Hello everyone! It's been one year since I made this video, and what a year it's been. Ironically, just a couple of short weeks after filming this, statues once again popped up in the American news cycle as worldwide protests intensified following the murder of George Floyd. But it wasn’t just Confederate monuments in the crosshairs - it was just about any statue deemed problematic. So unfortunately, certain aspects of the video quickly became dated, in particular the information regarding public opinion in 2017 at 6:21. At the time, I posted a correction/update in a pinned comment. Now that enough time has passed to view the events more soberly and objectively, I'd like to share my (probably unasked and unwanted) thoughts about the 2020 monuments controversy. Last summer, when protestors started toppling non-Confederate statues - including likenesses of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and others - those who had opposed the removal of Confederate symbols loudly gloated that the "slippery slope" argument had been vindicated. As they saw it, these malevolent anti-American protestors were never going to stop with Confederates, oh no! They would not rest until history was completely rewritten to fit their woke agenda. Have events since last summer borne that theory out? No, of course not. To be sure, protestors did destroy a few statues of slaveowning Founding Fathers (whose legacies are far more morally ambiguous than Confederates, in my opinion). They even took aim at a bust of Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco. The months-long uprising in Portland, Oregon was especially dangerous for big bronze presidents, claiming such esteemed casualties as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln. Wait, so you're telling me that leftist activists on the West Coast have a myopic view of American history? Whoa, that's crazy. And those activists, caught up in the heat of the moment and understandably outraged by four hundred years of black oppression in America, went a little too far and tore down a statue that maybe shouldn't have been torn down? Pull the other one! Here's my main question for the drunk uncles of America: where is the apocalyptic domino of toppled Founding Father statues you keep predicting will happen? If the communists over at Antifa, LLC are trying to destroy American history, they're doing a terrible job. Since the ferocity of last summer, only a couple of inoffensive statues have been removed, always peaceably and (it seems to me) for good reasons. The Emancipation statue in Boston for instance, despite being erected for all the right reasons, depicts a black man kneeling in gratitude at Lincoln's feet - yeah, maybe not a great look, and I can completely understand why the city of Boston would no longer want it on public display. Times change, and standards change. It's only natural that something that was innocuous 140 years ago might raise a few eyebrows today. And in all seriousness, I think the statues controversy last year was a terrible shame. Not because of the statues - they're hunks of metal - but because it allowed the enemies of progress to gain the initiative in the cultural conversation, and provided ammunition to the right-wing media, which thrives on fear and misinformation. Pundits on networks like Fox screamed that what these protests were really about was destroying America, and all that was good about America. See, they even tore down poor George Washington! Their audiences ate it up. All of a sudden, everyone was talking about historical memory and activists were on the defensive. Any notions of police reform, the protests' original aim, were quietly forgotten. Because, of course, this debate actually has next to nothing to do with statues themselves. They only seem to become important to modern day Americans (of any political persuasion) once they pop up in the news again. So during the next monuments controversy, just remember that it's never been about "preserving history." It's about depriving people of color of even the barest symbolic gesture. Oh, and if you're curious, my position has remained unchanged. If a local municipality wants to take down a statue, they should be able to, and if I don't live there then it's not my business.
To bank on your "Civil war museum" Idea... I know what we can call it.... The Lost Cause History Museum...... where it full on debunks every lost cause myth and where it came from and shows the harsh reality of the civil war and slavery.
I find that in people's rush to get to where they should be they often forget the slow painful steps taken to get there and fail to recognize their signifigance.
@@notimportant3394 It's not destroying shit, yes they destroyed shit, but that was an outrage at the system where they are getting killed and jailed at twice the rate of everyone else in America. The "barest gesture" is no longer idolizing those that fought to keep them in bondage or not defending the racist individuals that hurt them because they have the power to do so. Convicting Chovin was a small basic gesture, but for every Chovin there are 4 more that are protected by "qualified immunity". Which is basically "ignorance of the law is not an excuse, except when your job IS the law then you can get away with anything"
How about a statue of Frederick Douglass next to the Confederate statues? Or a statue of a soldier belonging to one of the Black regiments taking aim at the Confederate? Let us see if those who like these Confederate monuments find that offensive.
In my town we have a statue of the confederacy, which is strange considering we actually voted to secede from Tennesee after it itself seceded from the union.
Southern Unionists (those who remained loyal to their country) are terribly underrepresented as monuments in the South. 22,000 Virginians fought for the Union alone, including 1/3rd of Virginia's officers that studied at West Point. They were Southerners too, but are not honored in the South. If Confederate statues were solely about heritage, we'd also see statues of Southerners who loved their country more than slavery.
Welcome to East Tennessee, I've been threatened and almost doxxed by people online because I told them that large parts of East Tennessee weren't pro-confederate.
I'm surprised you didn't bring up the fact that many of the statues and monuments in question were erected closer to present time than to the Civil War. While arguments could be made about original period monuments erected by veterans of the Civil War are historic, that argument cannot be made about Confederate statues erected in the 1960s and 70s in response to the Civil Rights Movement.
@@ronwallace6273 the last of the confederacy was dying and black people were getting rights, we had to honor our slave owning/raping/breeding you know all the things you do with live stock to breed and work them. So glad they were dead though, can you imagine how they would have felt seeing thay civil rights Bill pass? The day the true America died, sit close to them on a bus or use the same water fountain? What has this country come to 😂 so when do we put up the nazi monuments next to the allies and holocaust ones? They were people's grandfathers fighting to return the empire to its former glory days. If you want a real good book that those daughters wrote, you should see the book those daughters wrote for children and to put in schools that was Pro KKK, don't worry also not racist, just funny stories about those same dads and grand dads dying back in their prime building bonfires and starting a neighborhood watch, sounds right up your alley.
Fun fact: when Lincoln first read out the Gettysburg Address, he wasn’t happy with it. He thought it was a really stupid and underwhelming speech. He was actually quite shocked when people were like “nice job dude”
My American History professor touched on this. The man who spoke before Lincoln was considered the best orator in the US at the time, and he delivered a multiple-hour-long speech. Upon the completion of the Gettysburg Address, the orator approached the president and said something along the lines of "you managed to say more in 15 minutes than I could've said in 5 hours.''
I would also be pretty shocked if William Seward leaned over to me and said, "nice job, dude." I'd be like, "its 1863 and I'm the fucking president! Stop being so anachronistic!"
Didn't Robert E Lee once say that he was against monuments to the Confederacy because "they would keep open the wounds of war." ( I'm paraphrasing here. I can't remember the exact quote.)
To be specific, he was against making monuments to the Civil War at all. But this includes the Confederacy, much to the chagrin of people who cry "he didn't mean Confederate statues!"
Cash Nelson Lee was interesting. While by no means a bastion of noblesse and good some make him out to be, he was more moderate on his views of slavery than other southerners; believing it would go away eventually but it was up to god not Washington to decide when. He did not support secession but in the end felt loyalty to states was more important than the federal government. After defeat he staunchly opposes any acts of continuing rebellion and pushed for southerners to reconcile with the north. Finally, while still an extreme racist, he didn’t support assaulting black civilians and did punish some students at his college for doing that at one point. Overall while not a good man, he was by no means the worst of the worst.
I really wish it were all that simple. The fact is those statues have served as a reminder of where we have come from, and the process by which we got here. We didn't get here without mistakes, or trials, and it doesn't really serve the future to repaint the past to pretend like we did. We document our mistakes so that we do not have to repeat them. Mistakes are not without temptation, or justification (however temporary it may prove to be). To conceal that you've made mistakes, is to ensure you'll make them again. Do we really have to relive slavery to know that it was a bad idea? It cannot be helped that slavery pencils-out economically, but morally, and ethically it is entirely corrupt. If I can get the same lesson out of a statue, why not just leave it there?
@@ericrosso4846 We learn about mistakes of the past from history books and lessons. And if you really wanted to build a statue to "teach the lessons of the past", then design it that way. Confederate statues are built to portray the character as heroic and courageous, and are clearly designed for hero worship. To portray them as mistakes of the past, show them WITH the people they wronged, or as part of a scene - make it obvious that they're not the focus but rather the mistakes they have committed.
Seperatist Confederacy of Independent Systems. My grandfather was a Colonel from Raxus Secundus and fought and died bravely at the battle of Onderon. Heritage not hate.
I love your passion for the Civil War. I'm in my 40s now but when I was 13, I was obsessed. I watched Gettysburg and the Ken Burns series dozens of times, owned a union uniform and had a photo of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on my wall. Strangest 13 year girl anyone knew XD
@@kenabbott8585 I know it's almost like he was a racist aristocrat who didn't want black people to be considered anything other than second class citizens in the political landscape and subhumans in the mythical racial hierarchy that he sent thousands to die for and was bitter about it 🤔
@@franzjoseph1837 "I know it's almost like...." It's very much like you can't come up with a real argument and so you have to spew a bunch of dishonest accusations of racism in a sad attempt to cover up for it.
@@marcusjackson5837 yeah the economics and self-interest of owning slaves lmao Go ahead and look up a copy of South Carolina's statement of secession for me, and tell me what they said their primary reason for leaving the union was
Thanks! They broke the oath. It's as simple as that. As a vet I take that seriously. They took an oath and they broke it. No heroism or honor in that. You're right. Lincoln's few lines encompassed the war and those who fought for their country and the idea of the constitution. Bravo!
The US really needs a national museum for removed statuary. Maintenence is far easier for a place dedicated to it. Just look at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. They essentially have the same upkeep problems, but by keeping it all in one place, they can significantly reduce the costs, and dedidicate a museum to that particular type of oversized and defunct artifact. yes, this kind of museum would attract bigots - but just as the holocaust memorials effectively deal with them, so too would this. It would in fact be perfect for what the University of Texas's museum calls their exhibit of an old Jeff Davis statue, "From Commemoration to Education." Bigots will do their thing. The best we can do is exclude and ridicule them, instead focusing on the people who are capable of learning
Yeah. I'm hesitant to support anything that resembles damnation memoriae, so the best thing to do is to remove these statutes from a place of honor to a museum of horrors. In the museum, each statue could have a several plaques, detailing who it represented, under what context it was erected, and under what context it was removed (because that's history too). And I do agree it should be a national institution, so that way small southern towns aren't also under and obligation to relocate the statue to a local museum. The national museum would just be like "you've decided to remove your confederate (or other racist) monuments? Cool we'll be over with our truck soon". Also I feel like a large indoor museum would make for cheaper upkeep than an outdoors one. And since this isn't really damnation memoriae, I don't think resources should be expended recovering statues destroyed in these protests. It's just not worth it. Especially since we have photos to know what these things looked like. We could even have a section of the museum dedicated to these protests in the same format as the rest of the museum for the destroyed/thrown into a river statues.
I like what some former Warsaw Pact countries have done with their statues. Hungary and a few of the Baltic nations have created 'statue graveyards. Basically, they took former communist statues and place them in less public areas and let them sit there. People can come and see them along with tours being provided to give context. The statues themselves have either basic maintenance or none at all, so over time, they weather away. I think something akin to that would be nice to see. Maybe not in every state in the south, but at least have one for the more infamous ones.
You know in Seattle we acquired a massive Lenin. That statue is still controversial with people who think we shouldn’t be celebrating Lenin. People keep vandalizing Lenin by painting his hands with blood.
@@beigeturtleneck7511 absolutely. Slaves of all ethnicities and races have existed throughout history but the only ones that seem to matter are the African American ones. Why is that?
@@beigeturtleneck7511 I’m not from America and no I don’t hear anything other than African American slavery. Should the pyramids be torn down as they are a symbol of Jewish slavery?
My biggest problem during this whole thing was every time someone asked my opinion on the matter, they always wanted a straight yes or no answer as to whether they should stay or be removed, as a whole. But it should be a case by case basis! As a history teacher, remembering context is incredibly important! For example many of the statues and monuments were erected in the late 20th century, and I think most everyone can agree these are not historically important and should be removed (Barring perhaps one or two, which should be moved to a civil rights museum to highlight the dirty practice of the time period, building political monuments to stifle social progress). Some statues are much older and weren't created in such bad taste, and should probably remain or perhaps relocated to a museum. There is more than enough information regarding the construction of pretty much all of these monuments to discern whether a monument was built in good faith or solely to push some kind of agenda, and these things should be considered when discussing the topic. That said, yeah probably 95% of them or more should go as it was such a common political tool for suppression. And I don't know that any of them should be displayed anywhere outside of a museum where a greater context can be conveyed.
I think most should not be removed rather "community notes" be added alongside them. Stating how old they are along with the context and history around it's creation. To turn these monuments of false glorification and oppression into tools of education and warning. Most importantly of this we must ban the creation of new confederate statues.
leave statues alone , don't dig up graves and tear down monuments all that does is give hatred fuel , don't make people today pay money or apologize, nobody today did anything , if you do that fuels hate. don't let hate groups march but stop other hate groups from marching that fuels hate . don't rewrite history that fuels hate. you move on unless you lived it , I'm part irish I never was in the potato famine I never got whipped by a British, I never made a bomb , if they started that up again I'd be first to support ireland in protest . I work on problems of today not from 150 years ago ,
As always, the victors get celebrated. If Washington failed in his rebellion against the Brits he would have been seen as a terrorist instead of a hero.
@@Stormcloakvictory That's not true, like, at all. To your point, Washington was still seen by the British as a traitor and not a hero, for a long time and is to an extent seen that way today.
I've just realized that in my 27 years of living I've never heard more of the Gettysburg Address then the first few lines. Considering I live in the south that's a damn shame and this has been a very sobering experience.
I must've heard the speech a dozen times, but hearing it spoken in earnest, rather than like a dry textbook passage, it felt like listening to it for the very first time.
@@polin1710 I'm in my 40's and from the south and we had to memorize it in elementary school... Personally, I think the north does a far better job of white washing things...as long as no one happens to wander into their ghettos that is.
@@possumverde large swaths of the American south are decrepit wastelands and you are talking about northern ghettos? I'm not without sympathy to your comment but a little clarity here please. Have you ever been to... oh I don't know.. northern Louisiana or rural Alabama?
I am an old man, and I have heard the Gettysburg Address countless times since my grandfather first recited it to me as a young boy. This is, however, the first time it brought tears to my eyes. Well done, Andrew, and thank you.
I have seen both movies Gettysburg and Gods and Generals and I have to say I liked the characters of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee in Gods and Generals and I am not pro lost cause or pro Confederate does not mean I am biased against them either. I would like to see a video made by Atun Shei about why the last four states Virginia Tennessee Arkansas and North Carolina seceded to join the Confederacy when Lincoln called on those states to send their troops
@@arlonfoster9997 Don't fall for the trap, dude, the confederacy was always for slavery whether you like it or not. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that the confederacy is the bad guy here. What next, is saying imperial Japan is the bad guy between America and Japan during WW2 controversial?
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 there are no good or bad in wars. Both sides today in America's modern wars do some pretty fucked up shit. The north itself as well as the south during the Civil War did messed up things. I think y'all are arguing that the Confederacy is like Nazi Germany so you can erase America's statues. I'd rather be a Union or a Confederate soldier in the Civil War than be a fucking Nazi. The Confederacy did not have concentration camps for enslaved African Americans. Also Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson whether you love them or hate them was better than fucking Adolf Hitler.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 also for your information if you want to blame a country for existence of American slavery then fucking blame the British and stop blaming the south
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 and I like Gods and Generals and the characters it doesn't mean I hate the Union I just have a non bias approach to the Civil War. If the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War showed respect for the hanged British spy Major Andre who helped Benedict Arnold switch sides why can't Union and Confederate soldiers respect one another just because of their political and ideological differences. Why is it not okay for me to respect Lee or Jackson and point out that they fought the Civil War to protect Virginia and not the entire Confederate States of America. Do you think it was justified that we established internment camps for the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor even though the majority of them did not spy for Imperial Japan. Do you think Sherman was justified in burning southern cities do you think Hunter was right to burn VMI cause let me tell you I would call you the extremes on both sides while respecting and liking Lee Jackson Grant Meade Hancock Longstreet Lincoln Chamberlain and Frederick Douglass. And I am not being racist when I say this and if you even think that you are wrong
I would actually think that would be cool. Especially on the historical battle sites. Hard to compare with confederate though, as they still have their own country, and colonized 1/3 of the world at one point. They still have statues (for now) of their homeland.
Interesting. Virginia had one of the highest concentrations of loyalists during the Revolutionary war--and was the capital of the Confederacy. Not sure why they venerate one generation over the next. Also, Viriginia, what's with that massive confed flat flying over one of your interstates?
Most of these, for both British regulars and loyalists, are in Canada. All I see is one group of rebels bemoaning over a newer group of rebels rebelling from said rebels, while meanwhile the British Empire had already abolished slavery 30 years earlier.
I love the idea that without statues we would forget the people they depict. Books and writings are for history, statues are for honoring the individuals. The statues themselves are no better proof because if they weren't labeled no one would know who they even are...
@@isaiahmiller6452 dude no offense but you shouldn’t say that it’ll just alienate the southerners that believe in this stuff even more I get that it’s a joke but videos like this one are trying to educate and it’s best you not make comments like that about the very people who would gain the most out of this
@@Blue-J4 there are a surprising number of progressive-types in the south nowadays. They call it the “New South”. It’s just that their voices get drowned out by the loudmouth confederate-apologists, and other Lost Causers. I’m about as “northern” as you can get (I’m from the Canadian border area of northern Minnesota), and I have to admit I had a rather negative view of the south most of my life, but I’ve always tried to keep an open mind as much as possible. The last few years have been a real eye opener, as I’ve discovered a lot of southerners even here on RUclips who are amazing people. There’s a really good channel called Beau of the Fifth Column for example, if you want to hear a more progressive southern point of view.
@@Pretermit_Sound yeah as one of those southern progressives it hurts to see people who genuinely don’t know any better become more and more estranged from facts and such just because many people end up pigeonholing them and insulting them rather than helping them learn
Plus some northerners end up seeming pretty classist towards southerners which again ends up completely hindering their willingness to learn and change for the better Not only that but people seem to forget that the south isn’t completely white like it has a sizable amount of minorities (me being one of them) that seem to be completely forgotten by many when they choose to stereotype all southerners as racist confederates
@@landonbass83 Which Anyone of moderate temperament would agree with & to ! Except, who is going to police the separate crowds of Aryan Brotherhood, KKK and the other White Supremacy groups gathering every Sunday, to spew forth the bile that maintains them! And what about the poor white Confederate Memorialist, come with his boys, Cleetus II, Cleetus III, Cleetus Junior and their sister, Cleetorus. He's got them ringed about to show them the Greatest General of the whole Republican Army, the 'Grand Gennelmin' their Grand-pa Cleetus - 4 times back ! - was proud to, "have been looked at by the 'Grand Gennelmin' while cleaning the shit & piss out of the way, so 'Fine Gennelmin' didn't get durty boots while mounting their horses, before leading their 300 men of the Heavy Foot Regiment off to battle again that day !" "Unkel Cleetus', piped up young Cleetus III,'Did that Ol' Grand-paw Cleetus git kilt in the War agin them Northin Slave Luvers ?" Cleetus looked at his sister and, when she nodded yes, he replied, "I'll leave that story to yore Auntee/Momma, to tell you fellas tonite, afore y'all godah bed ! She kin reed the pitchur-book !" So who protects Pa Cleetus, who is only there to mind the KKK Club's cars ? It's the only way he has to make money for the Membership Dues in his Local 1939 Whitish Bros & Hos! Another 6 months should do it, and his sister/wife can't wait! So does he get protected or condemned for going to: "Johnny Reb Memorial Statue Park & Butterfly Gardens" to make some "Walking-around Money" by cleaning up after the "Gennel-mens Cars !!🤔 ✌
PoD Benn why are you afraid of those idiots tho? Wouldn’t their hypothetical rally mean they’re annoyed and that we should build Civil War museums in order to annoy confederates? I would love to annoy them
Disagreeing with you on the Concentration Camps thing: I've visited three of them, one with my sisters, one with my school and one with my university. I've never seen a Nazi there, mostly school classes and normal people. It's a great way of remembering history, the atrocities and the suffering. Not just putting up the "war heroes". Most of the people walk out of there, being shattered and saying "never again".
