Racism in the Military

[DanMa1156]

With reference to Farragut, you would be mistaken. There is at least one statue of him in Tennessee where he was born and one on Florida. To the best of my knowledge, and I am willing to be corrected here, no Navy bases are named after people. That would be a good idea for the army...Fort Fayetteville, Fort Killeen and so on. We could avoid all controversy and name warships after geographic, oceanographic, and similar locations. The USS George Washington could become the USS Atlantic Ocean.

I should have rephrased - major monuments / honored in the vein of Lee or even Stoneall Jackson - you just don't hear about Farragut as a Civil War Hero. We did have some ships named after him, and you're right, we don't name bases after people, but perhaps training centers or ethics centers or something should be named after him if they aren't already.

My point is Southerners do have a lot to be proud of. If you want Southern pride and Civil War history in a monument designed to honor someone,, take down every Lee statue and replace it with Farragut or another southern hero that actually honored his oath.

For all the monuments at Gettysburg, why doesn't New Orleans or Mobile have a statue of Farragut? Those cities certainly have (had?) Confederate monuments, some of which are just "generic Confederate soldier" monuments.

 

[Brett327]

Curious...another person who failed, entirely, to read what was written. I find it delightfully amusing when the under-educated layer their lack of knowledge over a conversation in an attempt to sound intelligent.

It was just a point to pivot from, not a comment about your post directly.

 

[taxi1]

Key West...geographic and natural elements.

Key West is state of mind.

 

[Griz882]

I should have rephrased - major monuments / honored in the vein of Lee or even Stoneall Jackson - you just don't hear about Farragut as a Civil War Hero. We did have some ships named after him, and you're right, we don't name bases after people, but perhaps training centers or ethics centers or something should be named after him if they aren't already.

My point is Southerners do have a lot to be proud of. If you want Southern pride and Civil War history in a monument designed to honor someone,, take down every Lee statue and replace it with Farragut or another southern hero that actually honored his oath.

For all the monuments at Gettysburg, why doesn't New Orleans or Mobile have a statue of Farragut? Those cities certainly have (had?) Confederate monuments, some of which are just "generic Confederate soldier" monuments.

I have no issue with a government entity removing a monument, cities and states change their landscapes all the time. There are strict rules and laws (this is why Northram in VA isn’t “destroying” the Lee statue, he legally can’t) but it appears to me they are being followed. As for the hagiography of Lee, I’m not for that any more than I am for the simplistic, binary, “traitor” argument. His history and the history of that time is complex and worth our study.

Change like this comes at a price that many people don’t expect. The rise of the “Lost Cause” school was allowed because academics and politicians in the north were more interested in the unity of an “American” idea than in wagging fingers at the sons and grandsons of long dead rebels. Statues go up, speeches are made, life goes on...until, well, humans...now we are charging forward with a new narrative as artificial and hollow as the “Lost Cause.” This isn’t history, this is (and was back then) politics. One side of the political narrative wants nothing more then to dominate the other side and rub their nose in a little morality dirt. As one that works in history I would like to see a broader discussion that doesn’t end with idiotic, angry political name calling. There is a lot more to Lee, or Lincoln, than the childish stories we think make us wise.

 

[Griz882]

It was just a point to pivot from, not a comment about your post directly.

Got it. Thanks for the clarity.

 

[Flash]

Not a chance that a Dem President takes this on. The political cost would almost guarantee a one term presidency.

Of all the challenges and controversies facing thous country today I find it hard to believe that that many people would really care much about this pretty minor issue, at all. I think it would be met with a collective shrug by the vast majority of Americans.

Feel free to read my initial post on this topic. I don’t care if they change the names, I simply put out a warning that the reason for their naming is deeper than the simplistic, binary reason others are presenting. I also noted that starting here will open a rather tragic future of re-naming that will reach far deeper than Washington and Jefferson. All of your WWI, WWII...heroes will all be torn down just as quickly as Bragg, or any other. Most of the people involved in this effort know exactly what they are doing...in my business it is called controlling the narrative...they are not attacking the terrain of “truth” or “discovering “actual” history, they are attacking the map. They are trying to tear down what they imagine is the cherished history of a voting bloc that does not agree with them. They are not the first, you allude to it with the Lost Cause types did it in the early 20th Century. The history they are producing will be as vacant and empty as that it is replacing.

Or maybe it is about simple fairness, that maybe we shouldn't be have US Army bases named after folks who betrayed that very institution and their country. Certainly there are a few folks who might have a larger agenda but I support it and I certainly don't. Not everything is some giant agenda to change the world, sometimes it is just doing the right thing.

You’re forgetting the fact that they all resigned their United States commissions and formally/publicly renounced their loyalty to the United States prior to joining the Confederate forces.

The way the acted was considered honorable and above board at the time.

By some, yes, but they were rightfully viewed as traitors by others.

