I think trivial stuff is included because historians like trivia.
Twats.
Just raise a statue to the Tuskegee Airmen.
Or were they too successful?
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If one wants muddy the waters of the racial backbone of the war – as here – one would do better with the fact that, say, a number of Native Americans – tribes and individuals – fought for the Confederacy, likely thinking they might get a better deal with the CSA should they win. Or that supposed anti-Slavery countries like England and France were sympathetic to the South for an number of reasons.
But elevating the statistical likelihood that among the millions who did take up arms that some African American, somewhere, somehow fought for the Confederacy into a point that merits a monument is just ahistorical nonsense.
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As much as we honor Fredrick Douglass, there can be no doubt that he had an agenda (Negro troops in the Union Army) and claiming that the Confederacy was utilizing Negro troops would only advance his position. I’m not claiming he was right or wrong, because I don’t know, obviously. I’m just pointing out that he did have a motive.
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And thankfully we live in a day and age where the apparatus of slavery is something gag inducing in our culture. It took us long enough!
Chattel slavery was a lot closer to Django Unchained, Mandingo, and Underground than Gone With The Wind. Now the norm in popular culture is to depict (or imply) the systematic rape inherent in slavery. Even a lighthearted show like Legends of Tomorrow went there in an episode set in the Civil War.
Owning the children was a major part of American slavery and the deep secret behind the South’s “anti-miscegenation” laws after the Civil War.
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Tuskegee is in Alabama.
They have one there.
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Chattel slavery means enslavers can legally rape slaves (together or by themselves), and then sell the resulting children away for profit as slaves. I get the appeal of describing coerced labor as ‘slavery,’ but I think chattel slavery deserves a very particular distinction.
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Leela presents a pretty sanitized view of what being a slave was.
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Agreed. Sadly, almost everyone has an agenda when discussing this issue. Then and now. Right now the idea that no African American troops fought willingly for the Confederacy seems like a mantra. Any time someone makes a statement using the words “all” or “none” in reference to large groups of people, it is a clue that the statement is likely agenda driven. People and wars are more complicated than that.
Most soldiers who fight to defend their country are motivated by the desire to protect their families, homes, and communities. In the civil war, most people who lived in the states that seceded fought for the South, alongside their peers. In my part of Appalachia, families like mine who had fought for the war of Independence continued to serve in the Federal army, which led to issues in the community after the war.
But back to the proposed memorial: I don’t know enough about their motivations to erect it. Probably A bad idea, Until we can get to the point of honoring people who did their best to defend their country ( as they saw it), even though the war itself was being fought over ideas that seem repugnant today. If we could honor their sacrifice, made in defense of their homes and families, while acknowledging the larger issue of the inhumanity of slavery.
or those drafted.
There were confederate veterans, of African-American heritage, some free men, who enlisted into the confederate armed forces. Some were wounded in battles, many applied for pensions after the war.
But yes, some From South Carolina. so more than zero
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If they’re going to make a statue, maybe they should just erect a monument to that individual, should he exist.
Then technically your passion isn’t wasted on a bigoted argument with a cartoon villain.
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In 1864, when it became apparent that the CSA was beginning to lose the war, General Patrick Cleburne proposed emancipation of blacks and their use as soldiers.
He was told (in 19th century language) to go fuck himself.
Perhaps they should erect a statue to Cleburne.
Never fly though. He was, after all, a white guy fighting for the south.
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Should we erect statues for all people who merely proposed a good thing?
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Well, at the way we seem to be going, there will be more and more empty pedestals available…
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Perhaps we should rebrand taking down civil war monuments as “putting up monuments to black confederate combatants.”
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More monuments to the USCT, the Tuskegee Airmen, the Golden Thirteen, would be fine with me.
All men who I would have been honored to welcome into my home or business, had I lived in the 1860’s or the 1940’s. They could damn well marry my daughter, too.
Are you going to tell us next that you even have a black friend?
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