That stuff is a awful sight to behold, but we need to see those things. Do not think for a minute that if everyone saw that stuff, we'd have no more injustice. Evil is entwined deep in human nature. It's not for the evil we should hope to change by remembering this horrid stuff, but for the good to take history seriously.
I don't believe he opposes keeping the Camps as memorials. He just notes that they can allow fringe elements a place to gather for all the wrong reasons.
Stop obsessing about Hannibal`s crescent formation for a second. And take a good hard look at the world around you. I think this is the best roast to a history nerd ever.
@@witchhunter6755 Do you mean the world isn`t suffering from the things we have invented the last 200 year s? Or did I misunderstand what you said more then Agustus II misunderstand war?
This is a huge jab at 90% of the historical RUclips content-creator base who exist more to help DMs make their DnD sessions more immersive with frivolous details and to stroke the ego of Total War armchair generals than to actually teach people about history
Hurrah, hurrah! We ring the jubilee Hurrah, hurrah! The flag that makes you free So we sang the chorus from Atlanta to the Sea WHILE WE WERE MARCHING THROUGH GEEEEOOOOORRRRGGGIAAAA
He looks…almost as if he is holding back tears, reciting the Gettysburg Address. And he nearly brought me to tears. The country’s ideals have never been truly attained, but still the People fight for this country, they bleed for this country, they speak for this country. And they seek to form the more perfect Union by which our father’s so hopefully sought. It is, therefore, fitting; that our flag is one that should represent the ideals of a country that speaks of freedom and equality, yet cannot attain it due to works of the divisive and the hateful. We hold our hands to our hearts, we the People of the United States, to pledge allegiance to these ideals. May our ideals, not our actions, succeed in the end. For liberty, and justice for all. Atun-Shei, I pray you see this. You are a true patriot of our country. And I respect every endeavor and labor you dedicate yourself to, for the sake of teaching lost, confused, deceived people about our country. Faults and all.
That is in no way related to the removal of visual reminders of our national history! Comparing building a statue to remind oneself to do something with destroying/keeping a statue that may or may not offend you is a prime example of false equivalency
@@dpfljr Aww, "visual reminders of our national history"? That's cute. How about you come back to this topic when you're a little older and understand the difference between remembrance and glorification?
@@dpfljr I KNOW RIGHT?! And it is so sickening that Eastern Bloc nations took down statues of Stalin and Lenin after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how could they destroy their own history like that? Being facetious aside, you're talking about statues that were largely put up during the civil rights movement in the 1960's by white supremacist groups as a statement to black community, many of them being cheap and of very low quality--because remembering history wasn't the point. I'm all for remembering history, in fact I feel extremely strongly about it; but that doesn't include preserving statues glorifying atrocity, at least in their present context. In a museum or a statue graveyard such as the one where many Soviet statues ended up is a different story though. Would you advocate for keeping around things in Germany that glorify the Nazi's for the sake of "preserving history"? You don't need to keep around harmful reminders of oppression to remember history, or at least not without proper context. The "preserving history" argument is nothing but hot air, as this entire video makes clear. And frankly, to the people who have a problem even with removing them and putting them in a museum where they can be displayed in their proper context; I have to question whether they are interested in remembering history, or bringing that "history" into the present. If you're alright with the removal of Soviet era statues but have a problem with these statues being removed, I have to wonder if that's your motivation too. Or if it's a numbers game of how many people were killed or suffered under these people and regimes, I'm curious how many people you have to kill or harm before the removal of your statue becomes justified over keeping it to 'preserve history'.
@@mariocisneros911 funny how that nonsense is treason but what your politicians do to you every day isn't. That's why i love you Americans, you have your head up your asses constantly smelling propaganda scented farts.
@@Saturn369-i1b Why can't both be treason? The difference is, it's a lot easier to prosecute a bunch of idiots than the people who literally control the country.
@@gunterthekaiser6190 precisely you gave me the answer. only one is treated as treason despite those people not doing any real damage but the people doing real damage is like "meh, we can't do anything about it" if your founding fathers knew that you would develop into spineless groveling cowards they wouldn't have bothered with your second ammendment
I think it's unamerican to have monuments to our enemies and their values, I really don't understand why anyone would want these around if not for racism.
Ignoring all the valid reasons for their removal (which I agree with), it's a little callous to dismiss opposing arguments by calling many of the southern United States ancestors "our enemies", nor will it change anyone's mind as much as harden hearts.
@@Captain-Jinn I'm calling the people that went to war with this union and killed our citizens in the name of slavery our enemies. It's not callous. It's just appropriate.
I've never understood how you need monuments to remember history. Like, are books outlawed in places these people who this live? Do you do all your learning going from monument from monument and reading maybe 6 lines of fluff?
The monuments were only part of an all out effort by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other defenders of slavery and white supremacy to whitewash (pun intended) their history and erase the single cause of the Civil War. At the turn of the 20th century they formed a committee that ensured only their fake lost cause story would appear in textbooks. This was followed by similar efforts beyond primary schools. Northern historians didn't resist these efforts, spread being this lie Nationwide. Half of all Americans still believed it in 2011, and only 8% of high school seniors correctly identified slavery as the war's cause in a 2018 poll. Sadly resistance to historical accuracy hasn't ended, and the successful papering over of traitorous racism and its morphing into other forms of suppression has prevented an honest discussion of how omnipresent racism has been in our history. time.com/5013943/john-kelly-civil-war-textbooks/ theamericanscholar.org/the-problem-in-the-classroom/
Ever heard of the Bonfire of the vanities or the Nazi book burnings? Imagine if something like that happened to the books in this country that people viewed as being subversive.
@@tenlosol Everything. There are people who want to see every statue, monument and history book involving the Confederacy and the Civil War destroyed and treat it as if the Civil War never happened. That's a major reason why I'd rather see the statues stay where they are as a lasting reminder of the past and how the country changed after that and still changes today.
Just found this from InRange TV. I didn't expect to have my thoughts changed on the matter, but hot damn, context is a merciless and humbling thing. Thanks for making this, man.
@@BomimoDK imo, the InRange crowd is very well spoken and open to new, well referenced ideas. It's kinda insulting to generalize them because they are receptive to changing their ideals.
Absolutely! In Germany we still have to deal with some cases like Rommel, Stauffenberg and some others, which seem to have gotten some following and some streets etc. named after them. But of course they are/seem kinda... well not Hitler. On the other hand, there are monuments and memorials about the horrors of that history, like the famous "Stolpersteine" (Metal Bricks in some roads in front of former homes of killed jews and other groups the nazis killed) and the big holocaust memorial in Berlin. Still there are those that try to do pretty much exactly what those that hail the confederacy do. We should always be wary about trying to make our own History less shameful.
@@troodon1096the bunker is just about the opposite of preserved by now, most of the surviving portions were filled in with cement in 1989 and the whole thing has been sealed off. its former site is a car park these days
"I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered." - Robert E. Lee
@@JamesW7723 Not fully. He did only follow the South because of his sense of allegiance but he also considered slavery a necessary evil. He wasn't for it but he also wasn't against it
@@balabanasireti Loot at his personal letters to himself and his journal he wanted to avoid the war completely and said “if I could free the damn slaves and avoid this war entirely I would”
The Gettysburg Address is one of the most enlightening speeches in history. If you ever get the chance, read it aloud from the transcript carved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. It is a fantastic experience.
You know I've seen a lot of your videos and I have to say - this video, and your Gods and Generals video...this is when I've actually seen you ANGRY. Not just educational, not just understanding, but ANGRY. Especially when you were discussing the pro-violence and pro-lynching southern leaders. Hell, you practically spat Benjamin Tillman's name...which is understandable, the man was a one-eyed snake. Kudos, man.
I was in KY when that monument moved. I had a small disagreement with my friend who I was staying with - my perspective was in such a narrow place because I was visiting from England and didn't KNOW about American history and its budding culture. This video, yourself and the words of union vets changed my mind. Thank you.
If it's important to you I'd recommend studying the civil war and the aftermath in more detail. Abuse, robbery and rape of southern civilians was rampant.
@@Skibidiscones That's absolutely correct and you're right that we never look at both sides evenly. It hasn't been long enough yet. We need to wait another one or two hundred years before we become objective enough and no longer coloured by our emotional attachment to our ancestor's causes. I think the issue with accepting Southern civilians suffered unjustly from Yankee forces is that it gives some degree of victimhood to sympathizers with genuine pro-Confederate sentiment. It's hard to educate people about the barbaric behaviour of both sides without bringing people to one of two conclusions: "Well, they deserved it" or "Well, they were righteous rebels, look what the North did to 'em" It's completely true and something that happened and becomes a whataboutism game - Southerners also looted, and the plantation class had been treating black people as property for a very long time. If men that treated human women like broodmares got lynched, I can't honestly say I care. I don't shed a tear at the idea of Crassus being brutalized at Carrhae, either. It was a war and both sides, civilians men women and children, were unfairly brutalized by one another. The peoples of America engendered serious hatred towards one another, a virulent, vicious kind of hatred that arises specifically when forced to fight your own countrymen, when forced by terroristic violence committed by your own countrymen. The evil in their eyes and words, hearing when Southern politicians suddenly began advocating extreme hatred and violence, extreme hatred and violence which Southerners then enacted. If your neighbor is caught trying to burn down your house, and you beat the crap out of him? that's tough shit for him isn't it. You're right we should study the aftermath but it's difficult to sympathize when many serious attempts were made by the Union to prevent civil war, to pacify Southern aggression - aggression which was spurred initially by the South regardless, especially when they experienced some victory. The North threatened the South's economy, so the South went at their throats. Who started the fight? These brutalized civilians had been spitting on Union troops for a long time. Frankly, some of these civilians were racist slave owners and whilst we should accept what happened was wrong, many got what they deserved. Many were also not slave-owners, not racist, and did not deserve what they got - that's a big mess that is not clear and understandable. What is understandable is that the rebels, even a good third of their civilian population, their women too, absolutely wanted to not only keep their slaves, but expand their slave ownership to create a slave empire like Rome. There's cultural reasons your dollar has a Graeco-Roman temple spread across it!
We should do what the Lithuanians did after communism and create our own Gruto parkas (Stalin's World) where all the public statues are removed and placed in an outdoor park.
I was just about to bring this up! It definitely would require careful planning and consultation with historians, and there should definitely be a project requiring a significant amount of funding, but I think it'd be the best option. side note: Aš myliu tave, Lietuviai!
I’ll never understand the “destroying history” argument regarding the removal of Confederate monuments. The battlefield parks are still here. The plantation-museums are still here. The ink spilled on over thousands upon thousands of pages written on Civil War history are still here. What history is being destroyed exactly?
Because its not about preserving history, its about maintaining a foothold in the public space. Its about being seen, being accepted and being tolerated. Propaganda symbols are worthless cast away from people eyes.
The Modern Stoic First, you’re thinking of the Cultural Revolution, not the mass collectivization attempt that was the Great Leap Forward, so at least get that part right. Second, municipal-level decisions to remove statues, which this video shows has sometimes been opposed by state legislatures, are hardly equivalent to the top-down iconoclasm and mass purges of 1960s and 70s China.
@Donde Merlin They made a deal with him where they'd cut him in half. They buried his legs and his top half went free. Legend says he's still out there, building his underground complex and taking phone donations from skinheads.
Soviet officers disposed of Hitler's remains? That's the first I've heard of this. The official story has always been that Nazi guards in the bunker burned Hitler's remains and buried the ashes outside of the bunker, as ordered to do so, and that no remains had been discovered since.
@@V_for_Vovin Declassified Soviet documents claim that Hitler's remains were tossed into a River. So there would be no place for his followers to gather to mourn him.
Yeah, the decision of removing or maintaining should be solely on the local community. And if any statues are deemed to have any historical value (which I believe most of them don't) they should be moved to a museum
How about we simply dont commemorate traitors with statues meant to specifically intimidate black people? That is why they were built during the Civil Rights Movement lol
I remember watching a Documentary on the statues in 9th Grade. I can’t remember where it was from or who was in it, but a Black Historian raised a very valid point. “If you take a young Black kid growing up in the South, and show him a Confederate statue endorsed and constructed by the state, what is that kid going to think?”
I think it's an interesting area to look at, because I read an article online the other day (with all grains of salt taken by the way, as this was just an article online which I cannot vouch for) that showed there are a surprising number of black people surveyed that do not think certain Confederate symbols should be removed. For example, apparently, 24% thought that CSA flags should not even be removed from government buildings, 39% opposed redesigning state flags that contained CSA imagery. And most surprisingly, majorities of 63% of black people opposed renaming streets and highways named after CSA leaders and 50% opposed removing tribute from public places. So once again I am taking this one-off article very cautiously, I promise. And it is pretty old now as a 2015 survey. But as I say, interesting food for thought at very least. Source: I don't know if RUclips likes links or not so its a survey by Roper Center, and the article was titled 'Public Opinion on the Confederate Flag and the Civil War'. Once again, I don't know anything about this organisation or their credibility so apologies in advance if they are a shady site.
@Joseph Chambers These days, being backed by the media carries more pull than being backed by the government, sadly. While I personally don't see all Confederate statues as promoting racism, I can understand that some do. I just think the sweep it under the rug approach is a mistake. Both the "lost cause" and the modern progressive revision like to pretend the cause(s) of the Civil War was far less complex than it really was and that the outcome was either all good or all bad when it was a bit of both. Trying to make it go away likely dooms it to repeat itself eventually.
One idea I've heard is to completely change them to a different era, a different conflict. Make them honor Revolutionary War heroes from the South, or perhaps World War II or maybe even Korea ones (after all, Korea was the first time America fought as a truly integrated military). There are DOZENS to choose from, both white and black alike.
George Henry Thomas definitely deserves at least one statue in Virginia. What other general from the era can claim to have fought in as many battles as him without losing so much as a movement? Admittedly, he definitely wouldn't have wanted people to build statues of him, but neither did Lee, and that sure didn't stop anyone.
Agreed. Or in museums. But don't put them right in front of the state capital or gvt buildings. That's when heritage becomes honoring. That's the problem.
I dont know about that. Even if we move it to a cemetery, 15 foot statues of people that wanted to take away our freedom and slaughtered american soldiers by the dozens doesnt seem right. I wouldnt want a statue of max freiherr outside the NASA headquarters for the same reason, statues glorify people and most people dont deserve to be glorified
@Big Rock the Confederate statues are of people that betrayed this country and fought a war to keep slavery, while George Washington was one of this countries founders. That's why it's a false equivalency.
The best case scenario was what happened to the gold bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee. It was in the Tennessee state capital building and the people of Tennessee voted upon it to have it removed. It was removed and placed in the Tennessee State Museum in the section of how people from Tennessee were involved in the Civil War. It wasn't destroyed like certain other monuments, and it was taken from one public space to a space where more people can view the bust and learn about who the person is and what they did instead of the bust existing for seemingly no reason.
People still get offended at the mention Hernando de Soto and Jean Baptise de Sier Bienville. Most people get offended at glorifying historical characters because of past ideologies that are different from our own.
Thomas Ridley The great louisiana slave revolt The acadian deportation and the foundation of the cajun culture Huey Long dong Creole culture The trail of tears
@@thomasridley8675 I guess I was unclear. There are many more pieces of Southern history that deserve to be remembered and celebrated rather than the Confederacy.
"I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered," Robert E. Lee
He was begrudging in admitting defeat but he did admit it and work for a form of reconciliation, it was white reconciliation but he didn’t join the KKK as some did
Geez, I'm a Confederate Re-enactor in a company full of Lost Causers. I discovered your channel while in COVID limbo and I completely agree with you about the Confederacy. But I'm still a little worried about the friction I may cause when I'm asked those "awkward" questions by camp visitors.
I'm also a local reenactor in my country. What we do is usually we print stuff of FAQs, sometimes it's pamphletes (if the budget is there!) but usually a poster, related to our costumes and and what we do. I always believe a reenactor's "role" in public is to educate. So if someone stops learning in your unit... You might need to have a long talk or maybe get out...
Another irony of lost causers saying "you can't erase history because it's offensive" is that, whenever you calmly tell the truth that the Confederates fought for slavery, a ton of lost causers seem to get all steamy and go "GoD sAvE tHe SoUtH" and "TyRaNnY!" They're only second to Skyrim players who always pick the Stormcloaks (despite the game outright telling you that Ulfric is a puppet and destroying the empire means possibly damning the world) in responding to calm criticism with screaming buzzwords, chanting out of nowhere and generally acting like someone from a gamer rage compilation, over something that's just irrelevant to most of us in the real world. (Seriously, why do so many Stormcloak players act like they're in a real civil war?)
My great-great-great-grandfather fought for the Union at Gettysburg in the Michigan 24th “Iron Brigade” regiment. God I wonder what he would think seeing the rebels glorified by so many, not even just in the South. I see the Confederate battle flag flown in rural northern Michigan, in the heart of Yankee country. How’d we let this be their legacy?
Wisconsinite here, whilst I do not have any knowledge of my family during the Civil War, I do see it as somewhat worrying to see that sort of thing so common where I’m from
Fellow Michigander here, and living near Detroit, which I'm sure you know is predominantly colored people of all races, I see way too much of the Confederate flag. I see them on pick up trucks in front of a police station when I'm on my way home. I see them when I'm getting a slushy from Circle K. It's a problem how much I've seen it, here in the far north nonetheless. It's quite worrying how little we as a people have learned from history.
I also had a relative in the 24th! I too hate seeing the confederate battle flag being flown in yankee country and I wish I could do something to get rid of them, but as of now I cannot
As someone who has had a love of history, I believed it was wrong to remove Confederate monuments, but after listening to your well reasoned arguments I now realized I was wrong. While I will no longer support and urge the removal of those monuments that honor the Confederate cause or there leaders, I continue to believe it still proper to keep those monuments at such places such as cemeteries. Here in my home state of New Jersey there is a single marker at the cemetery were over 2,000 CSA POWs are interned. It is important to show respect for the dead, without trying to glorify the cause they fought for.
