't plenty of lefties who would jump at the chance.

81usaf92 · May 22, 2017

Relayer said:
Don't think for one minute that there aren't plenty of lefties who would jump at the chance.

Yeah the point is where does it end.

Tidewater · May 22, 2017

Here are extracts from the speech at the ceremony when the city unveiled the Lee statue.
From The Southern Historical Society Papers, vol. XIV, January To December, 1886.
Ceremonies Connected with the Unveiling of the Statue of General Robert E. Lee, at Lee Circle, New Orleans, Louisiana, February 22, 1884.

Oration by Charles E. Fenner.
Fenner quoted US Army General Winfield Scott,

Scott said:
"Lee was the greatest living soldier of America," and that "if a great battle was to be fought for the liberty or slavery of America, and I were asked my judgment as to the ability of a commander, I would say with my dying breath, 'Let it be Robert E. Lee.’"

This, by the way, is the only time the word “slavery” is used in the ceremony. Anybody who says different is a liar.

Fenner said:
… Lee loved the Union. It was emphatically the Union of his fathers, whose cunning hands had wrought in its construction. It was the Union of Washington, the idol of his worship. It was his own Union for which he had fought, and in whose service the "dearest action" of his life had been spent. The tenor of his way had removed him from the growing exacerbation of political strife. The bitterness of sectional hate had not entered his soul. He loved the whole Union. To his acute prevision, its threatened disruption meant chaos and inevitable, desperate war. He opposed secession. He lifted his voice against it in words of solemn warning and protestation. … [When] Virginia [seceded] standing in the solitude of her original sovereignty, with imperial voice, in her hour of peril, summoned all her children to her side. Lee she called by name, singled him out as chiefest of her sons, her Hector, the pillar of her house. Stern mother, as she was, she held out to him the baton of her armies and bade him take it and protect her honor, or die in its defence. … With gracious mien he put aside all contrary solicitations, surrendered to the Union the unstained sword which he had worn so worthily, and parting from the friends and associations of his youth and manhood in sorrow, but not at all in anger, bent his steps to his mother, Virginia, and kneeling reverently at her feet received from her hand the chieftain's sword, and there, kissing its hilt, swore eternal fealty to her cause. For this act he has been denounced as a deserter from his flag and a traitor to his country. For this act he went down to his grave a disfranchised citizen of a restored Union.

Fenner addressed the problem of divorcing the skill of the soldier from the merits of his cause.

Fenner said:
If these charges against Lee are true, the urgent question presents itself: What do we here to-day; erecting a monument to a deserter or a traitor? To magnify the deeds of our heroes, without at the same time vindicating the cause for which they were done, would be to ignore that which gives to those deeds their highest merit and grace and beauty. Mere brute courage, and even the highest military skill, are not, of themselves, fit subjects for commemoration in monumental brass. A pirate captain has often fought in defence of his black flag with as desperate bravery and as consummate art as Nelson at Trafalgar or Lawrence on the decks of the Constitution. A bandit chief might display as much devotion, skill and courage in defending some mountain pass, the key to the lair of his band, as were exhibited by Leonidas at Thermopylae. But we do not build monuments to these. We cannot afford to sink our heroes to the level of mere prizefighters, who deluged a continent in blood without just right or lawful cause.

Fenner then addressed the issue of secession.

Fenner said:
“We, the people of the South, have renewed our unreserved allegiance to the Constitution as thus authoritatively construed. By the bloody Caesarian operation of the war, the right of secession has indisputably been eviscerated from the fundamental law.

Fenner denied wanting to reopen settled constitutional controversies.

Fenner said:
Standing by the grave of this dead and buried right of secession, we inscribe upon its tomb the solemn "requiescat in pace" … but fanaticism itself cannot deny us the privilege of asserting that it once "lived and moved and had its being," sprung from the womb of the Constitution, begotten of the loins of the Fathers, in its day a leader of hosts as true and valiant as ever struck for the "altars of their country and the temples of their gods.”

Thus, understandings of patriotism changed over time.

