Posted on 06/11/2020 8:18:23 PM PDT by E. Pluribus Unum
This week, if there had been no pandemic, I would have been on leave, heading for Gettysburg in Pennsylvania - the site of the famous battle in the American Civil War of 1861-65.
For some reason this conflict captured my interest as a child. I've always wanted to attend the Gettysburg College Civil War Institute's annual summer school. Sadly, that has been cancelled this year because of Covid-19.
On frequent trips to the States, I used to buy a historical magazine about the war whose masthead slogan proclaimed: "For those who still hear the sound of the guns."
This reference to the echoes of the conflict through the ages is, I think, why the war still fascinates me today.
As the Black Lives Matter movement demonstrates, for many Americans there is still unfinished business from the Civil War years.
The benefits of black emancipation were partial and never fully realised. Oppression, disproportionate poverty and racism continue to this day, more than 150 years after the conflict ended.
Other Americans who still hold to the myths about "the old South" take a very different view. And then there are the hardcore right-wing and racist militias, who freely use the symbols of the Confederacy to symbolise their own cause.
Indeed, the Civil War is rarely out of the news, be it for controversy over statues commemorating Confederate leaders or famous generals or, most recently, for the long-standing naming of a small number of US military bases after rebel commanders.
In the wake of George Floyd's killing and the wave of protests that have followed, the questioning of the visibility of the Confederate's public heritage has reached a new intensity.
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
Keep giving in. Eventually they get to executions.
America’s dark past? These idiots must be joking.
Im sure the Indians, the Spanish, French, Scotts, Irish, Jamaican, Haitian, south Americans, have something to say about you
It won’t stop with Confederate statues, they intend to erase ALL of our history.
On the other hand, Fort Bragg and Fort Hood are named for Confederate generals who probably aided the Union cause more than some Union generals did.
How so?
Two of the least competent army commanders the Confederacy had.
I agree.
Democrats are trying to cover up THEIR long, sordid history of racism, slavery, Jim Crow laws, the KKK, their whole opposition to the civil rights legislation and struggle.
If we have to change the names of military bases named for Civil War era DEMOCRATS, then we should rename any and every base, ship, street, city, park, landmark, highway, and building named after any racist DEMOCRAT throughout US history.
MLK streets would still be MLK streets because MLK was a Republican.
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