Ive always maintained the belief that they should be removed but not destroyed, as he said we could build a museum for them or maybe donate them to one of the smithsonians.
To be honest you shouldn’t let one video change your mind. Dig into other stuff if you’re that into this topic. Personally both sides are wrong and I have no sympathy nor support for either. He might sound educated but it doesn’t mean he is completely educated. I’m not saying he isn’t, he clearly knows things but don’t believe what one man tells you.
One of the more interesting ideas I've seen is a museum created, in which these statues would be faced towards the wall in order to remove glorification from the cause. Display and acknowledgement is one thing, but making a space of reverence is very different, and many of these Confederate monuments are specifically reverential to the cause, not just respectful of the people they depict. There needs to be a direct effort and values need to be put forward to denounce these views while acknowledging their existence. There is a similar thing done with (shocker) Hitler, where in one Holocaust museum, the room in which the bust is displayed is designed to be claustrophobic and uncomfortable, and the bust is painted black, and facing the wall, so that nobody can look directly at its face.
@@FireHawkISA Also I feel like it could be interesting to trace the history of these statues themselves in a museum or similar setting, given that at this point in many ways these statues tell just as much of a story as the events, movements, and people that led to their creation.
@@tdog4423 That's a pretty unfair thing to throw in if you don't accompany it with rational counter-arguments on things that he said on the video. The video presented rational fact based arguments against the most commonly used arguments for not removing the statues. You need to demonstrate that either the facts he bases his claims or the logic he comes to his conclusion are wrong. Otherwise your "both sides are wrong" is just empty words.
"Get up out of that armchair, stop obsessing about Hannibal's crescent formations for a second and take a good, hard look at the world around you. Don't wanna repeat history? Actually learn from it." Holy shit. Guys, these words need to be heard by everyone, need to go down in history themselves. Remember that in archeology, the relics and artifacts of Native Americans and others were handled horribly, casually broken and forgotten about, and that it's still happening. Remember that so many of the historical figures you like weren't flawless, they were always problematic in some (many) way(s)- yes, even that one. Remember that people still believe in these insane, absurd myths. We all sit around, always moaning that the world's not fair. Are you going to keep sitting around, or do something to make it fair?
I've always been bugged by the rhetoric that teaching kids about the nastier parts of our history will make our white children hate themselves, or leave them without people to look up to. This never really sat right with me, as someone who actually WAS lucky enough to grow up as a white kid in a school district that didn't shy away from it. (Admittedly, the diversity of the area that I grew up in, along with the educators I had, probably helped as well.) There were parts of my history education where I felt kinda shitty, and yeah, I didn't grow up wanting to idolize people like Jefferson, which is something I've heard people HORRIFIED to imagine. Just think, our next generation of children won't have a sanitized, whitewashed, psuedo-religious masturbatory view of some of our founding fathers! The horror! So how did this woke, dystopian nightmare-education shape my view of history? I just... found other people to take inspiration from, and learned to judge historical figures within the full context of their actions. I didn't wake up every morning and kiss my Thomas Jefferson pinup on the lips, but it's not like I saw him as some satanic monster; I learned that he was a complex, interesting, and flawed person, who was instrumental in the forming of our country, but also did some pretty fucked-up shit. As for role models in history? I ended up looking up to people who rose above the standard prejudices of their day- my historical role models were people like the abolitionists of the Underground Railroad, my favorite president was Grant, and my favorite founding father was Franklin (turns out there were founding fathers who learned to NOT be racist, and also DIDN'T rape any slaves! Isn't that great?). I learned not to feel guilty that hundreds of years ago some people who had the same skin color as me did some bad things to people who didn't- instead, I decided to learn from the examples of the people who got into the history books by going AGAINST that, and strived to learn from their examples. End of the day, I'm not responsible for putting into place the institutions that still put so many minorities at a disadvantage to this day But I can sure as Hell be responsible for ending them, y'know?
Because I'm incapable of not being long-winded about stuff: I know I addressed the thing about "We can't just dismantle all of our historical role models for white kids or whatever!!!" in the other comment, but it seriously pisses me off so much As if I'm too stupid to just... look up to people whose morals I align with? It's not like they didn't exist in history! Basically all the Quakers were super cool! I loved learning about them in US history class! Also, the idea that white kids need white guys to look up to in history (while apparently neglecting to do the same for any other groups lmao) is just really insulting. Y'know who I thought was the coolest guy growing up (and to this day, honestly)? Frederick fucking Douglass You know who DEFINITELY wasn't the same color as me? Frederick fucking Douglass! It's fucking patronizing, seriously. I guess this is what I get for actually reading through the 1776 Commission thing. I think that document physically killed off a not insignificant number of my neurons.
@@suspectsn0thing I know its a month late, and I gotta sleep soon, but let me just drop a comment real quick. Your story is genuinely heartwarming and I appreciate every word of it. :)
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 thank you, I've just always been annoyed by this weird perception that if American kids can't look up to the same few founding fathers like Jefferson or whatever, somehow they're gonna end up falling into a life of ruin with no good role models. It's like people have such a narrow knowledge of US history outside of the weird, psuedo-religious mythology surrounding a few guys from the 1700s that they're completely unaware of the THOUSANDS of incredible people in American history who did great things and also DIDN'T rape any slaves. This obviously doesn't make people like Jefferson or Confederate leaders any less important or worth studying, but I feel like deification of any historical figure, especially ones who've done questionable stuff, isn't a great path.
@@suspectsn0thing Tbf are they wrong? There aren't many historical white role models that are promoted outside of the circlejerk of terrible figures. Even Lincoln is called racist. And I don't think the record high statistics of white (especially male) people committing suicide is a pure coincidence in a time where white guilt in media and society is steadily the norm.
Erecting statues of confederate soldiers is just “honoring” history but if there were any schools, monuments, or statues dedicated to communist leaders, you would never hear this argument from the same people.
Honoring people that wanted to own slaves, killed people for their power. How would a black person feel whos ancestors were tortured by these people? We also have monuments that remember fallen soldier who fought in ww2 here in germany. But not of fucking hitler or goebbels themselves. That would be a threatening sign for the jewish population here. It really depends on what these people did. Soldiers being forced in a war or even showing bravery helping the oppressed is a huge difference from depicting the oppressors themselves.
The only compromise I can see is placing all of these statues, placques and memorials in each state where they reside in a Confederate Museum within each State.But keeping them in public spaces is no longer relevant.These artifacts were erected well with after the CIVIL WAR ENDED.During the Jim Crow era they were erected to remind Blacks and other people of color to remember their place.A show of White supremacy.A show of institutional supremacy under the guise of honoring and respecting such individuals.THE DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY played a significant role in advocating for these monuments and the revisionist history within the Educational curriculum.I myself might respect these Confederate soldiers and Generals for their fighting prowess,but never admire them because their aim was the dissolution of the Union itself.In my opinion a traitorous offense.I understand the Confederacy had many grievances against the Federal government other than Slavery.States rights is one.And the other was their belief that the federal government was imposing unfair import/export duties upon goods and raw materials as they crossed state lines by land and by sea.One of my great grandfathers had the honor of befriending both Former Union and Confederate soldiers while working on the docks in Baltimore during the late 19th early 20th centuries.Here is the truth from their perspective.The Union soldiers told him the Union Generals told the White Union soldiers that the fight was to first and foremost to preserve the Union.If the Slaves were freed after a Union victory.So be it.The War started in 1861.The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted in 1863.The Black Union soldiers were told that the federal government would fight for equality on their behalf of their service to the Union. That when the Confederate states voted to secede that within itself was an act of provocation.Because Lincoln had promised to compromise by allowing Slavery to remain in the States where it already existed but not allow its expansion if it meant keeping the Confederate states in the Union.Lincoln was concerned that slave labor was beginning to encroach upon the Industrial sector within the border states.As since there were lulls in the planting season, Southern landowners were expanding the practice of contracting out slave labor to private entities.Which posed quite a dilemma to the steady influx of European immigration.What is remarkable to me is that Confederate soldiers that confided in my great grandfather stated that they were concerned about what type of society they were returning to in the event of a Confederate victory.They found the Confederate leaders to be increasingly autocratic and they lamented the treatment of the poorer White farmers, women and children as the authorities demanded they hand over all foodstuffs and supplies on behalf of the soldiers at the expense of the women and children left behind.These mostly poor White soldiers clearly understood that there existed a social and class hierarchy amongst White people.Many of the Confederate Generals came from wealthy and Aristocratic families.While the soldiers were comprised of mainly poor and middle class Whites.Their main concern was whether social and upward mobility for them would be easier for them as a result of their service to the CONFEDERACY.And that was an increase in land acquisition They realized it was hard enough to compete against slave labor and Wealthy White planters.But they were also concerned about what would happen should the slaves be freed.Because then they would have to compete with them for labor, resources and living space.So in reality the glory of the Confederacy was not as glorious for some Southern White men either.And the White power structures realized they had to come up with a viable solution to appease the fears of many of these returning soldiers.Or else there may well have been another rebellion regardless of a Confederate victory or not.
“Youre not stupid but youre misinformed.” That meant alot to me and I appreciate you candor. While I disagreed on a point or two, this video definitely made me appreciate your “camps” argument, and i will seriously reconsider my position.
I don't think it gets said enough, so: Much praise to you for being able to listen to the arguments and actively consider your own positions in that light, rather than simply taking them as a personal attack. Whichever "camp" you end up deciding to be a part of, I appreciate your willingness to make the examination.
I mean, good on you for being willing to have a wide ear.....I'd like to hear some of those points because most of this video is him correcting misinformation by simply citing the historic facts via recorded information....there isn't as much subjective interpretation there.
Speaking as distant kin to the only Union general to hand Forrest a defeat... you should do some reading on Forrest. Or perhaps you are happy with the current state of all US inner cities. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
As a sailor on the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN72), I had the great honor of reading out the address to all 5K of my shipmates. It was true and heartfelt when it was first spoken by Lincoln and it is just as true and moving today. ISC(PJ), USN, Ret.
He talks about not wanting to repeat the past but at least I can die happily knowing that i'll never be encircled by an invading Carthaginian army. I'll see that shit coming a mile off.
Just curious, why did you hold this view? In any other country, they would not honor a traitorous group. The confederates did not want to be American. Why should we honor them?
This was exactly the conversation I had with my youngest son when he was about 20 and became a trucker. He spent a lot of time in the South and had some affinity for it *as he understood it*. I had to explain to him, gently, that it wasn't just 'Heritage, not hate'. When he finally heard and understood the full context of those monuments and the flag, he was appalled and felt like a fool. For those who have not truly studied history, finding out that you are completely wrong about something can be devastating to the core. You see, to him, it was Daisy Duke short-shorts, the General Lee Dodge Charger, jacked-up 4x4's, beer kegs, country music, and flag waving. When he finally understood the racist intent of their emplacement, the Klan, lynchings, Jim Crow, etc., that they actually stood for, he had the good grace to at least change his mind. And that is all you can ask of a man; to be able to entertain a new idea and after careful deliberation, come to a new conclusion. Peace.
@@Yankeefan2807 Because I hadn't considered the issue deeply and was won over by the erasing history/slippery slope line of reasoning. I also tend to have a gut reaction against "PC culture" for lack of a better word. All this being said now that I have been presented with more information and thought more on this issue I can say I agree with these statues being removed.
I shared this with my father today. The words I had were inadequate and I couldn't get my point across. After watching this he had a better understanding of how I see the world. Thank you.
@@SafetySpooon sure... why not... If u don't say something on the lines off "Every single soldier who fought for the confederacy was a racist" on the statues in honor to the confederates soldiers who died I'm ok with it... If u want to write racist on the statue of jeferson davis go ahead... or any guy in spacific which we know were clearly only defending he preservetion of slavery... U could take most of them down too, just let the ones who honor the dead soldiers stand or move them into cemeteries or war momorials...
they represent those who died for their state, not every confederate soldier (who most were young men, farmers, and sometimes children) was for slavery, they had the morale high ground, not dying for slavery, but dying for their state, yeah they really must be the devils men
"Get out of your comfort zone history nerds. Get up out of that armchair and stop obsessing about Hannibal's crescent formation for a second and take a good hard look at the world around you. Don't want to repeat history? *Actually learn from it."* That's a great takeaway.
Atun-Shei, I wanted to say thank you for making these videos, and helping me to better understand Civil War history. You've helped me to separate better understand the Civil War as a conflict. Also, it made me happy to hear you mention my hometown of Winston-Salem, NC, and their Confederate Monument. I was once against the tearing down of Confederate Statues too, until I learned the truth of why they were erected. So, I agree with your statement here, 100%. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to future videos from you.
In Liverpool, England there was a controversy years ago on what to do about a street called "Penny Lane," that was named after a local slave trader in the 18th century. Yes, that "Penny Lane" that The Beatles wrote a great song about. Now, street names are not statues but the city council decided to keep the street name but set up an amazing museum on Liverpool's role in the slave trade that pulls no punches. As a history teacher, I enjoyed the museum and thought it was a good response to the issue.
‘Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum also said evidence linking Penny Lane to James Penny is “not conclusive”, but it is “actively investigating” its history.’ - the independent.
That's really cool actually. I am vehemently against honoring confederates in the US but Penny Lane obviously has its own significant history outside of the original name. I would have been a little disappointed if the name was changed.
It was named for how much the toll was, it was a “Penny Lane” the myth of it being named for J. Penny was actually mentioned in the Beatles myths and tall tales section of the book Fab Four FAQ,
@Big Rock Idk because every country in the Americas,Africa (except Ethiopia) and the middle East and large parts of Asia were once at sometime invaded and governed by Europeans, that's why. European governments did a hell of lot of seriously sketchy,racist, genocidal and just generally insidious shit whilst plundering resources and stealing lands from native peoples, that's a fact. You can't expect 300 years of European imperialism to be healed in 75 years of global peace, whether we taking about Confederate statues, or Artifacts in the British museum,the genocide of the aboriginal people in Australia or the legacy of colonialism on the sub-continent, it's all the same issue, that's why. Nobody is guilty for the sins of their ancestors but systematic racism exists to varying degrees in all of Britain's former Dominions.
This is a thoughtful video. I had 7 ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, 2 of them at Gettysburg in the 13th and 47th Alabama. My family's oral history fully celebrates their service. At the same time, I am completely against anything that rings of racism. It is a very difficult position to be put in to work out those conflicting points. The truth is that it is impossible to separate the Confederate cause from slavery. Thanks for posting this.
Yeah same, family ancestors fought for the Confederacy. We don't glorify it in the family or anything, but our family does pride itself on a long tradition of military service. It's hard to accept that your own kin fought for something so vile.
You should read the book Confederate president Jefferson Davis wrote about the war. He states first hand that slavery was a cause for the war but not the only one. Many confederates didn’t even agree with slavery at the time and were of the mind that after they gained their freedom, they would have to change themselves and abolish slavery in the court room.
Your ancestors fought for States rights. The Southern Cause was fighting for their land & unfair taxation being put upon them from the yankees in the North. It was a revolt against "Northern Aggression". The War, on the other hand, was fought by the North OVER MONEY and NOTHING else. Union soldiers were NOT dying on the battlefield for black people. AT THAT TIME, the North & everyone else had the SAME basic opinion about black people. Don't just BLAME it on the South. Only 30% of Southerners even owned slaves. People in the North also had slaves. Every civilization since the beginning of time has had some form of slavery. It would have resolved itself in due time. You can't judge the way people thought in 1860 the same way you would judge people in 2023.
@@Taylor-mn9fv SHAME on you for talking about your brave ancestor who fought for their land & States rights. That's what the War was all about. It was about MONEY, not black people in the North or the South. The North was IMNPOSING UNFAIR TAXATION on the South. Union soldiers in the North WERE NOT dying on the battlefield for black people. Please..... let's get real. Stop listening to "White Hating Woke Assholes" talking about something of which they know nothing.
seeing you flip off a statue had no business feeling so cathartic, but after living through so much intense controversy regarding these monuments, and particularly after recent stresses... well. that really hit the spot, lol.
I learned a lot from this. While I was personally incensed by the tearing down of statues in 2017 ( and I'm not even American) , for the very argument of erasure of history, you've demonstrated that this is not a new debate and much more complex than just a "woke mob reaction."
I, a german student of History am actually crying when hearing the Gettysburg Address. And as a german, who is proud of his country's way to democracy with tow dictatorships and the crime of a genocide in the last century, which shall nerver be forgotten, can, no, must encourage the people, my brothers and sisters, in the United States: remember your dark history and remember it well, but also remember the light of the words of your 16th president and they shall shine on your way to a better future.
Greetings from America, and thank you for your kind words. In my eyes Germany is a shining example of a country looking at and accepting its past. It’s the only way forward.
@@jacoblinde7486 That's what confuses me. The Empire wasn't a dictatorship; it was a constitutional kingdom. And I wouldn't describe the East German government as ever having been legitimate. It could simply be that his interpretation of history is different from mine, but if there's something I'm forgetting (maybe he's referring to the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duumvirate?) I wan't to know about it.
@@Nikolapoleon Imperial germany started as a fairly absolutist state, and became less and less so after Bismarck's reign ended. He was more of an autocrat than the Kaiser, as I understand it.
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it." - Some guy with Confederate flags on his pickup truck who learned nothing from history, probably.
The statement those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it is actually very true I mean how many wars has the whole world fought because they couldn't learn from the past wars
@@joshuahughes3365 true but the OPs statement is in mockery od the hypocrisy if conservatives. We both know most of them have no interest in learning even remotely objective history. Nor do left wingers either. Its simply that statements like these are basic impulse "mouth breather" responses conservatives usually give. Its like the "the left is doing a 1984" meme conseratives say because they heard jordan peterson say it once.
@@jertdw3646 you know don't take this wrong way but in a way I didn't understand I understood to a certain extent however when it comes to being conservatives and left-wingers I'm not saying there's not good and bad on both sides because there is there's bad apples in everything because I'm conservative and I can't speak for everybody else but I'm trying my hardest to learn from history so that I don't make mistakes with that being said I still believe that saying is true to a fault but in a way I see what you're saying that it can be a mockery if not used truthfully let me know if with what I wrote I understood what you said cuz I have a feeling I didn't quite fully understand your statement
@@joshuahughes3365 I'd wager people will learn more from history by reading books than by looking at statues. Confederate statues aren't teaching history, they're glorifying slavers and traitors and an attempt at re-writing history, not teaching it. And wars aren't fought because people forget about the horrors of them, but because the powers in control care more about their power and the preservation of it. No amount of "learning from history" would have kept Putin from invading Ukraine, for example.