Fenner said:
[The Founders] assiduously guarded and restricted the consent upon which alone the authority of these governments rested, and, "to make assurance doubly sure," distinctly provided that all powers, not expressly delegated, were reserved to the States. … the right to withdraw from a Federal Union was a right that inhered in the States prior to the establishment of the present Constitution. … Unless there is something in the essential nature of the government established by the Constitution, or in the character of the parties who established it, or in the nature and mode of the consent upon which it rests, which is inconsistent with the right of secession in the States, it is difficult to conceive how such right could be disputed.

Fenner noted that others before the war acknowledged the right of secession.

Fenner said:
William Rawle, … declare … that "the States may withdraw from the Union," and that " the secession of a State from the Union depends on the will of the people.” … De Tocqueville, … declared that ''the Union was formed by the voluntary agreement of the States, and in uniting together they have not forfeited their nationality. … If one of the States choose to withdraw from the compact, it would be difficult to disprove its right of doing so.”

Fenner then spoke to northerners.

Fenner said:
It is not for me dogmatically to proclaim that we were right and that the supporters of the Union were wrong. I shall have accomplished a duty, and shall, as I believe, have rendered a service to the whole Union, if what I have said shall contribute to confirm the Southern people in the veneration and respect justly due to the cause for which their fathers fought, and, at the same time, to moderate the vehemence with which many of the Northern people have denounced that cause as mere wicked and unreasoning treason. … Far be it from me to impugn the motives of those who advocated and enforced the indissolubility of the Union.

A little charity, magnanimity towards one's opponents goes a long way.

Fenner said:
Mr. Webster's was the grandest civic intellect that America has produced. The most prodigious achievement of his eloquence and genius was the success with which he darkened and, to the minds of many, actually obliterated the clear historical record which I have heretofore exhibited, confuted the very authors of the Constitution as to the meaning and effect of their own language, and may be said substantially to have created and imposed upon the American people a new and different Constitution from that under which they had lived for so considerable a period. Yet we must forgive much to the motives and inspirations upon which he acted.

Fenner then returned to the cause for which Lee fought.

Fenner said:
The cause of Lee … presents this singular claim to the considerate judgment of its adversaries, that we, who fought for it, have done and will do what in us lies to gild their triumph by making the restored Union so prolific in benefits to all coming generations that our posterity, while respecting the principles and convictions for which we fought, may rejoice in our defeat.

A gentleman's agreement, thus, stood between northerners and southerners. Southerners agreed to drop the idea of secession and northerners (at least the magnanimous ones) agreed to allow southerners to honor the memory of Confederate soldiers, and some northerners even joined in that honoring.

Fenner said:
Proudly, then, we unveil this monument, fearless of any denial that it perpetuates the memory of a man justly entitled to rank as one of the princes of his race, and worthy of the veneration of the world. The Christian may point to it as commemorative of one who faithfully wore the armor of Christ, and who fashioned his life as nearly after that of the God-Man as human imperfection would permit. The moralist may recognize in it a tribute to a friend of humanity to whom pride and self-seeking were unknown, and whose unconscious nobility of conduct answers to the description of a virtuous man given by the imperial philosopher, Marcus Antoninus: "He does good acts as if not even knowing what he has done, and is like a vine which has produced grapes and seeks for nothing more after it has produced its proper fruit. Such a man, when he has done a good act, does not call for others to come and see, but goes on to another act, as a vine goes on to produce again the grapes in season.” The social philosopher will see in it a tribute to the highest type of gentleman, in birth, in manners, in accomplishments, in appearance, in feeling, in habit. The lover of the heroic will find here honor paid to a chivalry and courage which place Lee by the side of Bayard and of Sidney, "from spur to plume a star of tournament.” It is fitting that monuments should be erected to such a man. The imagination might, alas! too easily, picture a crisis in the future of the Republic, when virtue might have lost her seat in the hearts of the people, when the degrading greed of money-getting might have undermined the nobler aspirations of their souls, when luxury and effeminacy might have emasculated the rugged courage and endurance upon which the safety of States depends, when corruption might thrive and liberty might languish, when pelf might stand above patriotism, self above country, Mammon before God, and when the patriot might read on every hand the sure passage:
''Ill fares the land, to hastening ills a prey,
Where wealth accumulates and men decay! “
In such an hour — quam Dii avertite — let some inspired orator, alive to the peril of his country, summon the people to gather round this monument, and, pointing to that noble figure, let him recount his story, and if aught can arouse a noble shame and awaken dormant virtue, that may do it.
The day is not distant when all citizens of this great Republic will unite in claiming Lee as their own, and rising from the study of his heroic life and deeds, will cast away the prejudices of forgotten strife and exclaim:
"We know him now; all narrow jealousies
Are silent, and we see him as he moved —
How modest, kindly, all-accomplished, wise,
With what sublime repression of himself —
Wearing the white flower of a blameless life.”
But, proudest, tenderest thought of all, the people of this bright Southland say, through this monument, to all the world:
"Such was he; his work is done,
But while the races of mankind endure,
Let his great example stand,
Colossal, seen of every land,
And keep the soldier firm, the statesman pure,
Till in all lands and through all human story,
The path of Duty be the way to glory!"

