QOTD: Confederate celebration edition
by digby
Hell no, they ain’t forgot:
One hundred and fifty years ago an invading Union army was halted at Chattanooga by the Confederate Army of Tennessee under General Braxton Bragg. The Battle of Chickamauga was one of the bloodiest days of the entire Civil War, and a resounding defeat for the Northern forces. Today Southeastern Tennessee faces invasion from another union— an actual labor union, the United Auto Workers (UAW). The UAW has its heart set on organizing Chattanooga’s Volkswagen plant, which employs several thousand and supports thousands more throughout the Southeast. […]
No wonder Hamilton County Commissioner Tim Boyd warns that unionization “will be like a cancer on [Chattanooga’s] economic growth.” Indeed it would be, though perhaps an infection is a more apt metaphor, an infection borne by an invading union force from the North. One hundred and fifty years ago, the people of Tennessee routed such a force in the Battle of Chickamauga.
Let their descendants go now and do likewise.
The battle Patterson romanticizes in his column resulted in over 34,000 casualties. One of the leading officers in the battle, Brig. Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest—a wealthy slave-trader—went on after the war to found the Ku Klux Klan, a group that helped powerful elites suppress black-white labor unity through a campaign of terrorism and murder.
But hey, it’s all just a celebration of “heritage” dontcha know? Apparently, the confederates were all anti-union, which is kind of a surprise because the union movement didn’t exist at the time.
But unions did help a whole bunch of the people the confederacy sought to keep enslaved so I suppose it’s not all that surprising. Evidently, the would also like to keep white workers from having good paying, secure jobs as well. But then that was always part of the confederate plan as well and the way to make that work is to rile up the racist lizard brain and get them all fighting over the scraps. Same as it ever was.
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