Carol's Blog!: Confederate Gen Who wAs elected to office

Thursday, August 24, 2017

Confederate Gen Who wAs elected to office - the Readjuster Party

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/the-confederate-general-who-was-erased-from-history_us_599b3747e4b06a788a2af43e

2 comments:

Mustang said...: I am a historian ... so I want to comment about this. I just don't have the time right now. I'll be back.

Semper fi; August 24, 2017 at 2:57 PM
Mustang said...: What makes history so interesting (to me) is that it provides a window into the past and allows us to examine not only what happened, but why —along with its short and long-term effects. When we examine the lives of these Civil War personages, we have to do so with some detachment because looking at 1861 through 2017 eyes is likely to lead us to incorrect conclusions —and this is especially true if all we have as our foundation of knowledge is recently manufactured leftist talking points. “Little Billy” wasn’t the only ostracized confederate general. James Longstreet was another, criticized during the post-war era for making valid attempts to heal the wounds. In my view, General Longstreet was a far superior general to Robert E. Lee, whose vanity and stubbornness led him to order the slaughter of thousands at Gettysburg, Fredericksburg, and Petersburgh .... and the tragedy of this was that had Lee listened to Longstreet, the CSA would have been able to fight the Army of Northern Aggression into a standstill.

No matter ... it is history. The author is correct, however, in relating how post-Reconstruction Democrats erected statues of confederate personages as acts of defiance. When you think about it, it does make sense that a subjugated people would do that. Looking at this from the Southern perspective (which is what we must do in this instance), it was not bad enough that the South suffered under military governors for a time, but when these were replaced by Northerner carpetbaggers seeking to make a profit off the backs of an already destitute populace, deep resentment ensued. Imagine the indignity of having to stand as an accused before a Negro judge, a former slave, who could not even write his name. Appointing blacks to the southern judiciary was akin to pouring vinegar onto a festering wound —and it was intentional. Southerners didn’t much appreciate the scalawags, either. And so, if you want to examine post-Civil War attitudes, and if you know enough about what was going on, then you can at least see the Southern point of view leading them to enact the so-called Jim Crow laws as a defense against the Carpetbaggers and Scalawags.

All this said, it makes no difference why southerners erected these statues; the fact is that these men represent American history. We need not “white wash” our history. Some of it was good, some of it not-so-good, but all of it brought us to who we are today. Its value is that we do not make these same mistakes again ... but of course, we are doing exactly that. If we had learned from any of our history at all, there would never again had been a Democrat elected to the presidency after Andrew Johnson. Today’s protestors against confederate statues are the same imbeciles who support Hillary Clinton, who in turn admires the woman who did more to murder innocent blacks than any other single person in history: Margaret Sanger. What blockheads! Now ask, who taught these people history? Answer: leftist teachers with a socialist agenda. My question: getting your money’s worth, America?; August 25, 2017 at 1:10 AM