Confederate soldiers=terrorists

Huh. OK, agreed on the second part. But weren't the colonies occupied after they attempted to, well, secede?

[Insert obligatory "Wikipedia sucks" comments to get that out of the way.]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Revolutionary_War

<em>The war was the culmination of the political American Revolution, whereby many of the colonists rejected the legitimacy of the Parliament of Great Britain to govern them without representation, claiming that this violated the Rights of Englishmen. The First Continental Congress met in 1774 to coordinate relations with Great Britain and the by-then thirteen self-governing and individual provinces, petitioning George III for intervention with Parliament, organizing a boycott of British goods, while affirming loyalty to the British Crown. </em>

<em>Their pleas ignored, and with British combat troops billeted in Boston, Massachusetts, by 1775 the Provincial Congresses formed the Second Continental Congress and authorized a Continental Army. Additional petitions to the king to intervene with Parliament resulted in the following year with Congress being declared traitors and the states to be in rebellion. The Americans responded in 1776 by formally declaring their independence as one new nation — the United States of America — claiming their own sovereignty and rejecting any allegiance to the British monarchy.</em>

If they were loyal to the British crown at one point, how does this not make them as traitorous as the Confederates? Not that I'm complaining about the revolution; just curious.

 

OK, maybe you <em>are</em> right about the wave:

<em>The dustup over Virginia’s proclamation for Confederate History Month seems like a lot of noise over something that “doesn’t amount to diddly,” Mississippi’s governor said in an interview aired today.</em>

http://www.commercialappeal.com/news/2010/apr/11/mississippi-governor-says-confederacy-flap-not-wor/

 

Publishers Weekly blurb on What If? 2:

 

Etc. ;D ;D

 

Historian James Loewen wrote some excellent books about the historical revisionism supporters of NeoConfederate policies have been trying to push through. One thing that really upsets him is the number of pro-Confederate monuments vastly outnumbering the the Union ones. For instance, in Ohio there are countless homages to Morgan's Raiders up and down the Ohio River Valley. There is nary a word about the Union soldiers who defeated them. The most sickening thing, in my opinion, is the number of high schools in Ohio who use nicknames like Raiders and Rebels in reference to the Confederate band of marauders.

You can also see this NeoConfederate way of thinking permeate in the way groups like the Sons of Confederate Veterans have grown exponentially, while the similar Union one basically exists in name only.

While I don't believe most Confederate soldiers were really in it to wholeheartedly defend slavery and white supremacy, the dedicated ones who did not stop fighting after Appomattox truly were terrorists and thus eventually gave birth to the first edition of the Klu Klux Klan.

 

I think you have a much stronger argument there, NOLU, than Martin does.

 

Actually, my favorite one of these was the one that pondered, "What If the original Marvel bullpen had become the Fantastic Four?" ;D

 

In one of my favorite early SNL skits, a panel pondered the question "what if Eleanor Roosevelt could fly?" Gilda Radner, wearing a flowered dress and big hat, dropped bombs on the Nazis, etc.

 

Ever spend much time driving around Chattanooga? You can see several monuments to different Union outfits, and not just on the protected battlefields. Hell, New York has one visible from I-24 near the Georgia line. I seem to recall a big Iowa monument right by US 27 south also.

 

Tons and tons of Union monuments at Gettysburg, as you'd expect. Monuments at the various battlefields were often funded by veterans/survivors of the individual units, or states.

 

The hell you say!

 

Oddly enough, had a long and lengthy conversation about this, what if the south had won or gotten to a point where a lengthy truce could have been in place.
The overwhelming answer is that the south would have been an absolute and complete shithole as a region.
Under the articles of confederation, states were forbidden to have gone together on any public works projects. They all would have been state by state. So that means no public interstate system, no TVA, no airports, no regional water, sewer and electric systems.
And that's just the start, it only gets worse.
The romantic notions surrounding the Confederacy are mostly by people who have never bothered to look at the actual governance.
A complete and total disaster.