The Confederate Flag Thread

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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Holman »

It's amazing that this even needs to be said, but there we are:

Max Boot, "The Difference between George Washington and Robert E Lee."
By contrast, what is it that we are supposed to be grateful to the Confederates for? For seceding from the Union? For, in the case of former U.S. Army officers such as Lee and Jackson, violating their oaths to “support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic”? For triggering the most bloody conflict in American history? For fighting to keep their fellow citizens in bondage?

There is nothing praiseworthy about any of this even if, like all soldiers, many Confederates showed considerable prowess and bravery in battle. But then so did Nazi German generals such as Erwin Rommel and Heinz Guderian. The same could be said of Japanese Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto, who planned the attack on Pearl Harbor. Heck, even the 9/11 hijackers were undoubtedly courageous if also deeply twisted. Why not honor them while we’re at it? The cause in which bravery is displayed matters a lot, and the cause of the Confederacy, to maintain and preserve slavery, was evil. Therefore we should not pay tribute to its leaders. Full stop.
If there is any Confederate worthy of special recognition it isn’t Lee but his subordinate, Gen. James Longstreet, who after the war battled white supremacist militias in New Orleans that were seeking to deprive freedmen of their rights. But it is precisely for this reason that Longstreet became anathema to his fellow Confederates. No statues to Longstreet were erected until one finally went up at the Gettysburg battlefield in 1998.

And, no, it isn’t rewriting history, as Trump claims, to take down statues honoring Confederates. The real attempt to rewrite history was undertaken by white supremacists who made a fetish of honoring the Confederacy so as to preserve segregation — the oppression of freed slaves and their descendants — when it was under challenge from the 1860s to the 1960s. Mainstream historiography has already been revised to dispel the myth of the “Lost Cause” that was created by white supremacists after the Confederacy’s defeat. Taking down the statues is simply allowing the statuary to catch up with the history.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by $iljanus »

On the T to the Common with a lot of happy protesters. The signs are entertaining to read

Edit: Yea some is cranking Know Your Rights. The free speech contingent is rather underrepresented

Edit: And that's all she wrote. "Free speechers" skulk away. Now time to get lunch.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Pyperkub »

$iljanus wrote:On the T to the Common with a lot of happy protesters. The signs are entertaining to read

Edit: Yea some is cranking Know Your Rights. The free speech contingent is rather underrepresented

Edit: And that's all she wrote. "Free speechers" skulk away. Now time to get lunch.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Carpet_pissr »

More on Lee, and his apologists: The Myth of the Kindly General Lee
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ee/529038/

This article also touches on (and links to another article specifically dealing with it) the question raised earlier in the thread by someone asking where the notion of "the war was not about slavery!" came from.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Kraken »

$iljanus wrote:On the T to the Common with a lot of happy protesters. The signs are entertaining to read

Edit: Yea some is cranking Know Your Rights. The free speech contingent is rather underrepresented

Edit: And that's all she wrote. "Free speechers" skulk away. Now time to get lunch.
We concluded that our presence would be superfluous since the protesters vastly outnumbered the rally people, and in fact only 40-60 Trump supporters showed up. The protest crowd has been variously estimated at 15-30,000.

Wife told me the rally people started a kickstarter or gofundme or whatever to raise money for a PA system. They took it down when only two people pledged a total of $9. That's probably why nobody could hear them. I don't think they'll be back to Boston.

AFAIK the Common is still full of anti-Trump people validating one another, but the main event (such as it was) had ended by 1 pm.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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em2nought wrote:If there was a rebellion over "states rights" versus the growing power of the federal government today could it be a just cause?
Look, I get it that the question of state rights wasn't very democratically decided and was hand waved away over the centuries of your country's existence. It's a shame that there still isn't enough reasonable political discussion about separation of powers, of which that is but one issue. The EU would do much better if it wasn't doing the same. However, you can't just pick up arms just because others don't agree with how things are done. If your state representatives don't agree and you can't elect ones that share your views, just let it go, no society is perfect, but it might just be good enough to live on to change another day.
But let's not pretend that the ACW wasn't about continuing to brutally abuse human beings, there's not even a moral grey ground on that one, no matter what happened around it.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Kraken wrote:
$iljanus wrote:On the T to the Common with a lot of happy protesters. The signs are entertaining to read

Edit: Yea some is cranking Know Your Rights. The free speech contingent is rather underrepresented

Edit: And that's all she wrote. "Free speechers" skulk away. Now time to get lunch.
We concluded that our presence would be superfluous since the protesters vastly outnumbered the rally people, and in fact only 40-60 Trump supporters showed up. The protest crowd has been variously estimated at 15-30,000.

