Ex-Church of Christ Support Board

I was just yesterday thinking about the insidiousness of confederate war era culture in the south to this very day. It suddenly hit me that there are a number of streets in my home town which are named after confederate generals. I had never thought of it before. I was able to think of perhaps 2-3. Then I asked my historian DH for some names of confederate generals and he named a few more.......more streets named after them in my home town!! Holy @#$%^&!! I won't name them here lest I out myself and my home town. But if you know your confederate history you can guess some of the street names.

I imagine that some day all of those streets will be renamed, but over great protest by the citizenry. Yes, we had a statue and it has been re-homed to an obscure local museum. But there are other remnants which have yet to be highlighted.

This explains a lot.

The problem is symbols evolve. Take the Confederate battle flag. At the time it stood for secession, the right to own slaves, black inferiority to whites, practically unchallenged rule by rich whites over blacks and less afluent whites (you could not even run for certain offices unless you were worth so much).

Over time people forget their history. The Confederate flag came to be seen by most or at least a lot of whites as just a symbol for churchy apple pie culture, go to church love your family type stuff. And these folks get mad when the flag gets spoken evil of or Confederate statues get taken down, for the statues to them represent the same cultural expressions. They are not aware of what those men did or really stood for.

There was a Robert E. Lee elementary school where I live. We always had a week long instruction practicum about his life. He was portrayed as a very loving kindly man, grandfather to all type. He loved everyone and hated having to kill people in war. He prayed all of the time, helped the poor and sick and gave comfort to the grieving. In fact he was out helping the poor and sick, praying, and going to church so much it's amazing he had time to go lead troops in the civil war! That's how he was portrayed.

Real life Robert Lee was probably the exact opposite. He was a very entitled self absorbed man. He inherited slaves from his inlaws and had them severely beaten, often times mocking them while the overseer beat them. There are records of overseers quiting or refusing to beat the slaves because he wanted it to be so severely done. His slaves also claimed he would rape them and fathered children with them. One historian who saw his private papers (the Lee family still holds them and does not allow most to be published to this day) said after reading through some that Lee was a course and vulgar man, quite the opposite in character than what the southern public portrays him as being.

I could go on. There was a rich planter in the South during the civil war that was ordered by the Confederate government to feed some Confederate soldiers from the crops growing in his fields. He threw a tantrum and said he might as well be a slave having to feed those soldiers. It was only one meal and he owned a huge plantation. They were fighting and dying for him to have the type of life and riches he had and he threw a fit he had to feed them a meal or two. That was in truth one of the big reasons the COnfederacy lost. It's rich and leaders were not willing to sacrifice what they had to to win the war.

A lot of people do not know it but Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis's wife, after seeing how much better things were actually in the South after the Confederacy lost publicly stated before she died that it was best the North won. We got more schools, more infrustructure, political office and power opened up to the poor and middle class in ways not allowed before the war, no more slavery and its abuses, ect.

And you know they didn't just work slaves in the cotton field and beat them. There was a big demand for the lighter skinned mulatto women to serve as prostitutes in the cities along the south and even up North where it was legal.

And slaves were often times used for very dangerous medical experiments. There was one doctor who experimented on slave women to try to find a way to fix fistulas in women after giving birth. He operated on black slaves, even would cut them when not having delivered a child just to see if he could fix the problem. He hoped if he developed a technique he could get rich curing well off white women of their problem.

Here is my personal opinion on the Confederate flag. Some people see the flag as a symbol of apple pie love of family culture and nothing more. However, a lot of people see it as a sign of rebellion, death, slavery. It is not illegal to fly the flag but I will not do so personally. It's kinda like Paul, in the Bible, having the right to take pay for his preaching and a wife if he wanted one, but did not do so because he loved the people he was teaching and preaching to and did not want to take from them. So he worked for a living. I say that knowing how the black people see the Confederate flag and many northerners the loving thing to do is not to fly it because they by default are not going to see it as an apple pie love family type thing. There are many things that will offend people and cannot be avoided. This is something that can be avoided and does not hurt anyone to oblige their feelings. So don't fly the flag out of a sense of love towards others.

It would be like in a few hundred years someone in Germany does not really understand how evil the Nazis were and decided to fly the Nazi era German flag because he is proud of their inventing the first jets, the first rocket to reach space ect. And he has Jewish neighbors that very much remember what the Nazis stood for. They get up every morning to go to work and Hans has his Nazi flag flying across the street from them. If you would not fly a Nazi flag so as to avoid offense why would you fly the Condeferate flag and give offense?

The only time it is appropriate in my opinion is perhaps at the graves of people like Jefferson Davis, Confederate war dead cemetaries, reenactments, and places where its absence would be weirder than its inclusion like displays where all the flags flown over Texas in history are shown or exampled.

B.H. wrote:The problem is symbols evolve. Take the Confederate battle flag. At the time it stood for secession, the right to own slaves, black inferiority to whites, practically unchallenged rule by rich whites over blacks and less afluent whites (you could not even run for certain offices unless you were worth so much).

Over time people forget their history. The Confederate flag came to be seen by most or at least a lot of whites as just a symbol for churchy apple pie culture, go to church love your family type stuff. And these folks get mad when the flag gets spoken evil of or Confederate statues get taken down, for the statues to them represent the same cultural expressions. They are not aware of what those men did or really stood for.

There was a Robert E. Lee elementary school where I live. We always had a week long instruction practicum about his life. He was portrayed as a very loving kindly man, grandfather to all type. He loved everyone and hated having to kill people in war. He prayed all of the time, helped the poor and sick and gave comfort to the grieving. In fact he was out helping the poor and sick, praying, and going to church so much it's amazing he had time to go lead troops in the civil war! That's how he was portrayed.