Not the greatest speech ever in the English language, but it absolutely does not celebrate slavery and racism, as graceless small-minded modern detractors would have it.

I believe that, since this speech never mentions, much less celebrates, slavery or racism, the real reason some wanted that statue down is that it was a reminder of people who asserted that the Federal government was not the sole judge of the extent of the powers delegates to it, and even took up arms to defend that assertion. The belief that some exogenous power might dare limit the Federal government's powers is intolerable to some.

TideEngineer08 · May 22, 2017

81usaf92 said:
Yeah the point is where does it end.

***Trigger Warning***

http://www.theblaze.com/contributio...-monuments-next-theyll-come-for-the-founders/

81usaf92 · May 22, 2017

TideEngineer08 said:
***Trigger Warning***

http://www.theblaze.com/contributio...-monuments-next-theyll-come-for-the-founders/

I don't need it but thanks

But there was a push by UA students and professors to rename Gorgas, Nott, and Morgan halls. Nott is the more curious one. Nott was a eugenics person, but so was Jane Addams. But Addams was just celebrated by the LGBT community Legacy Walk. Go figure.

Tidewater · May 22, 2017

TIDE-HSV said:
SIAP, as I haven't read the entire thread, but here is Mayor Landrieu's address on the removal of the statues...

LINK

One of the ironies of that speech is that Landrieu spent $600,000 to remove four statues, and complains that there is "no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks."
Well, Mitch, why not spend that money to erect a memorial to those victims? I'd bet lots of Louisianans would contribute to memorialize the victims of those wrongs.

CrimsonProf · May 22, 2017

81usaf92 said:
I don't need it but thanks

But there was a push by UA students and professors to rename Gorgas, Nott, and Morgan halls. Nott is the more curious one. Nott was a eugenics person, but so was Jane Addams. But Addams was just celebrated by the LGBT community Legacy Walk. Go figure.

Smart progressives will leave the eugenics thing alone, lest we burn Margaret Sanger in effigy, racist and eugenicist that she was.

rgw · May 22, 2017

Relayer said:
Don't think for one minute that there aren't plenty of lefties who would jump at the chance.

Real lefties don't worry about meaningless wedge issues and instead hope for class awareness. The entire world can be explained as a power struggle over handedness. Rise up lefties! We demand scissors we can use!

LA4Bama · May 22, 2017

[

Tidewater said:
One of the ironies of that speech is that Landrieu spent $600,000 to remove four statues, and complains that there is "no slave ship monuments, no prominent markers on public land to remember the lynchings or the slave blocks."
Well, Mitch, why not spend that money to erect a memorial to those victims? I'd bet lots of Louisianans would contribute to memorialize the victims of those wrongs.

This really is a key post. We can debate the past all we want, and it is a worthy thing to do, but the hard part will always be what comes next, who do we want to be. In the present climate it's politically easier to tear down than to build up new memories. The question should be what new monuments are worth building today.

