I don't think removing some Confederate statues that were erected many, many years after the events they allegedly commemorate qualify as "erasing history". I suspect that there is a very good reason why this timeline occurred and that such commemorations were not made until 40-50 years after the Civil War ended.tech37 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 4:23 pmMaybe. So what do we do now? Erase that history or qualify it within the context of it's time?Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 3:59 pmWho said anything about the “common man” being at fault? Some of the common man benefited from the exploitation of those considered even less than common. Purposely so.tech37 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 3:44 pmYour argument re "human decency" and rightly so, is with the ruling class and elites of the time. The common man was simply trying to survive.Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 1:27 pmBasic human decency was probably learned centuries ago. Treating some with basic human decency and denying it to others can’t all be blamed on “didn’t know any better”…..kind of like a kid…. A 12 year old should know better than a 3 year old.tech37 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 1:11 pmTrue.Kismet wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 12:42 pmCertainly a rather large consideration but not the only factor. They also do not have the luxury of knowledge of what came after as we all do.tech37 wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 12:16 pmMostly because survival was job#1?Kismet wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 11:42 amEveryone should also recognize that when these historical people lived that it wasn't history to them. It was just life as they came to know it. They weren't all that prescient and pretty much lived in their moments.Typical Lax Dad wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 10:12 amThanks for posting that. I always tell people, I can give a Mulligan for slavery. Harder to give a Mulligan post emancipation. If we had only done the right thing post emancipation, we would be much further ahead as a country….its been 100+ years of sub optimization in this country. Some folks want to keep their foot on the brake.Kismet wrote: ↑Sun Dec 05, 2021 7:25 amIrrelevant to the point you were making. George III's government carried out his policies with regard to the colonies and refused to compromise on their requests for redress. That he wasn't as bad a guy as advertised previously does not change the way his government dealt with the colonists which resulted in a revolution. What a concept that a British historian would have to explain how the biggest eff up in British history occurred on his watch. Regardless of his personality, he still manged to lose a good portion of the Empire's colonies in North America. Not to mention, how he and his government set it all up fighting the French for all those years before the American Revolution. Recommend Crucible of War by Fred Anderson (an American author BTW)
As an so-called expert on 1776, please enumerate any of the grievances itemized in that document that the Southern States legitimately had in 1861.
I'll help you out - Zippo. Nada. Zero.
Southern states had representation in the Federal Government including a bunch of minority rights that they made sure they inserted into the Constitution including limitations on the Federal Government in favor of States' Rights. They used these rights to fight for the continuation of the practice to preserve their economic system based upon free slave labor. They wanted to expand slavery into the territories unfettered to perpetuate their economic system which included slavery and they didn't think the Feds were going to allow them to do that over time using the election of Republican Lincoln in 1861 as an excuse to secede. They were a minority and they knew it. The only way to make a majority was to secede.
As I have said here many times, there is much history available on the period and even more on the military piece of that history. We should be able to read all of it and understand the history in our own terms. Knowledge is indeed power. That said, there is no need to commemorate in the public square those figures who rebelled against their Federal Government and were traitors to same country. It is noble that we, as a country, paroled them after the war and not a single one of them received the penalty for treason or even served a day in jail except for Jefferson Davis.
I made a distinction earlier in this thread earlier in this thread using the recent removal of Jefferson stature from New York's City Council chamber at City Hall by reminding supporters of that action that without Jefferson and other of similar situation there might not be an independent City Council or City Hall in NYC in the first place. The same would go for all the others - Washington, Madison and Monroe who should be celebrated but also should have their other less redeeming features exposed for a total view of their lives and contributions to history. I just read recently that John Jay of New York (also the first Chief Justice of the Supreme Court) owned 17 slaves at one point or another (his family was heavily involved in the slave trade for generations before him) and even took a few to Paris when he was part of the delegation to negotiate and end of the American Revolution. He was later an ardent abolitionist. Does this detract from his accomplishments as part of a successful revolution and formation of an independent government? Certainly not. Is it relevant to our collective understanding of him, his family and his ties to slavery as well as the revolution? Also certainly. Should we take down all of his statues? I say no but that we should also understand his life in its totality. So far, not although an attempt was made to remove the new statue of him at the Kroll Auditorium celebrating the 50th Anniversary of the school named for him - John Jay College of Criminal Justice - talk about conundrums.
https://nyslavery.commons.gc.cuny.edu/s ... -john-jay/
So, any reading of history without an understanding the context of the times is sub-optimal IMHO. Applying modern context to historical events is a true "lost cause". Ditto for applying today's values retroactively 250 years.
Consider how we freak over Covid... try facing what those folks did on a daily basis (no matter what color) pre-penicillin/pre-vaccines/living standards in general. Some had it worse than others, no doubt.
Contrasting how far our society has come should be qualified. You probably disagree.
As I mentioned earlier, I'm not for placing any qualifiers on monuments to the generation who successfully fought the American Revolution and who founded this country. I am in favor of making access to the public records of their lives to understand them in the context of their times to allow individuals to know more about it and draw their own conclusions about how they feel about them having gained some additional knowledge. Having said this, I do also suggest that those same individuals make use of the same resources to discover materials about Confederates, both political and military, but I am not in favor of commemorating, in any way, what I opine is their treason against their country.
I'd encourage citizens with interest in American History to visit a library or a bookstore and access a voluminous amount of well-researched scholarship on the history of the country from innumerable different viewpoints.