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Statues, Monuments, and When to Take Down or Leave Up Ones Dedicated To Flawed Historical Figures


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1 hour ago, Ran said:

Useful data from 538 on Confederate statues. As has been said all along, most of them are from the 20th century and came to existence as part of an effort to rewrite history.

Oh, they were erected to further the false “Lost Cause” narrative.  That is well established.

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Bit of a tangent, but there are parallels. 

Hagia Sophia has been this afternoon confirmed as a mosque and not a museum as per Ataturk's reforms. As Byzantine scholars and others will know, this does not bode well for the future of the Christian aspects of the basilica. Other converted churches/museums with complicated histories and with dual roles as Christian and Muslim historical places of worship in Turkey have been damaged or the Christian bits have. I was there in October thank goodness and I also visited Chora Church near the old city walls - that was 'restored' to being a mosque back in January.  I could not get to see part of the church as it has been under restoration for over 5 years - a bit of joke really as they have no intention of completing the work. Istanbul has some stunning mosques but Erdogan has to shore up his shaky political position and he's taken it out on monuments. It is very sad. 

In a way I'm glad Venice got the spoils of the sackage of Constaninople in 1204 - otherwise they would have been smashed up and thrown into the Bosphorus. 

I will say this for the miserable dictator that Erdogan is - he does keep the streets clean. Never seen so many street sweepers and bin men in my life. 

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2 hours ago, Ran said:

Useful data from 538 on Confederate statues. As has been said all along, most of them are from the 20th century and came to existence as part of an effort to rewrite history.

 

59 minutes ago, Ser Scot A Ellison said:

Oh, they were erected to further the false “Lost Cause” narrative.  That is well established.

True, but the were also erected as a means to intimidate African Americans. 

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Well then if they were only going to expand South how do you explain that Jefferson Davis expected and planned to be back in D.C. by Christmas and be the POTUS, sitting in the White House -- as his wife carefully explained to quite a few people, including her (black) dressmaker?

The point of going south was to expand the territory into which slaves could be sold, as it was illegal by the US Constitution to import slave labor from anywhere (1808 protectionism) - for every one who owned a single nubile female slave it was like owning Apple shares that redouble in value every day.  Plus, then, all those new senators and representatives who vote reliably for slavery.

And as even they understood, and understood even earlier than the free soil states did, there was no way to have two competing capitalist systems in the same place.  The south never left it alone.  Ever.

 

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7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

how do you explain that Jefferson Davis

You mean his wife, Varina.

7 minutes ago, Zorral said:

 

expected and planned to be back in D.C. by Christmas and be the POTUS, sitting in the White House

You mean his wife told Elizabeth Keckley that, in a potentially jocular or high-spirited fashion.

Is this the proof of an interest in a conquest of the North? The social prattle of Jefferson Davis's wife? You could look at the archives of Jefferson Davis's own letters at the time and see he had no intention of trying to reform the United States. She was fantasizing a triumphant return to the social circle she enjoyed best, not laying out any kind of overarching strategy that has somehow escaped scholars.

 

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On 7/7/2020 at 3:35 AM, Ran said:

Regardless of what Zorral thinks they have read, the CSA fought to remain independent of the United States, not to conquer it. It was a literal impossibility, given the vast manpower and industrial gaps between the two.

Given that the Union had about twice the population of the South and somewhere around 90% of the US total industrial production, it strikes me as extremely silly that that the Confederacy would ever hope to get an army to New York or Boston.

In addition, by making a strike deep into the north, the CSA would give up one of its biggest strategic advantages, what strategists call fighting on interior lines, which made it easier for the CSA to move around armies more quickly than the Union.

I'm pretty sure the Confederacy's basic strategy was to bleed the Union white, until it sued for peace.

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Just now, OldGimletEye said:

I'm pretty sure the Confederacy's basic strategy was to bleed the Union white, until it sued for peace.

Yep. Whatever hotheads and airheads may have said, the actual strategy was essentially defensive and focused on the survival of the CSA, not on the destruction of the US. As I said before, the only real territorial gain the CSA hoped for was to make the conditions such that Maryland would secede as well.

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59 minutes ago, OldGimletEye said:

Given that the Union had about twice the population of the South and somewhere around 90% of the US total industrial production, it strikes me as extremely silly that that the Confederacy would ever hope to get an army to New York or Boston.

Well, did anyone from the CSA consider themselves another Alexander? Just asking, I don't know. But my point is, there is precedent of a small nation conquering a larger one.

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13 minutes ago, Corvinus85 said:

Well, did anyone from the CSA consider themselves another Alexander? Just asking, I don't know. But my point is, there is precedent of a small nation conquering a larger one.

Sure, but in order for the South to believe that it could conquer the North, it would have to believe that it could win a number of decisive or outright lopsided victories against the Union, while marching its army from the Mason-Dixon line to New York. The south had some capable military leaders, but I doubt any of them were that optimistic.

Plus the front was so large, that the Union could have invaded, the exposed south, while other Union forces held against a Southern offensive.

