Another Confederate Heritage Fantasy Moment

From the gift that keeps on giving … a telling glimpse into the mindset of a Confederate heritage advocate …

Several times after Fort Pillow USCT troops were incited by their officers to “Remember Fort Pillow” and “killed numbers of the enemy in spite of the efforts of their officers to restrain them.” One yankee officer recalled, “That there was a half determination on the part of a good many of the black soldiers to kill them as fast as they came to them…”. I can understand this and I know we killed many odf them but why aren’t we talking about this issue? Gary.

Who’s “we?”  And why are “we” imagining ourselves as a Confederate soldier mowing down African American soldiers at Fort Pillow?

Why aren’t you talking about that issue?

Another gift from Gary Adams … the CEO of the Southern Heritage Preservation Group.  At least this time he’s not plagiarizing … this is all him.

To Err is Human …

I recently came across this claim by a fellow who asserted that he knew my view of the Overland Campaign:

Brooks sees them all as clear Union wins and part of a well thought out campaign.

Oh, really?  Where did I say that?  What an odd thing to assert (who would see North Anna or Cold Harbor as “clear Union wins”?).

Clearly this fellow has actually failed to do any reading, although you would think that you might want to read what I have written before declaring (with unfailing smug certainty) what I believe.

This is part of what any professional historian may encounter when it comes to the internet (and not merely blogs, as Gary Gallagher might have it).  You learn how people understand or misunderstand you.  You discover how people represent or misrepresent you.  What makes it more amusing is that the people who can’t get their facts straight (or who make them up altogether) have no problem accusing historians of doing exactly that.  Yet it is evident that they find this supposedly simple task a bit too difficult for themselves.

Take a rather sloppy rendering of a recent post here.  Here’s the post … and here’s how it was rendered.  Notice the difference?  Seems some commentary was deleted, leaving the impression that I was the “southern nationalist” in question … all of which led a moderator of said group to declare:

the OP appears to be written by Brooks Simpson. It isn’t. It was presented by him as an example of the kind of idiocy promoted by the Crossroads blog. [Emphasis added]

That doesn’t seem to be much of an improvement in comprehension, when you think about it (as anyone who frequents this blog will attest).

Perhaps it isn’t so easy to be a good historian after all.