Discussion for article #243890
New Orleans was very early out of the Confederacy and the Union was involved in abolition and reconstruction in Louisiana well before Lee and the others surrendered.
I’ve been a Civil War enthusiast for a coupla years now. My interest in the history of it extends to both the Union and the Confederacy and mostly the military history of it. I’m not too interested in the politics of how the war got started. My only interest in the politics of it is how it effected military operations,appointment and sacking of officers and postwar reconstruction/reconciliation. I’ve joined a Civil War Round Table and an organization that honors a brigade of Texas infantrymen that served in the Civil War but so far I’ve declined to join the SCV because it’s a bit too political for me. If New Orleans follows through with that,it might push me to join the SCV. This shiite is getting out of hand.
If you want to view confederate memorabilia, the proper place for it is a museum. Meanwhile, “this shiite” is just beginning, and is a long time coming. “Appreciation of history” is one thing. “Preservation of a failed heritage” is what is ending.
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About damn time!
I have nothing at all against Robt E Lee. He was very good at a very difficult profession, directing armies in campaigns and battles. I studied his campaigns with great professional admiration when I was an Infantry officer quite some time ago.
But for some perspective, let me name another great general from our history, Benedict Arnold. I studied his campaigns as well. He was absolutely brilliant, and fearless. He achieved something that Washington never did, defeating a British army in the field (Yorktown was a siege), at Saratoga. This was the victory that most historians say won us the war
But we don’t put up statues of people in our public places to honor brilliant strategy and tactics. Arnold doesn’t have any statues of him in public places (except that boot at the Saratoga battlefield, no name, just a boot, to honor his being wounded in the hour of the victory he achieved) because he was a traitor in the end. RE Lee was a traitor too, only spared trial, conviction and hanging for his clear treason by the general amnesty he accepted at the end of the war. Traitors, no matter how talented, no matter what their other good qualities, should not receive the public honor of a statue in a public space.
But the reasons to haul down that statue in Lee Circle go beyond the fact of Lee’s treason against the US.
Arnold committed treason out of personal pique at being denied what he very rightly was owed. He was packed off to command West Point, while Gates was given command of the southern army. The excuse given was that the wound he sustained winning the war for us at Saratoga made him physically unfit to command an army in the field. Certainly this is not an excuse for treason, but at least this personal motivation does not cast any further stain, beyond the treason itself, on his standing as a public figure.
RE Lee committed treason in defense of slavery. His statue was put up high on that plinth in the center of Lee Circle, defiantly facing north, to make the point that the South Was Right, black people did too need to be kept down, by Jim Crow, once slavery had been suppressed.
We don’t honor Lee and his real accomplishments and virtues by letting him stand as a symbol of a Cause that sadly has not yet met the final and complete loss it so richly deserves.
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My experience with SCV members is that they’re a group of men who feel a sense of personal accomplishment because of something an ancestor did 150 years ago. Hell, it doesn’t even have to be a direct ancestor. A great - great uncle will do.
But self - importantance is a trait common to most native South Carolinians, so maybe that’s only a local thing.
That may be true. My interest in them and the organizations I have joined is in learning more about the history,battlefield and museum visits and preservation,cemetery/monument cleanup and preservation etc. All of those things are also things the SCV does. I am a direct descendant of 2 Confederate veterans and collateral descendant of 2 others which makes me eligible to join the SCV. I’ve checked it out a little and checked the Facebook group page of a coupla chapters in other states but have declined to apply for membership so far because of some of the things I’ve seen. Not sure that I belong there. I’m a relatively new Civil War enthusiast,so I’m still like a kid in a candy store fascinated by everything.
To each his own.
I was a minor Civil War buff for a number of years. I am also a lineal descendant of 2 Confederate veterans.
I even visited the White House and Museum of the Confederacy in Richmond. At the time I visited, they had the uniforms of William T. Sherman and John Bell Hood on special display. I just lost interest in it when I could no longer avoid the fact that the South went to war to preserve the institution of slavery.
I’m not making any judgements about you.
I understand how anyone interested in history would be intrigued by the Civil War.