MTFCA Forum

The latest newsletter from THF contained this announcement:
"I'm writing today to share that we have made the difficult decision to retire our Civil War Remembrance program. Operationally, we no longer have the capacity to present an event of this magnitude, given the number of internal and external resources necessary to produce the program at the high level that both our guests and institution have grown accustomed to over time." There's more info in the letter. Respectfully, jb

Loss of any accurate historical presentation is tragic.

The accuracy is often lost.

Tragic.

It has nothing to do with capacity or resources. It has everything to do with erasing parts of history that some find offensive.

Hard times create strong men, strong men create good times, good times create weak men, and weak men create hard times

we are living in a country filled with weak men

Very well said Scott. They have more resources than any facility I know of.

Yea, I read the same thing you folks did. I think the modern term for this is cancel culture?
If it offends anyone, erase it.

tdump wrote: ↑

Thu Sep 29, 2022 2:31 pm

If it offends anyone, erase it.

My problem is that I am offended by people who are easily offended for no good reason. Haven't figured out yet how to erase them.

A real education would help, but it's so much easier to soak up BS, especially when it's being force-fed to you when you're young.

What and where is THF? I have never heard of it. Would it have anything to do with the storm? Ft. Sumpter is right in the path of the storm.
Norm

"Operationally, we no longer have the capacity to present an event of this magnitude"- I believe this is an outright lie.

Reenactments are being canceled all over the county. The country's best days are definitely behind it.

Reality,replace the gun with a big paycheck. Brings a smile and a line of bs needed to earn it.
I am glad I grew up when I did.
America's best days are LONG behind us.

Science has become "consensus", and grant-$eeking.

By all contemporary accounts, General Robert E. Lee, to name just one "cancellee", was a fine man. The same cannot be said for those who find it fashionable to disparage him today. They disgust me.

Fans flocked to the occasion commemorated in a picture postcard of the dedication of a statue of Robert E. Lee in 1924. Rows of Lee fans dressed in white are what you would think they are.

Probably Klan Klowns. Lee had nothing to do with the Klan. Most Klan Klowns did not serve in the Civil War. "Reconstruction" abuses drove much early Klan support, such as it was, as well as the "Jim Crow" abuses.

"The further a society drifts from truth, the more it will hate those who speak it." -George Orwell".

That's an enduring truth, if there ever was one.

Well, Pat, I don’t claim to be a student of R. E. Lee, so I wouldn’t make the claim that he was a Klansman because I don’t know – I leave details like that to his more avid disciples and vociferous defenders. But, as an idle observation, if Lee was not one of them, they make no secret of claiming him as one of their own. We know that other models for memorial statues, such as Confederate Army General Grand Wizard Nathan Bedford Forrest, were profoundly and sincerely dedicated to the cause of the Invisible Empire.

Enthusiastic admirers of the various Confederate flags and lost causes, as a loosely defined group, appear to comprise a disproportionate percentage, perhaps even a plurality, of “Klan Klowns.” Not all, of course.

Many people don't know that US 80 was once called the "Lee Highway" One end of it is at Savanah Ga. The other end was at San Diego. The Lincoln Highway was in the north and ended at San Francisco. A few years ago the Mayor of San Diego had the plaque at our end secretly removed.
I personally don't think it is right to cancel history and to not remember it anymore. We can learn a lot by the mistakes of the past, and our country was actually one of the first in the world to outlaw slavery. It took quite a few more years to overcome prejustice but it is gradually happening. We should just not turn it in the opposite direction but truly treat everyone equally. Dr. King had it right. It' the content of the character that counts, not the color of the skin.

"...we no longer have the capacity to present an event of this magnitude..." "...at the high level..."
The Capacity:
1. They don't WANT to.
1.5. It's just too much to worry about.
2. Can't find the people to help run it.
3. Can't find the organizations to do the re-enactments anymore. Was that part of it?
3.5. Afraid the offerings available would not be up to par.
4. Don't have the $.
5. Or truly are afraid of some cluck's feelings getting hurt.
I don't know anything about the THF except that I was there once and had a wonderful day.
A lot of detail can be hidden in an innocuous (to me) statement like that.