Wife told me the rally people started a kickstarter or gofundme or whatever to raise money for a PA system. They took it down when only two people pledged a total of $9. That's probably why nobody could hear them. I don't think they'll be back to Boston.

AFAIK the Common is still full of anti-Trump people validating one another, but the main event (such as it was) had ended by 1 pm.
I was amused by a black clad bandana wearing protester sporting a pair of Dolce an Gabbana sunglasses. Antifa is a big tent for all!

And if you hold a rally like this and not have a PA system or at least a megaphone then don't waste our time and city resources.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Holman »

Trump just tweeted that the Boston counter-protesters were "anti-police agitators" and congratulated the police for being smart and tough (presumably against them).
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Holman wrote:Trump just tweeted that the Boston counter-protesters were "anti-police agitators" and congratulated the police for being smart and tough (presumably against them).
Ummm no Mr. Trump. I overheard one officer at the end saying good job you drove them out. The police presence were not armored riot police wielding weapons or brandishing shields. Crowd was pretty reasonable.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Holman »

He knows what he's doing. Groups protesting racism or Trump policies will be described as "anti-police." Expect to hear more from Trump about law & order.

It's not new. Civil Rights marches were often characterized as anti-police in the 60s.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Boston Police Commissioner says bottles filled with urine were thrown at officers during protest
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by LawBeefaroni »

El Guapo wrote:To some degree, I feel like people on my Facebook feed are overly freaking out about what Charlottesville represents. White Supremacists and Neo-Nazis rallied there to try to preserve the Robert E. Lee statue and to try to rally white supremacists more broadly. The Charlottesville mayor is still pressing ahead with trying to remove the statue. Efforts to remove Confederate statues and symbols are accelerating. Trump himself mealy-mouth supported them, but bipartisan figures across the country are roundly and severely condemning him for it.

Basically from what I can tell white supremacists pushed their noxious agenda, and they are getting tremendous pushback, such that their rally seems to have been mostly counter-productive to their cause.

"I Used To Be a Neo-Nazi. Charlottesville Terrifies Me."
But there’s one huge difference: These newer offshoots have been far more successful than we could ever have dreamed. When you see crowds of hundreds marching through the streets with their faces uncovered, when white supremacist leader Richard Spencer holds a news conference a few days after a woman was killed by one of his fellow travelers and hosts reporters in his home, it becomes clear just how much more terrifying this new generation of extremists is. They’re savvier than we were. Better connected.
Last edited by LawBeefaroni on Sat Aug 19, 2017 7:37 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Rip wrote:
Boston Police Commissioner says bottles filled with urine were thrown at officers during protest
Other comments from police chief Evans (ABC News)

"But for the most part, Evans said, the day of direct action went off smoothly as police planned, with very little injury and property damage.

"Overall I thought we got the First Amendment people in, we got them out, no one got hurt, no one got killed," he said.

Police did stop three people with ballistic vests and a gun, Evans said, "but we were lucky to get those three out of here and confiscate the vests."

Evans said roughly 40,000 people descended on Boston today, "standing tall against hatred and bigotry in our city, and that's a good feeling." He added that he wished the "trouble makers stayed away," who he said weren't there for either the free speech side or the counterprotesters' side, but "were here just to cause problems."
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Rip wrote:
Boston Police Commissioner says bottles filled with urine were thrown at officers during protest
Gareth Keenan investigates!
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Wow it seems like all the fun stuff happened post-protest. Darned kids!

Enlarge Image
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Combustible Lemur »

Rip wrote:
Boston Police Commissioner says bottles filled with urine were thrown at officers during protest
And?

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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Holman »

The Wagner at 0:28 is really what makes it.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Defiant »

So apparently, after the events of Charlottesville, this sign was put up at a college:

Image

Because the Nazi chants of "Low Income Artists will not replace us!" need to be directly addressed. :think:
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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What is an LBGTQ+?

