Confederate monuments

[Gregg]

Which is truly ironic, since Braxton Bragg was a terrible General and EVERYONE in BOTH Armies hated him. Hell, he was most famous, before the war, for arguing with himself.
From The Memoirs of U.S. Gant...

Bragg had a reputation for being a disciplinarian who strictly adhered to regulations. There is a famous, apocryphal story, included in Ulysses S. Grant's memoirs, about Bragg as a company commander at a frontier post where he also served as quartermaster. He submitted a requisition for supplies for his company, then, as quartermaster, declined to fill it. As company commander, he resubmitted the requisition, giving additional reasons for his requirements, but as the quartermaster, he denied the request again. Realizing that he was at a personal impasse, he referred the matter to the post commandant, who exclaimed, "My God, Mr. Bragg, you have quarreled with every officer in the army, and now you are quarreling with yourself!"

As I have said many times, those Bases were named as they were as a tool of segregation, both to appease the locals about having thousands of armed blacks in town and as a warning to those African American soldiers to behave. In North Carolina, where ironically the Confederacy, during the war, was never that popular, Bragg was the only local they could come up with.

[Volkonski]

AP

A U.S. Army base in western Louisiana has been renamed in honor of Sgt. William Henry Johnson, a Black veteran of World War I and a Medal of Honor recipient.

https://apnews.com/article/army-base-re ... 5f9113ed2a

[Sam the Centipede]

Off Topic

Arguably analogous to the Confederate memorial issue and Fort SomeBastard names: apparently in Australia there are moves to restore more native names to features which were given English names by settlers. Some probably as dual names – I think, but could be wrong – that Uluru / Ayers Rock are dual names.

Some of these English names commemorate army of government folk who were murderously horrible to the aboriginal population, which resonates with the Confederate issue.

[Dave from down under]

Off topic - for example
K'gari, also known as Fraser Island, is a World Heritage-listed island

[Volkonski]

Confederate memorial to be removed in coming days from Arlington National Cemetery

https://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory/con ... -105718054

The decision ignores a recent demand from more than 40 Republican congressmen that the Pentagon suspend efforts to dismantle and remove the monument from Arlington cemetery.

Safety fencing has been installed around the memorial, and officials anticipate completing the removal by Dec. 22, the Arlington National Cemetery said in an email. During the removal, the surrounding landscape, graves and headstones will be protected, the Arlington National Cemetery said.

Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin disagrees with the decision and plans to move the monument to the New Market Battlefield State Historical Park in the Shenandoah Valley, Youngkin spokeswoman Macaulay Porter said.

In 2022, an independent commission recommended that the memorial be taken down, as part of its final report to Congress on renaming of military bases and assets that commemorate the Confederacy.

The statue, unveiled in 1914, features a bronze woman, crowned with olive leaves, standing on a 32-foot pedestal, and was designed to represent the American South. According to Arlington, the woman holds a laurel wreath, a plow stock and a pruning hook, with a Biblical inscription at her feet that says: “They have beat their swords into plough-shares and their spears into pruning hooks.”

Some of the figures also on the statue include a Black woman depicted as “Mammy” holding what is said to be the child of a white officer, and an enslaved man following his owner to war.

[Maybenaut]

The New Market Battlefield Park is about five miles from us, just on the other side of I-81. It’s a fairly large tract with a museum dedicated to the Battle of New Market, in which a fighting force made up of various Confederate units and boys from the Virginia Military Institute who had Marched up from Lexington defeated a larger Union force.

I hope when they move the statue there they provide an accompanying explanation to n the display. I don’t think we should erase the uncomfortable aspects of our past as though they never happened.

[raison de arizona]

Agree, it shouldn’t be about removing it, but rather about placing it in the proper context.

[raison de arizona]

The Confederate Memorial in Arlington Cemetery is being dismantled today.

[John Thomas8]

Good. There's not a single reason for traitors to be acknowledged in that cemetery.

[raison de arizona]

Oops, spoke too soon.

BREAKING: Trump appointed U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston has issued a restraining order halting the removal of a Confederate memorial at Arlington National Cemetery.

The memorial removal began on Monday but was halted after Alston's order was issued.

