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A 2015 New Orleans Times-Picayune article tells how New Orléans' Vieux Carré Commission recommended that four monuments be removed. Three of them honour
[...] Confederate generals P.G.T. Beauregard and Robert E. Lee and Jefferson Davis, president of the Confederacy [...]
The other monument
[...] was erected in 1891 to honor the 16 members of the White League who died during an insurrection against the integrated Reconstructionist government in Louisiana, which was based in New Orleans at the time.
Various news outlets are reporting that the latter monument, an obelisk, has been dismantled at the behest of the city government, and that the others are also set to be dismantled.
coverage:
- Washington Post
- The New Orleans Advocate
- WWL-TV (has statement from city government)
- ABC
- New York Magazine
- Newsweek
- The New Orleans Advocate
- Chicago Tribune
- Los Angeles Times
- Times-Picayune
- Reuters
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New Orléans Dismantles Monuments to Failed Coup and Civil War Figures
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The last time I saw him he was walking down Lover's Lane holding his own hand.
-- Fred Allen
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @02:29AM (2 children)
"Yet, he still had a choice. Fight for slavery and the right to own people, of fight to keep the Union intact."
Not really. He fought for his soil, which at the time, was his home state of Virginia.
As did most of the Civil War volunteers, North and South.
It wasn't a simple, Union was anti-slavery, Confederacy was pro. Witness the buried history of the Manhattan draft riots. New Yorkers fucking rioted because they did NOT want to be drafted to free blacks. There was an attempt by Manhattan city government to secede from the US over this, by "declaring the city's independence from Albany and from Washington." Thousands were injured, dozens lynched, and a fucking black orphanage burned to the ground (among other abolitionist targets) in the protest.
This kind of thing is fascinating to get a glimpse into the minds of civilians at the time. It's not really talked about. Lincoln used the same troops that had just won the Gettysburg battle to put down the riot. That too, is rarely discussed.
Secession was more than just fighting over slavery. It was considered part of the deal with joining the Union in the first place, and the ultimate solution when the terms of that agreement were unilaterally infringed/broken. That concept is no longer discussed, but it was considered a right of the States to secede in those days. Georgia actually seceded again from the Confederacy during Sherman's march to the sea, because the Confederate government had proven powerless to defend that State.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Joe Desertrat on Thursday May 04 2017, @05:45AM
Secession was more than just fighting over slavery. It was considered part of the deal with joining the Union in the first place, and the ultimate solution when the terms of that agreement were unilaterally infringed/broken.
The biggest battle seemed to be over the expansion of slavery. Had the South been willing to accept no further expansion of slavery, the war might never have happened. Of course, they feared that increasing the non-slave states would create a situation where the slave states would be increasingly marginalized in the Federal government, which was probably true, and slavery would eventually be outlawed anyway. It was a declining institution, slaves were increasingly expensive and fewer and fewer people could afford to own them, we of course will never know if it would have died out on its own as it had almost everywhere else in the civilized world before being forced out.
That concept is no longer discussed, but it was considered a right of the States to secede in those days. Georgia actually seceded again from the Confederacy during Sherman's march to the sea, because the Confederate government had proven powerless to defend that State.
The Confederacy showed the major flaw with the states rights trumping the central government when it came to making major regional decisions. There were several times, particularly in the western battles, when a proper military response might have stalled or even stopped the Union forces. Yet state governors refused to release forces to the Confederate government for battles, instead keeping them to defend their own states. The end result of course was that battles were continually lost, then the states by themselves were too weak to stop the Union advances.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday May 04 2017, @08:31AM
He fought for his soil, which at the time, was his home state of Virginia.
What does that even mean? It wasn't like northerners were trying to confiscate his land.
He didn't have to fight at all.
Witness the buried history of the Manhattan draft riots. New Yorkers fucking rioted because they did NOT want to be drafted to free blacks.
That's not really a surprise. Nobody wants to be drafted. And northern whites were just barely less racist than southern whites. So of course a whole bunch of them would be anti-war. Just like a whole bunch of americans were against getting involved in WWII.