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Since the Lee monument was FINALLY removed from the Capital today, I thought it would be fun to look back at the moment of national unity in 1910 that brought it there in first pla- oh, wait, no, the opposite happened.
Here's New York's GAR with a WTF and a GH Thomas namedrop
Here's New York's GAR with a WTF and a GH Thomas namedrop
Here's Indiana, New Jersey, South Dakota, Delaware, New Mexico, Kansas, Ohio, and Pennsylvania with a double shotted "aw hell no"
Vermont with a "get lost"
https://www.timesargus.com/news/local/vt-civil-war-vets-opposed-lee-statue/article_2d635e2c-e345-5b91-a5e5-cf391b98e40d.html
https://www.timesargus.com/news/local/vt-civil-war-vets-opposed-lee-statue/article_2d635e2c-e345-5b91-a5e5-cf391b98e40d.html
From the same article, Kansas nearly sending a John Brown monument, which would've been EPIC:
The debate was pretty hot in the GAR encampment of 1910 ( https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433079005215&view=1up&seq=1)- some were for letting bygones be bygones.. The nation was united now, right? Then this dude from Georgia spoke up:
Albert Sholes - who'd served with two Rhode Island units in the war - went on to quote this letter from a son of a Confederate officer. The Lost Cause was growing fanatical in the second generation:
One reason this was a divisive issue was because the idea of a pension for US Army Civil War veterans was going through Congress, and many GAR members didn't want to rock the boat, such as this one:
Kansas striking back again:
Some GAR representatives were saying that if the GAR made a fuss about the Lee monument, it might be a rough time for the GAR members in the south, to which Indiana replied:
I'll leave you with the words of the representative from Illinois, Jasper Darling, who prophesied what compromise and "reconciliation" would bring:
Darling, a soldier from Massachusetts in the war, was an adamant opponent of the Lost Cause narrative and was NOT a fan of Lee, btw. Here's a sample:
https://leefamilyarchive.org/reference/addresses/darling/index.html
https://leefamilyarchive.org/reference/addresses/darling/index.html
I mentioned the "Reconciliation" narrative a few times in that thread; this is what I'm referring to: https://angrystaffofficer.com/2017/09/25/deconstructing-the-reconciliation-narrative-of-the-civil-war/
There's also the issue of an imagined southern hegemony, where it was a war of north versus south. That simply isn't true (Yes, I used GH Thomas as the cover for both pieces because he's a BAMF): https://angrystaffofficer.com/2019/04/01/debunking-the-myth-of-southern-hegemony-southerners-who-stayed-loyal-to-the-us-in-the-civil-war/
