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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Posted on 10/09/2002 9:49:51 AM PDT by Rebeleye
In the Confederacy's case, the revisionism is ill-intentioned and manipulative, a corruption of the record to recast the Lost Cause into something honorable that happened to fall short, to be defeated in a battle among equals. It is a Civil War re-enactment where every man is a gentleman, every cause a just cause. Neo-Confederates use the language of honor, virtue, duty, of the Confederacy's Columbus-like motto Deo Vindice, "With God As Our Defender" and call it their heritage. But it is all sedative language hiding, as it did so well for three centuries, the South's original and ultimately irrepressible sin: White supremacy, from which the South has not yet been fully emancipated.
(Excerpt) Read more at news-journalonline.com ...
In the late 19th century Columbus was the toast of the continent, a safe megacelebrity of history whom President Benjamin Harrison referred to as "the pioneer of progress and enlightenment." A century later, he was Darth Vader incarnate. Russell Means, the American Indian Movement leader, said that Columbus "makes Hitler look like a juvenile delinquent." A leaflet circulating in Berkeley, Calif., around the time of the quincentennial 10 years ago, charged Columbus with "grand theft; genocide; racism; initiating the destruction of culture; rape, torture and maiming of indigenous people; and [being the ] instigator of the Big Lie." Berkley stopped celebrating Columbus Day, opting instead to celebrate Indigenous People Day every Oct. 12 (not to be confused with the United Nation's International Indigenous People Day every Aug. 9). What happened?
For one, historians did their homework. Columbus really was not a savory character, although for most of the last 500 years historians had missed the tick that made him so freaky. He was less of an explorer than a fundamentalist bent on slaving for God Almighty. And as usually happens when men go messianic on other men, all hell breaks loose. Columbus' messianism brought hell to his New World or, rather, began the import of a European brand of hell a few degrees hotter than the locals' own. The most they did to retaliate was give Europe syphilis. But the rap on Columbus is not entirely fair. The Mayan, Aztec and Inca civilizations that thrived in the Americas before 1492 were themselves brutal, unsavory, repressive in ways that made them more kin to today's Taliban than to romantic notions of noble natives.
The great Peruvian novelist Mario Vargas Llosa asked the right question: "What would America be like in the 1990s if the dominant cultures were those of the Aztecs and Incas?" The answer is a thankful "Don't ask." So the beating Columbus has taken recently may be deserved, but only in the details. There was no alternative to the European conquests, and in conquests there's seldom been an alternative to the brutality of men, whatever the color of their skin, their passport or their soul. Pre-Colombians and Europeans were cut of the same DNA. They were bound to collide. Columbus was hazard's delegate, its designated trigger. He would have been extraordinary only if he had not acted as the brutal, run-of-the-mill conqueror. He proved all too ordinary.
If Columbus has been revised downward, the Confederacy is being revised upward. The likes of Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson aren't war criminals; they're heroes who get their own massive statues on Monument Avenue in Richmond or their own Rushmore-like carvings at Stone Mountain in Georgia admittedly old displays, but burnished by the very recent revivals or sheer creations of Confederate holidays such as Confederate Flag Day or that cleverly racist pairing, by the legislatures of Alabama, Arkansas and Mississippi, of Robert E. Lee Day with Martin Luther King Day. Without Lee riding King's coattails, the three states were not willing to recognize the civil rights leader's holiday. That's more cynicism than revisionism, the same kind of cynicism that informs the recurring debate over the Confederate flag. Should it fly on top of legislatures? Should it be on the flags of Mississippi (voters there said yes) and Georgia? Southerners in love with their lost causes call it "heritage," a euphemism for revising racism upward, back onto the stage of equal rights in the eyes of history. If "the pioneer of progress and enlightenment" could be revised, so could Dixie's never-dead past that, to paraphrase Faulkner, isn't even past.
The difference between the two is that in Columbus' case the revisionism is on the whole well-intentioned, if naive and overreaching. It corrects the record more than it reinvents it. In the Confederacy's case, the revisionism is ill-intentioned and manipulative, a corruption of the record to recast the Lost Cause into something honorable that happened to fall short, to be defeated in a battle among equals. It is a Civil War re-enactment where every man is a gentleman, every cause a just cause. Neo-Confederates use the language of honor, virtue, duty, of the Confederacy's Columbus-like motto Deo Vindice, "With God As Our Defender" and call it their heritage. But it is all sedative language hiding, as it did so well for three centuries, the South's original and ultimately irrepressible sin: White supremacy, from which the South has not yet been fully emancipated.
October 12 may be America's most meditative holiday yet. It certainly bears the burden of heavy legacies. But those caravels and their Confederate flags are sailing still, their destinations stubbornly uncertain.
Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. He can be reached at ptristam@att.net.
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FreeRepublic , LLC PO BOX 9771 FRESNO, CA 93794
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Robert E. Lee was a true Christian gentleman, a mighty warrior, an exemplary father, son and husband. It sullies his memory to pair his name with King's.
If the Confederacy had stood for anything other than the perpetuation of slavery, their cause might have been just. But since that was the reason for their fight, the neo-Confederates have no basis to justify southern insurrection.
There's a lot of bad history being passed off these days. If you want to blame somebody for slavery you might go after the Portugese who revived the practice to pay for their exploration program, or the English who profited the most from it. The conquest of India and the profits from slavery made the City of London the center of European finance, which continues to this day.
What contradictory nonsense. Clearly the world (particularly the New World) is better off for the introduction of Western Civilization. The left as usual has focused exclusively on the warts of Western Civ while ignoring those of the rest of the world. They judge Western Civ by contempory liberal standards, while deeming criticism of other cultures as racist. What they ignore is that slavery and persecution have been the norm in every society in the world until a bunch of dead white guys invented freedom and human rights.
He was more than willing to preserve slavery in territories that agreed to submit to Union rule.
If the Confederates were fighting for slavery, and if Lincoln was willing to concede slavery to keep the Union together, what motivated the Confederacy to fight?
Lincoln's accomodation, by your reasoning, should have stolen all their thunder. But they fought on.
90% of the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy gained no benefit from the institution. They owned no slaves and their own financial prospects were significantly impaired by the huge pool of almost-free labor the slaves represented. They were outnumbered in the field with poor supplies. Why did they fight?
Plenty of slaveholders fought hard for the Union as well - what was their motivation? Why would they refuse to join the Confederacy?
History is a lot more complicated than you imagine.
If you're asking me, no. Lee was not a war criminal.
Furthermore, Columbus revisonists are not "well intentioned" and "naive". They are deliberate and calculating to revise Columbus into an evil man so they can further whatever political leftist cause they want: victimizationb, reparations, racial warfare, etc.
Now, Columbus’s culture did still have absolute monarchs, repressive churches, and slavery; the changes that would eliminate many of these conditions were also still hundreds of years away. Unfortunately, the two worlds were more alike than different. I do believe that this would not have changed in the new world on its own, and we all know that it did change for the better in the Old World.
The revisionists are scraping for content - what a joke.
Oh really?
I think the author is a yankee hog-boy who got his degree from a cracker-jack box.
The author's conclusion is flawed. I submit that if Columbus has been revised downward because historians did their homework, then the Confederacy is being revised upward for the same reason. People are doing their homework and not blindly accepting the victor's version of the story.
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