Georgia Lawmakers OK Confederate History Month

[ecstatic]

After a Senate committee voted yesterday for the Confederate heritage bill, state NAACP leader Edward Dubose said it "reeks of hypocrisy" that legislators would feel responsible to honor past deeds of their ancestors while resisting an apology to the victims of slavery.

http://www.wsbtv.com/news/11266826/detail.html

What do you think about Confederate History Month?

[Name removed]

1. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[bryant69]

4. That's my objection as well

If they taught the truth about the civil war, the confederacy, and reconstruction I'd be fine with it. Hell, I'd be ok with them talking a bit about what few positives they can dredge up about southern culture. But of course they won't. It will be a whitewash of history, making everything pretty and shiny and false.

Bryant
Check it out --> http://politicalcomment.blogspot.com

[Name removed]

7. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Bill McBlueState]

11. northeastern Democrats?

In the fifteen Presidential elections since FDR, the party nominated someone from the Northeast three times. Each of those three times, the running mate was from a southern state. In contrast, the party nominated someone from the old Confederacy or a border state seven times. This is despite the fact that the South has been predominantly Republican in the last two decades.

I don't see the evidence for northeastern Democrats "trying to control the whole show."

[RubyDuby in GA]

12. I'm so sure that you don't see that evidence, but try walking a mile in our

southern shoes.

Let's concentrate on those last two decades you mention as being the Republican South and how it went over on the national level:

Kennedy (Massachusetts/northeastern senator) challenging Carter. Mondale (despite being the former VP and not eastern, but northern). Dukakis (Governor of Massachusetts/northeastern).

Finally a victory in 1992 and 1996 with a Southern governor (first Democratic president since last Southern governor turned President).

I'll give you a stolen election in 2000.

2004 - A Massachusetts senator/northeasterner running the worst campaign in modern history.


My overall point is stop bashing the South for the shortcomings of the national party. There are a hell of a lot more Democrats than you care to think of.

[hlthe2b]

2. Those who fail to learn from history, are condemned to repeat it...

I believe in that (paraphrased above) so strongly, I keep the actual quote for my sigline.

Having said that, it is all in the implementation. It could be good or bad, depending....Very much like comparative religion, which on its face I would favor as well... Unfortunately, it could likewise become a bastardized excuse to promote someone's viewpoints...

[Deep13]

3. Um, is there a month's worth of history in the ...

... short time the CSA existed?

[Lilith Velkor]

5. Racist and dumb.

[nealmhughes]

6. It is a bad idea on many levels, not chief amongst them is that this will not be an

instructive experience, rather a propogation of the "South as Christian Victim" legacy that the generation following the actors actually developed. I have studied Southern History for years on a graduate level, and there is a fetishism in the "Neo-Confederate" antiquarians who seem to know every detail down to the last button decoration of every CSA cavalry brigade's unform, the men's names, and their movements in battle but have no understanding of the extremely complicated socio-economic history that prompted the states to seceed.
The same ignorance (in the true term of the word, not stupidity, but not having knowledge) is evident in the Whig histories of the Union. "The glorious battle for universal freedom in the great industrialized North" v. "The evil decadent Southern Slave Power" is the narrative we get or the "Gallant Cavaliers defending the country Washington, Madison, and Jefferson gave us from the Corrupt Capitalist Yankees who have perverted our traditional liberties" narratives of the South.
Neither side were saints,they were men. The South was hijacked by the modern equivalent of Neo-Cons: idealogues who applied extreme peer pressure on the common folk of the South to advance their own status quo in the West.
The narrative of the Civil War is not to be written by antiquarinas or partisans, but men and women who take every record into consideration and try to make it a balanced narrative. Unfortunately, as George Rabel pointed out in a seminar of which I was a member at U. of Alabama, "There has never been a book bad enough on the Civil War not to get published and sell."
Slavery was the root of the Civil War, not some agrarian v. industrial culture. The South was not up to Union industry par at the outbreak of the war, but it was rapidly advancing. The Union soldiers were by and large country boys, the same as the Confederate soldiers. The South had a very complicated relationship with London, Liverpool, NYC, and Boston capital and insurance and shipping companies. Many of the slaves' lives were insured by Hartford, NY, and Boston insurance companies, death benefits going to the owner of the slave.
I often wrote "African kidnap victims forced into involuntary servitude" instead of "bondsman" or "slave" to reiterate the status of slaves. It was tied to cheap, self-replicating labor, purely and simply, and the "religious" and pseudo-scientific "racial" theories came later -- frankly, it was simple to tell a slave at sight. That is why slave rebellions were so futile and frankly, astonishingly infrequent. The Civil War was a cancer eating at Enlightenment theory and had to be violently excised. There was little glorious about the fighting, per se, only the rhetoric to justify the destruction of cities and countryside. The South had no chance of winning, given the blockade of the Gulf and Atlantic and the eventual Union control of the main river system in the US: the Mississippi/Ohio/Cumberland/Tennessee System.
I see no point in high school teachers and outside reenactors given free rein to posit about the "glories" of the Old South. It is hard enough for MA and Ph.D. students and teachers to understand it, much less a layman or mere lecturer. Understanding every facet of the CSA is a life time's work, and not a month's celebration, since the true celebration ought to be the continuing formation of a multicultural South with its distinct accomplishments in cusine, art and language highlighted, and not one sad era that began in 1619 and is yet to end.

