The following post is by Connie Chastin, God Bless Her!
IMO, the purpose of this is to have a post up he can point to when he's accused of anti-Confederate bias and say, "No, I'm not biased. See?"
Frankly -- and this is MY OPINION, a conclusion I've drawn based on my (admittedly limited) lookarounds over there -- that blog is not about the Civil War, or how it's remembered, despite the title. It's about slavery. It's about how slavery is remembered. Even that is a sort of generalization. It's about *Southern* slavery; it's about Southern slaveholding and Southern slaveholders. We know that because of the inattention given to Northern slaveholding and Northern slaveholders, and slave shipping, a basically Northern enterprise.
This is the sort of inattention that will argue with you that the Union was fighting to free the slaves while ignoring that there were five Union slave states and slaves were helping to build the U.S. capitol.
The Civil War, in other words, is a cover for the subject that truly interests pro Yankee bloggers: white Southern evil. When they say "slave women were raped," using the passive voice like that, what they really mean is evil white Southern men raped slave women. When they say slaves were beaten, what they mean is evil Southern white men beat slaves. When they say "slave families were separated" what they mean was evil Southern white men separated slave families
We know it's not about how the Civil War is remembered because of the references to the "Jim Crow white South" -- which occurred long after the war, long after reconstruction. But it does fall within the realm of discussion of evil white Southerners.
The question is, why?
Why such an interest in so evilizing white Southerners? We're no worse than anyone else -- our ancestors were no worse than anyone else. The great majority of antebellum white Southerners owned no slaves. (They have to be evilized by saying, "Well, yeah, but they wanted to. They aspired to being a slave owner some day," though I've never seen anyone offer the "scholarship" that proves it.)
So why? Because Southerners have to be made deserving of the horrific brutality done to them by the north in the war. It is that simple. There may be a few critics, but basically, the United States cannot admit to ever having done anything wrong. But what the north, doing the bidding of the feds, did to the South during the war and for five generations afterward is not justifiable.
So they came down here and killed us, stole everything that wasn't nailed down, burned towns and farms, and laid our region waste; installed a military dictatorship over us, and puppet governments that would put state treasures so deeply in... debt it would take generations to get out, leaving us little or no capital for investments, jobs, schools, and kept us in widespread poverty until almost WWII -- and then ridiculed us for being poor and uneducated.
THAT is why the South -- why *Southerners* (white ones) -- must still be evilized -- in the classroom, on television, on Hollywood's silver screen, in the corporation, the government bureaucracy, even in freakin' video games. Throughout the popular culture. And especially in academia. That mission of keeping Southerners evil is the motive, perhaps buried so deep it isn't recognized, behind all the "Civil War" "scholarship" and that's what all the Sesquicentennial commemorations intend to commemorate, in one way or another.
Don't let the occasional token Confederate flag post fool you. Don't let the occasional "fairminded" comments fool you. Look at the totality.
IMO, the purpose of this is to have a post up he can point to when he's accused of anti-Confederate bias and say, "No, I'm not biased. See?"
Frankly -- and this is MY OPINION, a conclusion I've drawn based on my (admittedly limited) lookarounds over there -- that blog is not about the Civil War, or how it's remembered, despite the title. It's about slavery. It's about how slavery is remembered. Even that is a sort of generalization. It's about *Southern* slavery; it's about Southern slaveholding and Southern slaveholders. We know that because of the inattention given to Northern slaveholding and Northern slaveholders, and slave shipping, a basically Northern enterprise.
This is the sort of inattention that will argue with you that the Union was fighting to free the slaves while ignoring that there were five Union slave states and slaves were helping to build the U.S. capitol.
The Civil War, in other words, is a cover for the subject that truly interests pro Yankee bloggers: white Southern evil. When they say "slave women were raped," using the passive voice like that, what they really mean is evil white Southern men raped slave women. When they say slaves were beaten, what they mean is evil Southern white men beat slaves. When they say "slave families were separated" what they mean was evil Southern white men separated slave families
We know it's not about how the Civil War is remembered because of the references to the "Jim Crow white South" -- which occurred long after the war, long after reconstruction. But it does fall within the realm of discussion of evil white Southerners.
The question is, why?
Why such an interest in so evilizing white Southerners? We're no worse than anyone else -- our ancestors were no worse than anyone else. The great majority of antebellum white Southerners owned no slaves. (They have to be evilized by saying, "Well, yeah, but they wanted to. They aspired to being a slave owner some day," though I've never seen anyone offer the "scholarship" that proves it.)
So why? Because Southerners have to be made deserving of the horrific brutality done to them by the north in the war. It is that simple. There may be a few critics, but basically, the United States cannot admit to ever having done anything wrong. But what the north, doing the bidding of the feds, did to the South during the war and for five generations afterward is not justifiable.
So they came down here and killed us, stole everything that wasn't nailed down, burned towns and farms, and laid our region waste; installed a military dictatorship over us, and puppet governments that would put state treasures so deeply in... debt it would take generations to get out, leaving us little or no capital for investments, jobs, schools, and kept us in widespread poverty until almost WWII -- and then ridiculed us for being poor and uneducated.
THAT is why the South -- why *Southerners* (white ones) -- must still be evilized -- in the classroom, on television, on Hollywood's silver screen, in the corporation, the government bureaucracy, even in freakin' video games. Throughout the popular culture. And especially in academia. That mission of keeping Southerners evil is the motive, perhaps buried so deep it isn't recognized, behind all the "Civil War" "scholarship" and that's what all the Sesquicentennial commemorations intend to commemorate, in one way or another.
Don't let the occasional token Confederate flag post fool you. Don't let the occasional "fairminded" comments fool you. Look at the totality.