@@erikskelton6597 you know I disagree about the slave traders I agree on what you said about putting but I disagree with the statues being there to glorify slave traitors and here's why those monuments wasn't put up to glorify slave traders no matter what anybody says those statues were put up to remember the people who helped make this country this country if the civil war wouldn't have been fought back then it would have been fault today and it would probably been worse be glad what happened back in history happened back in history and not today and unless you're a hypocrite I would change your statement so we're so focused on what happened to a couple of black people that were just going to ignore the mass genocide of native Americans I guarantee you somewhere there is a Andrew Jackson statue just hanging around and nobody's saying nothing about it and if you really want to be mad at somebody be mad at the people who sold their own people for weapons see you blame the South for all the slaves and stuff like that yes it happened in the South but all you Yanks had to do was stop it at any time you wanted to the civil war wasn't fall over slaves it was fault because we wanted to get away from the Union Lincoln had a good reason for trying to keep us together though the only reason Lincoln stopped the Confederacy from becoming it's on country was because Lincoln thought that we'd be stronger together because of the wars we just fought it had nothing to do with the blacks to some probably yes so no to say that those statues are promoting slave traders and all this other stuff I disagree with do I disagree with slave slavery yes I do I think it was wrong but at the same time like I said before be glad it happened then and not now and by the way I have more respect for general Lee than any other person because if it wasn't for general Lee the war would have never ended because there was a battle that was to come and it was going to cause more deaths than anybody can think of and general Lee said no enough is enough so it wasn't your little Yanks that stopped the Confederacy or even ended the war it was general Lee because he didn't want to see anybody else die
I agree with most of your reasoning in this video. As a Brit I don't have an emotional connection to your civil war, and to me the removal of Confederate statues isn't inherently more objectionable than former USSR removing Communist monuments. But looking at the current campaigns against historical statues in my country, I don't find your first point very convincing. I see groups demanding the removal of monuments to important figures like Churchill, Nelson, and Robert Peel, not just slave traders. This isn't a tiny fringe and their demands are being taken seriously by local authorities. I know for a fact that Leicester City Council are currently discussing whether to remove a statue of Gandhi after receiving a 10,000 signature petition labeling him a fascist and demanding they pull it down. Pretty much any historical figure has done or said things that are problematic in 2020 so where would they stop? In my opinion that can't simply be dismissed as a slippery slope argument when things have already slid so far in such a short time...
But those aren't the same things. The Confederate statues are memorializing rebellion and have no place except in a museum or a scrapyard. while in Britain it wasn't a slippery slope, they started it with Ghandi and churchill. You didn't slide to get there, that's where you started. And slippery slope fallacy...
@@dillonblair6491 No, they didn't start with figures like Gandhi and Churchill. Previous campaigns have primarily called for the removal of memorials to slave traders, as well as highly controversial colonialists like Cecil Rhodes. George Pearson above mentions a Lindybeige video that discussed it back in 2016, and it was going on years before that. They've had a fair amount of success in getting certain statues removed and buildings/streets renamed. As with the Confederate statues, there's a compelling argument against memorializing people who defended slavery and made their fortune from it. The focus on less obvious targets like Churchill, Gandhi, and Nelson is more recent.
I Hungary, they took all the "heroic" statutes of Lenin and Stalin and moved them to one place and turned into into a tourist trap. "Come see TONS of communism!"
@@CaomhanOMurchadha You can be opposed to Communism while still appreciating the Communist period of history. I have no love for Communism and no desire to live in a Communist society but I love the Soviet Union from a purely historical standpoint. Not so much because I agree with what it did but I find the entirety of Soviet history to be incredibly fascinating, especially for the huge impact it had on human history as a whole. Plus, let's face it, it's impossible not to listen to Soviet era music and start feeling a desire to charge Mamayev Kurgan
@@Killzoneguy117 I know what you mean. Russian music is very strong and empowering. I always thought it was retarded how the whole Crimean war happened. Russaphobia from the West was stupid. Empire was a big folly. Hindsight is 20/20. The west wanted to prevent Russia from having an empire for I don't know. Stupid reasons? Because God forbid Russia liberated Christendom from the Ottomans back then. So bizarre how things changed in such a short time after all those events.
It's no marvel that some champion the underdogs of the Confederacy. Look how many Cleveland Browns fans there are floating around. 😂😂 Some people just feel sorry for born losers.
I'll always find it funny in a dark way that the reason why I stopped supporting Confederate statues was from seeing who was the MOST vocal at supporting them. Turns out it's not unbiased history buffs
@@spookrockcity it isn't politics, it is my own moral code, I don't want to support symbols that neo-Nazis are literally willing to kill for, as seen in Charlottesville. That just proved to me that these statues are seen as much more than just historical markers, both then and now they are icons for white supremacists, whether we like it or not
The most vocal are not the majority. Shouldn't pull down something historical just because of a few bad apples. They will continue to be icons for those who we disagree with, Even when removed. Better to leave them up and teach the next generation unbiased history.
I just wanna say, those last 5 minutes were truly inspiring. Anyone can really see how passionate you are for truth and the longing for a better America. You are, in my eyes, a true patriot. Not because of your uniform, but because of your heart.
@@DeadCat-42 It was still a war. It lasted for 20 years solely because the US decided to stretch it as far as possible. But the war still happened almost independently of the US.
2:45 I'm not pro-monument, but I am also staunchly against destroying these statues. They belong in museums or national parks with tours and exhibits to give context. They don't belong in public squares or courthouses or anywhere else
Three were melted down in Baltimore in 2017. One lee and Jackson on horseback had incredible detail. Made by important artist Laura g Fraser in 1947-48.
@@larsandrune That's pretty late for Confederate statues to be built, isn't it? She won the design contest in 1936! Well, that one is not being destroyed, although it seems to be in storage with plans to move it to a museum setting in Virginia.
I've spent the last few months studying the civil war in depth, starting with Shelby Foote's excellent three volume series "The Civil War: A Narrative". I grew up with the "Lost Cause" myth and it was even taught to me in school. I came to about the same opinion that you have regarding Confederate motivations before I found your channel, and it's been a blast. You do an excellent job of making these videos, as someone who has spent years crawling through dusty academic websites it is refreshing to see an honest, unapologetic presentation of the truth. And the way that you call out your own biases, or at least don't attempt to hide them, is extremely refreshing. How does this channel only have 100k subs?
Actually, this channel has been exploding in subs. Since I saw one of the Checkmate Lincolnites videos, it had barely 20-30k subs and that was earlier this year. It's great to see this channel expanding!
@@morganknox6642 A truly gentle and articulate man. He was for me one of the most engaging and informative participants in Ken Burns brilliant documentary.
Shelby foote is a novelist. Hes kind of a hack historian in my personal opinion. But i applaud people who inspire others to learn. Do yourself a favor and watch professor Gary Gallagher
There's tendency with new authors and writers to try and make a "revisionism" to get themselves noticed by going against the grain and being provocative. That's why there's why we see these "new histories" of Lee, Grant, Jefferson and Lincoln.
Yeah, it's sad. if only we could find a way to definitively document your life, goals, and general thoughts. Maybe through some sort of system of information conveyance. Something that could be used to create a physical or digital storage method for storytelling, documentation, and opinions. You could maybe even package these items and... sell or rent them out to people... via some sort of... publicly-held "warehouse" so that the information would be easily accessible for all citizens. But nah, that's crazy! Guess we'll just have to continue using ONLY monuments and statues to record history in a medium whose purpose is to be subjectively interpretable!
Gap Shot Okay lemme go buy some black people and enslave them. Now, what if I told you I hold electrical patents?? Haha, racism forgotten, gimme a statue 👍
Otacon with your stupid logic we should ban all Japanese imports because they committed war crimes against US way back in the 1940’s and Japan should ban anything American because we nuked them...see the flaw in your libtarded logic, where does it end lol
All other recorded deliveries of "The Gettysburg Address" are dead and buried. I could only applaud. Then the Witchfinder General killed me at the end.
I had originally wrote a long speech about how much I’ve enjoyed your civil war videos which I’ve been binging and how they’re enlightened me about the nature of the lost cause, but I’ll keep it shorter. Thank you so much for these videos, they’re both entertaining and informative and I deeply enjoy them.
So weird that in 2024 we're still discussing this, literal slavery based on race and how acceptable it is to honor it publicly. We're evolving very slowly, if at all.
A Ulysses statue was torn down recently www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/san-francisco-protesters-tear-down-union-general-ulysses-s-grants-statue/ar-BB15KtqI As well as a couple of Jefferson, and one George Washington statue had a flag burnt on it's head before being torn down Though I'm fine with removing confederate statues, the whataboutism has been proven correct
LTC No, it hasn’t. The whataboutism is still a lie. The vast majority of Americans on *both* sides of the political spectrum oppose testing down statues of Washington, Jefferson, and other non-Confederates: www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-17/far-right-boogaloo-boys-linked-to-killing-of-california-lawmen-other-violence%3f_amp=true?client=safari
@@Ultimaton100 why link an article about boogaloo bois youre clearly trying to spin your own narrative because them killing politicians isn't linked with what I said at all. Just because I think taking down statues is bad doesn't mean I condone killing political officials, plus the John Brown gun club consider themselves boogaloo bois but are far left so clearly that article is fake AF
@@Ultimaton100 also you know what's crazy? The American left can never do anything wrong their record is so clean it's crazy, and it's always the right doing everything wrong no matter what, if I didn't know better id say that almost sounds as simplistic as say... a child's cartoon. But no it's always easy to know who the bad guy is and there's always a good guy and they're always the same people and the good guys never ever I'm a bazillion years do anything worth criticizing
Hello everyone! It's been one year since I made this video, and what a year it's been. Ironically, just a couple of short weeks after filming this, statues once again popped up in the American news cycle as worldwide protests intensified following the murder of George Floyd. But it wasn’t just Confederate monuments in the crosshairs - it was just about any statue deemed problematic. So unfortunately, certain aspects of the video quickly became dated, in particular the information regarding public opinion in 2017 at 6:21. At the time, I posted a correction/update in a pinned comment. Now that enough time has passed to view the events more soberly and objectively, I'd like to share my (probably unasked and unwanted) thoughts about the 2020 monuments controversy.
Last summer, when protestors started toppling non-Confederate statues - including likenesses of Thomas Jefferson, George Washington, Christopher Columbus, and others - those who had opposed the removal of Confederate symbols loudly gloated that the "slippery slope" argument had been vindicated. As they saw it, these malevolent anti-American protestors were never going to stop with Confederates, oh no! They would not rest until history was completely rewritten to fit their woke agenda.
Have events since last summer borne that theory out?
No, of course not.
To be sure, protestors did destroy a few statues of slaveowning Founding Fathers (whose legacies are far more morally ambiguous than Confederates, in my opinion). They even took aim at a bust of Ulysses S. Grant in San Francisco. The months-long uprising in Portland, Oregon was especially dangerous for big bronze presidents, claiming such esteemed casualties as George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Teddy Roosevelt, and Abraham Lincoln.
Wait, so you're telling me that leftist activists on the West Coast have a myopic view of American history? Whoa, that's crazy. And those activists, caught up in the heat of the moment and understandably outraged by four hundred years of black oppression in America, went a little too far and tore down a statue that maybe shouldn't have been torn down? Pull the other one!
Here's my main question for the drunk uncles of America: where is the apocalyptic domino of toppled Founding Father statues you keep predicting will happen? If the communists over at Antifa, LLC are trying to destroy American history, they're doing a terrible job. Since the ferocity of last summer, only a couple of inoffensive statues have been removed, always peaceably and (it seems to me) for good reasons. The Emancipation statue in Boston for instance, despite being erected for all the right reasons, depicts a black man kneeling in gratitude at Lincoln's feet - yeah, maybe not a great look, and I can completely understand why the city of Boston would no longer want it on public display.
Times change, and standards change. It's only natural that something that was innocuous 140 years ago might raise a few eyebrows today.
And in all seriousness, I think the statues controversy last year was a terrible shame. Not because of the statues - they're hunks of metal - but because it allowed the enemies of progress to gain the initiative in the cultural conversation, and provided ammunition to the right-wing media, which thrives on fear and misinformation.
Pundits on networks like Fox screamed that what these protests were really about was destroying America, and all that was good about America. See, they even tore down poor George Washington! Their audiences ate it up. All of a sudden, everyone was talking about historical memory and activists were on the defensive. Any notions of police reform, the protests' original aim, were quietly forgotten.
Because, of course, this debate actually has next to nothing to do with statues themselves. They only seem to become important to modern day Americans (of any political persuasion) once they pop up in the news again. So during the next monuments controversy, just remember that it's never been about "preserving history." It's about depriving people of color of even the barest symbolic gesture.
Oh, and if you're curious, my position has remained unchanged. If a local municipality wants to take down a statue, they should be able to, and if I don't live there then it's not my business.
Very good insight as usual, love your work, really got a foreigner like me (Irish) interested in American history, particularly the civil war.
Whoa, good timing for an update comment! Just found this channel (thanks, sis), and I love how nuanced and calm your videos are. Keep it up!
To bank on your "Civil war museum" Idea... I know what we can call it.... The Lost Cause History Museum...... where it full on debunks every lost cause myth and where it came from and shows the harsh reality of the civil war and slavery.
I find that in people's rush to get to where they should be they often forget the slow painful steps taken to get there and fail to recognize their signifigance.
@@notimportant3394 It's not destroying shit, yes they destroyed shit, but that was an outrage at the system where they are getting killed and jailed at twice the rate of everyone else in America. The "barest gesture" is no longer idolizing those that fought to keep them in bondage or not defending the racist individuals that hurt them because they have the power to do so. Convicting Chovin was a small basic gesture, but for every Chovin there are 4 more that are protected by "qualified immunity". Which is basically "ignorance of the law is not an excuse, except when your job IS the law then you can get away with anything"
I'm ok with confederate monuments as long as behind every monument there is a statue of Sherman, twice the height, spitting fire in random intervals.
Man, you just reminded me how much I'd like to see a statue of Grant mounted on a steamroller to go up and down alongside the Mississippi River.
My band director at my school almost wrote me up when I suggested that we play Marching through Georgia for the spring concert.
How about a statue of Frederick Douglass next to the Confederate statues? Or a statue of a soldier belonging to one of the Black regiments taking aim at the Confederate? Let us see if those who like these Confederate monuments find that offensive.
That is exactly what they should do with Stone Mountain GA.
Sherman statue: "Remember meeeeeeee!"
'Breathes fire'
“Stop obsessing about Hannibal’s crescent formation”
I feel called out
Me too
Me too that man was great
Especially because he lost in the end
He's biased. Just look at the book about Caesar on his shelf!
@@timtheskeptic1147 NOT true. if Any thing hes "biased" , in YOUR Favour
In my town we have a statue of the confederacy, which is strange considering we actually voted to secede from Tennesee after it itself seceded from the union.
Southern Unionists (those who remained loyal to their country) are terribly underrepresented as monuments in the South. 22,000 Virginians fought for the Union alone, including 1/3rd of Virginia's officers that studied at West Point. They were Southerners too, but are not honored in the South. If Confederate statues were solely about heritage, we'd also see statues of Southerners who loved their country more than slavery.
Welcome to East Tennessee, I've been threatened and almost doxxed by people online because I told them that large parts of East Tennessee weren't pro-confederate.
scott county, right?
Freedom for me but not for thee
Basically West Virginia
I'm surprised you didn't bring up the fact that many of the statues and monuments in question were erected closer to present time than to the Civil War. While arguments could be made about original period monuments erected by veterans of the Civil War are historic, that argument cannot be made about Confederate statues erected in the 1960s and 70s in response to the Civil Rights Movement.
they were erected when the last of the troops were old and there children wanted to pay respects to them ,
@@ronwallace6273 or, ya know, when they got fired up over black people having rights and wanted to retaliate
@@chiko4536 just respect for dead which nobody cares about just help the crying ones
@@ronwallace6273 the last of the confederacy was dying and black people were getting rights, we had to honor our slave owning/raping/breeding you know all the things you do with live stock to breed and work them. So glad they were dead though, can you imagine how they would have felt seeing thay civil rights Bill pass? The day the true America died, sit close to them on a bus or use the same water fountain? What has this country come to 😂 so when do we put up the nazi monuments next to the allies and holocaust ones? They were people's grandfathers fighting to return the empire to its former glory days. If you want a real good book that those daughters wrote, you should see the book those daughters wrote for children and to put in schools that was Pro KKK, don't worry also not racist, just funny stories about those same dads and grand dads dying back in their prime building bonfires and starting a neighborhood watch, sounds right up your alley.
@@ronwallace6273 do germans honor nazis? fuck no. and southerners shouldn't honor confederates, who were fighting for their right to own other humans.
Fun fact: when Lincoln first read out the Gettysburg Address, he wasn’t happy with it. He thought it was a really stupid and underwhelming speech. He was actually quite shocked when people were like “nice job dude”
Same thing with the Nutcracker by Tchaikovsky
My American History professor touched on this. The man who spoke before Lincoln was considered the best orator in the US at the time, and he delivered a multiple-hour-long speech. Upon the completion of the Gettysburg Address, the orator approached the president and said something along the lines of "you managed to say more in 15 minutes than I could've said in 5 hours.''
At the time, Lincoln's speech was roundly criticized by newspaper editors. But its fame grew with publication and time.
I would also be pretty shocked if William Seward leaned over to me and said, "nice job, dude." I'd be like, "its 1863 and I'm the fucking president! Stop being so anachronistic!"
He also wasn't the main speaker. That was Edward Everett
Didn't Robert E Lee once say that he was against monuments to the Confederacy because "they would keep open the wounds of war." ( I'm paraphrasing here. I can't remember the exact quote.)
To be specific, he was against making monuments to the Civil War at all. But this includes the Confederacy, much to the chagrin of people who cry "he didn't mean Confederate statues!"
Cash Nelson Lee was interesting. While by no means a bastion of noblesse and good some make him out to be, he was more moderate on his views of slavery than other southerners; believing it would go away eventually but it was up to god not Washington to decide when.
He did not support secession but in the end felt loyalty to states was more important than the federal government. After defeat he staunchly opposes any acts of continuing rebellion and pushed for southerners to reconcile with the north. Finally, while still an extreme racist, he didn’t support assaulting black civilians and did punish some students at his college for doing that at one point.
Overall while not a good man, he was by no means the worst of the worst.
@@Nostripe361 Well I think he was a good man but thank you for explaining your perspective. Can you give sources to say the students were punished?
I really wish it were all that simple. The fact is those statues have served as a reminder of where we have come from, and the process by which we got here. We didn't get here without mistakes, or trials, and it doesn't really serve the future to repaint the past to pretend like we did.
We document our mistakes so that we do not have to repeat them. Mistakes are not without temptation, or justification (however temporary it may prove to be). To conceal that you've made mistakes, is to ensure you'll make them again. Do we really have to relive slavery to know that it was a bad idea? It cannot be helped that slavery pencils-out economically, but morally, and ethically it is entirely corrupt. If I can get the same lesson out of a statue, why not just leave it there?
