New Orleans Begins Process of "Removing History"

[The Batorys]

Eh, as a not-particularly-patriotic person, it's the fact that they were fighting to defend slavery more than the secession from the country that pisses me off.

Same.

I think it's fine for states to secede, but they are still responsible for everything else they do. They are responsible for how they handle the secession -- whether they go about it in a calm and reasonable manner or just flip their shit and start shooting people -- and they are responsible for what sort of government they form. They are responsible for what values they preach and what principles they put in their laws.

I am actually a secessionist myself, but I still think the Union side of the Civil War had better values. That whole slavery thing is just hard to get past.

Yeah, I don't really have an opinion on secession. In my opinion, its legality became irrelevant the second that the firing started against Fort Sumter.

[The Batorys]

I've heard that he suffered from being bi-polar.

He was also a bit of a drunk if I remember

Many who suffer from mental illness also have substance abuse issues.

[Ifreann]

I've heard that he suffered from being bi-polar.

He was also a bit of a drunk if I remember

I'd get drunk too if I had to fight in the American Civil War.

[The Batorys]

He was also a bit of a drunk if I remember

I'd get drunk too if I had to fight in the American Civil War.

Me, too.

[Roikstead]

Same.

I think it's fine for states to secede, but they are still responsible for everything else they do. They are responsible for how they handle the secession -- whether they go about it in a calm and reasonable manner or just flip their shit and start shooting people -- and they are responsible for what sort of government they form. They are responsible for what values they preach and what principles they put in their laws.

I am actually a secessionist myself, but I still think the Union side of the Civil War had better values. That whole slavery thing is just hard to get past.

Yeah, I don't really have an opinion on secession. In my opinion, its legality became irrelevant the second that the firing started against Fort Sumter.

Who cares how it happened or why, we should remember what it is,the bloodiest war for America,one that took a lot out of both sides,over one million Americans died if I remember correctly,so who cares if some racist shit happened? If we still get upset about all this and get destructive like we did some 100 years ago we will end up in another civil war and it will end the same way the first did,a lot of good American men and females died so,let's just make a compromise and be happy about this crap because I don't wanna see this country torn apart from something like racism,if we don't get above all this,we are just gonna be stuck like this and a lot more will die

[Roikstead]

You can try to argue and such but all of you know I am right,we should just forget all the racism,if we do,we won't see people as lesser from skin color or otherwise if we just make some fucking compromises and not try to fucking kill each other something older then America or any country on earth,it will never go away and never will,it is just a fact of life,so let's just shimmer down,make compromises and don't try to go all in one way or the other,please

[Arkinesia]

The abolition of slavery was not an attack on a geographic region. It was an attack on an evil institution. The fact that it was concentrated geographically is irrelevant.

Evil according to whom? Northern voters? Yes, but I'm sure that a lot of people in the south would disagree quite strongly with you back then.

Even if a lot of people disagreed, that doesn't make them right, but slavery was actually not widely supported by commoners in the South, it's just that many of them couldn't vote because they didn't own land.

So you think the appropriate response to the secession of the South was for the Union to just let them get away with it? Are you sure you're not a Georgian?

Well, I think they've got reason not to want a big naval fort from another country sitting in their harbour.

Well, maybe they shouldn't have engaged in insurrection then.

Better than betraying your species.

Calling the many men who fought for the south traitors to humanity is somewhat disrespectful to them, don't you think? The fact remains that the vast majority were not slaveowners and did not fight to defend slavery.

I'm sure there are plenty of American soldiers who thought they were fighting a holy war for Jesus in Iraq or Afghanistan, does that make them religious crusades now?

American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Vice-President of the Confederacy: "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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. "

You do realize that the men who wrote those words were slave owners and most definitively did not consider blacks to count under "all man". Furthermore, you do realize that many of the northern states were slave states? Right?

The whole thing was not some sort of morality crusade as people these days seem to want to make it out to be. It was a civil war like that in the ukraine. The people of the south felt their political power slipping away and realized that in the future this might lead to someone taking the source of their wealth away so they decided to break off. The people of the north who saw their political power rising decided not to not let half their country just go. The whole slavery thing is only relevant in so much that it happened to be the source of said wealth. If it had been anything else like say mining gold from moon rocks or something things would have played out exactly the same.

UGH Founder revisionism. Again.