Real life Robert Lee was probably the exact opposite. He was a very entitled self absorbed man. He inherited slaves from his inlaws and had them severely beaten, often times mocking them while the overseer beat them. There are records of overseers quiting or refusing to beat the slaves because he wanted it to be so severely done. His slaves also claimed he would rape them and fathered children with them. One historian who saw his private papers (the Lee family still holds them and does not allow most to be published to this day) said after reading through some that Lee was a course and vulgar man, quite the opposite in character than what the southern public portrays him as being.

I could go on. There was a rich planter in the South during the civil war that was ordered by the Confederate government to feed some Confederate soldiers from the crops growing in his fields. He threw a tantrum and said he might as well be a slave having to feed those soldiers. It was only one meal and he owned a huge plantation. They were fighting and dying for him to have the type of life and riches he had and he threw a fit he had to feed them a meal or two. That was in truth one of the big reasons the COnfederacy lost. It's rich and leaders were not willing to sacrifice what they had to to win the war.

A lot of people do not know it but Varina Davis, Jefferson Davis's wife, after seeing how much better things were actually in the South after the Confederacy lost publicly stated before she died that it was best the North won. We got more schools, more infrustructure, political office and power opened up to the poor and middle class in ways not allowed before the war, no more slavery and its abuses, ect.

And you know they didn't just work slaves and beat them. There was a big demand for the lighter skinned mulatto women to serve as prostitutes in the cities along the south and even up North where it was legal.

And slaves were often times used for very dangerous medical experiments. There was one doctor who experimented on slave women to try to find a way to fix fistulas in women after giving birth. He operated on black slaves, even would cut them when not having delivered a child just to see if he could fix the problem. He hoped if he developed a technique he could get rich curing well off white women of their problem.

You forgot the part where he did all that surgery WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because hey, black folks don't have the same pain feelings as white folks. And that doctor has STATUES and MEDICAL SCHOOL BUILDINGS in his honor.

You forgot the part where he did all that surgery WITHOUT ANESTHESIA because hey, black folks don't have the same pain feelings as white folks. And that doctor has STATUES and MEDICAL SCHOOL BUILDINGS in his honor.

That is correct as well.

I forgot to add one more detail. Remember when I said the mulatto women were often used as prostitutes in the bigger cities? Those mulatto women were often times the daughters of full black women and white masters. The white master made his daughter go whore to make him money.

You know the Confederacy declared war on the United States and started the war in the first place. The Confederacy wanted the border states of Missouri, Kentucky and the then territories of Oklahoma, Arizona and New Mexico. Lincoln and the northern government, if you read their writings, were probably going to let the Confederacy leave if it accepted it would only the 11 actual states it was historically composed of and perhaps Oklahoma. Oklahoma had a large population sympathetic to the Confederate cause. There were elections in Kentucky and Missouri whether to secede or not and the secessionists lost badly. Jefferson Davis said "Nope, gonna join Confederacy anyway. Give them to us or we will take them" Confederacy fired on Ft. Sumnter because it was declaring war and going to take more land from the USA than wanted to join it. Confederacy deserved its ass whippin. BH had a great great grandfather serve in the Confederate army. The north whooped his ass so hard it became genetic. Even to this day it hurts my butt to try to sit down after thinking about the civil war.

Well, I really didn't mean to open a can of worms with this post. But I guess any time the Civil War comes up, it is a nasty can of worms.

Ivy wrote:Well, I really didn't mean to open a can of worms with this post. But I guess any time the Civil War comes up, it is a nasty can of worms.

I accepted a long time ago after my university studies as well as much self directed study my family was on the wrong side of the civil war. My family owned slaves up in Arkansas. I do not know how they treated them but I am sure even under the kindest masters slavery still sucked. I know their names and there are lots of blacks that live in that area today that have their last name. I probably am blood related to some of these black people. In a way the slaves got back at old master. If they are descendants of his and his slaves they have done better than most of masters descendants. I haven't done bad in life but they have gone on to be doctors and lawyers and such. I grinned when I realized this and said "You know what. Good for them".

If you wouldn't be proud of the Nazis then you wouldn't be proud of the Confederacy and its leaders if you knew what they really did and believed. The only difference really was in the degree and who they crapped on. They even had a book called 'A Biblical Defense of Slavery" circulating and gave it to Confederate troops supposedly proving from the Bible that God wanted blacks to be the slave race and then went on to use junk science to prove blacks were inferior to whites. If you read it it will just make you sick how the author takes bible out of context and the perverse use of science to prove blacks supposedly inferior. To his shame Alexander Campbell allowed a postcript at the end of the book where he shares his views. Campbell was a politican about it and said basically slavery was biblically okay but it wasn't something we had to have. He hoped we wouldn't knock the crap out of each other over it.

Some of my ancestors were Confederate soldiers and one had a high rank in the Confederate Army. A few fought on the Union side but most were Confederate. I'm not proud of that part of my family history.

B.H. wrote:

Ivy wrote:Well, I really didn't mean to open a can of worms with this post. But I guess any time the Civil War comes up, it is a nasty can of worms.

I accepted a long time ago after my university college studies as well as much self directed study my family was on the wrong side of the civil war. My family owned slaves up in Arkansas. I do not know how they treated them but I am sure even under the kindest masters slavery still sucked. I know their names and their are lots of blacks that live in that area today that have their last name. I probably am blood related to them. In a way they got back at old master. If they are descendants of his slaves they have done better than most of masters descendants. I haven't done bad in life but they have gone on to be doctors and lawyers and such. I grinned when I realized this and said "You know what. Good for them"..

What part of Arkansas? Most of my family is from Arkansas, even going way back.