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.
Crossroads 
If people aren’t talking about it, where did he find that “yankee officer” quote? I guess Adams must spend his days sifting through primary sources, responisble historian that he is.
You overlook Adams’s methods. He simply stripped the quote from Kevin Levin’s blog.
That’s why all this recent whining over at the SHPG about the blogs of their so-called enemies is funny. Without those blogs they would have very little to talk about. As it is, they struggle with historical accuracy, and of course some say they really aren’t interested in that, anyway.
“We” is obviously a group ‘we’ meaning the Confederacy in general. You make them sound like unsubs who sit around dreaming of murdering black people … you know full well that’s not what they meant.
If I were going to discuss US actions in Vietnam (a war I absolutely DON’T believe in), I would probably use the group “we” in conversation — ie, we killed innocent people at Mai Lai. I would hardly be imagining myself at the massacre, but rather acknoweldging group responsibility shared by the entire nation and culture. I, Joe Internet User, may be personaly guiltless — but the United States (of which I am part of its collective ‘we’) is guilty, hence using “we.”
I don’t think so. No one in that group fought for the Confederacy, so “we” is an interesting imaginative leap claiming to transcend time, reality, and common sense.
You don’t know what they mean. Only they do. You can speculate, but you don’t know. I’m simply taking the language as is. If they can’t say what they mean, that’s their fault. Or do you hold them to a lower standard of intelligence and skill of self-expression? That would be South-bashing, would it not?
The comparison you use doesn’t quite work. The United States of America continues to exist. The Confederate States of America does not. The commenters are not part of the CSA, however desperately they want to pretend they are, because the CSA doesn’t exist. There’s no “we” there.
One of the ironies in their self-identification with the long-dead Confederacy is that most of the real Confederates–i.e. the soldiers and their families–acknowledged their defeat in 1865 and tried to rebuild their communities and their lives as American citizens. They had better things to do, in other words.