TIL that Arlington National Park was confiscated by the U.S. federal government from the private ownership of Confederate States Army general Robert E. Lee.

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en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arlington_National_Ceme…

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Makes you think. Just what should we do with Mar-a-lago when this is all over?

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it's a golf course, which is, like, environmental imperialism or something. ecological deserts, wastes of water and space.

I say we repurpose it into a nature reserve, ie rip it all out and let nature take it back unimpeded, but under our protection

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LIke the finale of Yellowstone. Hell yes.

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Hear me out, but maybe we should properly enshrine the grave on the course.

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I say move the grave/body to a proper location, considering why she was buried there in the first place.

or maybe don't if the goal is erasure of all things Trump which was my unspoken goal for the nature reserve idea. undo his 'monuments' in the most antithetical way, make him forgotten

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They commit to history erasure, we do not.

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There is no high ground

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Is this a Florida sea level joke?

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I'm going to intentionally interpret your comment in a way I don't think it was intended.

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Low income housing developments for immigrants with free citizenship classes.

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maybe it stays as a golf course, but no use of pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, heavily limits on fertilizer use, no watering except collected rainwater, rainwater, and/or tertiary treated sewage, nothing motorized, and nothing electric except from more environmental sources—maybe have a few wind turbines there—and/or wp:nickel-iron batteries.

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Oh, see that's much more wholesome than what I was thinking.

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Pave over it and erase it from history.

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It really is a shame the Confederate generals weren't lined up and publicly hanged, but then as now, power gives you access to a different tier of 'justice'.

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Deleted by author

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Only if we sit back and do nothing to change it. Trump is not a unicorn, he is a horse. America chose to allow this over years and years of voting.

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We shoulda had him hanged by his balls.

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Andrew Johnson is still the worst president the US ever had. He led us to where we are today by allowing the cancer to live and eat us alive from the inside out.

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That would be to peaceful. I say set him on fire and let people take turns beating out the fire. Instead he became the 1st President of Washington and Lee University.

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maybe do a few years picking cotton, with ex-slaves as overseers.

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Good.

Lee's more strict expectations and harsher punishments of the slaves on Arlington plantation nearly led to a revolt, since many of the enslaved people had been given to understand that they were to be made free as soon as Custis died, and protested angrily at the delay.

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it doesn’t count if it’s from a terrorist leader.

/s

/s

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Deleted by moderator

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Lee's reputation as an honorable man is something of a fabrication by false lost cause narratives.

The reality is that his reputation and skill as a military leader was overblown, and he was as cruel an enslaver as they come. He felt slavery was a cause worth fighting for, all to protect his/his family's wealth. If he chose to fight for the south in spite of low odds of winning, it's only more indicative of just how strongly he supported the confederacy and the right to own people.

The notion that he only acted out of loyalty to his home state is the work of lost causers trying absolve him of responsibility for betraying his country. This way, he can continue filling the role of (white) people's hero long after his death and get monuments built for him that celebrate and perpetuate confederate ideals. If Lee's decision was normal, one might ask why General George Henry Thomas, another Virginian, still chose to fight for the United States alongside 100,000 other southern unionists who disagreed with secession.

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We were immediately taken before Gen. Lee (http://fair-use.org/national-anti-slavery-standard/1866/04/14/robert-e-lee-his-brutality-to-his-slaves), who demanded the reason why we ran away; we frankly told him that we considered ourselves free; he then told us he would teach us a lesson we never would forget; he then ordered us to the barn, where, in his presence, we were tied firmly to posts by a Mr. Gwin, our overseer, who was ordered by Gen. Lee to strip us to the waist and give us fifty lashes each, excepting my sister, who received but twenty; we were accordingly stripped to the skin by the overseer, who, however, had sufficient humanity to decline whipping us; accordingly Dick Williams, a county constable, was called in, who gave us the number of lashes ordered; Gen. Lee, in the meantime, stood by, and frequently enjoined Williams to lay it on well, an injunction which he did not fail to heed; not satisfied with simply lacerating our naked flesh, Gen. Lee then ordered the overseer to thoroughly wash our backs with brine, which was done.

Doesn't sound like he stood on the side of progress. You are either knowingly or unknowingly white washing him. I hope you are doing the latter.

https://acwm.org/blog/myths-misunderstandings-lee-slaveholder/

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What was the reason for the civil war?

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It's pretty much all about how they didn't think the feds should have a say in slavery.

So slavery?

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The civil war was absolutely fought over slavery. That was the reason given by every state that attempted to secede. Any suggestion otherwise is historical revisionism based on the lost cause narrative.

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What does this have to do what u/Stovetop said?

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I'm gonna need you to clarify your point some more

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wp:Robert E. Lee#Postbellum life

After the war, Lee was not arrested or punished (although he was indicted),[136] but he did lose the right to vote as well as some property. Lee's prewar family home, the Custis-Lee Mansion, was seized by Union forces during the war and turned into Arlington National Cemetery, and his family was not compensated until more than a decade after his death.[137]

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...was not compensated...

I thought I was going to have an aneurysm there, ngl

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He was that good of a general…

Somewhat related, he remains the only person to graduate West Point without a single demerit, IIRC. Granted, school accomplishments don’t necessarily translate into real world capability. Just a bit of trivia I’ve retained over the years.

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Lmao yeah right. If that were true he would have defected.

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