APP - Robert E. Lee is Not Our Heritage

midcan5 said:
This discussion is about American history and the inability of Americans to accept what the Civil War was about. Revising history and making excuses for mistakes is not the function of this debate. Honesty is. We don't know your great grandfather so let him rest in peace. But that doesn't mean Americans cannot be honest about their history.

"I can testify about the South under oath. I was born and raised there, and 12 men in my family fought for the Confederacy; two of them were killed. And since I was a boy, the answer I’ve heard to this question, from Virginia to Louisiana (from whites, never from blacks), is this: “The War Between the States was about states’ rights. It was not about slavery.”

I’ve heard it from women and from men, from sober people and from people liquored up on anti-Washington talk. The North wouldn’t let us govern ourselves, they say, and Congress laid on tariffs that hurt the South. So we rebelled. Secession and the Civil War, in other words, were about small government, limited federal powers and states’ rights.

But a look through the declaration of causes written by South Carolina and four of the 10 states that followed it out of the Union — which, taken together, paint a kind of self-portrait of the Confederacy — reveals a different story. From Georgia to Texas, each state said the reason it was getting out was that the awful Northern states were threatening to do away with slavery." http://www.nytimes.com/2010/12/19/opinion/19Ball.html


"Her conclusion is that the Americans who fought the Civil War overwhelmingly thought they were fighting about slavery, and that we should take their word for it."

"In this unprecedented account, Chandra Manning uses letters, diaries, and regimental newspapers to take the reader inside the minds of Civil War soldiers-black and white, Northern and Southern-as they fought and marched across a divided country. With stunning poise and narrative verve, Manning explores how the Union and Confederate soldiers came to identify slavery as the central issue of the war and what that meant for a tumultuous nation. This is a brilliant and eye-opening debut and an invaluable addition to our understanding of the Civil War as it has never been rendered before." http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107198/what-this-cruel-war-was-over-by-chandra-manning/

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/687330.What_This_Cruel_War_Was_Over

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27876395-troubled-refuge





I have to disagree with that statement, this is about American history and that is a history of all of us.

Dictionary definition: something that is handed down from the past, as a tradition: a national heritage of honor, pride, and courage.


"If you can cut the people off from their history, then they can be easily persuaded." Karl Marx
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no you are no southerner man,GOD bless ROBERT E. LEE AND STONEWALL JACKSON.
 
Damocles said:
Heritage is not the same thing as history. While Robert E. Lee is part of U.S. history, I would not call him part of my heritage. He has had nothing to do with my heritage...

Heritage is the unique collection of crap (buildings, statues, parks, museums, etc.) around people that they use to create their culture. So, people who live in CO likely would never consider that guy part of their "heritage"...

While people in Virginia may consider his statues, etc. as part of their heritage, there is nothing particularly sacred about heritage, it also doesn't erase history if you choose to collect different items in order to build a more proud or even simply a different heritage than that of losing a frikin' war fought for a different nation who had the expansion of slavery encoded into their constitution.

In fact I would likely be embarrassed, and personally against, including statues to traitors who lost wars as part of my "heritage"... I'm glad I grew up elsewhere. You get to pick what you promote to build your culture, you don't get to choose what you use to build your history. History shouldn't be forgotten, and there is a place for that kind of thing and pedestals in poses that make them look like heroes isn't one of them...

I know I wouldn't want some statue of a KKK member sitting on or near the steps of Colorado's Capital Building.
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adjective
5.
noting or relating to a product, place, etc., that evokes a nostalgic sense of tradition or history:
 
chink said:
adjective
5.
noting or relating to a product, place, etc., that evokes a nostalgic sense of tradition or history:
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Right the stuff around us that gives us that sense of nostalgia. Stuff we can certainly choose. IMO, you set that statue inside a museum next to a statue of MLK and hold conversations, but using it as a measure of what is "good" about you? Yeah, that's all you.
 
What about the Buffalo Soldier Statue? Is it time to tear it down? The Buffalo Soldiers are mostly known for killing Native Americans during the Indian Wars. Can we really tolerate a statue to them, despite the fact that it is part of our history?
 
midcan5 said:
Robert E. Lee was a traitor to the United States of America and he was a poor military leader of the South, He was a savage person to the slave families and individuals. More of the actual man is documented below with sources and other references inside the articles for the person who wants to understand the real history of slavery.