Tidewater · May 23, 2017

After John Brown's arrest at Harper's Ferry, Virginia Governor Henry A. Wise received hundreds of letters asking Wise to pardon Brown, and anonymous threatening letters if Brown's sentence was carried out.

Anonymous said:
“Be careful what you [do] with ‘Ossawatomie Brown.’ So sure as you harm a hair on his head, … the following day, … you will see every city, town and village south of Mason and Dixon’s Line in flames.”

Anonymous New Yorker said:
“The knell of Old Brown shall be Sicilian Vespers—the tocsin of war without quarter!”

Anonymous said:
“Revenge, revenge, revenge. Every southern city shall pay a penalty – already begun. The torch, the torch, the torch. Pause. Reflect. You only can stop it.”

Michigan author named “Wolverine” advised that

“just so sure as Brown is hung [sic], … so sure will a body of men enter Richmond and destroy it root and branch. Hang Brown and the North will have revenge.”

Wise received letters warning him of attempts to rescue Brown and his accomplices. One anonymous writer from Pittsburgh wrote that

Anonymous from Pittsburgh said:
“about a hundred and fifty men” were going to "seize the arsenal at Harpers Ferry and then proceed to the prison where Old Brown is.”

The author warned that men were gathering in Cincinnati, Boston, Indiana, New York. One letter received November 14, declared that

Anonymous said:
“an insurrection is about to take place. … Over twelve hundred men are now drilling and preparing for action in western Pennsylvania. They are well provisioned and every man is sworn to die in the cause if necessary.” These men would attack in “four divisions,” the author wrote, “an outbreak of a very grave nature will soon take place in several of the slave states and the attack is to be made the same day or as near that is possible.”

John Andrew, who had helped fund Brown’s legal defense team and would soon be the Republican party’s nominee for governor, told a Massachusetts crowd that John Brown had

Republican John Andrew said:
(John Brown had) fallen for an idea. Whether his course was wrong or not, Brown himself was right.”

At the same meeting, Rev. Edwin D. Wheelock of Dover, New Hampshire, declared that,

Rev. Wheelock said:
“to be hanged in Virginia is like being crucified in Jerusalem—it is the last tribute which [Virginia] pays to Virtue!”

At a meeting at Natick, Massachusetts, resolutions were adopted declaring,

Natick Mass. Meeting said:
“it is the right and duty of the slaves to resist their masters, and the right and duty of the north to incite them to resistance and to aid them in it.”

Massachusetts Republican Senator Henry Wilson was present at this meeting and neither objected, nor left the meeting after this resolution was adopted unanimously.
This is a glimpse of the context in which southerners reacted to Harper's Ferry.

Tidewater · May 23, 2017

Here is how Alabama reacted to the threat of John Brown-type antislavery violence:On February 24, 1860, the Alabama Legislature adopted the following Joint Resolutions:

WHEREAS, anti-slavery agitation persistently continued in the non-slaveholding States of this Union, for more than a third of a century, marked at every stage of its progress by contempt for the obligations of law and the sanctity of compacts, evincing a deadly hostility to the rights and institutions of the Southern people, and a settled purpose to effect their overthrow even by the subversion of the Constitution, and at the hazard of violence and bloodshed; and whereas, a sectional party calling itself Republican, committed alike by its own acts and antecedents, and the public avowals and secret machinations of its leaders to the execution of these atrocious designs, has acquired the ascendency in nearly every Northern State, and hopes by success in the approaching Presidential election to seize the Government itself; and whereas, to permit such seizure by those whose unmistakable aim is to pervert its whole machinery to the destruction of a portion of its members would be an act of suicidal folly and madness, almost without a parallel in history; and whereas, the General Assembly of Alabama, representing a people loyally devoted to the Union of the Constitution, but scorning the Union which fanaticism would erect upon its ruins, deem it their solemn duty to provide in advance the means by which they may escape such peril and dishonor, and devise new securities for perpetuating the blessings of liberty to themselves and their posterity.

