Confederate flag sparks controversy in Crosby (MN)

[struggle4progress]

By Spenser Bickett Today at 5:04 p.m.

A student at Crosby-Ironton High School was disciplined by the school district after showing up to school Monday morning with a Confederate flag on his vehicle.

The student arrived Monday morning and parked .. in the school parking lot, Superintendent Jamie Skjeveland said, with the Confederate flag displayed on the back of his vehicle. High School Principal Jim Christenson said the flag was on a pole attached to the rear window of the car.

The student was senior Cody Nelson, his mother Dorene Nelson reported ...

Cody will be returning to school Tuesday morning, Dorene Nelson said, with the same flag on his car. She'll be following him to school, she said, displaying a flag on her own truck ...

http://www.brainerddispatch.com/news/4033886-confederate-flag-sparks-controversy-crosby

[Jackie Wilson Said]

1. Drumpf has legitimized racist behavour, this is now OK and encouraged. Those who will

allow Drumpf to become president will be considered racists, all of them.

[KamaAina]

2. That's not even southern Minnesota!

[Journeyman]

3. Home of the First Minnesota Volunteers, one of the most storied regiments of the Civil War . . .

They were the very first volunteers. The Governor of Minnesota was in Washington the day Mr Lincoln put out the first call for volunteers and he quickly stepped forward with a promise to raise a regiment. He had some idea it would be a useful addition; he had no idea how well they would distinguish themselves.

Very few of the original 3,000 men returned home just a scant two years later. They fought in nearly every major engagement of the first two years of war: Bull Run, the Penninsula, Antietam, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville. At Gettysburg, they found themselves almost alone on Cemetery Ridge, the only Union force available to confront a mass of Confederate troops who were storming through the broken lines of Gen. Sickles' ill-placed defenses and threatening to get behind the Federal lines. Gen. Hancock, commanding the center, knew he needed to delay the Confederates for five minutes so he could move in reinforcements. All he found for the task was a handful of the 1st Minnesota. He pointed to the advancing enemy lines and told Col. Colville to hold 'em at all cost. Charging forward, the Minnesotans fixed bayonets as they ran. They knew it was suicide. They numbered only 262. And there were more than 1600 Alabamans coming towards them.

It was the highest casualty rate in a single engagement of any regiment in the war. Only 47 men returned. They suffered a staggering loss of 82%. But they bought Gen. Hancock not five minutes, but ten, inflicted tremendous casualties on the Rebel regiment, and helped hold the line.

There are over 1600 monuments at Gettysburg. The very first was dedicated to the 1st Minnesota. It was placed in the National Cemetery exactly four years to the hour after Col. Colville lead that fateful charge. It's one of the simplest, a stone vase in which fresh flowers are planted every Spring. On Cemetery Ridge there's a larger monument, atop which a running soldier is posed, bayonet at the ready, faced eternally towards the rock-strewn swale into which so many gave that last full measure.



There are some things worth more than flags, there are some heritages worthy of recognition.

[MrsMatt]

4. resident of Minnesota

and I've seen the monuments at Gettysburg. You can feel the weight of their sacrifice on the battlefield.

I feel ashamed that this has been forgotten in our schools.

[Journeyman]

7. When the battle ebbed after nightfall, and the Army took stock of itself . . .

Gen. Hancock recognized the valiant effort of the 1st Minnesota and ordered that, in recognition of their losses, they would be moved to the center of the Union lines and given a place of relative refuge behind a low stone wall in front of a copse of trees. Early the next morning, Gen. Lee's artillery took aim at that copse of trees and unleashed a barrage that lasted hours, so ferocious it was heard in Harrisburg, forty miles distant. Into the limited stillness that followed, Gen. Pickett (CSA) sent 15,000 troops across the valley towards that low stone wall.

Some years later, Pickett was interviewed about the War. The reporter was effusive about the successes the CSA had had up to that point, and kept returning again and again to the cause of the Southern defeat at Gettysburg. He seemed convinced it had to have been some error by the Confederate command (they were even then trying to pin blame on Gen. Longstreet), some failing of the artillery, or perhaps even a loss of nerve among the Rebel soldiers.

Gen. Pickett fixed him with a cold stare and quietly admired:

"I like to think it had a lot to do with those boys in blue."

[csziggy]

5. This kid's idiot mother apparently knowns nothing of this history

From the link in the OP:

"He was just trying to respect those people that fought for everything where we are today," Dorene Nelson said. "He felt like he was outnumbered because he was trying to be supportive of how far we've come in our country."

No, shit for brains - by displaying that flag he is insulting the people who DIED and suffered for "everything where we are today." His ignorance and the ignorance of his mother are taking us backwards, not being "supportive of how far we've come in our country."

[kwassa]

6. My great-grandfather survived Gettysburg ....

or I would not be writing this.

first day of the battle, a courier under Col Ray Stone of the Pennsylvania Bucktails, fighting a defensive retreating action that allowed the Union troops to take the high ground, though Cemetery Ridge is not very high, it does allow cover. 70 - 80% casualties. Supposedly my great-grandfather was the last man not shot off his horse.