Alston explained that the lawsuit brought forward by Defend Arlington claimed the removal of the memorial involves the disturbance of gravesites.

In a footnote, Alston noted that he “takes very seriously the representations of officers of the Court and should the representations in this case be untrue or exaggerated the Court may take appropriate sanctions.”

[pipistrelle]

Another Twitter account to block.

[Volkonski]

Judge allows the removal of a Confederate memorial at Arlington Cemetery

https://www.npr.org/2023/12/20/12205739 ... press.coop

A federal judge on Tuesday allowed the Arlington National Cemetery to remove a century-old Confederate memorial one day after blocking the removal over a report that gravesites were disturbed.

At a hearing in federal court in Alexandria, Virginia, U.S. District Judge Rossie Alston said he issued the temporary injunction Monday after receiving an urgent phone call from the memorial's supporters saying that gravesites adjacent to the memorial were being desecrated as contractors began work to remove the memorial.

He said he toured the site before Tuesday's hearing and saw the site being treated respectfully.

"I saw no desecration of any graves," Alston said. "The grass wasn't even disturbed."

Alston issued an 18-page opinion Tuesday evening to lift the injunction. He said the allegations that the removal efforts amounted to grave desecration "were, at best, ill-informed and, at worst, inaccurate."

Cemetery officials sought to have the injunction lifted quickly. They said they are required by law to complete the removal by the end of the year and that the contractors doing the work have only limited availability over the next week or so.

In a statement Tuesday evening, the cemetery said it "will resume the deliberate process of removing the Confederate Memorial from Arlington National Cemetery immediately. While the work is performed, surrounding graves, headstones and the landscape will be carefully protected."

[raison de arizona]

You mean they lied to stop the removal? I’m shocked. Or something.

[Rolodex]

You mean they lied to stop the removal? I’m shocked. Or something.

Yeah. Just following the example of SCOTUS in the football coach case.

[Volkonski]

Confederate monument taken down in Jacksonville

https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watc ... press.coop

A Confederate monument was taken down in Jacksonville, Fla., Wednesday following an order from the city’s mayor, as public officials around the U.S. continue to grapple with what to do with statutes commemorating the Confederacy.

Jacksonville Mayor Donna Deegan (D) ordered the removal of two statues from Springfield Park. Both were part of the “Tribute to the Women of the Southern Confederacy” monument, according to The New York Times.

“Symbols matter. They tell the world what we stand for and what we aspire to be. By removing the confederate monument from Springfield Park, we signal a belief in our shared humanity. That we are all created equal. The same flesh and bones. The same blood running through our veins. The same heart and soul,” Deegan said in a Wednesday statement.

“This is not in any way an attempt to erase history but to show that we’ve learned from it. That when we know better, we do better by and for each other. My prayer today is for our beautiful city to continue embracing unity and bending the arc of history towards justice,” she continued. “Let’s keep lifting as we climb.”

Deegan said the monument, which was put up in 1915, was part of an effort to intimidate Black people and promote discriminatory Jim Crow laws.

The statues were commissioned by Florida’s division of United Confederate Veterans, an organization headquartered in New Orleans, La., that promoted the “lost cause” myth that the Civil War was a fight for states’ rights. A year before the monument was erected, nearly 8,000 former soldiers gathered in Jacksonville for an annual reunion held by the group.

[Rolodex]

Meanwhile, here in Alabama, the state passed a law a couple of years ago that says monuments that have been up for 40+ years may not be removed or changed. That includes street names (so all the MLK streets stay) and other commemorative items. Even if a city votes to move or remove a statue, they will be fined $25,000 for doing so.

[roadscholar]

I had a guy I was buying a jointer from notice my Obama stickers. Not sure how, but the topic of slavery came up; I said the Civil War settled that.

To the point: he claimed the war was “not about slavery.”

I told him about the declarations of secession presented to Congress by each rebel state, and several (esp. S. Carolina) specifically mentioned that they feared they would soon be deprived of their ‘freedom’ to hold slaves. I told him the statements are in the Archives, you can look it up.

He visibly telegraphed ‘I don’t care about facts, I will believe what I want to believe.’

The machine was loaded by then, and we both agreed to part ways while we were still on polite terms.