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> Traitors should not be honored And that's precisely why those generals were being honored; to proactively show that, despite them being on the losing side, w

> Traitors should not be honored And that's precisely why those generals were being honored; to proactively show that, despite them being on the losing side, we would not be regarding them as traitors! This kind of thing used to be seen as an important part of peacefully reabsorbing and reconciling the South with the rest of the nation. It strikes me as incredibly foolish to renege on this deal today even as cultural divides within the country are widening to the point where they might essentially split it apart all over again. (Not on racial or ethnic lines however, but, loosely speaking, on ones pitting "elite intellectualism" against the "common man's good sense". And I say this while fully acknowledging that the latter is at least as flawed as the former.) > ...the ideals... That is, black people need to know their place. Not so. The Civil War was indeed "about" slavery in many ways, but the "confederate private soldier, who was kept poor by the exploitation of slaves in a feudal system, and answered the call and sacrificed anyway" you mention above would be able to tell you plenty of reasons why he was going to fight the Yankees with full conviction no matter what. Slavery and "keeping black people in their place" were important to the opportunistic elite of the South; but in the common man's view, what was being threatened to the point of wholly justifying their sacrifice was their culture and way of life. And this viewpoint is still one way that the war is understood in many parts of the South.

dctoedt 7y ago
> This kind of thing used to be seen as an important part of peacefully reabsorbing and reconciling the South with the rest of the nation. It strikes me as incredibly foolish to renege on this deal today .... Except the South reneged on the deal almost as soon as the war ended, violently suppressing and oppressing the formerly-enslaved.
- 0815test 7y ago
  The Reconstruction was badly bungled on both sides. Many Southerners even today object far more to what happened to the South "as soon as the war ended"[1], than to the war itself. This is not a justification of Jim Crow and the like of course, but an account of how the folks in the South who wished to "violently suppress and oppress the formerly-enslaved" for their own benefit managed to get away with it, despite having just lost a war with the North over that very issue. [1] Well, not quite; the "Radical Reconstruction" was a bit of a later development. But then, the truly nasty politics on the other side, with a "Redeemer" movement working together with violent, paramilitary organizations (including the 1st 'Klan') to ensure that white Southern democrats would dominate the South and impose overt white supremacy, was itself enabled and triggered by a backlash to the Radical Reconstruction.
WalterSear 7y ago
Bollocks. Many of them were put up in the 60s, as a reaction to the civil rights era. Most of them were put up in the 1910s, for similar reasons. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/18/southern-poverty-law-center_wide-8dd59c84cdf1835e87d11d69ad98e7c1dc119a02-s800-c85.png https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/18/southern-poverty... They were erected to rewrite the history exactly as you are presenting it.
- 0815test 7y ago
  While what was going on in the 1960s is indeed suspicious (though it was very obviously a time of political upheaval in the South as a whole, and this may have very well been what was being "reacted" to, more than civil rights themselves!), the 1910s was well within living memory of the war itself as well as the rather problematic "Radical Reconstruction" era. What's more interesting in the chart you link to is the way the monuments drop sharply in the 1970s and especially the 1980s, precisely as the "New South" starts really taking off. Not exactly consistent with the common viewpoint that "politics in the South didn't really change in that time frame, they were always dominated by racism and white supremacy"!
  - Spooky23 7y ago
    I respect your perspective, but the underlying assumption is heritage for white southerners. It’s a dangerous thing to honor. The 1910s were also within living memory of people who were born as chattel, property of someone else. What did the heroic statue of Forrest mean to them? This was put up with because the political machinery of the south was incredibly powerful, and northerners, particularly immigrants weren’t exactly woke to the troubles of former slaves either. The new South era was unique in many ways, including the end of open racial oppression and blacks voting in numbers. LBJ broke the back of the solid south for a few years.
    - 0815test 7y ago
      > but the underlying assumption is heritage for white southerners. It’s a dangerous thing to honor. Actually, I've consistently been trying to make the point that the things being honored in this way do NOT include slavery itself. Yes, it's a weird point of view which involves a whole lot of willful cognitive dissonance on the part of those white southerners who celebrate their heritage today. Yes, it is entirely fair to criticize it on that basis. But it's not any more inherently weird than celebrating Washington despite him being a slaveowner, or celebrating the U.S. itself even though its expansion was accomplished by killing Natives. It's just not fair to be in denial about these nuances, and insist that "Southerners who respect their own heritage are celebrating slavery" in a way that others are not. (Note that one can fairly object to the Confederate flag on other grounds - it has always been an overt symbol of illegal secession, and a secession that was explicitly motivated by slavery - that don't quite apply to the statues of defeated generals.) > What did the heroic statue of Forrest mean to them? I'm sure that they had plenty of other things to worry about. And that, by and large, they wouldn't have wanted a South that failed altogether to reconcile with the North. Failed reconciliation after a defeat in war can be very dangerous - and if the "Redeemers" were willing to use paramilitary violence in our timeline as a reaction to a comparatively mild "Radical Reconstruction", can we even imagine how Southerners would have reacted to extreme levels of festering resentment? It would have gotten quite ugly, to say the least.