Wouldn't be easier to just say take care of everyone except straight white dudes? Cause you know, they all have it made.

Queue Dire Straits:

Money for nothing and their chicks for free....
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Rip wrote:What is an LBGTQ+?

Wouldn't be easier to just say take care of everyone except straight white dudes? Cause you know, they all have it made.

Queue Dire Straits:

Money for nothing and their chicks for free....
It's a list that ends in "LBGTQ + Low Income Artists". Whoever posted it doesn't embrace inclusivity of commas, ampersands or kerning.

Or persons of Jewish heritage, oddly enough.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Rip »

Max Peck wrote:
Rip wrote:What is an LBGTQ+?

Wouldn't be easier to just say take care of everyone except straight white dudes? Cause you know, they all have it made.

Queue Dire Straits:

Money for nothing and their chicks for free....
It's a list that ends in "LBGTQ + Low Income Artists". Whoever posted it doesn't embrace inclusivity of commas, ampersands or kerning.

Or persons of Jewish heritage, oddly enough.
That is probably because it is them giving all the straight white dudes all that free money.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Rip wrote:
That is probably because it is them giving all the straight white dudes all that free money.
That reminds me. I need to buy some more slaves, so I'll have to send you your check after payday. Is that OK?
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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tgb wrote:
Rip wrote:
That is probably because it is them giving all the straight white dudes all that free money.
That reminds me. I need to buy some more slaves, so I'll have to send you your check after payday. Is that OK?
Sure, just don't wait too long, we are running low on ammo.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Max Peck wrote: It's a list that ends in "LBGTQ + Low Income Artists". Whoever posted it doesn't embrace inclusivity of commas, ampersands or kerning.
Actually, I don't think the plus is meant to be a conjunctive, but rather a fill in for the rest of the alphabet soup that is the list of sexual minorities.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Max Peck wrote:
Rip wrote:What is an LBGTQ+?

Wouldn't be easier to just say take care of everyone except straight white dudes? Cause you know, they all have it made.

Queue Dire Straits:

Money for nothing and their chicks for free....
It's a list that ends in "LBGTQ + Low Income Artists". Whoever posted it doesn't embrace inclusivity of commas, ampersands or kerning.

Or persons of Jewish heritage, oddly enough.
Throw off the elementary school shackles of your Eurocentric grammatical rules!
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by AWS260 »

Defiant wrote:
Max Peck wrote: It's a list that ends in "LBGTQ + Low Income Artists". Whoever posted it doesn't embrace inclusivity of commas, ampersands or kerning.
Actually, I don't think the plus is meant to be a conjunctive, but rather a fill in for the rest of the alphabet soup that is the list of sexual minorities.
The full acronym, of course, is LBGTQMST3K.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Holman wrote:Daily Stormer has just been been booted from GoDaddy.
Fighting Neo-Nazis and the Future of Free Expression
These are methods that protect us all against overbroad or arbitrary takedowns. It’s notable that in GoDaddy and Google’s eagerness to swiftly distance themselves from American neo-Nazis, no process was followed; CloudFlare’s Prince also admitted that the decision was “not CloudFlare’s policy.” Policies give guidance as to what we might expect, and an opportunity to see justice is done. We should think carefully before throwing them away.

It might seem unlikely now that Internet companies would turn against sites supporting racial justice or other controversial issues. But if there is a single reason why so many individuals and companies are acting together now to unite against neo-Nazis, it is because a future that seemed unlikely a few years ago—where white nationalists and Nazis have significant power and influence in our society—now seems possible. We would be making a mistake if we assumed that these sorts of censorship decisions would never turn against causes we love.

Part of the work for all of us now is to push back against such dangerous decisions with our own voices and actions. Another part of our work must be to seek to shore up the weakest parts of the Internet’s infrastructure so it cannot be easily toppled if matters take a turn for the (even) worse. These actions are not in opposition; they are to the same ends.

We can—and we must—do both.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Kasey Chang »

I'm a bit ambivalent about the Confed flag. I used to live in Texas, and my old high school mascot is a rebel soldier on a galloping cartoon horse holding a confed flag. It used to be "Rebels". Before I left, they painted over the mascot, and apparently not long after I left they changed the mascot to "Raiders".