Jefferson owned slaves because he had to. Here's a passage from his first draft of the Declaration of Independence:

he has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating it’s most sacred rights of life & liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating & carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere, or to incur miserable death in their transportation thither. this piratical warfare, the opprobrium of infidel powers, is the warfare of the CHRISTIAN king of Great Britain. determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought & sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or to restrain this execrable commerce: and that this assemblage of horrors might want no fact of distinguished die, he is now exciting those very people to rise in arms among us, and to purchase that liberty of which he has deprived them, by murdering the people upon whom he also obtruded them; thus paying off former crimes committed against the liberties of one people, with crimes which he urges them to commit against the lives of another.

Jefferson's uncompleted life goal was a law banning slavery in Virginia. He hated himself for owning slaves, but had no choice as a landowner. White men would not do the work of a negro, that was the logic at the time.

[Ifreann]

You can try to argue and such but all of you know I am right,we should just forget all the racism,if we do,we won't see people as lesser from skin color or otherwise if we just make some fucking compromises and not try to fucking kill each other something older then America or any country on earth,it will never go away and never will,it is just a fact of life,so let's just shimmer down,make compromises and don't try to go all in one way or the other,please

Yeah, forgetting history is a sure way to stop it from ever happening again. Let's all sit by and say nothing as Neo-Confederates tell themselves that their cause was noble and just, that the North were cruel oppressors, that one day they will rise again and reclaim the country that should rightfully be theirs. This will certainly not lead to any conflict.

[AsReil]

So why should treason be memorialized?

You know we have slave-era relics, right?

[AsReil]

Also I do not understand the argument that this will somehow erase the Confederacy from history.

Like infants: if you can't see it, it doesn't exist!

[Shazbotdom]

That and the statue is absolutely memorializing the beliefs of the Confederacy, the text on the state celebrates white supremacy for fucks sakes.

'I don't agree with them so hundreds of thousands of dead soldiers don't deserve a memorial!'

I hate to bring this up again, but what the fuck?

The monument that was brought down, the "Battle of Liberty Place" Monument, had nothing to do with the Civil War and had everything to do with an uprising and subsequential riot of white people who randomly killed free people of color in the City of New Orleans which ocurred AFTER the civil war was over.

[Roikstead]

You can try to argue and such but all of you know I am right,we should just forget all the racism,if we do,we won't see people as lesser from skin color or otherwise if we just make some fucking compromises and not try to fucking kill each other something older then America or any country on earth,it will never go away and never will,it is just a fact of life,so let's just shimmer down,make compromises and don't try to go all in one way or the other,please

Yeah, forgetting history is a sure way to stop it from ever happening again. Let's all sit by and say nothing as Neo-Confederates tell themselves that their cause was noble and just, that the North were cruel oppressors, that one day they will rise again and reclaim the country that should rightfully be theirs. This will certainly not lead to any conflict.

Morgan freeman even said,the way to get rid of racism is not to talk about it

[Ifreann]

Yeah, forgetting history is a sure way to stop it from ever happening again. Let's all sit by and say nothing as Neo-Confederates tell themselves that their cause was noble and just, that the North were cruel oppressors, that one day they will rise again and reclaim the country that should rightfully be theirs. This will certainly not lead to any conflict.

Morgan freeman even said,the way to get rid of racism is not to talk about it

Bullshit is bullshit even if Morgan Freeman says it.

[Datlofff]

Morgan freeman even said,the way to get rid of racism is not to talk about it

Bullshit is bullshit even if Morgan Freeman says it.

HERETIC!!!! STONE THIS MAN FOR DEFYING OUR ALL MIGHTY GOD!!!!!!!!!!!!

In all seriousness, yes that is true, even morgan freeman can be wrong.

[Roikstead]

Morgan freeman even said,the way to get rid of racism is not to talk about it

Bullshit is bullshit even if Morgan Freeman says it.

racism is a idea,a idea can be forgotten,tho i can tell your educated and not intelligent

[Ifreann]

Bullshit is bullshit even if Morgan Freeman says it.

racism is a idea,a idea can be forgotten,

We shouldn't forget that the Confederates were motivated by their belief that the "negro race" is inferior and belongs in chains. We shouldn't erase history.

tho i can tell your educated and not intelligent

I'm sure you'll understand if I don't thank you for this insult.

[Chestaan]

So why should treason be memorialized?

You know we have slave-era relics, right?

We also have WWII relics. Does that mean that statues of Hitler should have been left standing?

[USS Monitor]

I am neither a secessionist nor a patriot. I am saying that there is no reason for any government to recognize those that act in a way that is traitorous to that government. Even if the North had been the worst government in existence, even if it had been the South leaving the union to get rid of slavery, I do not see why the government in power should have statues to those who where in essence traitors.

