Editor's note: Will the iconoclasts demand the removal of Washington and Jefferson from Mt. Rushmore next? When will this lunacy end?
DISHONORING CONFEDERATE WAR DEAD
by Patrick Buchanan
On Sept. 1, 1864, Union forces under Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman, victorious at Jonesborough, burned Atlanta and began the March to the Sea where Sherman's troops looted and pillaged farms and towns all along the 300-mile road to Savannah.
Captured in the Confederate defeat at Jonesborough was William Martin Buchanan of Okolona, Mississippi, who was transferred by rail to the Union POW stockade at Camp Douglas, Illinois.
For a century, Americans lived comfortably with the honoring, North and South, of the men who fought on both sides.
By the standards of modernity, my great-grandfather, fighting to prevent the torching of Georgia's capital, was engaged in a criminal and immoral cause. And "Uncle Billy" Sherman was a liberator.
Under President Grant, Sherman took command of the Union army and ordered Gen. Philip Sheridan, who had burned the Shenandoah Valley to starve Virginia into submission, to corral the Plains Indians on reservations.
It is in dispute as to whether Sheridan said, "The only good Indian is a dead Indian." There is no dispute as to the contempt Sheridan had for the Indians, killing their buffalo to deprive them of food.
Today, great statues stand in the nation's capital, along with a Sherman and a Sheridan circle, to honor these most ruthless of generals in that bloodiest of wars that cost 620,000 American lives.
Too much tu quoque and not enough introspection. I too had a highly placed southern great grandfather. I respect him and honor his gravesite but would not place him on a pedestal.
ReplyDeleteInteresting...you don't see anything hypocritical in the trashing of southern generals while honoring ruthless men who engaged in scorched earth war including against women and children?
ReplyDeleteDemonizing the South and those who fought for the Confederacy just further divides the country.
Read today's American thinker, especially the quote from the cornerstone speech.
ReplyDeleteOr read "in the valley of secrets" at history.net to see how free people were to vote against secession.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the references. I read them. It reminded me of the conflict between rebels and loyalists during the American Revolution. It's much more complicated than one gets in school. I read Oliver Wiswell, a novel about the Revolution from the Tory perspective, and found it very thought-provoking. Nothing like this is ever simple. And it's true that the winners write the history.
ReplyDeleteI'm a student of Shakespeare. He died in 1616, 400 years ago, and we are just learning his history as a Catholic recusant. I think it will be another few hundred years before we have an accurate perspective of the Civil War, presuming everything hasn't been dropped down the memory hole.
Thanks for the references. I read them. It reminded me of the conflict between rebels and loyalists during the American Revolution. It's much more complicated than one gets in school. I read Oliver Wiswell, a novel about the Revolution from the Tory perspective, and found it very thought-provoking. Nothing like this is ever simple. And it's true that the winners write the history.
ReplyDeleteI'm a student of Shakespeare. He died in 1616, 400 years ago, and we are just learning his history as a Catholic recusant. I think it will be another few hundred years before we have an accurate perspective of the Civil War, presuming everything hasn't been dropped down the memory hole.