Group Wants Confederate Monument Removed

[The Straight Story]

Group Wants Confederate Monument Removed
AP

(02/21/06 - GREENVILLE) - A Pitt County citizens' group wants the county commissioners to remove a Confederate memorial from the courthouse grounds, but there's a possibility the request won't be considered.

Confederate soldier was erected in downtown Greenville in 1914. A retired U-S Marine says the monument should stay because it represents a chapter in the nation's history.

One of ten supporters of the plan to remove the memorial calls it a "relic representing slavery" and he questioned why tax dollars were being spent to maintain it.

An East Carolina University history professor recommended building a second monument in honor of black Union soldiers.

http://abclocal.go.com/wtvd/story?section=central&id=3927204

[badgerpup]

1. oh, fer cryin' out loud....

Why don't we just take EVERY statue EVERYwhere down...because it's a sure bet that it's pissing somebody off...and start fresh?

:banghead: :sarcasm:

[The Straight Story]

2. I take a lot of photos of cemetaries and monuments

The civil war soldiers up my way (Ohio) all of course face south, and the ones down there north. It never occured to me to remove any of them.

The civil war was a major war here, and whether you liked the south or not (and by like I mean respected them, which I do) it was a huge part of our history.

But then, I am near impossible to offend.

[Greyhound]

5. There ya go. n/t

[Yupster]

10. One of the reasons that there are so many

Confederate soldiers monuments throughout the south is the way the Confederacy formed its army.

They organized their regiments by county usually.

The Confederacy did an amazing job of mobilizing its fighting men putting an estimated 75 % of all able-bodied adult white males into gray uniforms. We've never come anywhere close to such mobilizations in any of our other wars.

Anyway, when the county mobilized, basically every white man formed up and marched out to war together. They were able to elect their leaders which was often the mayor or preacher.

This system had real advantages in battle as fathers, sons and brothers fought together with real cohesion. Also soldiers tended to act more bravely and also behaved themselves better in camp since everyone was their friends and neighbors and everyone knew their wives and mothers.

There was a real downside too though. In the Civil War when an attack was ordered, the regiment was often asked to charge straight at the enemy and the results could be disastrous for the units in the front.

Just to take an example, the 26th Regiment from North Carolina came from the Crabtree Valley outside of Raleigh. Today I think it's a pretty suburban area. Back then it was a farming valley.

At Gettysburg, the 26th North Carolina was part of General Heth's Division which was the first Confederate division on the field and it took a beating pushing back the federal cavalry off the ridges and through the town. Then on Day Three it was part of Pickett's charge which ended the battle in complete Confederate defeat. In the three day battle the regiment lost over 70 % of its men.

Imagine the news of the battle reaching the Crabtree Valley. Think what it must have been like to realize that over 2/3 of the adult white men in your county had been killed or wounded in one battle.

I wouldn't be at all surprised if I went to the Crabtree Valley today and saw a monument to the Confederate soldiers which was put up after the war. It would be a way for the families and survivors to remember their dead.

[aden_nak]

3. I'm of two modes of thought on this one.

On one hand, I don't know much about the monument in question. I mean, if it's a great big bronze cast of Jefferson Davis cheering and waving a rifle around, yeah, tear that som'bitch down. But if it serves as a reminder of the senseless waste of life that was the Civil War, well, it's really a matter of what the piece actually is. So I can imagine some scenarios in which it ought to say up. I think I need more information than that article gives to really form an opinion.

[The Straight Story]

4. Good thoughts - will try to locate a photo of it

If anyone else finds one please post!

[Somawas]

6. This is ludicrous.

Apart from the historical significance of the Civil War, it would beehove some of these folks to read some of that history. Until Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, slavery was not a war issue. The north would have welcomed a peaceful runification with a slave holding south in order to preserve the union, prior to 1863.

[The Straight Story]

7. True enough

The war changed a lot because it ended up being fought over a lot of things, slavery was not the main reason but a side issue.

Folks on all sides fought hard and sacrificed a lot, to me part of healing that is recognizing the sacrifice so many americans made on both sides.

The south has every right to be proud of the people there who fought and gave their life in what they saw as a just cause - it amazes me at times that people can rationalize suicide bombers, et al, and yet see the south and civil war vets as worthless racists.

[bobbieinok]

8. secession statements of many states listed slavery as a major reason

many were posted on DU a month or so ago

[Charlie Brown]

13. Slavery was the underlying reason for the war

but it was not the reason most Confederate soldiers fought. Most were either drafted, or believed they were defending their homes from outsiders.

There's nothing wrong with memorials and monuments to those soldiers, especially not in South Carolina.

[Lexingtonian]

21. It's not that easy.

First of all, the South was considered the side more likely to prevail from the battle at Shiloh until Sherman's victories around Atlanta and those in Virginia in September 1864. The North had to have a negotiating position to deal with a stalemated war it wasn't going to win during that time.

Slavery was always the signature issue, the one the common man understood. In the South this was formulated as 'property' in the arguments that led to secession. '$4 billion worth of property' was a rhetorical shorthand that was employed at the time.

Among the elites the view was that the South was regressing toward restoration of aristocracy and a monarchy of roughly the British kind, and then Empire. An agrarian society and deliberate, artificial, creation of underclasses to provide manual labor and cannonfodder were necessary to such a scheme. I suggest looking at the Confederate Constitution and its poignant differences from the federal one, and deciding from that what its framers had in mind about who and what the C.S.A. was founded for. None of this 'in order to create a more perfect union' stuff. Btw, secession from the C.S.A. was, ironically, illegal.