A very large part of me agrees with you. But (there's the "but, or however") I wasn't alive in the 1860s. Or in the previous millennia, where slavery was the norm in the world....But keep judging them by 2020 standards. I'm sure if you were born in the south in the 1830s, you would have made the "right" decision.

Slavery by the time of the Civil War was in fact widely condemned and seen by many as the horrible practice it was, having been ended in all the states north of the Mason-Dixon by 1847 and banned in every European country by the 1840's. A big part of the reason the UK never officially supported the south even they were sympathetic was because the confederate cause basically boiled down to defending slavery, which the UK had banned in 1834.

Even if you do make the argument that we can't judge them by today's standards there is still no reason for us today to honor those men whose main claim to fame as soldiers, and the reason those bases are named after them, is that they fought to preserve slavery. None. At. All.

 

[Flash]

Good post, but I find most contemporary people unable to think beyond their shallow mindset. It is not their fault, it is the state of their education. When offered facts, allegory, or similarities they run and hide screaming “Straw man...straw man!” Not actually knowing what it means.

Like the people who do nothing but scream "STATES RIGHTS!" when talking about the causes of the Civil War, leaving out the whole part about "states rights to allow the owning of slaves".

 

[Griz882]

Like the people who do nothing but scream "STATES RIGHTS!" when talking about the causes of the Civil War, leaving out the whole part about "states rights to allow the owning of slaves".

Just like that...shallow thinking.

 

[taxi1]

If ever in Millington with time to spare, it's worth a drive up to Fort Pillow, now a state park. Worth a google too. Small battle site with minimal impact in the big tactical scheme of things, and not celebrated in the South, but the incident there reverberated strategically.

 

[Griz882]

If ever in Millington with time to spare, it's worth a drive up to Fort Pillow, now a state park. Worth a google too. Small battle site with minimal impact in the big tactical scheme of things, and not celebrated in the South, but the incident there reverberated strategically.

Been there, fascinating site. I helped develop the area geography used in earning grants for battlefield preservation.

 

[Gonzo08]

Reference one Admiral David G. Farragut - southerner who understood his oath and fought for the Constitution; yet I see no statues of him throughout the south or bases named after him. Crazy.

I'm a graduate of Admiral Farragut Academy in St. Petersburg, FL. It's a military prep school, kind of; really it's just a private school that mandates every student enroll in NJROTC.

 

[Spekkio]

And I just realized, I didn't end my post how I wanted. If I had been born a German NAZI, I would still have been in the wrong. And likely to the benefit of humanity, would lose (and die) to the Allied forces. But deciding what was right 160 years ago using today's moral compass isn't really right either.

I don't think that this analogy holds. Large gap between John Q Public deciding whether to draft dodge the Wehrmacht and a senior military leader having to decide to go down in history as a traitor to the US, a traitor to the state of Virginia, or a coward.

It's worth noting that history over time is making the North's cause more virtuous than it was. The South fought to retain the institution of slavery; the north fought to keep the US one country. The Emancipation Proclamation freed 0 slaves. There were abolishonists on both sides, and there were people who believed slavery should continue where it already exists on both sides.

It's a complex time in our history.

 

[Spekkio]

To which my response would be:

1. Regardless of the value of allegiance to states at the time, they all swore to defend and protect the constitution of the United States (referencing former Union servicememebers turned Confederate)
2. Reference one Admiral David G. Farragut - southerner who understood his oath and fought for the Constitution; yet I see no statues of him throughout the south or bases named after him. Crazy.

The Constitution of the United States at the time specifically allowed and regulated slavery. If we want to go this route, not a single officer should have supported the union.

And at the time, state political leaders believed that participation in the Union was voluntary - that was the whole basis for secession in the first place.

 

[nittany03]

I agree that it's foolish on some levels to judge people 150 years ago by modern mores, but I'd also argue that the hagiography of Lee and the "Lost Cause" in general are also post-war fictions spread by people who were trying to deal with and process the fact that they'd been invaded, defeated on the field of battle, forcibly conquered and put under occupation. Similar to the Germans creating the "stab-in-the-back" legend to process why they lost WWI.

I'd also argue there's a difference between saying "I'm going to understand and accept why things were how they were in that era" and "I'm going to observe that people once did things a certain way and use it as justification for a point I'm making in this era." The latter isn't necessarily wrong (I mean, I consider myself a conservative for a reason, if a moderate one). But it doesn't stand on its own without more supporting arguments.

 

[xmid]

Slavery by the time of the Civil War was in fact widely condemned and seen by many as the horrible practice it was, having been ended in all the states north of the Mason-Dixon by 1847 and banned in every European country by the 1840's.

It's pretty easy to condemn something that doesn't affect you. I'm in no way defending slavery, but the places that were condemning it were largely industrialized. The south was still an agricultural system. North of the Mason-Dixon line they may have denounced the evils of slavery (and why wouldn't they, considering it had no effect on their economy), but they were still largely a racist society. If the south was industrialized to the extent of the north or the UK, I'd bet they would have been just as willing to ban such an evil practice.