Removing Confederate Generals portraits?

[J. Beckert]

(12-19-2013 06:01 PM)Rob Wick Wrote:  As I've never said all Southerners were " evil, slave raping and beating heathens" then I will agree it's untrue to say otherwise.
Best
Rob

Well, there's a start...

Yes, Rob, you can agree with those who disparaged slavery as wrong in the 19th century and at the same time you would be applying 21 st century mores, but those mores had a start with the Abolishionist movement in the 1850's and are universal today. Not all the people felt that way and that's what I try to understand. Lincoln himself didn't look at blacks as his equals. Partially equal? Yes, but there was a lot of struggle yet to come before that became a standard.

The intial gist of this post was is it wrong to clean the slate of history from mention of these men, simply because their views are different than those held now? In my opinion, yes, it is. These men were good Americans. They fought honorably and valiantly for their country before this conflict and when it arose, picked a side, as all of us do. If anyone today thinks slavery is a good thing, I'd question their sanity, but in 1861, we were still a very rural nation.