In order to not appear massively disgustingly hypocritical when they start supporting rebellions across the globe. You can't go looking at half the middle east going "Oh support those rebels! It's for a good cause!" but at the same time quash any memory of the rebellion you had back home. It's bad enough that you would pick and choose when to support the principal of self determination and when to oppose it. But if you are going to do that at the very least you should invest the time to actually prove the case why one is good and one is bad rather than erasing those you dislike from history and pretending they newer happened.

Good thing it's not Northerners or the federal government that made the decision to remove these statues.

[USS Monitor]

American Declaration of Independence: "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness."
Vice-President of the Confederacy: "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 normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. "

You do realize that the men who wrote those words were slave owners and most definitively did not consider blacks to count under "all man". Furthermore, you do realize that many of the northern states were slave states? Right?

If you go by pre-war definitions of North and South, all of the North except for Delaware had abolished slavery, or was in the process of doing so. Delaware is not "many states."

There were a handful of states in the Upper South that remained loyal to the Union. It's nice that they decided not to hop on the Confederate bandwagon, but they're not the North.

The slave states that remained loyal to the Union had lower slave populations than the Deep South, and their choice to remain in the Union was probably a reflection of slavery not being important to them.

The whole slavery thing is only relevant in so much that it happened to be the source of said wealth. If it had been anything else like say mining gold from moon rocks or something things would have played out exactly the same.

Not really because mining moon rocks wouldn't offend Northern sensibilities.

[Hurdergaryp]

Clearly the South had the technology to go to the moon in order to mine rocks back in the 19th century. This thread regularly descends into the realm of the absurd.

[USS Monitor]

Fundamentally the bottom line here is that the right to rebel is a right. It is called the right to self determination. And you can chose to either allow it or not. But what you can not do is only chose to allow it when and if it suits your interests. If you do so, if you restrict your self to only permitting a right when you like the way it is used, than you are evil. It's as simple as that.

Not at all. Just because you recognize a right doesn't mean you can't judge people by what they do with that right. The right to freedom of speech doesn't mean you can't judge somebody by the things they say.

I don't have a problem with the fact that the Confederate states declared independence. I have a problem with the fact that they were too quick to go to war and they were defending slavery.

[Thermodolia]

Fundamentally the bottom line here is that the right to rebel is a right. It is called the right to self determination. And you can chose to either allow it or not. But what you can not do is only chose to allow it when and if it suits your interests. If you do so, if you restrict your self to only permitting a right when you like the way it is used, than you are evil. It's as simple as that.

No the right to rebel is not a right in the US.

[USS Monitor]

I think, however, Robert E. Lee does deserve a memorial. As for Boregard, it was his home state and he wasn't the worst general in the world.

Your endorsement is hardly convincing when you can't even be bothered to learn to spell his fucking name.

IIRC, Coraspia is using a screen reader. If the screen reader pronounces "Beauregard" correctly, and Coraspia is trying to guess the spelling based on how it is pronounced, that would explain the problem.

Even with all the stuff that is out there to help the blind, it is still harder to read and write when you can't see the text.

[USS Monitor]

It's a little more complicated than that. The South was lagging behind the North economically and technologically even before the war started, and Sherman argued against treating the South harshly during Reconstruction.

Sherman had lived in Georgia and Louisiana before the war and was a great admirer of Southern culture. After the war, his attitude toward the South was very conflicted. Sometimes he'd rage against them for seceding and go on about how they deserved everything they got and then some. Other times he'd say how great they were and how much he enjoyed the culture. He had deep respect for certain individual Southerners, including Johnston, who had led the Confederate forces against him.

One thing to remember is that Sherman had some wild mood swings and may have been mentally ill. You have to be careful not to make judgements based on cherry-picked quotes because it can be very misleading. If you only look at what Sherman said when he was pissed off, he sounds like an absolute monster with a borderline-psychopathic disregard for Southern lives. If you only look at what he said when he was calm, he sounds like an upstanding gentleman. Nice-guy Sherman is probably closer to who he wanted to be, but he didn't always have the self-control to pull it off.

I've heard that he suffered from being bi-polar.

That's entirely possible.

[USS Monitor]

I've heard that he suffered from being bi-polar.

He was also a bit of a drunk if I remember

He never had a problem with alcoholism. You might be thinking of Grant, who had some minor problems with it, especially when he was away from his wife for too long.