I guess I don't see as much "cultural" significance to a flag as a lot of people do, and how this attack triggered such a backlash that's much greater than a death. OTOH, I guess I'm a pretty tolerant guy, so I'll just pull out the very appropriate XKCD explainer

Enlarge Image

Oh, and the alt-text on that specific panel is priceless.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Bill O'Reilly: Trump defended Nazis because, like most Americans, he doesn't really know about the Holocaust.
O’Reilly goes on to worry that in today’s America, only Jews know about Hitler’s evil. For everyone else, including the president of the United States, the Holocaust is just a bad thing that happened a long time ago. What most people don’t get is that “the crimes of Hitler's regime and the population that allowed it were so terrible that words cannot come close to description,” O’Reilly explains. “President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him. He was trying to make other points in the midst of the revulsion of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.”
I'd Godwinize this, but apparently most people wouldn't get the reference.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Moliere »

Holman wrote:Bill O'Reilly: Trump defended Nazis because, like most Americans, he doesn't really know about the Holocaust.
O’Reilly goes on to worry that in today’s America, only Jews know about Hitler’s evil. For everyone else, including the president of the United States, the Holocaust is just a bad thing that happened a long time ago. What most people don’t get is that “the crimes of Hitler's regime and the population that allowed it were so terrible that words cannot come close to description,” O’Reilly explains. “President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him. He was trying to make other points in the midst of the revulsion of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.”
I'd Godwinize this, but apparently most people wouldn't get the reference.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Archinerd »

Holman wrote:Bill O'Reilly: Trump defended Nazis because, like most Americans, he doesn't really know about the Holocaust.
O’Reilly goes on to worry that in today’s America, only Jews know about Hitler’s evil. For everyone else, including the president of the United States, the Holocaust is just a bad thing that happened a long time ago. What most people don’t get is that “the crimes of Hitler's regime and the population that allowed it were so terrible that words cannot come close to description,” O’Reilly explains. “President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him. He was trying to make other points in the midst of the revulsion of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.”
I'd Godwinize this, but apparently most people wouldn't get the reference.
Nah, he doesn't get off the hook that easy. A 10 year old might be able to plead ignorance but not this P.O.(tu)S.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by em2nought »

Archinerd wrote:
Nah, he doesn't get off the hook that easy. A 10 year old might be able to plead ignorance but not this P.O.(tu)S.
I think you violated my copyright on Obama. :wink:

I don't need statues, but I'd leave them on battlefields at least. It would be great if people could tell the difference between union generals and confederate generals, but that's asking alot. I get the feeling that any old white guy statue will do. But this is still funny Image
Technically, he shouldn't be here.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

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Holman wrote:Bill O'Reilly: Trump defended Nazis because, like most Americans, he doesn't really know about the Holocaust.
O’Reilly goes on to worry that in today’s America, only Jews know about Hitler’s evil. For everyone else, including the president of the United States, the Holocaust is just a bad thing that happened a long time ago. What most people don’t get is that “the crimes of Hitler's regime and the population that allowed it were so terrible that words cannot come close to description,” O’Reilly explains. “President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him. He was trying to make other points in the midst of the revulsion of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.”
I'd Godwinize this, but apparently most people wouldn't get the reference.
Speaking of Godwin, Mike Godwin (of Godwin's Law fame) declared on Twitter that he was fine with anyone calling the white supremacists Nazis.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Max Peck »

ImLawBoy wrote:
Holman wrote:Bill O'Reilly: Trump defended Nazis because, like most Americans, he doesn't really know about the Holocaust.
O’Reilly goes on to worry that in today’s America, only Jews know about Hitler’s evil. For everyone else, including the president of the United States, the Holocaust is just a bad thing that happened a long time ago. What most people don’t get is that “the crimes of Hitler's regime and the population that allowed it were so terrible that words cannot come close to description,” O’Reilly explains. “President Trump did not understand that and it has hurt him. He was trying to make other points in the midst of the revulsion of white supremacists marching in Charlottesville.”
I'd Godwinize this, but apparently most people wouldn't get the reference.
Speaking of Godwin, Mike Godwin (of Godwin's Law fame) declared on Twitter that he was fine with anyone calling the white supremacists Nazis.
Yup.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Holman »

em2nought wrote: Enlarge Image
Show me on your sense of history and identity where pulling down the statue hurt you.

