Katrina destroyed Confederate President Jefferson Davis' final home Beavoir. It was also the site of the Jefferson Davis Presidential Library. This is a significant loss to history.He's kidding, right?
If that traitor's so-called 'presidential library' was destroyed by the hurricane, then chalk that up as at least one positive from the terrible storm.
Update: Reason for hope, at least on this front, check out the location of the Davis Rebeltorium (it's the red star):
10 comments:
We should start a "Do Not Rebuild the Traitor's Home" movement.
Apparently Beauvoir planned for the wrong hurricane. But let's not fight yesterday's wars.
http://www.beauvoir.org/katrina.html
I emailed the guys at the Corner. If you are inclined to do the same, go for it.
I was happy when they pulled down the statue of Saddam and thrilled when Stalin's statues came down. The existence of this stuff celebrating the so-called confederacy was an insult to the U.S. Army.
The moral courage that you have exhibited in opposing slavery is quite admirable. So too is your desire to allign yourself with the U.S. Army---which General Lee and other Southern (read evil) officers once served.
Lincoln was one of America's greatest presidents, but he fought the war to save the Union, not end slavery. Regardless of what you think of Mr. Davis (praise be to Allah), it is historically dishonest to conflate Southern secession and the defense of slavery. Most Southerners never owned a slave and were enthusiastic in their support of secession. History is more complex than Batman versus the Penguin.
Where is your sense of charity as a historian?
Whatever happened to the sensability that allowed Lincoln to proclaim after over 500,000 men died--- "with malice toward none and charity toward all, let's bind up our nation's wounds."
Political correctness has entered your Big Tent. So take delight in the destruction of all monuments to the Southern heritage. The Fighting Sioux should no doubt go too in your morally superior world.
One by one responses to the anonymous commenter who gives lectures on moral courage:
Is it okay if I align myself with the U.S. Army? They do sign my paychecks. And I do remember swearing an oath to defend my country and its constitution when I started working here--a very similar oath to the one Robert E. Lee, et al., swore before they committed treason. They are not evil because they are Southern, but they did fight for an evil cause.
I'm not going to argue with you about why the South tried to secede (Lincoln's motivations are debatable but irrelevant--he didn't start the war) because you will ignore any and all evidence that slavery was the motivating factor. You already ignored even that Lincoln speech you quoted: “One-eighth of the whole population were colored slaves, not distributed generally over the Union, but localized in the southern part of it. These slaves constituted a peculiar and powerful interest. All knew that this interest was somehow the cause of the war. To strengthen, perpetuate, and extend this interest was the object for which the insurgents would rend the Union even by war, while the Government claimed no right to do more than to restrict the territorial enlargement of it. Neither party expected for the war the magnitude or the duration which it has already attained. Neither anticipated that the cause of the conflict might cease with or even before the conflict itself should cease.”
Of course you did not actually quote Lincoln correctly. What he actually said was: “With malice toward none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, to bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” Lincoln was calling for charity, but he was also calling for a just peace. Considering his other lines in the speech (you really should read it) that describe the war as God’s punishment for the sin of slavery (“every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword”), I think it’s pretty clear that to Lincoln a just peace would not have involved the South using their newfound states’ rights after Reconstruction to reduce African Americans to as close to slavery as possible.
Jim Crow and the Lost Cause go hand in hand. The Jefferson Davis “Presidential” Library is a celebration of the Lost Cause. That is not political correctness, that is a fact.
(So says this Chief Wahoo-wearing Cleveland Indians fan.)
I am anti-slavery and pro-United States. Mr. Davis was pro-slavery and a traitor to the United States. It is not a mistake to say that slavery was the cause of the rebellion. Read Charles Dew's Apostles of Disunion. And I will never have any symathy for traitors-- no matter how long ago they lived. I would be just as offended if I saw a monument to the Rosenbergs, Hiss, or Arnold. If southern heritage is nothing more than a defense of slavery and treason, then I suppose I do want to see southern heritage destroyed. If there are parts of the so-called southern heritage that do not involve slavery and treason I would want to see those things preserved.
This has nothing to do with political correctness. It has everything to do with patriotism, justice, and honoring the sacrifice of the men who died fighting Jeffersons army of rebel traitors. The cowardly terrorists who followed in their wake did their best to undo the results of the war that they lost on the battlefield. I have always been comforted by the thought that no matter how many rednecks wave the battle flag of the rebel army of Virginia, they can't change Jefferson Davis's special place in Hell.
Unfortunately the National D-Day museum is also located in New Orleans. Let's hope that this true monument to deserving heroes in defense of the ideals of this nation has been preserved. At least Jefferson Davis was brave enough to reveal his name...why don't you guys disallow anonymous comments? Cowards need not apply.
Guys --
Let's not conflate two important issues. The loss of Davis' home and museum? Good -- I agree with everything Tom and Tootle have said. However, the loss of the library, assuming it has any papers or anything ireplceable to scholars? That is not good. Historians have done some of our best work when it comes to understanding evil through its own words. I woudl lament the loss of collections of KKK papers, or the Citizens' Council, or other segregationist papers at the archives at which i have worked not because I celebrate what they stand for, but for exactly the opposite reason -- because I loathe what they stand for, but through their papers I can gain understanding. Imagine if the venona papers had been lost through a natural disaster? Imagine if we had no primary source documentation from slave plantations, from apartheid South Africa, from Nazi germany. that would be a horrible loss. this is why evil regimes often destroy documents -- because they know we could better understand them if we say those papers.
As for whther or not the Confederacy was about slavery, please. read their own secessionb documents. Go ahead -- read Mississippi's or Texas' or Alabama's or South carolina's own justification for secession. then go read Charles Dew's "Apostles of Disunion," where secession commissioners went across the South to speak only to their fellow southerners to push for secession, and then tell me some lie about how secession, and thus the Civil war, was not about slavery. I noticed that Forrest gump was on television last night. I recall some thing about "stupid is as stupid does." Well stupid does argue that the South seceded for reasons unrelated to slavery.
dcat
My understanding is that the so-called "library" was really just a bunch of neo-confederate crap. I could be wrong.
Post a Comment