Notes from a Small Island

[Anachro]

I will note one interesting thing. Many of the GAR monuments were erected by the GAR organization (one of the first veterans' organizations) and can be considered non-public, private things. Although, GAR was dissolved with the death of its last member in '56, I wonder who pays for them now.

It would be interesting to know the sheer number of monuments in the south versus the north.

[Canoerebel]

I'll post the story I wrote about Wirz and Andersonville. IF the pages are too large, I'll resize once I get them all posted. I love the richness of the history here and that fact that it surprises by contradicting what most of us thought was factual.

[Canoerebel]

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[JohnDillworth]

It would be interesting to know the sheer number of monuments in the south versus the north.

. I'll have to wait until I can get in front of a real computer in tbe next few days but here is a good graphical start. Looks like Virginia and Northern Georgia are the big winners here. Probably much more so if you do the per-capita calculation. http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_ ... _ones.html

[Bif1961]

I agree with you he was a scapegoat for all the ills and evils of the war actually on both sides. Being a Swiss-American also probably helped him be chosen for this sacrifice as well as his position as the Commander of the PoW camp. . Major Wirz, by all accounts did the best who could with the limited resources available and showed no malice and tried to carry out his work as best he could. Many guards also died while staitoned there from the same illnesses that killed the PoWs. I visited Andersonville last year and as a 24 year Army veteran, who worked for 10 years on POW/MIA issues, 6 of those as a civilian intelligence officer at DIA, the National POW/MIA Center was a place of great interest to me. I brought him up as one of the most unknown yet unusual Civil War monuments.

[Canoerebel]

Is there something nefarious about the eruption of monuments in northwest Georgia in the early '60s? Was that an in-your-face-segregationaist attitude or coincident with the centennials of the Great Locomotive Chase and the Atlanta Campaign? I can take you to dozens of markers to both, showing nothing but troop movements and memorials to the men who served with zero suggestion of segregationist attitudes.

[Canoerebel]

And, by the way, there's no such thing as "dog whistles" for white supremacists. Those people are in your face and proud of it and have no sense of decency and care nothing about concealing their beliefs. So putting up a monument showing the movement of respective Union and Confederate units at Cassville, Georgia, in 1964 to honor the centennial is not some secret handshake, nod-wink-nudge-nudge. No, when segregationists acted, they did so openly: Let's change the flag!

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel


The graphic proves the point that the actual monuments were overwhelmingly erected during the era when the aging veterans were dying. That was done in tribute rather than as some kind of political statement.

It can still be both.

[Canoerebel]

Yup. Camp Sumter, the National Cemetery, and the National Prisoner of War Museum are beautiful and moving.

ORIGINAL: Bif1961

I agree with you he was a scapegoat for all the ills and evils of the war actually on both sides. Being a Swiss-American also probably helped him be chosen for this sacrifice. Major Wirz, by all accounts did the best who could with the limited resources available and showed no malice and tried to carry out his work as best he could. Many guards also died while staitoned there from the same illnesses that killed the PoWs. I visited Andersonville last year and as a 24 year Army veteran, who worked for 10 years on POW/MIA issues, 6 of those as a civilian intelligence officer at DIA, the National POW/MIA Center was a place of great interest to me.

[Canoerebel]

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel


The graphic proves the point that the actual monuments were overwhelmingly erected during the era when the aging veterans were dying. That was done in tribute rather than as some kind of political statement.

It can still be both.

There was no need to make such a political statement in Georgia. There was only one party. It was monolithic and unthreatened.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

And, by the way, there's no such thing as "dog whistles" for white supremacists. Those people are in your face and proud of it and have no sense of decency and care nothing about concealing their beliefs. So putting up a monument showing the movement of respective Union and Confederate units at Cassville, Georgia, in 1964 to honor the centennial is not some secret handshake, nod-wink-nudge-nudge. No, when segregationists acted, they did so openly: Let's change the flag!

