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Take a Deep Breath About Confederate Nostalgia
In the Washington Post, James L. Loewen makes an interesting point about Civil War monuments:
Take Kentucky, where the legislature voted not to secede. Early in the war, Confederate Gen. Albert Sidney Johnston ventured through the western part of the state and found “no enthusiasm, as we imagined and hoped, but hostility.” Eventually, 90,000 Kentuckians would fight for the United States, while 35,000 fought for the Confederate States. Nevertheless, according to historian Thomas Clark, the state now has 72 Confederate monuments and only two Union ones…
Neo-Confederates also won parts of Maryland. In 1913, the United Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) put a soldier on a pedestal at the Rockville courthouse. Maryland, which did not secede, sent 24,000 men to the Confederate armed forces, but it also sent 63,000 to the U.S. Army and Navy. Still, the UDC’s monument tells visitors to take the other side: “To our heroes of Montgomery Co. Maryland: That we through life may not forget to love the thin gray line.”
Why did this happen? The answer, he posits, is that the Confederacy and its 20th century apologists had a better, more active, and more persistent propaganda machine than did the Union. The effects of those efforts persist to this day, he argues, pointing out not only the glowing monuments and namesakes, but how many textbooks continue to present the Confederate cause as being more about states’ rights than slavery.
Honoring the Confederacy today is probably largely harmless: the case of Dylann Roof is interesting primarily because of how much of an aberration he represented. Ironically, however, it’s probably that way in no small part because of the ahistorical whitewashing its apologists accomplished. David French likely speaks for many when he writes that, during his childhood, he saw the Confederate flag as an essential part of honoring his family’s long (and continuing) martial history.
Figuring out how to navigate all of this is hard in a country as fundamentally decent and liberal as the United States. We know how crippling dealing with the truth of its past turned out to be for Germany (which, on the whole, may not be such a bad thing). In our case, however, we’re dealing with a controversy that is both more historically distant and less likely to have serious implications in the present day. That’s worth remembering every time the media gets a little too breathless about Confederate nostalgia.
Published in General, History
You think he was a legitimate ruler? Or that it makes no difference to you where rule is legitimate or not?
Well, in some cases truth is no defense against slander. Is that your case?
One wonders if the battles would have turned out differently if so many southerners had fought on their side of the war rather than helping the northerners field an army. It is even more exaggerated today. Look at the distribution of ROTC programs in the South vs the North.
1. Today, it is the left, not the religious right, that wants men (and even women) to work ore and more days for the state rather than for himself. Tax freedom day comes later and later for some, and on Jan 1 for many others.
2. The religious South does not advocate the killing of unborn children. Let the left apologize for the great moral wrong of the 20th century.
Are Southern men present in the US military? Over-represented as a matter of statistics–though, surely, not as a matter of honor? If they owe no loyalty to the US, if their ancestors were justified & conquered by evil men–how could this be? These men are all taking the oath that Gen. Lee betrayed? How can this contradiction be reconciled?
I think you are confusing loyalty to country and loyalty to government. We southerners treat the US flag with respect, wear flag pins proudly, and love the 4th as a celebration of liberty. We respect liberty and love our state. That is why the US flag flies on my porch, accompanied by one of several flags….the SC flag, the garnet and black SC flag on days USC plays football, and the yellow “Don’t Tread on Me” Gadsden flag that I bought at Patriots’ Park in Charleston. If the South were to secede today, it would take the Stars and Stripes and Constitution with it. That is the mark of a different mentality than that which you try to relive in your logic. Remember, we have a pattern for the Stars and Stripes for most numbers of stars between 13 and 50. I think the state of Mississippi has more ROTC detachments than the northeastern part of the US. There are jobs in the states’ Army and Air National Guard units for graduates (units belong to the governors, not the feds).
First, the Stars & Stripes & the Constitution are the cause of the Union!
Secondly, I have been living with the illusion that the military is run by the federal government, not by the country. In fact, I am even so deluded as to think the Constitution constitutes the government
I am not sure what different mentality–different to the ‘different mentality’ you mean–I am ‘trying to relive’.
I’ve scanned everything since my last comment, & haven’t stumbled onto any response to it. I refer to #105. Also, others have posed similar queries, and have received no response from you. I wonder why…..?
The flag and Constitution are not the cause of the union but byproducts of it. The Constitution was more of a byproduct of the failings of the Articles of Confederation.
We have several militaries. The President is Commander in Chief of the active duty forces and of the Reserves. The National Guard units belong to the governors of the states and must be called up to federal service to fall under the President. When states have emergencies, the governors deploy the National Guard. The President can’t send in the military unless the governor requests it. The National Guard units contain 100% of the airlift and air refueling assets, unless something has changed since i retired. It also contains 3/4 of the air defense radars.
You make general assumptions about the character of the South and of our government that has no correlation with reality. It is as if you read Howard Zinn or something.
The Constitution’s preamble says the people made it in order to make a more perfect union. That means the union of the states such as it was caused it & it in turn would cause a more perfect union.
I know all this. So if Southern men join the US military, then they do take oaths to the Union. Like the oath Gen. Lee broke. Much has changed…
Except cases of insurrection, rebellion or invasion…
I did not know this. Thanks.
Talk about making assumptions!
I can tell you why–it’s several people I’m arguing with here. If you’ve at least scanned it, how can you miss that? You think this is easy?
You can find some parts of an answer–you’re not the first to raise the points, so maybe that’s why I didn’t bother to repeat–in answers to asquared (I hope I’ve got the moniker right) a bit before your number 105.
I think we are in a chicken or egg debate over the Union and the Constitution. For my point, I count back to the birth of the country. Our 200th anniversary was celebrated when? The 13 stripes on the flag harken back to the 13 colonies, and has existed since 1777.
The oath is to the Constitution. I both took and administered the oath to my people many times. “I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic;…”
and the one for the Guard. “I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the State of (STATE NAME) against all enemies, foreign and domestic;…”
In the case of the President using the forces to quell an insurrection, you would need to know the difference between “may” and “can.”
When you put it in writing, I am not making assumptions.
Yeah, I agree. It is a kind of chicken & egg. A union of a kind was necessary for the Constitution to be acceptable to politicians & electorates; & the Constitution was necessary for that union to have any chance of survival. (As it turned out, it was imperfect, but better than anything else.)
I’m looking to when the age of founding was over. The organic laws were completed & were meant to remain that way, capped with the bill of rights. (Of course, there was trouble & there were mistakes–your Founders started practicing partisan gov’t, but did not constitutionalize parties. It took Jefferson & the little evil he plotted, he thought, with justice. & Madison, always doing his work for him. So that part of the regime was added later.)
I think once the more perfect union was ratified, constitution-making was over–& the constitution started its work of causing union–union was already there, only insufficiently perfect, requiring forming.