@@ericrosso4846 We learn about mistakes of the past from history books and lessons. And if you really wanted to build a statue to "teach the lessons of the past", then design it that way. Confederate statues are built to portray the character as heroic and courageous, and are clearly designed for hero worship. To portray them as mistakes of the past, show them WITH the people they wronged, or as part of a scene - make it obvious that they're not the focus but rather the mistakes they have committed.
The Grand Army of the Republic fought the Confederacy?
I've heard this one before...
WATCH THOSE WRIST ROCKETS
Seperatist Confederacy of Independent Systems. My grandfather was a Colonel from Raxus Secundus and fought and died bravely at the battle of Onderon. Heritage not hate.
Clankas!
@@doctorlunarous5747 don't use the hard r bro
@@roadhouse6999 Ok ok I fixed it.
I love your passion for the Civil War. I'm in my 40s now but when I was 13, I was obsessed. I watched Gettysburg and the Ken Burns series dozens of times, owned a union uniform and had a photo of Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain on my wall. Strangest 13 year girl anyone knew XD
...That last part threw me the fuck off. Just goes to show that, even as a girl myself, I've still got a lot of unpacking to do!
@@fandomcringebucket no one expects the teenage girl into American war history XD XD XD
@@fandomcringebucket Respect to both of you :)
13 year old civil war history girl? That's so cool.
Coolest 13 year old girl!
Funny story, general lee was asked about monuments about the war and said we shouldn’t even build them and try to move on from the Civil War
@@vardekpetrovic9716 You're very clueless if you still don't know he was very against his building of statues.
@@vardekpetrovic9716 www.pbs.org/newshour/nation/robert-e-lee-opposed-confederate-monuments
He also said that if he knew what the yankees would do with their victory, he never would have surrendered.
@@kenabbott8585 I know it's almost like he was a racist aristocrat who didn't want black people to be considered anything other than second class citizens in the political landscape and subhumans in the mythical racial hierarchy that he sent thousands to die for and was bitter about it 🤔
@@franzjoseph1837
"I know it's almost like...."
It's very much like you can't come up with a real argument and so you have to spew a bunch of dishonest accusations of racism in a sad attempt to cover up for it.
As always, the Witchfinder General has the best, most righteous judgement on this issue.
"THOU ART A WICKED SINNER!"
You mean the most mythical - it's all Yankee myth, from the Treasury of counterfeit virtue.
@@robertvowell7293 say it in the voice
@@marcusjackson5837 I don't think you know what that word means
@@marcusjackson5837 yeah the economics and self-interest of owning slaves lmao
Go ahead and look up a copy of South Carolina's statement of secession for me, and tell me what they said their primary reason for leaving the union was
"I think you're wrong, but I don't think you're stupid."
There's not enough of that these days. Thank you.
yeah most people aren't really stupid they'er just ignorant.
NO, they're not stupid, they're evil. Racism and supporting the concept of slavery are evil. Period.
@@d.e.b.b5788 nah youd have to be pretty stupid to be racist
Shiranami Rei that's a pretty low bar....
@@d.e.b.b5788 Imagine assuming ignorance = evil. Couldn't be me.
Thanks! They broke the oath. It's as simple as that. As a vet I take that seriously. They took an oath and they broke it. No heroism or honor in that.
You're right. Lincoln's few lines encompassed the war and those who fought for their country and the idea of the constitution. Bravo!
It's not honorable to uphold an unjust cause. It's more noble to turn your back on it. What about the Hitler oath?
The US really needs a national museum for removed statuary. Maintenence is far easier for a place dedicated to it. Just look at the Neon Museum in Las Vegas. They essentially have the same upkeep problems, but by keeping it all in one place, they can significantly reduce the costs, and dedidicate a museum to that particular type of oversized and defunct artifact. yes, this kind of museum would attract bigots - but just as the holocaust memorials effectively deal with them, so too would this. It would in fact be perfect for what the University of Texas's museum calls their exhibit of an old Jeff Davis statue, "From Commemoration to Education." Bigots will do their thing. The best we can do is exclude and ridicule them, instead focusing on the people who are capable of learning
This, this is what I would love to have done.
A new Smithsonian
Yeah. I'm hesitant to support anything that resembles damnation memoriae, so the best thing to do is to remove these statutes from a place of honor to a museum of horrors. In the museum, each statue could have a several plaques, detailing who it represented, under what context it was erected, and under what context it was removed (because that's history too). And I do agree it should be a national institution, so that way small southern towns aren't also under and obligation to relocate the statue to a local museum. The national museum would just be like "you've decided to remove your confederate (or other racist) monuments? Cool we'll be over with our truck soon". Also I feel like a large indoor museum would make for cheaper upkeep than an outdoors one. And since this isn't really damnation memoriae, I don't think resources should be expended recovering statues destroyed in these protests. It's just not worth it. Especially since we have photos to know what these things looked like. We could even have a section of the museum dedicated to these protests in the same format as the rest of the museum for the destroyed/thrown into a river statues.
AbsolX Guardian Or just make a national museum dedicated to the civil war with them in there.
@@thejestor9378 Like how Kansas City has the National World War 1 museum which is rather fantastic.
I like what some former Warsaw Pact countries have done with their statues. Hungary and a few of the Baltic nations have created 'statue graveyards. Basically, they took former communist statues and place them in less public areas and let them sit there. People can come and see them along with tours being provided to give context. The statues themselves have either basic maintenance or none at all, so over time, they weather away. I think something akin to that would be nice to see. Maybe not in every state in the south, but at least have one for the more infamous ones.
yeah, why not
I like it.
You know in Seattle we acquired a massive Lenin. That statue is still controversial with people who think we shouldn’t be celebrating Lenin. People keep vandalizing Lenin by painting his hands with blood.
I like this idea. A good solution
George Duckson Isn’t that statue (ironically) on private property though?
My city removed a confederate statue last year but they left the base so now it just looks like the bottom half of a weird lego pyramid
I say put a potted plant there and call it a day. lol
Pyramid? Ah, the symbol of Jewish slavery. Oh, but that’s ok, they weren’t black.
Sondra Sondra Is this satire?
@@beigeturtleneck7511 absolutely. Slaves of all ethnicities and races have existed throughout history but the only ones that seem to matter are the African American ones. Why is that?
@@beigeturtleneck7511 I’m not from America and no I don’t hear anything other than African American slavery. Should the pyramids be torn down as they are a symbol of Jewish slavery?
My biggest problem during this whole thing was every time someone asked my opinion on the matter, they always wanted a straight yes or no answer as to whether they should stay or be removed, as a whole. But it should be a case by case basis! As a history teacher, remembering context is incredibly important! For example many of the statues and monuments were erected in the late 20th century, and I think most everyone can agree these are not historically important and should be removed (Barring perhaps one or two, which should be moved to a civil rights museum to highlight the dirty practice of the time period, building political monuments to stifle social progress). Some statues are much older and weren't created in such bad taste, and should probably remain or perhaps relocated to a museum. There is more than enough information regarding the construction of pretty much all of these monuments to discern whether a monument was built in good faith or solely to push some kind of agenda, and these things should be considered when discussing the topic. That said, yeah probably 95% of them or more should go as it was such a common political tool for suppression. And I don't know that any of them should be displayed anywhere outside of a museum where a greater context can be conveyed.
I think most should not be removed rather "community notes" be added alongside them. Stating how old they are along with the context and history around it's creation. To turn these monuments of false glorification and oppression into tools of education and warning. Most importantly of this we must ban the creation of new confederate statues.
they removed the 10 commandments . so anything else is going to go
leave statues alone , don't dig up graves and tear down monuments all that does is give hatred fuel , don't make people today pay money or apologize, nobody today did anything , if you do that fuels hate. don't let hate groups march but stop other hate groups from marching that fuels hate . don't rewrite history that fuels hate. you move on unless you lived it , I'm part irish I never was in the potato famine I never got whipped by a British, I never made a bomb , if they started that up again I'd be first to support ireland in protest . I work on problems of today not from 150 years ago ,
We don't get to pick and choose which parts of history we remember, but we do get to choose what we celebrate.
Amen
Correct
As always, the victors get celebrated.
If Washington failed in his rebellion against the Brits he would have been seen as a terrorist instead of a hero.
@@Stormcloakvictory That's not true, like, at all. To your point, Washington was still seen by the British as a traitor and not a hero, for a long time and is to an extent seen that way today.
@@aaronkuhlman1392 Not by any Brit I've ever talked to.
I've just realized that in my 27 years of living I've never heard more of the Gettysburg Address then the first few lines. Considering I live in the south that's a damn shame and this has been a very sobering experience.
the south whitewashes history to the extreme
I've never heard more then about 2 or so lines of it, and I never even knew that it was the Gettysburg address
I must've heard the speech a dozen times, but hearing it spoken in earnest, rather than like a dry textbook passage, it felt like listening to it for the very first time.
@@polin1710 I'm in my 40's and from the south and we had to memorize it in elementary school... Personally, I think the north does a far better job of white washing things...as long as no one happens to wander into their ghettos that is.
@@possumverde large swaths of the American south are decrepit wastelands and you are talking about northern ghettos? I'm not without sympathy to your comment but a little clarity here please. Have you ever been to... oh I don't know.. northern Louisiana or rural Alabama?
My allegiance is to the Republic, to democracy! - A Union soldier, probably
"If you're not with me, then you're my enemy." - A Confederate soldier, probably.
@@confusedcossack2885 Anakin Skywalker/Darth Vader
“From my point of view, the Union are evil!” - A confederate soldier, probably
"Hello there" ~Stonewall Jackson, to some random Confederate soldiers at night.
John Fraire “General Kenobi” -Confederate soldier probably returning Jackson’s greeting, perhaps
I am an old man, and I have heard the Gettysburg Address countless times since my grandfather first recited it to me as a young boy. This is, however, the first time it brought tears to my eyes. Well done, Andrew, and thank you.
I have seen both movies Gettysburg and Gods and Generals and I have to say I liked the characters of Stonewall Jackson and Robert E Lee in Gods and Generals and I am not pro lost cause or pro Confederate does not mean I am biased against them either. I would like to see a video made by Atun Shei about why the last four states Virginia Tennessee Arkansas and North Carolina seceded to join the Confederacy when Lincoln called on those states to send their troops
@@arlonfoster9997 Don't fall for the trap, dude, the confederacy was always for slavery whether you like it or not. There's nothing wrong with acknowledging that the confederacy is the bad guy here. What next, is saying imperial Japan is the bad guy between America and Japan during WW2 controversial?
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 there are no good or bad in wars. Both sides today in America's modern wars do some pretty fucked up shit. The north itself as well as the south during the Civil War did messed up things. I think y'all are arguing that the Confederacy is like Nazi Germany so you can erase America's statues. I'd rather be a Union or a Confederate soldier in the Civil War than be a fucking Nazi. The Confederacy did not have concentration camps for enslaved African Americans. Also Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson whether you love them or hate them was better than fucking Adolf Hitler.
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 also for your information if you want to blame a country for existence of American slavery then fucking blame the British and stop blaming the south
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 and I like Gods and Generals and the characters it doesn't mean I hate the Union I just have a non bias approach to the Civil War. If the Continental Army during the Revolutionary War showed respect for the hanged British spy Major Andre who helped Benedict Arnold switch sides why can't Union and Confederate soldiers respect one another just because of their political and ideological differences. Why is it not okay for me to respect Lee or Jackson and point out that they fought the Civil War to protect Virginia and not the entire Confederate States of America. Do you think it was justified that we established internment camps for the Japanese Americans after Pearl Harbor even though the majority of them did not spy for Imperial Japan. Do you think Sherman was justified in burning southern cities do you think Hunter was right to burn VMI cause let me tell you I would call you the extremes on both sides while respecting and liking Lee Jackson Grant Meade Hancock Longstreet Lincoln Chamberlain and Frederick Douglass. And I am not being racist when I say this and if you even think that you are wrong
Why aren't there any memorials for the British soldiers who served in the Revolution? All I can find are a few grave sites.
Considering Britain literally laid the foundations for the United States, good point (unless you’re being facetious).
I would actually think that would be cool. Especially on the historical battle sites. Hard to compare with confederate though, as they still have their own country, and colonized 1/3 of the world at one point. They still have statues (for now) of their homeland.
There is one at the Guilford courthouse battlefield
Interesting. Virginia had one of the highest concentrations of loyalists during the Revolutionary war--and was the capital of the Confederacy. Not sure why they venerate one generation over the next.
Also, Viriginia, what's with that massive confed flat flying over one of your interstates?
Most of these, for both British regulars and loyalists, are in Canada. All I see is one group of rebels bemoaning over a newer group of rebels rebelling from said rebels, while meanwhile the British Empire had already abolished slavery 30 years earlier.
"Actually learn from it"
HOW DARE YOU! SIR! i will learn history but i will not learn FROM history!
Exactly, my secret Communist uprising may suffer from all the problems communism suffered in the past but what's the odds of that?
@@witchhunter6755 “Everything I don’t like is communism!”
I love the idea that without statues we would forget the people they depict. Books and writings are for history, statues are for honoring the individuals. The statues themselves are no better proof because if they weren't labeled no one would know who they even are...
you can read all about these historical figures in book but southerners don't read :/
@@isaiahmiller6452 dude no offense but you shouldn’t say that it’ll just alienate the southerners that believe in this stuff even more
I get that it’s a joke but videos like this one are trying to educate and it’s best you not make comments like that about the very people who would gain the most out of this
@@Blue-J4 there are a surprising number of progressive-types in the south nowadays. They call it the “New South”. It’s just that their voices get drowned out by the loudmouth confederate-apologists, and other Lost Causers. I’m about as “northern” as you can get (I’m from the Canadian border area of northern Minnesota), and I have to admit I had a rather negative view of the south most of my life, but I’ve always tried to keep an open mind as much as possible. The last few years have been a real eye opener, as I’ve discovered a lot of southerners even here on RUclips who are amazing people. There’s a really good channel called Beau of the Fifth Column for example, if you want to hear a more progressive southern point of view.
@@Pretermit_Sound yeah as one of those southern progressives it hurts to see people who genuinely don’t know any better become more and more estranged from facts and such just because many people end up pigeonholing them and insulting them rather than helping them learn
Plus some northerners end up seeming pretty classist towards southerners which again ends up completely hindering their willingness to learn and change for the better
Not only that but people seem to forget that the south isn’t completely white like it has a sizable amount of minorities (me being one of them) that seem to be completely forgotten by many when they choose to stereotype all southerners as racist confederates
By God, that conclusion by Atun-Shei quoting Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address was so fucking classy…
His eyes are so intimidating and scary when he gets serious
w-w-winnie i-i-m s-s-s-careed
i hope he reaches a john brown like state
This man is not scary lol.
But I do like his content.
THE WITCHFINDER GENERAL COMMENT THO im laughing so hard rn
I wonder if Atun posted that himself, or if a fan did?
It was the date stamp that got me: 348 years ago.
@K you are someone I would gladly to secularism with
"it belongs in the museum"-Indiana Jones
They offered, most museums say they don't want them as they have no real historic significance.
They need to put them in a civil war historical site in each state
@@landonbass83 Which Anyone of moderate temperament would agree with & to !
Except, who is going to police the separate crowds of Aryan Brotherhood, KKK and the other White Supremacy groups gathering every Sunday, to spew forth the bile that maintains them!
And what about the poor white Confederate Memorialist, come with his boys, Cleetus II, Cleetus III, Cleetus Junior and their sister, Cleetorus. He's got them ringed about to show them the Greatest General of the whole Republican Army, the 'Grand Gennelmin' their Grand-pa Cleetus - 4 times back ! - was proud to, "have been looked at by the 'Grand Gennelmin' while cleaning the shit & piss out of the way, so 'Fine Gennelmin' didn't get durty boots while mounting their horses, before leading their 300 men of the Heavy Foot Regiment off to battle again that day !"
"Unkel Cleetus', piped up young Cleetus III,'Did that Ol' Grand-paw Cleetus git kilt in the War agin them Northin Slave Luvers ?"
Cleetus looked at his sister and, when she nodded yes, he replied, "I'll leave that story to yore Auntee/Momma, to tell you fellas tonite, afore y'all godah bed ! She kin reed the pitchur-book !"
So who protects Pa Cleetus, who is only there to mind the KKK Club's cars ? It's the only way he has to make money for the Membership Dues in his Local 1939 Whitish Bros & Hos! Another 6 months should do it, and his sister/wife can't wait!
So does he get protected or condemned for going to: "Johnny Reb Memorial Statue Park & Butterfly Gardens" to make some "Walking-around Money" by cleaning up after the "Gennel-mens Cars !!🤔
✌
PoD Benn so in a nutshell you don’t want to do that because kkk members and neo confederates would go there to rally?
PoD Benn why are you afraid of those idiots tho? Wouldn’t their hypothetical rally mean they’re annoyed and that we should build Civil War museums in order to annoy confederates? I would love to annoy them
I've *_heard_* the Gettysburg Address dozens of times in my life, but your recitation is the first time I've really *_felt_* it.
Disagreeing with you on the Concentration Camps thing: I've visited three of them, one with my sisters, one with my school and one with my university. I've never seen a Nazi there, mostly school classes and normal people.
It's a great way of remembering history, the atrocities and the suffering. Not just putting up the "war heroes". Most of the people walk out of there, being shattered and saying "never again".
That stuff is a awful sight to behold, but we need to see those things.
Do not think for a minute that if everyone saw that stuff, we'd have no more injustice. Evil is entwined deep in human nature. It's not for the evil we should hope to change by remembering this horrid stuff, but for the good to take history seriously.
It's hard to walk through those places but it is extremely important and I 100% agree with you.
I don't believe he opposes keeping the Camps as memorials. He just notes that they can allow fringe elements a place to gather for all the wrong reasons.
@@Significantpower you mean like a blacklivesmatter rally destroying entire cities. surely you must be for banning blacklivesmatter then?
Ah yes, the cities destroyed by black lives matter protests. The modern Bowling Green Massacre.
Stop obsessing about Hannibal`s crescent formation for a second. And take a good hard look at the world around you.
I think this is the best roast to a history nerd ever.
Look at the world around me? History is about the past, when the world suffers from everything were doing now then I'll look
@@witchhunter6755 Do you mean the world isn`t suffering from the things we have invented the last 200 year s? Or did I misunderstand what you said more then Agustus II misunderstand war?
@@lindaholen1368 you see, I attempted and some would argue that I failed at a funny
I felt legitimately hurt by it.
I just like the 7 years war man.
This is a huge jab at 90% of the historical RUclips content-creator base who exist more to help DMs make their DnD sessions more immersive with frivolous details and to stroke the ego of Total War armchair generals than to actually teach people about history
The last time I was this early the South still thought they could win the war.
HEY OH
Atlanta isn't on fire
*looks outside
Never mind
@@kstreet7438
Richmond just fell
Hurrah, hurrah!
We ring the jubilee
Hurrah, hurrah!
The flag that makes you free
So we sang the chorus from
Atlanta to the Sea
WHILE WE WERE MARCHING THROUGH GEEEEOOOOORRRRGGGIAAAA
too soon.
