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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDonald Trump, Like the Confederacy, Is Picking the Wrong Hill to Die On
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2020/06/donald-trump-like-the-confederacy-is-picking-the-wrong-hill-to-die-on/The best I can say about Henry L. Benning is that I literally do not even know what he did in the war to become famous. Braxton Braggs great contribution to the Lost Cause was a crushing defeat by Ulysses S. Grant at Chattanooga, which led to him being fired and eventually replaced by John Bell Hood. (Incredible eyebrows, though.) Hood was like a white-supremacist Leeroy Jenkins, forever going on offense against superior firepower and never learning any lessons. He lost control of Atlanta to Sherman, transferred to the Army of Tennessee and lost again at Franklin, and then effectively ended the war in the West when he lost half his army at Nashville. The Union commander at Nashville, Gen. George H. Thomas, was a native of Virginia who rejected the Confederacy to fight for the United States.
Trumps support for keeping Confederate monuments is longstanding. Theyre trying to take away our history, he said in 2017, when a wave of local officials began removing white-supremacist monuments across the country. He urged Virginia Republican to support gubernatorial candidate Ed Gillespie so he could save our great statues/heritage! Those white-supremacists he called good people in Charlottesville? They were rallying against the removal of a Robert E. Lee statue in the citys downtown.
But if its winning, victory, and freedom we want to celebrate, theres no shortage of heroic figures to choose from. Harriet Tubman, the victorious commander at Combahee Ferry in 1863, had a better win-loss record than Hood, for sure. William Harvey Carney, a former slave who joined the storied 54th Massachusetts Regiment, was shot three times and then won a medal of honor for retrieving the American flag from a fallen comrade at Fort Wagner that same year. That might be a good place to start for a self-styled protector of our Great American Flag. Despite the fact that Jeff Daniels (who I do not like) played him in a movie once, I like Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain, who accepted John B. Fort Gordons surrender at Appomattox and stopped John Bell Fort Hoods advance at Gettysburg. His previous job was teaching at a New England liberal arts college. Talk about the heroism of ordinary people! Americas history of freedom and winning, such as it is, has nothing to do with the men these bases are currently named for. But it has everything to do with the men and women who defeated them.
lapfog_1
(29,191 posts)for his stout defense at the battle of Chickamauga Creek.
Funny how we named all of the military bases for Confederate Generals... but not so much for the Union Generals.
Yes, both sides had their share of idiot Generals, even Lee made a number of strategic errors, including throwing away an opportunity to "win" Gettysburg and possibly force the Union to sue for peace (which was the aim of invading Pennsylvania anyway).
I've never understood the fascination with Confederate generals... they were not "brilliant field commanders" anymore that the collection of Union generals.
RainCaster
(10,825 posts)The sooner, the better.
OAITW r.2.0
(24,287 posts)Goddam liberal arts college....and he (with the 20th Maine) sure did his part in holding the flank for the Union at Gettysburg.
Thanks for posting....will Trump plant his flag on keeping the Confederacy legacy at our US military training bases? Stay tuned!
Hekate
(90,538 posts)Thanks, hghplainsdem
Awsi Dooger
(14,565 posts)The Trump presidency is unlike any other in that regard. There will undoubtedly be at least 2 or 3 subsequent firestorms that will knock Black Lives Matter to a distant memory.
DFW
(54,272 posts)We're going to win just like Custer did at Little Big Horn
canetoad
(17,135 posts)His disraction du jour. He neither knows or cares about the history of the USA.
ProfessorGAC
(64,827 posts)A third tier general who acceded to Lee at Gettysburg and led his division into a slaughter.
An uphill "charge" into entrenched artillery positions? Agreeing to do it was just stupid.
He was either too dumb to recognize what a rotten plan it was or too chicken to tell Lee no.
Even Longstreet tried to talk Lee out of it because he knew what would happen.
Pickett lost 50% of his division to death or capture. Great plan!