On November 14, 1860 Alabama Governor Moore wrote of Republicans,

They have invaded the State of Virginia, armed her slaves with deadly weapons, murdered her citizens, and seized the United States Armory at Harper's Ferry. They have sent emissaries into the State of Texas, who burned many towns, and furnished the slaves with deadly poison for the purpose of destroying their owners. … they for years have struggled to get control of the Legislative and Executive Departments thereof. They have now succeeded, by large majorities, in all the non-slaveholding States except New Jersey, and perhaps California and Oregon, in electing Mr. Lincoln, who is pledged to carry out the principles of the party that elected him. … The only hope of future security, for Alabama and the other slaveholding States, is secession from the Union.

Bamabuzzard · May 23, 2017

LA4Bama said:
[

This really is a key post. We can debate the past all we want, and it is a worthy thing to do, but the hard part will always be what comes next, who do we want to be. In the present climate it's politically easier to tear down than to build up new memories. The question should be what new monuments are worth building today.

Bruce err Kaitlyn Jenner titled "Courage"

Crimson1967 · May 24, 2017

Would the new law here stop us from adding Saban's name to the stadium one day?

Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

JBama_in_PCOLA · May 24, 2017

Truthfully as someone who's served I say good. The Confederacy was the enemy and it should not in any way be celebrated. Good riddance.

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bama2112 · May 25, 2017

Looks like it took a lady to stand up to all this non-sense.

http://www.al.com/news/birmingham/index.ssf/2017/05/gov_kay_ivey_signs_bill_protec.html#incart_river_home

Tidewater · May 25, 2017

JBama_in_PCOLA said:
Truthfully as someone who's served I say good. The Confederacy was the enemy and it should not in any way be celebrated. Good riddance.

As someone who has served in uniform, I say that when the Federal government violates the Constitution. those loyal to the Constitution will oppose the Federal government. If in office, they will resign that office.
When the sovereigns in our federal system (the peoples of the several states) order their servant (the Federal government) to do something, the servant should bow to the will of the sovereign and say "I will obey."
Under President Lincoln, the servant said, "I will kill you for your disloyalty."

JBama_in_PCOLA · May 25, 2017

Tidewater said:
As someone who has served in uniform, I say that when the Federal government violates the Constitution. those loyal to the Constitution will oppose the Federal government. If in office, they will resign that office.
When the sovereigns in our federal system (the peoples of the several states) order their servant (the Federal government) to do something, the servant should bow to the will of the sovereign and say "I will obey."
Under President Lincoln, the servant said, "I will kill you for your disloyalty."

I agree, but that has nothing to do with statues that do not represent the United States.

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LA4Bama · May 25, 2017

Bamabuzzard said:
Bruce err Kaitlyn Jenner titled "Courage"

Yep, what she did takes balls.

Tidewater · May 26, 2017

JBama_in_PCOLA said:
I agree, but that has nothing to do with statues that do not represent the United States.

I believe that allowing them to be erected after the war was a pragmatic and magnanimous gesture. Having fought a war to keep these people in the Union against the will of the majority of those states, allowing them to honor their dead was both magnanimous and pragmatic.
Simpletons today suggest the Federal government should have put every (or most) Confederate leaders on trial. I believe that would have resulted in a situation across the South that would have looked a lot like Ireland in the late 1910s/early 1920s and might well have brought about a similar result.

As for the constitutional issue, if you gave me a power of attorney to sell your car in Madison County, and I tried to sell your house in Morgan county, you'd probably stop me. If I asserted my right to sell your house in Morgan, I dare say the debate would be brief: "You're fired." In 1788, North Carolina advocate of ratification, James Iredell (later Federal Supreme Court Justice) said the Constitution was exactly like a power of attorney. The agent would never argue with the principals as to the extent of the powers the principals delegated to their agent. Well, the agent did argue, and in 1860-1, eleven states fired their agent for insubordination. So, who is disloyal? I'd say the Federal government was disloyal in 1861.

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

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