KEvron
He looks…almost as if he is holding back tears, reciting the Gettysburg Address. And he nearly brought me to tears.
The country’s ideals have never been truly attained, but still the People fight for this country, they bleed for this country, they speak for this country. And they seek to form the more perfect Union by which our father’s so hopefully sought. It is, therefore, fitting; that our flag is one that should represent the ideals of a country that speaks of freedom and equality, yet cannot attain it due to works of the divisive and the hateful.
We hold our hands to our hearts, we the People of the United States, to pledge allegiance to these ideals. May our ideals, not our actions, succeed in the end. For liberty, and justice for all.
Atun-Shei, I pray you see this. You are a true patriot of our country. And I respect every endeavor and labor you dedicate yourself to, for the sake of teaching lost, confused, deceived people about our country. Faults and all.
I mustn't forget to buy some toilet roll when I get to the shops - I'd better build a quick statue to remind myself
Quality comment
That is in no way related to the removal of visual reminders of our national history! Comparing building a statue to remind oneself to do something with destroying/keeping a statue that may or may not offend you is a prime example of false equivalency
@@dpfljr Aww, "visual reminders of our national history"? That's cute. How about you come back to this topic when you're a little older and understand the difference between remembrance and glorification?
@@dpfljr I KNOW RIGHT?! And it is so sickening that Eastern Bloc nations took down statues of Stalin and Lenin after the collapse of the Soviet Union, how could they destroy their own history like that?
Being facetious aside, you're talking about statues that were largely put up during the civil rights movement in the 1960's by white supremacist groups as a statement to black community, many of them being cheap and of very low quality--because remembering history wasn't the point. I'm all for remembering history, in fact I feel extremely strongly about it; but that doesn't include preserving statues glorifying atrocity, at least in their present context. In a museum or a statue graveyard such as the one where many Soviet statues ended up is a different story though.
Would you advocate for keeping around things in Germany that glorify the Nazi's for the sake of "preserving history"? You don't need to keep around harmful reminders of oppression to remember history, or at least not without proper context.
The "preserving history" argument is nothing but hot air, as this entire video makes clear. And frankly, to the people who have a problem even with removing them and putting them in a museum where they can be displayed in their proper context; I have to question whether they are interested in remembering history, or bringing that "history" into the present. If you're alright with the removal of Soviet era statues but have a problem with these statues being removed, I have to wonder if that's your motivation too. Or if it's a numbers game of how many people were killed or suffered under these people and regimes, I'm curious how many people you have to kill or harm before the removal of your statue becomes justified over keeping it to 'preserve history'.
@@czarpeppers6250
Yeah!
I love this channel, even the comments are Verbose AF.
My favorite quote from the Grand Army of the Republic, "We believe in making treason odious. "
And it is understandable, to the nutballs who invaded Washington in 2021.
@@mariocisneros911 funny how that nonsense is treason but what your politicians do to you every day isn't.
That's why i love you Americans, you have your head up your asses constantly smelling propaganda scented farts.
@@Saturn369-i1b Why can't both be treason? The difference is, it's a lot easier to prosecute a bunch of idiots than the people who literally control the country.
@@gunterthekaiser6190 precisely you gave me the answer. only one is treated as treason despite those people not doing any real damage but the people doing real damage is like "meh, we can't do anything about it"
if your founding fathers knew that you would develop into spineless groveling cowards they wouldn't have bothered with your second ammendment
That's rich since the county was founded on treason and they believe in session from Great Britain.
This is by far the best video I've seen on this subject. You do great work, sir.
@@lasernathan6812 The facts help persuade people to stop defending these statues because he gives reasons to why they're bad.
What's up Mr. Beat?
I think it's unamerican to have monuments to our enemies and their values, I really don't understand why anyone would want these around if not for racism.
Ignoring all the valid reasons for their removal (which I agree with), it's a little callous to dismiss opposing arguments by calling many of the southern United States ancestors "our enemies", nor will it change anyone's mind as much as harden hearts.
@@Captain-Jinn I'm calling the people that went to war with this union and killed our citizens in the name of slavery our enemies. It's not callous. It's just appropriate.
@@Captain-Jinn a bunch of British separatists getting pissy when some of their own separate is pretty funny and brutally ironic.
It's because those people who venerate their statues are, ideologically, the enemy.
It's like if the 13 original colonies had a statue of King George III
Confederates?! Grand Army of The Republic?! What is this!! Star Wars The Clone Wars?!
Joshua Starkloff long live the 501st and captain Rex
@@theshenpartei Who can forget the episode where Rex led his troops in the assault on the Vicksburg fortifications?
Now there's some statues I can get behind.
To be fair the Civil War came way before Star Wars.
I love democracy. I love the Republic.
I've never understood how you need monuments to remember history. Like, are books outlawed in places these people who this live? Do you do all your learning going from monument from monument and reading maybe 6 lines of fluff?
In the South? In some states those books may actually be banned.
The monuments were only part of an all out effort by the United Daughters of the Confederacy and other defenders of slavery and white supremacy to whitewash (pun intended) their history and erase the single cause of the Civil War. At the turn of the 20th century they formed a committee that ensured only their fake lost cause story would appear in textbooks. This was followed by similar efforts beyond primary schools. Northern historians didn't resist these efforts, spread being this lie Nationwide. Half of all Americans still believed it in 2011, and only 8% of high school seniors correctly identified slavery as the war's cause in a 2018 poll. Sadly resistance to historical accuracy hasn't ended, and the successful papering over of traitorous racism and its morphing into other forms of suppression has prevented an honest discussion of how omnipresent racism has been in our history. time.com/5013943/john-kelly-civil-war-textbooks/ theamericanscholar.org/the-problem-in-the-classroom/
Ever heard of the Bonfire of the vanities or the Nazi book burnings? Imagine if something like that happened to the books in this country that people viewed as being subversive.
@@Sigma0283 what's that got to due with puff or pieces that's statues make up especially these ones as a reinforcement of slavery south living
@@tenlosol Everything. There are people who want to see every statue, monument and history book involving the Confederacy and the Civil War destroyed and treat it as if the Civil War never happened.
That's a major reason why I'd rather see the statues stay where they are as a lasting reminder of the past and how the country changed after that and still changes today.
Just found this from InRange TV. I didn't expect to have my thoughts changed on the matter, but hot damn, context is a merciless and humbling thing. Thanks for making this, man.
That's so wonderful to read. If the world was full of people like you then we would have fewer problems. You're a role model dude!
just out of curiosity, what was your opinion before, what exactly changed it and whats your opinion now?
@@Ctane126 Probably "brown man bad, orange man good." Americans aren't really mentally all there, y'know.
It takes courage and wisdom to change your mind when presented with a different point of view.
@@BomimoDK imo, the InRange crowd is very well spoken and open to new, well referenced ideas. It's kinda insulting to generalize them because they are receptive to changing their ideals.
Germany remembers its History without making monuments to Himmler and Hitler ....
Absolutely! In Germany we still have to deal with some cases like Rommel, Stauffenberg and some others, which seem to have gotten some following and some streets etc. named after them. But of course they are/seem kinda... well not Hitler. On the other hand, there are monuments and memorials about the horrors of that history, like the famous "Stolpersteine" (Metal Bricks in some roads in front of former homes of killed jews and other groups the nazis killed) and the big holocaust memorial in Berlin. Still there are those that try to do pretty much exactly what those that hail the confederacy do. We should always be wary about trying to make our own History less shameful.
And yet Adolf Hitler's bunker is still a thing you can visit, without getting the sense he's being honored by it being preserved.
@@troodon1096now do the differences between displaying the Nazi flag in Germany and displaying the Confederate flag in the United States.
@@troodon1096the bunker is just about the opposite of preserved by now, most of the surviving portions were filled in with cement in 1989 and the whole thing has been sealed off.
its former site is a car park these days
Hitler's house still stands in Braunau
"I think it wiser, moreover, not to keep open the sores of war, but to follow the example of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, and to commit to oblivion the feelings it engendered." - Robert E. Lee
not a kindly man but he did willingly work to end the war even in surrender
You have to remember he joined the south purely out of state allegiance not because he believed in the southern cause.
@@JamesW7723 Not fully. He did only follow the South because of his sense of allegiance but he also considered slavery a necessary evil. He wasn't for it but he also wasn't against it
@@balabanasireti Loot at his personal letters to himself and his journal he wanted to avoid the war completely and said “if I could free the damn slaves and avoid this war entirely I would”
He wasn’t a good guy, but I can’t say he was the villain of the civil war along with types like Forrest or Davis.
The Gettysburg Address is one of the most enlightening speeches in history. If you ever get the chance, read it aloud from the transcript carved on the wall of the Lincoln Memorial. It is a fantastic experience.
I have read it on a plaque in a national cemetery in New Albany, Ind.
I've read it online. Says the same thing.
mysterious They?
@@fuzzybeargville what now?
@Peter Grahame Lmfao, go cry it out underneath your rebel flag bedsheets.
You know I've seen a lot of your videos and I have to say - this video, and your Gods and Generals video...this is when I've actually seen you ANGRY. Not just educational, not just understanding, but ANGRY. Especially when you were discussing the pro-violence and pro-lynching southern leaders. Hell, you practically spat Benjamin Tillman's name...which is understandable, the man was a one-eyed snake. Kudos, man.
I was in KY when that monument moved. I had a small disagreement with my friend who I was staying with - my perspective was in such a narrow place because I was visiting from England and didn't KNOW about American history and its budding culture. This video, yourself and the words of union vets changed my mind. Thank you.
If it's important to you I'd recommend studying the civil war and the aftermath in more detail. Abuse, robbery and rape of southern civilians was rampant.
@@Skibidiscones That's absolutely correct and you're right that we never look at both sides evenly. It hasn't been long enough yet. We need to wait another one or two hundred years before we become objective enough and no longer coloured by our emotional attachment to our ancestor's causes.
I think the issue with accepting Southern civilians suffered unjustly from Yankee forces is that it gives some degree of victimhood to sympathizers with genuine pro-Confederate sentiment.
It's hard to educate people about the barbaric behaviour of both sides without bringing people to one of two conclusions: "Well, they deserved it" or "Well, they were righteous rebels, look what the North did to 'em"
It's completely true and something that happened and becomes a whataboutism game - Southerners also looted, and the plantation class had been treating black people as property for a very long time. If men that treated human women like broodmares got lynched, I can't honestly say I care. I don't shed a tear at the idea of Crassus being brutalized at Carrhae, either.
It was a war and both sides, civilians men women and children, were unfairly brutalized by one another. The peoples of America engendered serious hatred towards one another, a virulent, vicious kind of hatred that arises specifically when forced to fight your own countrymen, when forced by terroristic violence committed by your own countrymen.
The evil in their eyes and words, hearing when Southern politicians suddenly began advocating extreme hatred and violence, extreme hatred and violence which Southerners then enacted. If your neighbor is caught trying to burn down your house, and you beat the crap out of him? that's tough shit for him isn't it. You're right we should study the aftermath but it's difficult to sympathize when many serious attempts were made by the Union to prevent civil war, to pacify Southern aggression - aggression which was spurred initially by the South regardless, especially when they experienced some victory. The North threatened the South's economy, so the South went at their throats.
Who started the fight? These brutalized civilians had been spitting on Union troops for a long time. Frankly, some of these civilians were racist slave owners and whilst we should accept what happened was wrong, many got what they deserved. Many were also not slave-owners, not racist, and did not deserve what they got - that's a big mess that is not clear and understandable.
What is understandable is that the rebels, even a good third of their civilian population, their women too, absolutely wanted to not only keep their slaves, but expand their slave ownership to create a slave empire like Rome. There's cultural reasons your dollar has a Graeco-Roman temple spread across it!
We should do what the Lithuanians did after communism and create our own Gruto parkas (Stalin's World) where all the public statues are removed and placed in an outdoor park.
That would be awesome
I was just about to bring this up! It definitely would require careful planning and consultation with historians, and there should definitely be a project requiring a significant amount of funding, but I think it'd be the best option.
side note: Aš myliu tave, Lietuviai!
The fact that Russia got this done first shows how ignorant some people are in the states. Not to slander Russia or America of course
Thats what Taiwan did with Chiang Kai-shek after he ended authoritarian rule.
I like this idea. Statues don't get destroyed, and the public can learn about the dark past of the United States.
I’ll never understand the “destroying history” argument regarding the removal of Confederate monuments. The battlefield parks are still here. The plantation-museums are still here. The ink spilled on over thousands upon thousands of pages written on Civil War history are still here. What history is being destroyed exactly?
The rewritten history that these men were true gentlemen and noble.
Because its not about preserving history, its about maintaining a foothold in the public space. Its about being seen, being accepted and being tolerated. Propaganda symbols are worthless cast away from people eyes.
The Modern Stoic First, you’re thinking of the Cultural Revolution, not the mass collectivization attempt that was the Great Leap Forward, so at least get that part right. Second, municipal-level decisions to remove statues, which this video shows has sometimes been opposed by state legislatures, are hardly equivalent to the top-down iconoclasm and mass purges of 1960s and 70s China.
They don't fly swastikas in Germany and don't have statues of Hitler, and I'm pretty sure they remember WWII.
They'll be next.
15:30 the Soviet officers who disposed of Hitler's remains took the location they did so to the grave, for this very reason.
Bin Laden was buried at sea for the same reason.
they almost certainly cremated him as well
@Donde Merlin They made a deal with him where they'd cut him in half. They buried his legs and his top half went free. Legend says he's still out there, building his underground complex and taking phone donations from skinheads.
Soviet officers disposed of Hitler's remains? That's the first I've heard of this. The official story has always been that Nazi guards in the bunker burned Hitler's remains and buried the ashes outside of the bunker, as ordered to do so, and that no remains had been discovered since.
@@V_for_Vovin Declassified Soviet documents claim that Hitler's remains were tossed into a River. So there would be no place for his followers to gather to mourn him.
Yeah, the decision of removing or maintaining should be solely on the local community. And if any statues are deemed to have any historical value (which I believe most of them don't) they should be moved to a museum
I share that exact same sentiment. It’s an unfortunate part of American history but it is history nonetheless that should be preserved in a museum
How about we simply dont commemorate traitors with statues meant to specifically intimidate black people? That is why they were built during the Civil Rights Movement lol
I remember watching a Documentary on the statues in 9th Grade. I can’t remember where it was from or who was in it, but a Black Historian raised a very valid point.
“If you take a young Black kid growing up in the South, and show him a Confederate statue endorsed and constructed by the state, what is that kid going to think?”
I think it's an interesting area to look at, because I read an article online the other day (with all grains of salt taken by the way, as this was just an article online which I cannot vouch for) that showed there are a surprising number of black people surveyed that do not think certain Confederate symbols should be removed. For example, apparently, 24% thought that CSA flags should not even be removed from government buildings, 39% opposed redesigning state flags that contained CSA imagery.
And most surprisingly, majorities of 63% of black people opposed renaming streets and highways named after CSA leaders and 50% opposed removing tribute from public places.
So once again I am taking this one-off article very cautiously, I promise. And it is pretty old now as a 2015 survey. But as I say, interesting food for thought at very least.
Source: I don't know if RUclips likes links or not so its a survey by Roper Center, and the article was titled 'Public Opinion on the Confederate Flag and the Civil War'.
Once again, I don't know anything about this organisation or their credibility so apologies in advance if they are a shady site.
@Joseph Chambers come to Florida, we'd be happy to have you 😊
Probably what anyone with any sanity left thinks about the George Floyd statues and memorials popping up...
@Joseph Chambers These days, being backed by the media carries more pull than being backed by the government, sadly. While I personally don't see all Confederate statues as promoting racism, I can understand that some do. I just think the sweep it under the rug approach is a mistake. Both the "lost cause" and the modern progressive revision like to pretend the cause(s) of the Civil War was far less complex than it really was and that the outcome was either all good or all bad when it was a bit of both. Trying to make it go away likely dooms it to repeat itself eventually.
Idk. They erected a statue of a career criminal and drug addict. It's that what you want black kids to aspire to?
What if we replaced statues to Southern Confederates to statues of Southern Unionists
that would be a start
One idea I've heard is to completely change them to a different era, a different conflict. Make them honor Revolutionary War heroes from the South, or perhaps World War II or maybe even Korea ones (after all, Korea was the first time America fought as a truly integrated military). There are DOZENS to choose from, both white and black alike.
I'd be good with that
George Henry Thomas definitely deserves at least one statue in Virginia. What other general from the era can claim to have fought in as many battles as him without losing so much as a movement?
Admittedly, he definitely wouldn't have wanted people to build statues of him, but neither did Lee, and that sure didn't stop anyone.
Or Just make them all John Brown statues! :p
I’m a fan of letting localities decide what they want to do. Statues belong on battlefields and in cemeteries
I know.
George Washington statuese need to go too given he was a slave owner "a bad man if you will"......
Agreed. Or in museums. But don't put them right in front of the state capital or gvt buildings. That's when heritage becomes honoring. That's the problem.
@@phillip_iv_planetking6354
False equivalency. A favored tactic of the pro-Confederates
I dont know about that. Even if we move it to a cemetery, 15 foot statues of people that wanted to take away our freedom and slaughtered american soldiers by the dozens doesnt seem right. I wouldnt want a statue of max freiherr outside the NASA headquarters for the same reason, statues glorify people and most people dont deserve to be glorified
@Big Rock the Confederate statues are of people that betrayed this country and fought a war to keep slavery, while George Washington was one of this countries founders. That's why it's a false equivalency.
The best case scenario was what happened to the gold bust of Nathan Bedford Forrest in Tennessee. It was in the Tennessee state capital building and the people of Tennessee voted upon it to have it removed. It was removed and placed in the Tennessee State Museum in the section of how people from Tennessee were involved in the Civil War. It wasn't destroyed like certain other monuments, and it was taken from one public space to a space where more people can view the bust and learn about who the person is and what they did instead of the bust existing for seemingly no reason.
Agreed, that might indeed be the best case scenario
There is so much more Southern history that deserves to be remembered and celebrated than the Confederacy. Well done and well argued Atun-Shei Films.
People still get offended at the mention Hernando de Soto and Jean Baptise de Sier Bienville. Most people get offended at glorifying historical characters because of past ideologies that are different from our own.
not all of us
Thomas Ridley
The great louisiana slave revolt
The acadian deportation and the foundation of the cajun culture
Huey Long dong
Creole culture
The trail of tears
Thomas Ridley he said *Other* southern history, there is a lot of it besides the civil war
@@thomasridley8675 I guess I was unclear. There are many more pieces of Southern history that deserve to be remembered and celebrated rather than the Confederacy.
"I think it wiser not to keep open the sores of war but to follow the examples of those nations who endeavored to obliterate the marks of civil strife, to commit to oblivion the feelings engendered," Robert E. Lee
Thank you
I'm glad that this quote is remembered
He was begrudging in admitting defeat but he did admit it and work for a form of reconciliation, it was white reconciliation but he didn’t join the KKK as some did
Geez, I'm a Confederate Re-enactor in a company full of Lost Causers. I discovered your channel while in COVID limbo and I completely agree with you about the Confederacy. But I'm still a little worried about the friction I may cause when I'm asked those "awkward" questions by camp visitors.