Incidentally, I came across this video recently:
Why do these Confederate monuments fall apart so easily?

The first minute makes an unexpected point.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Max Peck »

A funny thing about some of those cheap mass-produced Confederate statues.
President Trump’s supportive comments about Confederate monuments have focused new attention on long-ignored Civil War statues of a mustachioed infantryman standing at rest, wearing a greatcoat and holding a rifle barrel.

The nameless figure, known to many as the Silent Sentinel, gazes over town squares and courthouse steps in dozens of Southern towns — but not just there.

Many of the South’s Silent Sentinels turn out to be identical to the statues of Union soldiers that decorate hundreds of public spaces across the North. Identical, but for one detail: On the soldier’s belt buckle, the “U.S.” is replaced by a “C.S.” for “Confederate States.”

It turns out that a campaign in the late 19th century to memorialize the Civil War by erecting monuments was not only an attempt to honor Southern soldiers or white supremacy. It was also a remarkably successful bit of marketing sleight of hand in which New England monument companies sold the same statues to towns and citizens groups on both sides of the Civil War divide.
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Moliere »

Max Peck wrote:A funny thing about some of those cheap mass-produced Confederate statues.
President Trump’s supportive comments about Confederate monuments have focused new attention on long-ignored Civil War statues of a mustachioed infantryman standing at rest, wearing a greatcoat and holding a rifle barrel.

The nameless figure, known to many as the Silent Sentinel, gazes over town squares and courthouse steps in dozens of Southern towns — but not just there.

Many of the South’s Silent Sentinels turn out to be identical to the statues of Union soldiers that decorate hundreds of public spaces across the North. Identical, but for one detail: On the soldier’s belt buckle, the “U.S.” is replaced by a “C.S.” for “Confederate States.”

It turns out that a campaign in the late 19th century to memorialize the Civil War by erecting monuments was not only an attempt to honor Southern soldiers or white supremacy. It was also a remarkably successful bit of marketing sleight of hand in which New England monument companies sold the same statues to towns and citizens groups on both sides of the Civil War divide.
Capitalism wins in the end!
"The world is suffering more today from the good people who want to mind other men's business than it is from the bad people who are willing to let everybody look after their own individual affairs." - Clarence Darrow
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LordMortis
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by LordMortis »

Yay carpetbagging? Preserve history?
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Holman
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Re: The Confederate Flag Thread

Post by Holman »

Max Peck wrote:A funny thing about some of those cheap mass-produced Confederate statues.
President Trump’s supportive comments about Confederate monuments have focused new attention on long-ignored Civil War statues of a mustachioed infantryman standing at rest, wearing a greatcoat and holding a rifle barrel.

The nameless figure, known to many as the Silent Sentinel, gazes over town squares and courthouse steps in dozens of Southern towns — but not just there.

Many of the South’s Silent Sentinels turn out to be identical to the statues of Union soldiers that decorate hundreds of public spaces across the North. Identical, but for one detail: On the soldier’s belt buckle, the “U.S.” is replaced by a “C.S.” for “Confederate States.”

It turns out that a campaign in the late 19th century to memorialize the Civil War by erecting monuments was not only an attempt to honor Southern soldiers or white supremacy. It was also a remarkably successful bit of marketing sleight of hand in which New England monument companies sold the same statues to towns and citizens groups on both sides of the Civil War divide.
Another note:

In most cases the late-19th century statues--especially statues of soldiers instead of individual generals--were a somewhat different thing from the 20th-century erections.

As the ACW veterans aged, many formed regimental societies that put up monuments to their own service. These were typically placed in the towns where the regiments formed or on the battlefields where they most famously served. For example, the Gettysburg battlefield is covered with monuments, and the majority of them are individual regimental memorials placed where the regiment was positioned in line on day two or three.

The two busiest eras of Confederate monument building came later, in the 1900-1920 Jim Crow period and in the 50's/60's Civil Rights backlash. These were usually not regimental monuments but lauding the Confederacy and its leaders specifically.
Much prefer my Nazis Nuremberged.
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