While many might think our young Republic’s Civil War was fought exclusively in the pastures of Pennsylvania and corn fields of the Carolinas, many of those who joined the Southern Cause hailed from The West – and some left their names on our cities and towns.
With a renewed effort to erase any memory of the secessionists who took up arms against The North underway in the wake of a horrific church shooting in Charleston, S.C. last month – some, like the residents of Fort Bragg, Cal., are wondering if they’re about to get caught up in the nationwide attempt at revision.
Will we, residents of Fort Bragg wonder, have to change our name as a strict reading of Senate Bill 539 – introduced by Orinda’s 7th District Sen. Steve Glazer – intimates? After all, Fort Bragg is named for Braxton Bragg, an officer serving in the West who defected to the Confederacy when the Civil War broke out in 1861.
Bragg was, after all, a high-ranking Confederate general and adviser to Confederate President Jefferson Davis after he left the town that bears his name to serve the South. So should Fort Bragg be worried?
See what Fort Bragg’s mayor and a spokesman for Sen. Glazer said about the issue in a story on the subject in the Sacramento Bee.
And of course Robert Frost’s middle name was Lee. He was named after Robert E. Lee !!!!! I suppose we soon will hear calls to erase or preferably burn Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening and all other such racist hate mongering literature.
Rewriting history for the sake of compliance with contemporary standards is wrong minded.
Interesting! Any other towns or cities??
This race toward Orwellian one-upsmanship is troubling.
I thought that the victor wrote the history and erected the monuments. What a curiosity that schools in southern states still teach that the Civil War was really about high-minded principles of states’ rights and not about slavery or fighting to preserve a slave-based economy. It seems the victory is incomplete and hollow yet today.
An argument can be made for states’ rights, to be sure, but who today but a bigot would argue that individual states should determine whether women or people of color can be chattel? Those monuments to Nathan Bedford Forrest (KKK), and slave owner Bragg (Ft. Bragg, North Carolina), et al are a 21st century embarrassment. If you don’t believe me, ask the Chamber of Commerce.
I don’t think we need any grandstanding from new State Senators, but let’s shine some sunlight on it and see what scurries back into the shadows.
What great victory does Fort Bragg in North Carolina commemorate? Historians have judged him not particularly competent. Sooooo, why would he be honored, upon losing the war and all? Ah, yes, he fought for his way of life, and for the traditions of slave-ownership.
I’m not buying it, David. In your middle paragraph you use the time tested debate tactic of creating an artificial “straw man” argument: if you are not against that flag, then perhaps you are in favor of modern day slavery. Nope. That doesn’t work with me. The civil war and the rest of our history is, well, our history. Trying to erase history is not so good of an idea. Very Orwellian as someone else mentioned. To me, the main take-away from this episode has nothing to do with slavery. My take-away is how scary it is that such anger and activism can be generated so quickly. A year ago if polls were taken to list the top 5,000 issues facing the US, that flag would not even be on the list. Now we have people like Glazer who seem to be scouring Wikipedia to find names to hate. I think thats also how we got into Iraq, the leaders led and we followed along like nice little sheep.
Schools should teach history. If a state wants to keep a monument dedicated to an immoral man, maybe it should put up a plaque next to it for clarification. “Fought to preserve slavery.” Most observers wouldn’t otherwise know that. I believe the verdict is in on the moral virtue of the southern cause.
If you want to see what happens when a nation erases its history take a trip to Japan. To them, Pearl Harbor is just a spot to take an island vacation and World War Two was an accident for which Japan paid too high a price.
If we are going to start remaking those markers and adding explanatory revisions to our memorials I want a piece of that business cause the foundries are going to be really really busy.
George Washingon was a slave owner. You then need to have that plaque on every George Washington monument, lots of street signs bearing his name, and all the one dollar bills in your wallet. The list is endless of people who can be condemned with modern opinions. Per Carol above, this is a slippery slope that leads to even more conflict but adds nothing to civil rights.
Its sad that the debate has drifted for the core problem on gun violence in the US and instead focuses on renaming landmarks to sterilize our historical record of unpleasant realities. To what end?
If you’re worried about the murder rate in this county, the only rational starting place is the cluster of young black men killing other young black men with handguns in urban areas. Root causes are difficult to identify, but surely include the lack quality jobs and job training, coupled with the allure of ease money opened up but the “war on drugs.” Most other talk of cop-on-black or nutty-white-on-black killings are tragic, but are statistical noise to the real elephant in the room. A black man murders another black man about 40-50 times a week. How many of those stories do we see on national tv?
Thanks for clarifying that the debate should not be focused on racism in America. It should be focused on black on black violence. Obama is not a Kenyan Muslim in this worldview. Well, as a white man, phosphorescent pink actually, I am relieved! For a minute, I thought I might have a role to play.
And thanks to those who implied that I wanted to bury history. That is not my position, but who cares?
Talk to you in a day or so. It’s like the internet never happened. What is the price of a first class stamp these days? I have something to say. Or, at least I did.
Oh, never mind.
Remember