Maybe suggest this channel and some good books on the topic to the visitors and perhaps to your fellow re-enactors if it turns into a discussion? =)
Yeah you may wanna double check some of his ...umm...assessments...
@@theheretic3764 Like what? Not trying to be a tool, I'm genuinely curious.
Probably best to start with confederates oppressing southerners. Stuff like the lynching of loyalists, that sort of thing.
I'm also a local reenactor in my country. What we do is usually we print stuff of FAQs, sometimes it's pamphletes (if the budget is there!) but usually a poster, related to our costumes and and what we do. I always believe a reenactor's "role" in public is to educate. So if someone stops learning in your unit... You might need to have a long talk or maybe get out...
Another irony of lost causers saying "you can't erase history because it's offensive" is that, whenever you calmly tell the truth that the Confederates fought for slavery, a ton of lost causers seem to get all steamy and go "GoD sAvE tHe SoUtH" and "TyRaNnY!"
They're only second to Skyrim players who always pick the Stormcloaks (despite the game outright telling you that Ulfric is a puppet and destroying the empire means possibly damning the world) in responding to calm criticism with screaming buzzwords, chanting out of nowhere and generally acting like someone from a gamer rage compilation, over something that's just irrelevant to most of us in the real world.
(Seriously, why do so many Stormcloak players act like they're in a real civil war?)
😂😂😂😂 this is such a good observation
My great-great-great-grandfather fought for the Union at Gettysburg in the Michigan 24th “Iron Brigade” regiment. God I wonder what he would think seeing the rebels glorified by so many, not even just in the South. I see the Confederate battle flag flown in rural northern Michigan, in the heart of Yankee country. How’d we let this be their legacy?
Ikr??
I live in Indiana and you can find it flying in some places, but specially in rural areas. Like?!?? You’re in the north??! Why?!?😭
MIchigan woooo!!!!
Wisconsinite here, whilst I do not have any knowledge of my family during the Civil War, I do see it as somewhat worrying to see that sort of thing so common where I’m from
Fellow Michigander here, and living near Detroit, which I'm sure you know is predominantly colored people of all races, I see way too much of the Confederate flag. I see them on pick up trucks in front of a police station when I'm on my way home. I see them when I'm getting a slushy from Circle K. It's a problem how much I've seen it, here in the far north nonetheless. It's quite worrying how little we as a people have learned from history.
I also had a relative in the 24th! I too hate seeing the confederate battle flag being flown in yankee country and I wish I could do something to get rid of them, but as of now I cannot
As someone who has had a love of history, I believed it was wrong to remove Confederate monuments, but after listening to your well reasoned arguments I now realized I was wrong. While I will no longer support and urge the removal of those monuments that honor the Confederate cause or there leaders, I continue to believe it still proper to keep those monuments at such places such as cemeteries. Here in my home state of New Jersey there is a single marker at the cemetery were over 2,000 CSA POWs are interned. It is important to show respect for the dead, without trying to glorify the cause they fought for.
Ive always maintained the belief that they should be removed but not destroyed, as he said we could build a museum for them or maybe donate them to one of the smithsonians.
To be honest you shouldn’t let one video change your mind. Dig into other stuff if you’re that into this topic. Personally both sides are wrong and I have no sympathy nor support for either. He might sound educated but it doesn’t mean he is completely educated. I’m not saying he isn’t, he clearly knows things but don’t believe what one man tells you.
One of the more interesting ideas I've seen is a museum created, in which these statues would be faced towards the wall in order to remove glorification from the cause. Display and acknowledgement is one thing, but making a space of reverence is very different, and many of these Confederate monuments are specifically reverential to the cause, not just respectful of the people they depict. There needs to be a direct effort and values need to be put forward to denounce these views while acknowledging their existence.
There is a similar thing done with (shocker) Hitler, where in one Holocaust museum, the room in which the bust is displayed is designed to be claustrophobic and uncomfortable, and the bust is painted black, and facing the wall, so that nobody can look directly at its face.
@@FireHawkISA Also I feel like it could be interesting to trace the history of these statues themselves in a museum or similar setting, given that at this point in many ways these statues tell just as much of a story as the events, movements, and people that led to their creation.
@@tdog4423 That's a pretty unfair thing to throw in if you don't accompany it with rational counter-arguments on things that he said on the video. The video presented rational fact based arguments against the most commonly used arguments for not removing the statues. You need to demonstrate that either the facts he bases his claims or the logic he comes to his conclusion are wrong. Otherwise your "both sides are wrong" is just empty words.
"Get up out of that armchair, stop obsessing about Hannibal's crescent formations for a second and take a good, hard look at the world around you. Don't wanna repeat history? Actually learn from it."
Holy shit. Guys, these words need to be heard by everyone, need to go down in history themselves.
Remember that in archeology, the relics and artifacts of Native Americans and others were handled horribly, casually broken and forgotten about, and that it's still happening.
Remember that so many of the historical figures you like weren't flawless, they were always problematic in some (many) way(s)- yes, even that one.
Remember that people still believe in these insane, absurd myths.
We all sit around, always moaning that the world's not fair.
Are you going to keep sitting around, or do something to make it fair?
I've always been bugged by the rhetoric that teaching kids about the nastier parts of our history will make our white children hate themselves, or leave them without people to look up to. This never really sat right with me, as someone who actually WAS lucky enough to grow up as a white kid in a school district that didn't shy away from it. (Admittedly, the diversity of the area that I grew up in, along with the educators I had, probably helped as well.) There were parts of my history education where I felt kinda shitty, and yeah, I didn't grow up wanting to idolize people like Jefferson, which is something I've heard people HORRIFIED to imagine. Just think, our next generation of children won't have a sanitized, whitewashed, psuedo-religious masturbatory view of some of our founding fathers! The horror!
So how did this woke, dystopian nightmare-education shape my view of history? I just... found other people to take inspiration from, and learned to judge historical figures within the full context of their actions. I didn't wake up every morning and kiss my Thomas Jefferson pinup on the lips, but it's not like I saw him as some satanic monster; I learned that he was a complex, interesting, and flawed person, who was instrumental in the forming of our country, but also did some pretty fucked-up shit. As for role models in history? I ended up looking up to people who rose above the standard prejudices of their day- my historical role models were people like the abolitionists of the Underground Railroad, my favorite president was Grant, and my favorite founding father was Franklin (turns out there were founding fathers who learned to NOT be racist, and also DIDN'T rape any slaves! Isn't that great?). I learned not to feel guilty that hundreds of years ago some people who had the same skin color as me did some bad things to people who didn't- instead, I decided to learn from the examples of the people who got into the history books by going AGAINST that, and strived to learn from their examples. End of the day, I'm not responsible for putting into place the institutions that still put so many minorities at a disadvantage to this day
But I can sure as Hell be responsible for ending them, y'know?
Because I'm incapable of not being long-winded about stuff: I know I addressed the thing about "We can't just dismantle all of our historical role models for white kids or whatever!!!" in the other comment, but it seriously pisses me off so much
As if I'm too stupid to just... look up to people whose morals I align with? It's not like they didn't exist in history! Basically all the Quakers were super cool! I loved learning about them in US history class! Also, the idea that white kids need white guys to look up to in history (while apparently neglecting to do the same for any other groups lmao) is just really insulting. Y'know who I thought was the coolest guy growing up (and to this day, honestly)?
Frederick fucking Douglass
You know who DEFINITELY wasn't the same color as me?
Frederick fucking Douglass!
It's fucking patronizing, seriously. I guess this is what I get for actually reading through the 1776 Commission thing. I think that document physically killed off a not insignificant number of my neurons.
@@suspectsn0thing I know its a month late, and I gotta sleep soon, but let me just drop a comment real quick.
Your story is genuinely heartwarming and I appreciate every word of it. :)
@@ramenbomberdeluxe4958 thank you, I've just always been annoyed by this weird perception that if American kids can't look up to the same few founding fathers like Jefferson or whatever, somehow they're gonna end up falling into a life of ruin with no good role models. It's like people have such a narrow knowledge of US history outside of the weird, psuedo-religious mythology surrounding a few guys from the 1700s that they're completely unaware of the THOUSANDS of incredible people in American history who did great things and also DIDN'T rape any slaves. This obviously doesn't make people like Jefferson or Confederate leaders any less important or worth studying, but I feel like deification of any historical figure, especially ones who've done questionable stuff, isn't a great path.
@@suspectsn0thing Tbf are they wrong? There aren't many historical white role models that are promoted outside of the circlejerk of terrible figures. Even Lincoln is called racist.
And I don't think the record high statistics of white (especially male) people committing suicide is a pure coincidence in a time where white guilt in media and society is steadily the norm.
Erecting statues of confederate soldiers is just “honoring” history but if there were any schools, monuments, or statues dedicated to communist leaders, you would never hear this argument from the same people.
Honoring people that wanted to own slaves, killed people for their power.
How would a black person feel whos ancestors were tortured by these people?
We also have monuments that remember fallen soldier who fought in ww2 here in germany.
But not of fucking hitler or goebbels themselves.
That would be a threatening sign for the jewish population here.
It really depends on what these people did.
Soldiers being forced in a war or even showing bravery helping the oppressed is a huge difference from depicting the oppressors themselves.
@@michaelh4804 yeah exactly, thats the important difference
There are statues of Communist leaders in the US.......
You're not entirely wrong but... MLK is a lot closer to communism than the white washed version of MLK.
The only compromise I can see is placing all of these statues, placques and memorials in each state where they reside in a Confederate Museum within each State.But keeping them in public spaces is no longer relevant.These artifacts were erected well with after the CIVIL WAR ENDED.During the Jim Crow era they were erected to remind Blacks and other people of color to remember their place.A show of White supremacy.A show of institutional supremacy under the guise of honoring and respecting such individuals.THE DAUGHTERS OF THE CONFEDERACY played a significant role in advocating for these monuments and the revisionist history within the Educational curriculum.I myself might respect these Confederate soldiers and Generals for their fighting prowess,but never admire them because their aim was the dissolution of the Union itself.In my opinion a traitorous offense.I understand the Confederacy had many grievances against the Federal government other than Slavery.States rights is one.And the other was their belief that the federal government was imposing unfair import/export duties upon goods and raw materials as they crossed state lines by land and by sea.One of my great grandfathers had the honor of befriending both Former Union and Confederate soldiers while working on the docks in Baltimore during the late 19th early 20th centuries.Here is the truth from their perspective.The Union soldiers told him the Union Generals told the White Union soldiers that the fight was to first and foremost to preserve the Union.If the Slaves were freed after a Union victory.So be it.The War started in 1861.The Emancipation Proclamation was drafted in 1863.The Black Union soldiers were told that the federal government would fight for equality on their behalf of their service to the Union. That when the Confederate states voted to secede that within itself was an act of provocation.Because Lincoln had promised to compromise by allowing Slavery to remain in the States where it already existed but not allow its expansion if it meant keeping the Confederate states in the Union.Lincoln was concerned that slave labor was beginning to encroach upon the Industrial sector within the border states.As since there were lulls in the planting season, Southern landowners were expanding the practice of contracting out slave labor to private entities.Which posed quite a dilemma to the steady influx of European immigration.What is remarkable to me is that Confederate soldiers that confided in my great grandfather stated that they were concerned about what type of society they were returning to in the event of a Confederate victory.They found the Confederate leaders to be increasingly autocratic and they lamented the treatment of the poorer White farmers, women and children as the authorities demanded they hand over all foodstuffs and supplies on behalf of the soldiers at the expense of the women and children left behind.These mostly poor White soldiers clearly understood that there existed a social and class hierarchy amongst White people.Many of the Confederate Generals came from wealthy and Aristocratic families.While the soldiers were comprised of mainly poor and middle class Whites.Their main concern was whether social and upward mobility for them would be easier for them as a result of their service to the CONFEDERACY.And that was an increase in land acquisition They realized it was hard enough to compete against slave labor and Wealthy White planters.But they were also concerned about what would happen should the slaves be freed.Because then they would have to compete with them for labor, resources and living space.So in reality the glory of the Confederacy was not as glorious for some Southern White men either.And the White power structures realized they had to come up with a viable solution to appease the fears of many of these returning soldiers.Or else there may well have been another rebellion regardless of a Confederate victory or not.
“Youre not stupid but youre misinformed.” That meant alot to me and I appreciate you candor. While I disagreed on a point or two, this video definitely made me appreciate your “camps” argument, and i will seriously reconsider my position.
What about non-confederate statues?
I don't think it gets said enough, so:
Much praise to you for being able to listen to the arguments and actively consider your own positions in that light, rather than simply taking them as a personal attack. Whichever "camp" you end up deciding to be a part of, I appreciate your willingness to make the examination.
Bryton Wallis leave them
If you want to remove then put them up on the market, keep it in a museum or vote to get it out of there
Why support monuments of traitors to the United States?
I mean, good on you for being willing to have a wide ear.....I'd like to hear some of those points because most of this video is him correcting misinformation by simply citing the historic facts via recorded information....there isn't as much subjective interpretation there.
As a person who grew up in Nashville I'm so glad that stupid statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest finally got removed
forest statues are probably the ones that need the most removal in my opinion
Speaking as distant kin to the only Union general to hand Forrest a defeat... you should do some reading on Forrest. Or perhaps you are happy with the current state of all US inner cities. Ignorance is bliss I suppose.
@@jeffmilroy9345 you've said nothing coherent, but you did shovel in some kind of what, boast? because what again you are "distant kin" ? pfft.
@@breasonable4343 So have you read up on Forrest? Or are you too busy being toxic to people on the internet?
@@Skibidiscones We can see you have trouble making your point. What is it?
As a sailor on the USS ABRAHAM LINCOLN (CVN72), I had the great honor of reading out the address to all 5K of my shipmates. It was true and heartfelt when it was first spoken by Lincoln and it is just as true and moving today. ISC(PJ), USN, Ret.
Mr. Patterson was woke, even during the Victorian era. A true patriot 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
I mean I agree, but why do I have to stop obsessing over Hannibal’s crescent formation:(
Lol
Paraphrasing Woody Allen: They say Hannibal's crescent formation is an empty obsession. But as empty obsessions go, it's not bad.
He talks about not wanting to repeat the past but at least I can die happily knowing that i'll never be encircled by an invading Carthaginian army. I'll see that shit coming a mile off.
L Monk ahead of the game
@@danielmocsny5066 The crescent formation isn't an empty obsession, its full of dead and dying Romans.
I came into this with a "meh keep them up / preserve history" viewpoint which I no longer hold, so I guess all I can say is gg well played.
gl hf next time
Just curious, why did you hold this view? In any other country, they would not honor a traitorous group. The confederates did not want to be American. Why should we honor them?
@@Yankeefan2807 missinformation mostly but the question had a condescending tone
This was exactly the conversation I had with my youngest son when he was about 20 and became a trucker. He spent a lot of time in the South and had some affinity for it *as he understood it*. I had to explain to him, gently, that it wasn't just 'Heritage, not hate'. When he finally heard and understood the full context of those monuments and the flag, he was appalled and felt like a fool. For those who have not truly studied history, finding out that you are completely wrong about something can be devastating to the core. You see, to him, it was Daisy Duke short-shorts, the General Lee Dodge Charger, jacked-up 4x4's, beer kegs, country music, and flag waving. When he finally understood the racist intent of their emplacement, the Klan, lynchings, Jim Crow, etc., that they actually stood for, he had the good grace to at least change his mind. And that is all you can ask of a man; to be able to entertain a new idea and after careful deliberation, come to a new conclusion. Peace.
@@Yankeefan2807 Because I hadn't considered the issue deeply and was won over by the erasing history/slippery slope line of reasoning. I also tend to have a gut reaction against "PC culture" for lack of a better word. All this being said now that I have been presented with more information and thought more on this issue I can say I agree with these statues being removed.
I shared this with my father today. The words I had were inadequate and I couldn't get my point across. After watching this he had a better understanding of how I see the world. Thank you.
Ditto. Sent it to my mom.
That's genuinely beautiful, guys. This black woman thanks you.
"Stop obsessing over Hannibal's recent formation for a minute" LOL I feel personally attatcked
Not gonna lie, the witchfinder general comment killed me at the end
Me too, my parents looked at me weird
"348 years ago" got me.
"muft needs be purg'd" I'm DED
"PEPIST IDOLATREH"
If a statue/symbol is used to remember imperfection instead of glorify it, I’m fine with it staying around
I have a saying: "Fine, you keep your monuments. But WE're going to write the PLAQUES for them!"
@@SafetySpooon sure... why not... If u don't say something on the lines off "Every single soldier who fought for the confederacy was a racist" on the statues in honor to the confederates soldiers who died I'm ok with it... If u want to write racist on the statue of jeferson davis go ahead... or any guy in spacific which we know were clearly only defending he preservetion of slavery...
U could take most of them down too, just let the ones who honor the dead soldiers stand or move them into cemeteries or war momorials...
Absolutely
@@carlosfaria7390 It belongs in a museum!!!
they represent those who died for their state, not every confederate soldier (who most were young men, farmers, and sometimes children) was for slavery,
they had the morale high ground, not dying for slavery, but dying for their state, yeah they really must be the devils men
"Get out of your comfort zone history nerds. Get up out of that armchair and stop obsessing about Hannibal's crescent formation for a second and take a good hard look at the world around you.
Don't want to repeat history?
*Actually learn from it."*
That's a great takeaway.
I was skimming the comments and as he said that I read this comment.
@@Jack-xd1bd Same
repeating history is inevitable at this point
@@oof6894 big nope from me chief
Ngl it would be kinda interesting to see some of it repeat.
Atun-Shei, I wanted to say thank you for making these videos, and helping me to better understand Civil War history. You've helped me to separate better understand the Civil War as a conflict. Also, it made me happy to hear you mention my hometown of Winston-Salem, NC, and their Confederate Monument. I was once against the tearing down of Confederate Statues too, until I learned the truth of why they were erected. So, I agree with your statement here, 100%. Thank you, and I'm looking forward to future videos from you.
This may help🤫
ruclips.net/video/dOkFXPblLpU/видео.html
In Liverpool, England there was a controversy years ago on what to do about a street called "Penny Lane," that was named after a local slave trader in the 18th century. Yes, that "Penny Lane" that The Beatles wrote a great song about. Now, street names are not statues but the city council decided to keep the street name but set up an amazing museum on Liverpool's role in the slave trade that pulls no punches. As a history teacher, I enjoyed the museum and thought it was a good response to the issue.
‘Liverpool’s International Slavery Museum also said evidence linking Penny Lane to James Penny is “not conclusive”, but it is “actively investigating” its history.’ - the independent.
How about you just rename it to "The Beatles' Penny Lane". Then you can distance yourselves from the Slave Owner while celebrating the Beatles instead
That's really cool actually. I am vehemently against honoring confederates in the US but Penny Lane obviously has its own significant history outside of the original name. I would have been a little disappointed if the name was changed.
It was named for how much the toll was, it was a “Penny Lane” the myth of it being named for J. Penny was actually mentioned in the Beatles myths and tall tales section of the book Fab Four FAQ,
@Big Rock Idk because every country in the Americas,Africa (except Ethiopia) and the middle East and large parts of Asia were once at sometime invaded and governed by Europeans, that's why. European governments did a hell of lot of seriously sketchy,racist, genocidal and just generally insidious shit whilst plundering resources and stealing lands from native peoples, that's a fact. You can't expect 300 years of European imperialism to be healed in 75 years of global peace, whether we taking about Confederate statues, or Artifacts in the British museum,the genocide of the aboriginal people in Australia or the legacy of colonialism on the sub-continent, it's all the same issue, that's why. Nobody is guilty for the sins of their ancestors but systematic racism exists to varying degrees in all of Britain's former Dominions.
This is a thoughtful video. I had 7 ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, 2 of them at Gettysburg in the 13th and 47th Alabama. My family's oral history fully celebrates their service. At the same time, I am completely against anything that rings of racism. It is a very difficult position to be put in to work out those conflicting points. The truth is that it is impossible to separate the Confederate cause from slavery. Thanks for posting this.
Yeah same, family ancestors fought for the Confederacy. We don't glorify it in the family or anything, but our family does pride itself on a long tradition of military service. It's hard to accept that your own kin fought for something so vile.
@@Taylor-mn9fv To be fair many soldiers at this time didn't have much choice because they were conscripted by their government to go to war.
You should read the book Confederate president Jefferson Davis wrote about the war. He states first hand that slavery was a cause for the war but not the only one. Many confederates didn’t even agree with slavery at the time and were of the mind that after they gained their freedom, they would have to change themselves and abolish slavery in the court room.
Your ancestors fought for States rights. The Southern Cause was fighting for their land & unfair taxation being put upon them from the yankees in the North. It was a revolt against
"Northern Aggression". The War, on the other hand, was fought by the North OVER MONEY and NOTHING else. Union soldiers were NOT dying on the battlefield for black people.
AT THAT TIME, the North & everyone else had the SAME basic opinion about black people. Don't just BLAME it on the South. Only 30% of Southerners even owned slaves. People in the North also had slaves. Every civilization since the beginning of time has had some form of slavery. It would have resolved itself in due time. You can't judge the way people thought in 1860 the same way you would judge people in 2023.
@@Taylor-mn9fv SHAME on you for talking about your brave ancestor who fought for their land & States rights. That's what the War was all about. It was about MONEY, not black people in the North or the South. The North was IMNPOSING UNFAIR TAXATION on the South. Union soldiers in the North WERE NOT dying on the battlefield for black people.
Please..... let's get real. Stop listening to "White Hating Woke Assholes" talking about something of which they know nothing.
seeing you flip off a statue had no business feeling so cathartic, but after living through so much intense controversy regarding these monuments, and particularly after recent stresses... well. that really hit the spot, lol.
I learned a lot from this. While I was personally incensed by the tearing down of statues in 2017 ( and I'm not even American) , for the very argument of erasure of history, you've demonstrated that this is not a new debate and much more complex than just a "woke mob reaction."
I, a german student of History am actually crying when hearing the Gettysburg Address.
And as a german, who is proud of his country's way to democracy with tow dictatorships and the crime of a genocide in the last century, which shall nerver be forgotten, can, no, must encourage the people, my brothers and sisters, in the United States: remember your dark history and remember it well, but also remember the light of the words of your 16th president and they shall shine on your way to a better future.
Two dictatorships?
@@Nikolapoleon He could be referring to the Empire and the Nazis, or the Nazis and the East German Government.
Greetings from America, and thank you for your kind words. In my eyes Germany is a shining example of a country looking at and accepting its past. It’s the only way forward.
@@jacoblinde7486 That's what confuses me. The Empire wasn't a dictatorship; it was a constitutional kingdom. And I wouldn't describe the East German government as ever having been legitimate.
It could simply be that his interpretation of history is different from mine, but if there's something I'm forgetting (maybe he's referring to the Hindenburg-Ludendorff duumvirate?) I wan't to know about it.
@@Nikolapoleon Imperial germany started as a fairly absolutist state, and became less and less so after Bismarck's reign ended. He was more of an autocrat than the Kaiser, as I understand it.
Honestly, dressing up as Union soldier and flipping off confederate monuments is a Chad move
158 years after the fact doesn't sound like the Chad Move you think it is.
@@ericjohnson2024 No it’s still a chad move, no matter how late lmoa
go back to huffing sharpies
@@cheems436 No, it isn't.
It kind of seems childish, but I can see why he would do it.
Flipping off a statue, so chad
"Those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it."
- Some guy with Confederate flags on his pickup truck who learned nothing from history, probably.
The statement those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it is actually very true I mean how many wars has the whole world fought because they couldn't learn from the past wars
@@joshuahughes3365 true but the OPs statement is in mockery od the hypocrisy if conservatives. We both know most of them have no interest in learning even remotely objective history. Nor do left wingers either. Its simply that statements like these are basic impulse "mouth breather" responses conservatives usually give. Its like the "the left is doing a 1984" meme conseratives say because they heard jordan peterson say it once.
@@jertdw3646 you know don't take this wrong way but in a way I didn't understand I understood to a certain extent however when it comes to being conservatives and left-wingers I'm not saying there's not good and bad on both sides because there is there's bad apples in everything because I'm conservative and I can't speak for everybody else but I'm trying my hardest to learn from history so that I don't make mistakes with that being said I still believe that saying is true to a fault but in a way I see what you're saying that it can be a mockery if not used truthfully let me know if with what I wrote I understood what you said cuz I have a feeling I didn't quite fully understand your statement
@@joshuahughes3365 I'd wager people will learn more from history by reading books than by looking at statues. Confederate statues aren't teaching history, they're glorifying slavers and traitors and an attempt at re-writing history, not teaching it. And wars aren't fought because people forget about the horrors of them, but because the powers in control care more about their power and the preservation of it. No amount of "learning from history" would have kept Putin from invading Ukraine, for example.
@@erikskelton6597 you know I disagree about the slave traders I agree on what you said about putting but I disagree with the statues being there to glorify slave traitors and here's why those monuments wasn't put up to glorify slave traders no matter what anybody says those statues were put up to remember the people who helped make this country this country if the civil war wouldn't have been fought back then it would have been fault today and it would probably been worse be glad what happened back in history happened back in history and not today and unless you're a hypocrite I would change your statement so we're so focused on what happened to a couple of black people that were just going to ignore the mass genocide of native Americans I guarantee you somewhere there is a Andrew Jackson statue just hanging around and nobody's saying nothing about it and if you really want to be mad at somebody be mad at the people who sold their own people for weapons see you blame the South for all the slaves and stuff like that yes it happened in the South but all you Yanks had to do was stop it at any time you wanted to the civil war wasn't fall over slaves it was fault because we wanted to get away from the Union Lincoln had a good reason for trying to keep us together though the only reason Lincoln stopped the Confederacy from becoming it's on country was because Lincoln thought that we'd be stronger together because of the wars we just fought it had nothing to do with the blacks to some probably yes so no to say that those statues are promoting slave traders and all this other stuff I disagree with do I disagree with slave slavery yes I do I think it was wrong but at the same time like I said before be glad it happened then and not now and by the way I have more respect for general Lee than any other person because if it wasn't for general Lee the war would have never ended because there was a battle that was to come and it was going to cause more deaths than anybody can think of and general Lee said no enough is enough so it wasn't your little Yanks that stopped the Confederacy or even ended the war it was general Lee because he didn't want to see anybody else die
Why are they so obsessed with commemorating their failure?
martyr complex l
I agree with most of your reasoning in this video. As a Brit I don't have an emotional connection to your civil war, and to me the removal of Confederate statues isn't inherently more objectionable than former USSR removing Communist monuments. But looking at the current campaigns against historical statues in my country, I don't find your first point very convincing.
I see groups demanding the removal of monuments to important figures like Churchill, Nelson, and Robert Peel, not just slave traders. This isn't a tiny fringe and their demands are being taken seriously by local authorities. I know for a fact that Leicester City Council are currently discussing whether to remove a statue of Gandhi after receiving a 10,000 signature petition labeling him a fascist and demanding they pull it down.
Pretty much any historical figure has done or said things that are problematic in 2020 so where would they stop?
In my opinion that can't simply be dismissed as a slippery slope argument when things have already slid so far in such a short time...
The truly hateful are those that are tearing down the monuments.
There's a huge difference from the Poles removing Soviet monuments seeing they were fucking occupied.
@@johnfreeman9766
Tearing down monuments to anti American rebels is hateful?
But those aren't the same things. The Confederate statues are memorializing rebellion and have no place except in a museum or a scrapyard.
while in Britain it wasn't a slippery slope, they started it with Ghandi and churchill. You didn't slide to get there, that's where you started.
And slippery slope fallacy...
@@dillonblair6491 No, they didn't start with figures like Gandhi and Churchill. Previous campaigns have primarily called for the removal of memorials to slave traders, as well as highly controversial colonialists like Cecil Rhodes.
George Pearson above mentions a Lindybeige video that discussed it back in 2016, and it was going on years before that.
They've had a fair amount of success in getting certain statues removed and buildings/streets renamed. As with the Confederate statues, there's a compelling argument against memorializing people who defended slavery and made their fortune from it.
The focus on less obvious targets like Churchill, Gandhi, and Nelson is more recent.
God damn why do I feel so patriotic for a country I've never even set foot in?
Mr Lincoln certainly had a way with words...
Thus is the power of America...
@Warafare48 "We're all living in America! Coca-Cola, wunderbra!"
I Hungary, they took all the "heroic" statutes of Lenin and Stalin and moved them to one place and turned into into a tourist trap. "Come see TONS of communism!"
That's hilarious. Exactly what they deserve.
Great way to take money from commie tourists
Neither Lenin nor Stalin were Hungarians who died fighting for Hungary.
@@CaomhanOMurchadha You can be opposed to Communism while still appreciating the Communist period of history. I have no love for Communism and no desire to live in a Communist society but I love the Soviet Union from a purely historical standpoint. Not so much because I agree with what it did but I find the entirety of Soviet history to be incredibly fascinating, especially for the huge impact it had on human history as a whole.
Plus, let's face it, it's impossible not to listen to Soviet era music and start feeling a desire to charge Mamayev Kurgan
@@Killzoneguy117 I know what you mean. Russian music is very strong and empowering. I always thought it was retarded how the whole Crimean war happened. Russaphobia from the West was stupid. Empire was a big folly. Hindsight is 20/20. The west wanted to prevent Russia from having an empire for I don't know. Stupid reasons? Because God forbid Russia liberated Christendom from the Ottomans back then. So bizarre how things changed in such a short time after all those events.
If it’s your confederate heritage to celebrate these men. Then it is my union heritage, to remind you, how you came second place. #bluebelliesforlife
It's no marvel that some champion the underdogs of the Confederacy. Look how many Cleveland Browns fans there are floating around. 😂😂 Some people just feel sorry for born losers.
This must be right after Johnny Reb and Billy Yank enlisted, look how clean shaven and close cropped they are.
I'll always find it funny in a dark way that the reason why I stopped supporting Confederate statues was from seeing who was the MOST vocal at supporting them. Turns out it's not unbiased history buffs
When your intellectual compass is vastly overpowered by the the political landscape, you are officially a slave.
@@spookrockcity - Joe Mama, 1874
@@spookrockcity it isn't politics, it is my own moral code, I don't want to support symbols that neo-Nazis are literally willing to kill for, as seen in Charlottesville. That just proved to me that these statues are seen as much more than just historical markers, both then and now they are icons for white supremacists, whether we like it or not
@@jabscha7051 … ruclips.net/video/5w7kwtLJtVc/видео.html
The most vocal are not the majority. Shouldn't pull down something historical just because of a few bad apples. They will continue to be icons for those who we disagree with, Even when removed. Better to leave them up and teach the next generation unbiased history.
I just wanna say, those last 5 minutes were truly inspiring. Anyone can really see how passionate you are for truth and the longing for a better America. You are, in my eyes, a true patriot. Not because of your uniform, but because of your heart.
My guy was about to make me proud of being American(im from europe)
@@stefan5573 Lol, he's got that god-tier public speaking.
@@saintbrush4398 no cap
Just reading this made me happy. You, kind sir or ma'am, made my day
It was emotional af for me literally teared up
The only war where the losers got statues
Participation Trophies
Huh Vietnam war..?
@@PhelippeMitsu98 wasn't a war. The US held back, then stopped for political/social reasons.
We need statues of Sherman In Atlanta, grant in Mississippi etc.. We need to preserve our history as it's being re-written in the south .
@@DeadCat-42 It was still a war. It lasted for 20 years solely because the US decided to stretch it as far as possible. But the war still happened almost independently of the US.
2:45 I'm not pro-monument, but I am also staunchly against destroying these statues. They belong in museums or national parks with tours and exhibits to give context. They don't belong in public squares or courthouses or anywhere else
They are mostly cheap, pot metal statues with very little merit artistically, and completely offensive politically.
Three were melted down in Baltimore in 2017. One lee and Jackson on horseback had incredible detail. Made by important artist Laura g Fraser in 1947-48.
@@larsandrune good they should keep doing that
@@larsandrune That's pretty late for Confederate statues to be built, isn't it? She won the design contest in 1936! Well, that one is not being destroyed, although it seems to be in storage with plans to move it to a museum setting in Virginia.
larsandrune - Why was Lee ever immortalized in Baltimore? Maryland was a Union State.
If you take down all the confederate statues how am I supposed to piss on them?
Don't worry. There are still plenty of flags around to piss on.
@@josgretf2800 I'm glad to hear thank you for this good news!
@@demekagamine God speed noble pisser. God speed.
@@josgretf2800 right back to you lad!
@@josgretf2800 don't be daft. Flags are for wiping your bum.
I've spent the last few months studying the civil war in depth, starting with Shelby Foote's excellent three volume series "The Civil War: A Narrative". I grew up with the "Lost Cause" myth and it was even taught to me in school. I came to about the same opinion that you have regarding Confederate motivations before I found your channel, and it's been a blast. You do an excellent job of making these videos, as someone who has spent years crawling through dusty academic websites it is refreshing to see an honest, unapologetic presentation of the truth. And the way that you call out your own biases, or at least don't attempt to hide them, is extremely refreshing. How does this channel only have 100k subs?
I absolutely loved Shelby Foote
Actually, this channel has been exploding in subs. Since I saw one of the Checkmate Lincolnites videos, it had barely 20-30k subs and that was earlier this year. It's great to see this channel expanding!
@@morganknox6642 A truly gentle and articulate man. He was for me one of the most engaging and informative participants in Ken Burns brilliant documentary.
Shelby foote is a novelist. Hes kind of a hack historian in my personal opinion. But i applaud people who inspire others to learn. Do yourself a favor and watch professor Gary Gallagher
There's tendency with new authors and writers to try and make a "revisionism" to get themselves noticed by going against the grain and being provocative. That's why there's why we see these "new histories" of Lee, Grant, Jefferson and Lincoln.
Putting a flag on the moon always seemed crazy to me.
We liberated the moon from Communism. Don't criticize it.
@@nickaschenbecker9882that’s one way to spin it.
Same reason anyone wears make-up. It was more for us than anyone else tbh
I have no statue of myself. I can’t remember who I am as a result.
Yeah, it's sad. if only we could find a way to definitively document your life, goals, and general thoughts. Maybe through some sort of system of information conveyance. Something that could be used to create a physical or digital storage method for storytelling, documentation, and opinions. You could maybe even package these items and... sell or rent them out to people... via some sort of... publicly-held "warehouse" so that the information would be easily accessible for all citizens.
But nah, that's crazy! Guess we'll just have to continue using ONLY monuments and statues to record history in a medium whose purpose is to be subjectively interpretable!
You're Darth Revan. The Jedi erased your memories to use you as a weapon against the Sith.
You don’t have a statue because you didn’t do anything to earn one🤷♂️
Gap Shot Okay lemme go buy some black people and enslave them.
Now, what if I told you I hold electrical patents?? Haha, racism forgotten, gimme a statue 👍
Otacon with your stupid logic we should ban all Japanese imports because they committed war crimes against US way back in the 1940’s and Japan should ban anything American because we nuked them...see the flaw in your libtarded logic, where does it end lol
All other recorded deliveries of "The Gettysburg Address" are dead and buried. I could only applaud.
Then the Witchfinder General killed me at the end.
I had originally wrote a long speech about how much I’ve enjoyed your civil war videos which I’ve been binging and how they’re enlightened me about the nature of the lost cause, but I’ll keep it shorter. Thank you so much for these videos, they’re both entertaining and informative and I deeply enjoy them.
Making a formerly enslaved people live around monuments to people who tried to dissolve the nation to keep them enslaved is messed up.
So weird that in 2024 we're still discussing this, literal slavery based on race and how acceptable it is to honor it publicly. We're evolving very slowly, if at all.
No one was who was around when chattel slavery was legal is still alive.
@@amazinggrapes3045 fascinating.
tfw falls off confederate monument and gets arrested for damaging it after being ordered to destroy it
General Lee never wanted monuments to the Confederacy erected.
A Ulysses statue was torn down recently
www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/san-francisco-protesters-tear-down-union-general-ulysses-s-grants-statue/ar-BB15KtqI
As well as a couple of Jefferson, and one George Washington statue had a flag burnt on it's head before being torn down
Though I'm fine with removing confederate statues, the whataboutism has been proven correct
LTC No, it hasn’t. The whataboutism is still a lie.
The vast majority of Americans on *both* sides of the political spectrum oppose testing down statues of Washington, Jefferson, and other non-Confederates:
www.google.com/amp/s/www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-06-17/far-right-boogaloo-boys-linked-to-killing-of-california-lawmen-other-violence%3f_amp=true?client=safari
@@Ultimaton100 doesn't matter if they oppose it, it still happened
@@Ultimaton100 why link an article about boogaloo bois youre clearly trying to spin your own narrative because them killing politicians isn't linked with what I said at all.
Just because I think taking down statues is bad doesn't mean I condone killing political officials, plus the John Brown gun club consider themselves boogaloo bois but are far left so clearly that article is fake AF
@@Ultimaton100 also you know what's crazy? The American left can never do anything wrong their record is so clean it's crazy, and it's always the right doing everything wrong no matter what, if I didn't know better id say that almost sounds as simplistic as say... a child's cartoon.
But no it's always easy to know who the bad guy is and there's always a good guy and they're always the same people and the good guys never ever I'm a bazillion years do anything worth criticizing
THE ONLY TRUE CONFEDERATE FLAG 🏳️
Based
17th century flag of France?
@@hannibalburgers477 and in 1940
brev that's the italian flag from 1943
HA! Well done.