The Northern elites did not believe they could live in peace with a triumphant Confederacy for long, sure that the Southern elites would try to peel off federal states by all kinds of infiltrations and subversions and bribes. I suggest looking at Sherman's letters for what the upper tiers in the Lincoln Administration and their allies thought. Sherman lived in the South a long time before the war broke out, even ran a military academy there. He considered Jefferson Davis a man who had designs on becoming an emperor and his own role in the war as that of preventing and destroying this design.

Views in Washington didn't go quite that far but Empire on the British model was in the cards. During the Civil War some Southerners looked over the Caribbean countries for places weak enough to invade and with good enough soil to place plantations into. To a significant degree the Spanish-American War turned to be a land grab in the Caribbean of the kind Southern planters planned in the 1850s and 1860s. The grabbing of Hawai'i and the Philippines in the Pacific is related.

You can pick your perspective on the issue driving the Civil War as one of restoration of feudalism ending in imperialism, or as an argument about slavery. Similarly, in the present situation some people talk of the stakes in our partisan conflict as the restoration of monarchy or dictatorship and a global empire, or it's an argument about social equality and economic justice. In both cases both views are correct but also incomplete.

[Nye Bevan]

9. Commemorating the soldiers who died in battle

is *not* the same as erecting a monument engraved with the words "SLAVERY WAS WONDERFUL".

The idea to add a monument to the fallen black soldiers sounds like a good one. But I guess some people are never satisfied.

[GarySeven]

11. Some folks on this board will certainly never be satisfied

they'd prefer it if we just hit the History Eraser Button and reset everything back to 1968. To many people on this board all "unpleasant" history should go ignored and anyone who thinks differently should have thier liberal bona fides forcibly removed.

I am not talking about you, personally, of course, but pejoratively.

[flaminbats]

14. as you mentioned..there is no history eraser button

but this debate has little to do with erasing history. Some would argue it is an attempt to eliminate a memorial to one side's representation of history.

The solution is to provide a new memorial to those from that national massacre, who are not represented.

[Charlie Brown]

12. I always hate these threads at DU, but here we go

The monument is not a "relic representing slavery." It's a monument to fallen soldiers, and it should stay.

The East Carolina professor is mistaken. A memorial to black Union soldiers would have no meaning in that community, b/c there were no such soldiers from SC. If anything, a memorial to the victims of slavery and their perseverence would be more appropriate.

[JVS]

15. It's a monument to soldiers who tried to destroy our country

Tear that treasonous bullshit down!

[Charlie Brown]

16. Do you believe we should tear down the Vietnam and Korean memorials?

b/c those monuments represent pretty much the same thing. Soldiers fighting for their home.

In any case, the monument has been there for nearly a hundred years now, and is a part of the community's history itself. I don't believe in demolishing the past.

[JVS]

17. Did the soldiers in Korea and Vietnam invade Pennsylvania?

Was one of their goals to take Washington and dictate terms of peace to the US government?

[Charlie Brown]

18. A lot of Confederates were drafted

"Was one of their goals to take Washington and dictate terms of peace to the US government?"

I imagine the soldier depicted in this monument was more concerned with surviving the war and returning home, albeit one destroyed by the Union Army.

At any rate, do you believe a 100 year old monument should be bulldozed?

[JVS]

19. I don't give a flying fuck if they were drafted or what they wanted to do.

They invaded my country. I don't like for people to do that. And the fact that they responded to a draft from a completely illegitimate government makes them dumbfucks as well as traitors. To use the words Samuel L. Jackson "Yes they deserved die, and I hope they burn in Hell!"

Let's replace it with a monument to Gen. Sherman

[JVS]

20. Do you acknowledge the difference between these soldiers and...

U.S. veterans?

[Rageneau]

23. No, but soldiers from Pennsylvania DID invade Virginia (et al.)

The South's position was always clear: Lay down your arms and we will lay down ours. Acknowledge our borders and we'll acknowledge yours. Leave us alone and we'll do the same for you.

The South's two excursions into Union Territory came after Union troops had previously invaded Southern Territory and (much more so than the South) laid waste to the land.

Slavery was a scourge on the reputation of America (North and South) and deserved to be ended. But don't confuse a war of DEFENSE, which is what the South fought, and a war of OFFENSE and invasion -- which was the war
the Union fought.

[JVS]

24. The whole country was union territory

It was some southerners' inability to deal with that fact that caused the war. The CSA was a treasonous operation and there is no reason for USA citizens to pay it any respect.

[Yupster]

27. Well that was the federal position

and they won the war.

The Virginia position was that the people held a popular vote on whether to leave or stay and leave won by a landslide.

To the people of Texas it was even more clear. They had just held a popular vote to leave the Republic of Texas and join the USA 15 years earlier. Now they held another popular vote to leave the USA and join the CSA. Seemed simple enough to them.

[sandnsea]

22. 1st SC Volunteer Infantry, Colored U.S.

1862

http://www.awod.com/gallery/probono/cwchas/1sc.html#history

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

25. Tear it down. And, all monuments that glorify war.

[The Straight Story]

26. I don't think it glorifies war

It does help us to remember it though and that a lot of blood was shed by those who fought in it. It would be kind of like saying 'take down holocaust memorial because it glorifies killing people'.

It is a reminder and a tribute to the people. There is no glory in a statue imho.