White supremacists and counter protesters clash in Charlottesville

[Rahul]

So basically celebrating hatred for their fellow countrymen?   The country everyone is now a part of again? So much fucking better

No.  Celebrating the fact that their ancestors were willing to lay down their lives against invaders to protect their family and home.  Hatred was rampant on both sides.  The North exhibited a lot of hatred toward the South as well.  It was a horrible time in our nation's history.

The Northern soldiers, especially those with Sherman, laid waste to a lot of the South.  They not only took most of the food from Southern civilians, but they also tried to destroy any remaining food they couldn't carry.  The South to this day has an odd tradition that we are supposed to eat black eyed peas on the first day of the year.  This is because Northern soldiers didn't consider it food fit for humans during their destruction, so it was all a lot of what little was left that Southerners had to survive on.  Most Southerners don't even realize that's where that odd tradition comes from.

The South lost 25% of it's fighting age men dead, another 25% maimed, 40% of all livestock destroyed, most industry.  My ancestors were spread out all over the South when the Civil War happened.  But they all moved to east Texas after the war to escape the destruction.  It's odd to realize that if a certain war had not happened, you would have never existed.

Secession was most assuredly about slavery.  The war on the Southern side, though, was mostly about defense from invasion.  One idea that keeps popping up in my head when studing the war is that the war was much more popular among the South than secession was.  The county I was born in voted to remain in the Union.  But they fought like hell against the Union when they invaded.

All of this is really beside the point of this thread.  The problem now is that white supremacists are using Confederate monuments as lightning rods for hatred and violence.  So I am forced to agree that we need to start taking them down.