05-15-2017, 05:37 PM
(05-15-2017, 03:33 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: There is a lot of truth in all of this. Lincoln sought Lee to be commander of the Union forces before Lee had formally chosen a side. Jackson was seen as one of the greatest strategists in the war and had he not fallen to friendly fire there are historians that speculate Gettysburg would have been much different. They both were magnificent leaders and military minds but they had a, shall we say, complicated relationship with the notion of slavery as well as a loyalty to the Commonwealth and so they were on the wrong side of history.
You could make the same argument with Erwin Rommel, Erich von Manstein, Ewald von Kleist, Erich Hartmann, etc. All brilliant military minds or soldiers associated with a vile cause. Does that cause diminish their brilliance or accomplishments? I completely get the confederates are traitors to the US argument, because I've frequently made it. But I don't see how memorializing the great men associated with it promotes the confederacy itself. To me they are tragic figures but I get that some uphold them as heroes on the right side. I just don't believe that erasing them from history, because of the beliefs of a small minority, is doing our recognition of our shared national history a service.