I recommend that you familiarize yourself with microaggressions (it's not a great term from a naming standpoint, but the actions and their consequences are very real) and what messages they send. The muted messages are kind of the whole point. To deny that dog whistles aren't a thing is mind-boggling. They're a thing. Yes, there are your loud and proud folks. Those aren't the folks the dog whistles are intended for, and to pretend otherwise is being deliberately obtuse. Dog whistle terms are intended for closet bigots or even people who don't think of themselves as being racist or sexist or classist or whatever-ist (how many times have you heard anyone say "I'm not racist, but..."?). There are lots of latent -ists out there. We're all shaped by the social norms we grew up with and are all something-ist to some degree for anything you can think of; what matters is whether we're each aware of it. That's why there's no such thing as achieving full cultural competence.

[Lokasenna]

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel

ORIGINAL: Lokasenna

ORIGINAL: Canoerebel


The graphic proves the point that the actual monuments were overwhelmingly erected during the era when the aging veterans were dying. That was done in tribute rather than as some kind of political statement.

It can still be both.

There was no need to make such a political statement in Georgia. There was only one party. It was monolithic and unthreatened.

Even granting your assertion as I don't have the time to look up any details: yes, and? Political statements aren't all for or against one party. In fact, most of them have nothing to do with any given party.

[Canoerebel]

My point is that there was no need to make such statements in Georgia in 1910. There was no perceived threat to the status quo. The people were unified and, as part of that unification, chose to honor the veterans. They did so in many ways, and the veterans at the same time were doing things marking their aging years and looming mortality. There was no sneaky, underlying motive. The '50s were different.

I've lived here all my life. My parents and grandparents and great-grandparents are the people we're talking about. I know their weaknesses and their strengths. I've criticized the former, earning my fair share of critics among my own neighbors. But I've devoted my history career to seeking and writing truthfully. I have a reverence for history truly told. And I lament the virulent, mistaken views that are shaping our culture today, on both sides.

[Canoerebel]

The problem with the information/sources cited by well-meaning Forumites like JohnD and Lokasenna is that they are so full of disinformation and faulty innuendo.

When they refer to "Confederate Monuments," many people reading imagine the statues to Confederate soldiers. They post graphics that show the proliferation of monuments in southern states and picture some rabid secessionists acting "in your face." And nothing could be further from the truth. But nobody stops to look at the underlying information. And when they do, all the people posting falsehoods or distortions ignore it because it doesn't fit their narrative and worldview.

So I looked at that time graphic that showed the proliferation of monuments in North Georgia in the 1960s. What I found was essentially zero monuments to Confederate soldiers. Instead, it was almost entirely a program by the state of Georgia to place markers where events of historical significance took place. These markers clearly aren't polictial or idealogues. They were simply emplaced during the centennial to mark noteworthy events and troops movements, North and South.

Here are the two closest to my house - one is a mile north, the other 1.5 miles south. See anything nefarious there? No? Me neither. Yet they (and hundreds of other dots on maps) are misperceived as nefarious and ugly glorification of the Confederacy.

So a friendly forumite from someplace like Glasgow reads the words you post and the graphics presented and picture in their heads a South in which thousands of Confederate monuments somehow erected to glorify slavery or white supremacy dot the landscape....when that's absolutely, 100% factually untrue. But nobody retracts their misstatements or acknowledges the distortions of the truth.

That drives me crazy.

[Canoerebel]

P.S. The two markers above detail Union troops movements with only fleeting reference to any Southern units.

The Georgia Historical Marker program placed thousands of markers just like these. Exactly 0% are political. Yet they are included in a graphic meant to suggested, and apparently interpreted as such by a gullible public, as dog-whistling segregationist mementos.

[Canoerebel]

That website promised "chilling incscriptions" on the monuments, if I bothered to read them.

So I did. I looked up monument after monument in Northwest Georgia, all erected in the 1960s to commemorate the centennial of the Atlanta Campaign. I read dozens, like this one to the Trimble House, about 15 miles east of my own house. I didn't find anything chilling there. I didn't find anything except well-done, respectful, appropriate history in every one of the score I read. And over a lifetime of stopping to read these in my travels across Northwest Georgia, I've read not one that was chilling or inappropriate.

But thanks to the whackos who generate this stuff and misrepresent our history, it sounds like the South is full of awful memorials to slavery.

I'd love to see some retractions...but I won't hold my breath.