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confederate statues shouldn't be honored

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history.com and all the academic websites say the ciivil war was about slavery. hisotyr.com says if you asked people back then what the war was about, they'd say slavery. that means the only difference between germany erecting statues of hitler and the south raising confederates, is that one fought for genocide and the other fought for slavery. that's also why it's not like the statues of washington,... he just happened to have a slave, but he's known for a lot of other good things. if the south had other decent reasons for the war then it would be like washington- it'd be like if the usa lost the revolutionary war yet kept statues of washington. but that isn't the reality we are dealing with. people engage in revisionist thinking, and anachronistically say the war was about states' rights looking back on it, but that's not what the people or the leaders said was the reason for the war. 

"Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery " the greatest material interest of the world," proclaimed Mississippi in its articles of war

it should also be pointed out, that a plurality if not a majority of momuments were erected during jim crow and the civil rights movement. that means they were promoting suppresion of the black man with those monuments. it's not possible to say even the original intention of the monuments have good intentions.
even a confederate leader in his later years after the war denounced revisionist ideas that the war was about more than slavery.... (also in the following is an editorial about why we shouldn't honor confederate monuments)
"
""Whatever else I may forget," the ex-slave and abolitionist Frederick Douglass said in 1894, "I shall never forget the difference between those who fought for liberty and those who fought for slavery." Douglass (who is doing an amazing job and is being recognized more and more) deplored an emerging national consensus that the Civil War had been fought over vague philosophical disagreements about federalism and states" rights, but not over the core issue of slavery. In this retelling, neither side was right or wrong, and both Confederate and Union soldiers were to be celebrated for their battlefield valor.

Douglass was right to be concerned. Southerners may have lost the Civil War, but between the 1890s and 1920s they won the first great battle over its official memory. They fought that battle in popular literature, history books and college curricula, but also on hundreds of courthouse steps and city squares, where they erected monuments to Confederate veterans and martyrs. These statues reinforced the romance of reunion.

Now, a century and a half after the Civil War, Americans are finally confronting the propriety of celebrating the lives of men who committed treason in the name of preserving slavery. That these statues even exist is unusual. When armies are defeated on their own soil"particularly when those armies fight to promote racist or genocidal policies"they usually don"t get to keep their symbols and material culture. As some commentators have noted, Germany in 1945 is a useful comparison. "Flags were torn down while defeated cities still burned, even as citizens crawling from the rubble were just realizing that the governments they represented had ended," wrote a reporter for McClatchy. Most physical relics of the Nazi regime were banished from public view. In this sense, the example of Germany"s post-war de-Nazification may offer a way forward for the United States.

Yet history tells a more complicated story. In its initial years, de-Nazification had only limited impact. It would take time, generational change and external events to make Germany what it is today"a vibrant democracy that is notably less permissive of racism, extremism and fascism than the United States. Tearing down the symbols of Nazi terror was a necessary first step"but it didn"t ensure overnight political or cultural transformation. It required a longer process of public reconciliation with history for Germans to acknowledge their shared responsibility for the legacy of Nazism.

The vast majority of Americans have long agreed that the destruction of slavery was a just outcome of the Civil War. But in continuing to honor Confederate leaders and deny their crimes, we signal that the United States has not yet fully come to terms with its collective responsibility for the dual sins of slavery and Jim Crow."

the following is a politifact article that is responding to people who claimed the war was about more than slavery as "obvious if you research it". so politfact did research it, and came to the same conclusion that it was was about slavery....
http://www.debate.org/forums/politics/topic/103590/3/#2870466
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  • BrandyKnightBrandyKnight 62 Pts   -  
    It is dangerous to try and erase history first and foremost. And slavery was an international institution that was widely excepted as a lucrative business for the traders. We did not start that by any means. The first slaves came to Jamestown prior to the establishment of the United States. The northern states had slaves. of our presidents had slaves either prior to or during their office terms. IT was not illegal. It was nowhere close to genocide so it is reckless and absurd to compare the southern states to nazis especially when the northern states still had slaves right up to the civil war and after it. 
      The Union was not fighting the south to free slaves and you can look at any information in history that will back it up. The war started because southern states began to leave the Union. Slavery was part of the reason the states wanted out but you have to be realistic and honest in this situation. The entire southern economy depended largely on production from plantations. The north was industrializing and did not need the slaves that they did before.Their entire existence depended on those plantations which needed the labor it was afforded. If they lost the crops, they lost everything. 
      Don't confuse this post as me defending slavery which is deplorable. I am only pointing out that people evolve and their ways of thinking evolve. It was legal then and accepted around the world, especially in Europe. 
      If you are going to remove statues, remove them all. Remove the northern statues because they were fighting because of greed and power. Take George Washington off of our currency and tear down his monument. Remove all traces of our earliest presidents and their accomplishments because they owned slaves. Tear down everything in the world that was built by slaves. And on and on.  
      The removal of historical figures is like trying to make people forget that we had difficult periods in our history. These men were no less brave than the Union leaders. Be very careful when you erase history because it is likely to repeat itself. 
  • MayCaesarMayCaesar 5965 Pts   -  
    Slavery may have been the hottest topic at the time, as well as the voiced justification for the war from the Federals - but it only takes a bit of research to realise that slavery was more of a manifestation of the differing ideologies, than the crux of the matter. Federals' and Confederates' views on slavery reflected the difference in their views on the role of the government and free market in the society, and it was that, much deeper, difference that led to the sides being unable to find a peaceful compromise.

    Claiming that every Confederate soldier and general fought for the sole purpose of preserving slavery would be absolutely preposterous. People had a large army invade their territory and start pillaging it. It does not matter what you stand for, but when a few soldiers show up on your farm, beat you up, use your wife, slaughter your cattle and burn your barn down, you are likely to take up arms against the invaders.
    For a lot of Confederation inhabitants, the war was not about any ideology - it was about their land, their homes and families. There was a lot of support for banning slavery in Confederation, but even most of those who supported it still fought for their homeland, because that was what mattered more to them.

    The Civil War is often viewed from a very one-sided perspective. The reality was much more grey than many like to think, and both sides committed a lot of atrocities and featured a lot of ideological abominations. And while the Federals were probably much more progressive, they still were hardly saint, and Lincoln nowadays receives a lot more praises than he deserves.
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