It is a sad day when The Henry Ford (THF) has to cancel such events. Alas, they have been going downhill for a long time. Last time I was there they were not running steam equipment because some untrained person got killed trying to polish the brass on one engine when it was running. Who was in charge of training?

As the for the Klan, referenced in several posts above, it was started by a most innovative and feared Southern General, Nathan Bedford Forrest. He started it to provide common police protection at a time when occupying Union forces either could not or would not provide such protection. Later, when the Klan took on its racist identify, General Forrest resigned his membership. Alas, today, General Forrest is widely reviled by people who know no history. Cancel culture provides our children not with history but with twistory.

https://www.newenglandhistoricalsociety.com › slave-trade-took-root-new-england
How the Slave Trade Took Root in New England
Newport and Bristol by the middle of the 18 th century had overtaken Boston as the leading slave market in the colonies. In the 98 years between 1709 and 1807, Rhode Island merchants brought more than 100,000 slaves from Africa to the New World. The Brown family ran one of the biggest, nastiest slave trading businesses in New England....


American History did not begin in 1861.

I had no idea they had ever celebrated the Civil War at Henry Ford !
Norm

I have been to several Civil War reenactments at the old Victorian Festival in Jerseyville Ill. I didn't think that it was wrong to do so. The Civil war actually happened and is a part of our Nation's history. As a result of the war slavery was ended, or am I wrong?

Slavery continued after the war under a different name, with an enlarged and more diverse indentured demographic. What really ended slavery in the southern USA was the advent of combustion power, particulary combustion power applied to agriculture, which made slavery uneconomic. It's making a slow but steady comeback with the ever-expanding reach of taxation and ever-expanding reach of chronic debt.

I don't know whether they still have the show at the Dolly Parton theater in Branson Mo. but I was there two times. They had a show called "Dixie Stampeed". They sat the people on opposite sides. Ours was Confederate even though I am descendant of Yankees. we ate with our hands. Supposed to be the way the soldiers ate. They rode around and fought each other in pretend battles. Then at the end, they all went together with the statue of liberty in front of them Celebrating we were all united again.
I might not have everything right, because it has been about 20 years ago.
Very interesting.
Norm

It really bugs me that some history is suddenly terrible and should be destroyed such as the Robert E. Lee monument in Virginia. For folks to be offended by Lee's statue only to celebrate a statue of Floyd is strange at best.
It is all a part of our history. We should learn about it, learn from it,and hope not to repeat the bad parts.
BUT to me,as someone else stated above,as long as there is taxation, the citizen is a sharecropper at best if not a slave.

Lee was a great general! Not on my great, great grandfather John's side tho...
That's water long-since under the bridge. Now we can remember ALL souls who fought then.
John has a veteran's star 1861-63 at his grave. Civil war? He lived it. The MN 1st.
Mentioned in passing is a name I will revile until my last days. Common criminal with 2 drugs in his system.
Booze too?, I don't know, heading down to the store to exchange his fake 20's.
Ain't it sad?

A lot has been written about the Civil War, and a lot of photographs exist. One good Civil War novel is titled "The Twentieth Maine". There are others. The war never should have happened. The secessionist states would have been back in the union by about 1880 at the latest.

My wife's ancestors came across the country on the "Oregon Trail". On the same wagon trail. Some were from the north and some from the south. They met in Missouri and traveled together. They are on the 1850 Census in Oregon and might have killed each other if they had not gone west!
Norm

Two of my great grandfather's fought inthd Civil War. One was partially disabled. According to my grandparents, neither one wanted to talk about it or engage in anything about it.

Art Mirtes

China was ravaged by Mao's "Red Guards"... roving bands of young ignorami hell-bent on erasing History and traditional Chinese culture. Today, The USA is afflicted with similar groups of mental midgets, and their vandal runningdogs and media agitators and politician enablers and cheerleaders.