And in those cases where smaller nations defeat larger ones. like Frederick in the Seven Years War or Alexander, typically they have soldiers that are superior in their fighting abilities than their counterparts. In Frederick's case, it was the Prussian infantry, which was largely created by his father. And in Alexander's case, the phalanxes he went to war with, which were also largely the creation of his father Phillip. I don't think the confederacy had any reason to believe that the average confederate soldier was that much superior in his fighting abilities than the average union soldier.

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40 minutes ago, Ran said:

Yep. Whatever hotheads and airheads may have said, the actual strategy was essentially defensive and focused on the survival of the CSA, not on the destruction of the US. As I said before, the only real territorial gain the CSA hoped for was to make the conditions such that Maryland would secede as well.

One of the reasons the war lasted so long is that moving tens of thousands if not hundreds of thousands of men is not easy. Most armies had to operate fairly close to a major rail head. Feeding and supply that many men is a major logistical problem. And the further you advance into enemy territory the more difficult it becomes. And then because of the weaponry of the time, a huge advantage accrues to being on the tactical defense. In the Revolutionary War and and in the Napoleonic Wars, they fought with smooth bore muskets. In the Civil War, they were fighting with rifled weapons. That was a total game changer. Fighting the rapid offensive battles in the manner of Napoleon wasn't just going to be possible.

Had the south tried to launch massive offensive to conquer the North, it would likely would have changed its mind once the reality of the situation set in.

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You all are believing the south was sane.  They -- they who made that war -- were no more sane than the crazy people making decisions about the virus right now.  That is the word that used about them over and over and over, including starting way back in the early 1800's by the Adamses, who certainly knew.  Read John Quincy Adams's Diaries if you don't believe me.

Also if they weren't trying for D.C. what was the point of the CSA's 1862 campaign, and the Gettysburg campaign? What was the point of their attempts to take NY from Canada?

 

 

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Attacking DC is one thing, which is close to the borders of the South. Trying to send an army as far North as Boston is quite another.

I'll admit, it has been awhile since I've read any Civil War stuff. Maybe like 15 years or so. But, when I was in my Civil War phase, I don't recall any author making the claim that the South ever seriously considered trying to conquer the North.

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You all have forgotten too, that Jefferson Davis and Co. began the formal revision of Secession and its causes and objectives long before the war was over.  Suddenly, despite what their 'constitution' said, this war wasn't about slavery or any of the other reasons they gave back then for declaring war in the United States of America.  The Glorious Lost Cause didn't begin after the war -- it was already in play by 1863-64.

 

 

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I have never claimed once that the war was fought for any other reason than slavery. In fact, I think I've argued, repeatedly, that the war started because of slavery. I'm well aware of the South's attempt to re-write history in an Orwellian fashion.

The issue here is the South's military objectives to preserve slavery in the South.

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The idea that the South aimed to takeover the North, or that Jefferson Davis planned on sitting as POTUS in DC, can be declaratively refuted by any fourth grader that's (hopefully) learned the South seceded.  Neither the Jacobins nor the Bolsheviks seceded.  You don't secede if you want to rule a state, you secede because you want to create one of your own.  It was about establishing sovereignty in order to continue (and expand) chattel slavery, of course, but the primary public rationale of the confederates' was that secession is in the tradition of the American Revolution - in which the founders were certainly not looking to takeover Great Britain.  They just wanted their own place where they could be white supremacist tyrant racist fucks.  Anyone in the confederacy that had delusions of taking over Pennsylvania, New York, New England, or even the upper Midwest would have been eyerolled or laughed out of the room.  

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1 minute ago, DMC said:

 You don't secede if you want to rule a state, you secede because you want to create one of your own.  

Sometimes the first duty of intelligent men is the restatement of the obvious.

-George Orwell.

Thanks for cutting to the chase and getting to the point in a succinct manner. I guess talking about military realities is more long winded than it needs to be to make the point.

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7 hours ago, Ran said:

Yep. Whatever hotheads and airheads may have said, the actual strategy was essentially defensive and focused on the survival of the CSA, not on the destruction of the US. As I said before, the only real territorial gain the CSA hoped for was to make the conditions such that Maryland would secede as well.

It's expansion west was dependent on Cherokee Tribes revolting and expanding their territories. The Indians fought for the Confederates on premise Slavery would be kept, Indians would have more self autonomy, and the right to raid into Mexico.

With this expansion, concessions were also made for more rights granted to the Spanish colonial settlements in New Mexico.

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Generally speaking, I don't think statues should be removed, but in the US specifically there statues of traitors built for the sole purpose to insult the black population and re-affirm white supremacy; there's no reason to have statues of Jefferson Davis, General Lee or whatnot other than racism.

But when the honored people did contribute to society, and their sins weren't necessarily seen as wrong by the normal views of the time (for example, Washington, Jefferson or Columbus) I have no problem with them being kept.  One has to remember that when someone is supposed to be judged by a jury for a crime, he or she is supposed to be judged by their peers, and we're not the peers of those historical figures, because we have centuries of hindsight.  

That said, I also have no problem removing statues of people whose deeds and views were clearly racist or evil even by the standards of their time (like the already mentioned Leopold II or Woodrow Wilson, for example), specially when they didn't really contribute much or anything to society.

 

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