Sherman and Grimsley

Note: The blog post at Crossroads where Gary Adams' letter is under discussion is proof positive that those who are always touting "history" -- always putting down others for putting heritage above history, always claiming heritage folks don't know history -- don't give a rat's patootie about history themselves. Brooks D. Simpson didn't make this post about Gary for the sake of history. Neither he nor his commenters offer a syllable of historical correction of Gary's letter. No, the only reason he made that post was to ridicule another human being. Presumably, people like Brooks D. Simpson and the mockers and ridiculers who frequent his blog get off on that kind of put down far more than they do on history....

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Brooks D. Simpson and his minions are frothing over a letter to a college president sent by Gary Adams of the Southern Heritage Preservation Group. The letter is about historian Mark Grimsley.

First, they tsk-tsk'd over typos, assumed Gary couldn't spell, etc. The type of errors I saw makes me wonder if Gary posted a copy of his letter to Facebook using a smart phone. I've seen similar errors in texts transmitted by smart phone. Of course, when you're motivated to denigrate a person, such alternate explanations will be rejected before they can be stated....

Simpson sez, "Gary Adams is the best that the SHPG can do. Reflect on what that implies."

What it implies is that Simpson knows all 1,735 members of the SHPG -- he would have to know them all -- know each individual's level of knowledge and education in history, know what they do outside of the group, etc. -- in order to know who's best. You think he knows all 1,735 members that well? Of course not. This is just another way to mock and ridicule other human beings.

Oh, btw, Andy Hall, if you're reading this, you might want to correct these typos in your comments on your blog following the entry where you skewer Billy Bearden for doing only what you do (see my previous blog entry)....

crtiical
Y'all slogan
lagrely

Just outta curiosity, did you send your comments from your smart phone?

So, folks. How do you spell hypocrisy? S-I-M-P-S-O-N or H-A-L-L? Or maybe S-I-M-P-S-O-N -- A-N-D -- H-A-L-L.

Incidentally, if the paper in question is this one, "Thieves, Murderers, Trespassers": The Mythology of Sherman's March -- what he's saying is that the destructiveness of Sherman's march is myth. In other words, Grimsley is sanitizing Sherman.

Basically, his message seems to be that if Sherman had been destructive (although he, you know, really wasn't all that destructive) it would have been okay because slavery was destructive, too.

Years ago when I first got online, I came across information about a historian who specialized in the civil war.It claimed that as far back as high school, he intended to become a historian just so he could make the South look bad.... (Hmmm... an admission by a civil war historian of his aim to evilize the South....)

I've had numerous occasions to regret that I did not copy and keep that information, which included the historian's name, which I have long since forgotten. After skimming some of Grimsley's stuff online, I've wondered if it was him. But then, making the South look bad seems to be the goal of nearly all civil war historians since the PC era began, whether they admitted it as far back as high school or not....

Brooks D. Simpson says Gary's letter doesn't specifiy complaints about Grimsley's paper. I'll provide some specific complaints.

First, Grimsley says historians have known for a long time that claims of widespread rape and murder by union soldiers lack historical foundation. (I'm paraphrasing because of the copyright notice on the page.) Well, not necessarily. It's only lacking in the "historical foundation" Grimsley and his ilk are willing to accept and in the interpretation they put on it.

Second -- he basically implies that Southern women were post-war liars, emphasizing their "fear" and "outrage" above the not-all-that-awful facts. But his only "proof" is a reference to one woman, Grace Pierson Beard. And, of course, he reminds us that the only thing "uncritical readers" pick up on is the fear and outrage in her writing and don't notice the facts. Exactly how he knows they do this isn't explained. Maybe he consults a crystal ball, or calls Miss Clio, or throws chicken bones. Or... maybe he read Mrs. Beard's story uncritically once and now he's projecting his experience onto all.

Sounds familiar, doesn't it?

As Andy claims that "the SHPG" (all 1,730 members?) believe/claim that the UDC is a "support group" for the SCV when only one member said that ... and as Brooks D. Simpson has tried to attribute words expressed by a handful of SHPG members to the entire 1,737-member group, so Grimsley projects Mrs. Beard's "myth-constructing" (no indication that's what she was actually doing; that's just the name he calls it) to thousands of other white Southerners.

Here's another complaint. Grimsley's "explanation" that the union army's destructiveness was mostly "targeted" implies more than an explanation -- it implies acceptability. Damned secessionists -- they deserved it.

Sorry, no.

There was NO justification for the union army's presence in the seceded states and no justification for a union soldier so much as kicking a Southern dog. Regardless of how much or how little destruction Sherman and his rapacious men did, regardless of Mark Grimsley's efforts, and the efforts of every other Confederacy-bashing "historian" to santitize Sherman and downplay the destruction wrought upon the South by the union army, it was ALL too much because the union army should not have been down here to begin with.

Nothing -- not secession, not "preserving the union," not ending slavery, not anything -- justified the union's barbaric war on the South.