Avoid Memphis - Confederate statues coming down

Having had ancestors, Alabamians, who fought against Lee's army, I didn't grow up hearing him lionized. Quite the contrary...

My grandfather more or less concluded that the Civil War was a result of the fore father's inability to solve the issue of slavery while writing the Constitution, and anybody that says the war wasn't about slavery might as well try defending the Nazis by saying that the party was mostly a party based around peacefully retaking lost territory and that Hitler's inner circle were just the exception. My grandfather was probably more sympathetic to the southern soldier than any cog in the war because they were led to war on a lie, but he never painted the South as on the right side of history even though most of his ancestors were CSA.
 
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My grandfather more or less concluded that the Civil War was a result of the fore father's inability to solve the issue of slavery while writing the Constitution

A bright man. That's also the accepted interpretation in every history class I've ever taken. Although most of those were up in New England, so I'm certain TW would stomp his feet and shout bias while reciting talking points from the Confederate Catechism.
 
Having had ancestors, Alabamians, who fought against Lee's army, I didn't grow up hearing him lionized. Quite the contrary...
We proceed into any of these discussions wanting to avoid the appearance of defending slavery in any way. I would say however the article would lead us to understand that Lee was at his plantation conducting these affairs for his adult life when indeed his 32 years in the US Army included the Mexican War and the assault on Chapultepec, years as an engineer maintaining the Mississippi River waterway, serving as Superintendent of West Point and many other assignments. The article portrays a much different man than that.
 
Having had ancestors, Alabamians, who fought against Lee's army, I didn't grow up hearing him lionized. Quite the contrary...
I attended Robert E Lee school fourth through eighth grades in Fayetteville, TN so I received the full canonization. I’d like to think the kindly gentleman who fought for his beloved Virginia is true but suspect all slave owners justified the institution to satisfy their own conscience.

There used to be a lot of Lee schools in the South. I don’t know of any in west Tennessee. Is there still aLee High School in South Huntsville?
 
I attended Robert E Lee school fourth through eighth grades in Fayetteville, TN so I received the full canonization. I’d like to think the kindly gentleman who fought for his beloved Virginia is true but suspect all slave owners justified the institution to satisfy their own conscience.

There used to be a lot of Lee schools in the South. I don’t know of any in west Tennessee. Is there still aLee High School in South Huntsville?
Lee Montgomery and Jeff Davis are still in montgomery
 
I attended Robert E Lee school fourth through eighth grades in Fayetteville, TN so I received the full canonization. I’d like to think the kindly gentleman who fought for his beloved Virginia is true but suspect all slave owners justified the institution to satisfy their own conscience.

There used to be a lot of Lee schools in the South. I don’t know of any in west Tennessee. Is there still aLee High School in South Huntsville?
There is in NE HSV and it's a magnet school for the arts, with a large black percentage of black enrollment. I suppose you could say it's named after the general, but indirectly. The old Lee Highway, named after the general, ran in front of it and it was named for the road, so I don't think you could say it was named for the general...
 
My Facebook buddy was back at it yesterday with a post he shared that sort of relates to this.

It was a picture of a gas pump with a (most likely photoshopped) sign on it that said "If you want the instructions in another language, move back to the country that speaks it".

The funny part I that the post he shared was made a by a guy with a business that sells Confederate flags and other memorabilia. The profile picture is of a Confederate flag and he had a bunch of posts promoting his stuff.

I guess nobody bothered to point out to him the irony of a guy telling people to go back to their own country while promoting a country that doesn't even exist.
 
Johnny Cash is replacing one of the Capitol’s Civil War statues

The times are changing, and so is the marble. Arkansas is leaving behind statues of the old guard and sending a few new faces to the U.S. Capitol.

Civil rights icon Daisy Gatson Bates and musician Johnny Cash will join the Statuary Hall collection in D.C., replacing 19th-century attorney Uriah Milton Rose and statesman James Paul Clarke. The governor of Arkansas, Asa Hutchinson, made the plan official by signing a bill last week.
 
And now Kate Smith and her iconic rendition of God Bless America are out. Someone found a couple songs she recorded in the 1930s (including one also recorded by civil rights activist Paul Robeson) that contained lyrics that are considered offensive.

https://www.foxnews.com/sports/philadelphia-flyers-cover-god-bless-america-singer-over-racist-songs

I get the outrage over the Confederate statues, but this is a bit overboard.

By their mores, they should stop playing baseball since the Yankees were a segregated team at the same time.
 
My grandfather more or less concluded that the Civil War was a result of the fore father's inability to solve the issue of slavery while writing the Constitution

If the U.S. Constitution had included a clause along the lines of the eventual XIII Amendment ("Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction."), then there would not have been a United States as we know it. Georgia and South Carolina would certainly have declined to ratify such a constitution. (at the Philadelphia Convention, Gouverneur Morris, on July 11, 17817 said he "did not believe those (southern) States would ever confederate on terms that would deprive them of [the slave] trade." (Virginia, had already abolished the transatlantic slave trade by statute, if the Constitution proposed the abolition of slavery per se, the Commonwealth would have stood apart as well.) If the extension of the slave trade until 1807 had not been included, Rhode Island and perhaps Massachusetts might have declined. (On August 22, 1787 George Mason "lamented that some of our [North]Eastern brethren had from a lust of gain embarked in this nefarious [slave] traffic."Until 1807, the vast majority of the poor Africans dragged to America did so in American (i.e. New England) bottoms.
 
A bright man. That's also the accepted interpretation in every history class I've ever taken. Although most of those were up in New England.

That is really interesting. Northerners, then as now, have as little interest in airing their dirty laundry as southerners did and do (which is why you heae some southerners say the war had nothing to do with slavery, which is simply not born out by the facts).
At supper a few weeks, back, I was speaking with a woman from Massachusetts. When I explained my views on the war, she literally started sputtering. She had never even considered any viewpoint but the "all slavery, all the time" viewpoint common to New England society down to this day.
When she finally was able to compose a grammatical sentence, her first take was, "We should have let the South go." To which I responded, "That was kind of the point, wasn't it?"
When she had calmed down a bit, she went back to the old mainstay, the great northern alibi, "What about the slaves?" When I reminded her of Lincoln's first inaugural address ("I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.") and the Congressional declaration of July 25, 1861 ("this war is not waged on their part in any spirit of oppression, or for any purpose of conquest or subjugation, or purpose of overthrowing or interfering with the rights or established institutions of those (seceded) States, but to defend and maintain the supremacy of the Constitution, and to preserve the Union with all the dignity, equality, and rights of the several States unimpaired; and that as soon as these objects are accomplished the war ought to cease”), she changed the subject.
It was not that she had examined and rejected any alternative view to the New England school. She was completely unaware that any alternative existed. I later found out she had majored in U.S. history in college.
 
I find it interesting that you invoke the words of Lincoln to argue that the North had no care to free slaves. Yet when presented with the words of Confederate leaders claiming the preservation of slavery was, in large part, the impetus behind their rebellion, you insist that their words have no meaning.

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I find it interesting that you invoke the words of Lincoln to argue that the North had no care to free slaves. Yet when presented with the words of Confederate leaders claiming the preservation of slavery was, in large part, the impetus behind their rebellion, you insist that their words have no meaning.

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funny how that works.
 
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