dctoedt 7y ago

> This kind of thing used to be seen as an important part of peacefully reabsorbing and reconciling the South with the rest of the nation. It strikes me as incredibly foolish to renege on this deal today .... Except the South reneged on the deal almost as soon as the war ended, violently suppressing and oppressing the formerly-enslaved.

0815test 7y ago
The Reconstruction was badly bungled on both sides. Many Southerners even today object far more to what happened to the South "as soon as the war ended"[1], than to the war itself. This is not a justification of Jim Crow and the like of course, but an account of how the folks in the South who wished to "violently suppress and oppress the formerly-enslaved" for their own benefit managed to get away with it, despite having just lost a war with the North over that very issue. [1] Well, not quite; the "Radical Reconstruction" was a bit of a later development. But then, the truly nasty politics on the other side, with a "Redeemer" movement working together with violent, paramilitary organizations (including the 1st 'Klan') to ensure that white Southern democrats would dominate the South and impose overt white supremacy, was itself enabled and triggered by a backlash to the Radical Reconstruction.

WalterSear 7y ago

Bollocks. Many of them were put up in the 60s, as a reaction to the civil rights era. Most of them were put up in the 1910s, for similar reasons. https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/18/southern-poverty-law-center_wide-8dd59c84cdf1835e87d11d69ad98e7c1dc119a02-s800-c85.png https://media.npr.org/assets/img/2017/08/18/southern-poverty... They were erected to rewrite the history exactly as you are presenting it.

0815test 7y ago
While what was going on in the 1960s is indeed suspicious (though it was very obviously a time of political upheaval in the South as a whole, and this may have very well been what was being "reacted" to, more than civil rights themselves!), the 1910s was well within living memory of the war itself as well as the rather problematic "Radical Reconstruction" era. What's more interesting in the chart you link to is the way the monuments drop sharply in the 1970s and especially the 1980s, precisely as the "New South" starts really taking off. Not exactly consistent with the common viewpoint that "politics in the South didn't really change in that time frame, they were always dominated by racism and white supremacy"!
- Spooky23 7y ago
  I respect your perspective, but the underlying assumption is heritage for white southerners. It’s a dangerous thing to honor. The 1910s were also within living memory of people who were born as chattel, property of someone else. What did the heroic statue of Forrest mean to them? This was put up with because the political machinery of the south was incredibly powerful, and northerners, particularly immigrants weren’t exactly woke to the troubles of former slaves either. The new South era was unique in many ways, including the end of open racial oppression and blacks voting in numbers. LBJ broke the back of the solid south for a few years.
  - 0815test 7y ago
    > but the underlying assumption is heritage for white southerners. It’s a dangerous thing to honor. Actually, I've consistently been trying to make the point that the things being honored in this way do NOT include slavery itself. Yes, it's a weird point of view which involves a whole lot of willful cognitive dissonance on the part of those white southerners who celebrate their heritage today. Yes, it is entirely fair to criticize it on that basis. But it's not any more inherently weird than celebrating Washington despite him being a slaveowner, or celebrating the U.S. itself even though its expansion was accomplished by killing Natives. It's just not fair to be in denial about these nuances, and insist that "Southerners who respect their own heritage are celebrating slavery" in a way that others are not. (Note that one can fairly object to the Confederate flag on other grounds - it has always been an overt symbol of illegal secession, and a secession that was explicitly motivated by slavery - that don't quite apply to the statues of defeated generals.) > What did the heroic statue of Forrest mean to them? I'm sure that they had plenty of other things to worry about. And that, by and large, they wouldn't have wanted a South that failed altogether to reconcile with the North. Failed reconciliation after a defeat in war can be very dangerous - and if the "Redeemers" were willing to use paramilitary violence in our timeline as a reaction to a comparatively mild "Radical Reconstruction", can we even imagine how Southerners would have reacted to extreme levels of festering resentment? It would have gotten quite ugly, to say the least.