[ecstatic]

13. very good points nt

[semillama]

22. Kudos for the best post I've seen on the Civil War

Factual, to the point and informative without being inflammatory.

[trof]

28. I'm proud to count you as a fellow Alabamian.

Until I read your thoughtful post I was going to make some snarky remark and retire to the lounge.

I haven't studied enough U.S. history (more's the pity) to say, of my own knowledge, that you are absolutely correct in everything you say, but it has the ring of truth.

I absolutely agree that this just a political stunt by the Georgia legislature.

I had ancestors in the 'War of Northern Aggression' <insert appropriate smilie here>.

My 95 year old cousin came up with an interesting fact.
One of our Great-Greats was the ONLY private in the Confederate Army.
"Everbody you hear tell about their glorious ancestors in the Great War, they was ALWAYS AT LEAST Captains. Most of 'em was Colonels, and a whole hell of a lot was Generals. So I must conclude that great-great grandfather Private Absolom Jones, 1st Alabama, was the only damn private in the army."

You tell 'em, Billy.

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

29. To me, your post shows that we NEED a Confederate history month

or at least a week. Or a History Channel one-day marathon.

The most I know about the war is some history of battles, nothing much about the pre- and post-war years. Like what caused the war, and then something called "reconstruction".

And if some of the story comes from researchers like yourself, so much the better. There was more to it than cannons and bayonets.

[Name removed]

8. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[MLFerrell]

9. Ignoring a chapter of the past...

Does not make it go away. This is fine with me, as long as it presents Confederate history in an honest manner, i.e. no glorification of the Old South.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

14. Is Michigan going to celebrate a Tim McVeigh day?

After all, it's a chapter from the past.

[Name removed]

10. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[quinnox]

15. no problem at all

Unfortunately sometimes people think things should be censored because of difficult subject manner, but nothing should be censored or erased in history.

And about an apology for slavery well IMHO that is absurd. It's weird, some people seem to believe in a klingon blood stain legacy or something. All the people who kept slaves are long dead and their descendants have nothing to apologize for.

[ecstatic]

20. if slavery is just "the past," then shouldn't the confederacy also be kept in the past?

:shrug:

Why should blacks move on when southerners refuse to?

[LeftishBrit]

16. I think that it is appropriate for people to LEARN about Confederate History

It should be taught in American schools, along with much else. After all, it was part of history.

However, having a special 'Confederate History Month' sounds a bit too much like a celebration.

[Solo_in_MD]

17. While I have my reservations, if done right, it may actually help

and deromanticize some of the myths about the CSA

[wicket]

18. Traitors shouldn't be celebrated with a month

n/t

[Xithras]

19. So long as any "history" is presented in a balanced fashion, no problem.

Knowledge is always a good thing, and educating people about history should never be avoided. We simply need to ensure that Confederate history is presented in a balanced fashion, and that their crimes are taught along with their triumphs.

And for what it's worth, most Constitutional scholars even today acknowledge that Lincoln wasn't right, he just had a bigger army. There is no clause in the Constitution making entry into the Union irrevocable, and prior to secession the legality was a debated point with no precedent. They weren't traitors. If the south had banned slavery and THEN seceded, the south would be a separate nation today and nobody would be calling them traitors.

[ecstatic]

21. they wanted to keep humans as slaves

Forgive me if I don't view them of having any triumps worth noting. :puke:

[semillama]

23. There was that "Triumph of the Will" thingy.

but that's the only triumph that comes to mind when you put CSA and triumph in the same sentence.

[Xithras]

24. So did the Romans, the Greeks, the Celts, and practically every other society at some point.

For that matter, there were once slaves in New York and Massachusetts, do we write off the triumphs of the founders of those colonies? Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were slaveholders, do we ignore their triumphs because they were slaveholders? Heck, there are many threads on this board right now about the Spartans because of 300, most of which praise their heroism (even if they curse the movie). The Spartans held an entire nation in subjugation as slaves.

Slavery was a vile institution, and support for it is rightfully repulsive, but the Confederacy is the ONLY nation that Americans consider universally evil because of the actions of a few of its citizens. With other nations and peoples, we can separate their good deeds from their bad, and recognize both for what they are. Why isn't that same courtesy extended to our own ancestors?

[Critters2]

25. Will there also be a Third Reich history month?

And yes, they are comparable.

[TankLV]

26. I think it might be good as an educational springboard, but I doubt it will be used as such...

Something doesn't smell right in the conception of this thing...

And I don't trust white repuke georgia legislators with anything...

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. It depends on what "history" they want to purvey.

It being Georgia, it will probably be the Magnolias, Scarlett O'Hara, dashing Confederate "heroes" fighting off the invaders from the North. The slaves, if mentioned at all, will be of the "happy and smiling" variety who mourn the passing of "massa".

[fishwax]

30. I think it's horrible, but they have it in other states as well

:puke: