Friday, July 7, 2017

A small donation

So what is President Trump doing with his money these days? Well, it seems he can spend if faster than a woman in Woolworth's. His first pay check for $78333.32 went straight to the National Park Service for preservation at Antietam aka Sharpsburg. Antietam was the site of the largest single day casualty count of the American Civil War. 22,717 dead wounded or missing, 12410 Union, 10,316 Confederate. The battle marked the end of Lee's first invasion of the North.
If the significance of this is lost on you, both sides claimed it as a victory. Lee held the Union at bay in spite of their superior numbers, and the Unions failures to exploit several key advantages, while the Union was able to hold the field while the Confederates retreated across the Potomac.
In doing this , I sense a strong signal from President Trump that History is important, and that revisionist history and the destruction of monuments to Confederate leaders and veterans is not acceptable.
I don't agree with people running around waving the democrat rally flag of 1861, but that is their choice. We have so much revisionist history that most of the truth about the Civil war is unknown to most people. I believe that if most people knew the real truth about the Civil War and the events that led up to it, that they would find a better symbol to express their sentiments. Then again, lots of folks are proud of a grandfather who drank too much, abuse his wife and should have been hung in the town square.
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3 comments:

pigpen51 said...

I have a son who is from KY, but is stationed in VA in the navy right now, and we have talked about civil war history a lot. I was born in 1960, and while I didn't realize it, I went to school when they actually taught history, and I also read everything I could get my hands on, so that included some history books. The civil war had many reasons for it's beginnings, but slavery was so far down on the list that it is not even worth mentioning. Mostly it was about the north trying to rule the south because it was an industrial economy while the south was an agrarian economy. The invention of the cotton gin would eventually make slave labor much less efficient for the farm labor and would have changed the economics somewhat, but it was the northern industry that kept the south less economically viable and able to compete. Of course, there are always many factors involved with war, and this one was no different, but mostly it was the north trying to keep it's political and economic superiority over the south that made war all but inevitable. In my opinion, at least. This from just someone who reads a lot, not a scholar.

July 7, 2017 at 1:34 PM
JeremyR said...

Hi Pigpen, you got caught with what is known as the lost cause revisionism. Every state that approved an article of secession mentioned slavery, and as far as State's Rights, the southern states were all about squashing them.
Prior to the election, the United States had three pro-slavery presidents. Had the south not seceded, they would have had enough control in Congress that none of the proposed actions they opposed would have happened.
You and I are about the same age. I grew up with the same misinformation. There is plenty of it out there. After the Civil War, democrats regained control in congress and the disinformation campaign began. Consider that very few military installations are named for Union generals, but many are named for confederate ones. I am not about renaming a single one of them, all I advocate for is knowing history so we don't repear history which is the sorry path we are on now.
We are on a course to revisit 1861, and it is the democrats who are doing it again.

July 7, 2017 at 8:37 PM
pigpen51 said...

Are you forgetting the Missouri compromise and the Kansas Nebraska act, that was actually more of an impetus for pushing the actual start of the war? I do know that much revisionist history happened, but you must also remember that much of what happened to the south at the hands of the north after the war. And that history was not rewritten to make it look like the north was being punitive while the south was merely the harmless innocents. The union actually did seek to punish the south for their secession. I am sure that you are much more well versed in things than I, as I said before, I am merely a mildly interested student of these things, not a scholar or a serious researcher. And if you have any recommendations for further study for me, I welcome that also.

July 8, 2017 at 12:46 AM

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