"Nazi Germany was also defeated. But while its surviving leadership was put on trial before the world, not one author of the Confederacy was convicted of treason. Nazi Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop was hanged at Nuremberg. Confederate General John B. Gordon became a senator. Germany has spent the decades since World War II in national penance for Nazi crimes. America spent the decades after the Civil War transforming Confederate crimes into virtues. It is illegal to fly the Nazi flag in Germany. The Confederate flag is enmeshed in the state flag of Mississippi."

https://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2017/08/no-confederate/535512/

"Lee’s slaves regarded him as “the worst man I ever see.”

"The argument here is that slavery is bad for white people, good for black people, and most importantly, it is better than abolitionism; emancipation must wait for divine intervention. That black people might not want to be slaves does not enter into the equation; their opinion on the subject of their own bondage is not even an afterthought to Lee."

"I think it however a greater evil to the white man than to the black race, & while my feelings are strongly enlisted in behalf of the latter, my sympathies are more strong for the former. The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, socially & physically. The painful discipline they are undergoing, is necessary for their instruction as a race, & I hope will prepare & lead them to better things. How long their subjugation may be necessary is known & ordered by a wise Merciful Providence. Their emancipation will sooner result from the mild & melting influence of Christianity, than the storms & tempests of fiery Controversy." Robert E Lee

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/06/the-myth-of-the-kindly-general-lee/529038/
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The U.S. Constitution would have never been ratified — and a union never created — if the people of those 13 "free sovereign and Independent States" did not believe that they had the right to secede. Even on the eve of the War of 1861, unionist politicians saw secession as a right that states had. Rep. Jacob M. Kunkel of Maryland said, "Any attempt to preserve the union between the states of this Confederacy by force would be impractical and destructive of republican liberty." The Northern Democratic and Republican parties favored allowing the South to secede in peace.


https://www.creators.com/read/walter-williams/06/17/were-confederate-generals-traitors

Less than 5% of the whites in the South owned slaves. Fully 3/4's of the white people of the South had neither slaves nor an immediate economic interest in the maintenance of slavery or the plantation system.

This was written by none other than the late John Hope Franklin in From Slavery to Freedom, McGraw-Hill, 1994., p. 123. Franklin was a Harvard educated Professor Emeritus of History and Professor of Legal History at Duke University. Dr. Franklin also happened to be a Black man. This may come as an inconvient truth to some here.

So, why did they fight. As Prof. V.L. Parrington said in his Pulitizer Prize winning book Main Currents in American Thought, "slavery was only the immediate casus belli. The deeper cause was the antagonistic conceptions of the theory and functions of the political state that emerged from antagonistic economic systems."

stick your hate of the south where the sun does not shine hull.
 
midcan5 said:
...Well conservatives should statues to people who wanted to destroy the US of A be removed?
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My take on that as a general question is that it should be up to the folks in the community where the statue exists. Now specifically, with regards to your thread title, I disagree that General Lee "wanted to destroy the U S of A". The fact that he surrendered peacefully instead of ordering his army to go rogue with guerilla tactics, as he could have easily done thus extending the war perhaps indefinitely, is a testament against your accusation.

Thus your argument against Lee is a straw man.
 
Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who'd label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I'm sure Great Britain's King George III would have agreed.
 
chink said:
Confederate generals were fighting for independence from the Union just as George Washington and other generals fought for independence from Great Britain. Those who'd label Gen. Robert E. Lee as a traitor might also label George Washington as a traitor. I'm sure Great Britain's King George III would have agreed.
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Not to mention that Washington used tactics he learned from native Americans, that were considered dishonorable by the British.
 
midcan5 said:
So then if you say something several times it makes it true? LOL When you review who was put up these statues it is kinda interesting, also that there are so many. Consider that the Civil war was about destroying the United States and keeping people as objects to be sold. Is that something to be proud of? I was also surprised at the General who doesn't have a statue, see link below.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_monuments_and_memorials_of_the_Confederate_States_of_America

Missing General: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...ased-from-history_us_599b3747e4b06a788a2af43e


"Her conclusion is that the Americans who fought the Civil War overwhelmingly thought they were fighting about slavery, and that we should take their word for it."

http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/107198/what-this-cruel-war-was-over-by-chandra-manning/
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i understand you do not get it ,but i am a proud son of the south,ROBRT E LEE is part of my heritage ,i make no apology for this statement.

AMERICAN BY BIRTH SOUTHERN BY THE GRACE OF GOD
 
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