One wag, communication director for Tim Kaine (D-VA), decided to give a hardy burn to one Southern candidate for Governor from the GOP.
x
Big day for @CoreyStewartVA - 155 years ago today, the brave young men from his home state gave their all to keep Confederates from taking key ground at Gettysburg. If they werenâÂÂt there, the battle couldâÂÂve been lost.
At least four national political reporters noted that Stewart, was in fact, born in Duluth, Minnesota, making him much more of a Yankee than a son of the South. Stewart, 48, has tweeted numerous times about issues that would appear to concern only the most entrenched neo-Confederate.
He has relentlessly criticized the city of Charlottesville for its plan to tear down a statue of General Robert E. Lee in one of the city’s major parks, and rename parks named after Lee and Stonewall Jackson. “No Robert E. Lee monument should come down. That man is a hero & an honorable man. It is shameful what they are doing with these monuments,” he wrote in one Twitter missive, following up a few hours later: “After they tear down Lee & Beauregard, they are coming for Washington & Jefferson.” He added the hashtag #HistoricalVandalism.
It is, perhaps, surprising to see how recently many of these memorials were built, and how closely their appearance correlates to moments of widespread white resistance to civil rights progress. Their cultural reach is not limited to the South, though. Mirroring the ways in which many universities in the abolitionist North profited enormously from slavery—including Harvard, Yale, and Brown—it turns out that the majority of Confederate monuments were manufactured by foundries in the North, so there were Yankee businesses that profited considerably from the drive to keep alive the “lost cause” of the Confederacy. bostonreview.net/...
Monuments do matter especially when they don’t commemorate traitors, but celebrate national heroes.
No amount of revisionist history like that of the Jim Crow era’s Confederate monument mania can reverse the crimes of slaver secession.
A better example was how Little Round Top at Gettysburg was more important to the continuation of the Union than most have given credit.
20th Maine Monument, Little Round Top, Gettysburg Battlefield, Pennsylvania
Left Flanks matter “There is no need that I should recount to the friends who stand around us here, what would have happened had this little line - this thin, keen edge of Damascus steel - been broken down from its guard. All can see what would have become of our Brigade swallowed up; of Weed's, struck in the rear of Hazlitt's guns, taken in the flank and turned to launch their thunder-bolts upon our troops, already sore pressed in the gorge at our feet, and the fields upon the great front and right. Round Top lost - the day lost - Gettysburg lost - who can tell or dream what for loss thence would follow!”
Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain
When the regiment came under heavy attack from theConfederate15thand 47th Alabama regiments (part of thedivisionled by Maj. Gen.John Bell Hood), the 20th Maine ran low on ammunition after one and a half hours of continuous fighting; it responded to the sight of rebel infantry forming again for yet another push up the slope at them by instead suddenly charging downhill with fixedbayonets, surprising and scattering the Confederates, thus ending the attack on the hill and the attempt to flank the hill position and move around the south end of the Federal "fishhook".
The 20th Maine and the adjacent 83rd Pennsylvania together captured many men from both Alabama regiments (including Lt. Col. Michael Bulger, commander of the 47th),[4]as well as several other men of the 4th Alabama and 4th and 5th Texas regiments of the same division. Had the 20th Maine retreated from the hill, the entire Union line would have been flanked, endangering and hurting other Union regiments in the vicinity.
1889 reunion 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry Regiment
Twenty-five-year-old Color Sgt. Andrew J. Tozier of the 2nd Maine quickly emerged as an unlikely hero, and he was later awarded the Medal of Honor for his bravery. It had been Chamberlain’s idea to elevate Tozier to the post of color sergeant for the 20th Maine, a move designed to instill a new esprit de corps in the mutineers. Color sergeant was a dangerous but coveted position in Civil War regiments, generally manned by the bravest soldier in the unit. As the 20th Maine’s center began to break and give ground in the face of the Alabama regiments’ onslaught, Tozier stood firm, remaining upright as Southern bullets buzzed and snapped in the air around him. Tozier’s personal gallantry in defending the 20th Maine’s colors became the regimental rallying point for Companies D, E and F to retake the center. Were it not for Tozier’s heroic stand, the 20th Maine would likely have been beaten at that decisive point in the battle.
Chamberlain’s vivid personality overshadows the regiment that made him famous — even though it was the regiment that saved the day. There is a Chamberlain museum in Brunswick, Maine; Chamberlain Pale Ale produced in Portland, Maine; and a Chamberlain Bridge exists in Bangor, Maine — yet no commercial product commemorates the 20th Maine Volunteer Infantry. Chamberlain overshadows the 20th Maine in the way that George S. Patton overshadows the U.S. Third Army in World War II.
