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Fox News anchor Sean Hannity promised to provide a much-needed history of the much-maligned Confederate flag. For a moment, it seemed as though he and his guest, Mark Steyn, would deliver on the promise and lift the veil of ignorance. But no: The two showmen conducted a tactical tit-for-tat. They pinned the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia on the Southern Democrats (aka Dixiecrats). “I’m too sexy for my sheet,” sneered Steyn.
It fell to the woman who used to come across as the consummate Yankee supremacist to edify. The new Ann Coulter is indeed lovely:
Also on Fox, Ms. Coulter remarked that she was “appalled by” South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley’s call “for the removal of the Confederate battle flag from the state Capitol.” As “a student of American history,” Coulter offered that “the Confederate flag we’re [fussing] about never flew over an official Confederate building. It was a battle flag. It is to honor Robert E. Lee. And anyone who knows the first thing about military history knows that there is no greater army that ever took to the battle field than the Confederate Army.”
And anyone who knows the first thing about human valor knows that there was no man more valorous and courageous than Robert E. Lee, whose “two uncles signed the Declaration of Independence and [whose] father was a notable cavalry officer in the War for Independence.”
The battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia—known as “Lee’s Army”—is not to be conflated with the “Stars and Bars,” which “became the official national flag of the Confederacy.” According to Sons of the South, the “first official use of the ‘Stars and Bars’ was at the inauguration of Jefferson Davis on March 4, 1861.” But because it resembled the “Stars and Stripes” flown by the Union, the “Stars and Bars” proved a liability during the Battle of Bull Run.
The confusion caused by the similarity in the flags was of great concern to Confederate General P.G.T. Beauregard. He suggested that the Confederate national flag be changed to something completely different, to avoid confusion in battle in the future. This idea was rejected by the Confederate government. Beauregard then suggested that there should be two flags. One, the national flag, and the second one a battle flag, with the battle flag being completely different from the United States flag.
Originally, the flag whose history is being trampled today was a red square, not a rectangle. Atop it was the blue Southern Cross. In the cross were—still are—13 stars representing the 13 states in the Confederacy.
Wars are generally a rich man’s affair and a poor man’s fight. Yankees are fond of citing Confederacy officials in support of slavery and a war for slavery. Most Southerners, however, were not slaveholders. All Southerners were sovereigntists, fighting a “War for Southern Independence.” They rejected central coercion. Southerners believed a union that was entered voluntarily could be exited in the same way. As even establishment historian Paul Johnson concedes, “The South was protesting not only against the North’s interference in its ‘peculiar institution’ but against the growth of government generally.”
Lincoln grew government, markedly, in size and in predatory boldness.
“Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,” wrote the South’s greatest hero, Gen. Lee. He did not go to war for that repugnant institution. To this American hero, local was truly beautiful. “In 1861 he was offered command of all the armies of the United States, the height of a soldier’s ambition,” chronicles Clyde Wilson, distinguished professor emeritus of history at the University of South Carolina. “But the path of honor commanded him to choose to defend his own people from invasion rather than do the bidding of the politicians who controlled the federal machinery in Washington.”
To his sister, Lee wrote: “With all my devotion to the Union, and the feeling of loyalty and duty of an American citizen, I have not been able to make up my mind to raise my hand against my relatives, my children, my home.” Lee, you see, was first and foremost a Virginian, the state that gave America its greatest presidents and the Constitution itself.
Lord Acton, the British historian of liberty, wrote to Lee in praise. The general, surmised Lord Acton, was fighting to preserve “the only availing check upon the absolutism of the sovereign will”: states’ rights and secession.
Lee’s inspired reply to Lord Acton:
“… I believe that the maintenance of the rights and authority reserved to the states and to the people … are the safeguard to the continuance of a free government … whereas the consolidation of the states into one vast republic, sure to be aggressive abroad and despotic at home, will be the certain precursor of that ruin which has overwhelmed all those that have preceded it.”
Another extraordinary Southerner was James Johnston Pettigrew. He gave his life for Southern independence, not for slavery. Quoting Pettigrew, professor Wilson likens the forbearance of his own Confederate forebears to “the small Greek city-states who stood against the mighty Persian Empire in the 5th century B.C.”
Not quite Leonidas’ 300 Spartans at Thermopylae, but close.
“The U.S. government had quadruple the South’s resources.” Yet “it took 22 million Northerners four years of the bloodiest warfare in American history to conquer five million Southerners,” who “mobilized 90 percent of their men and lost nearly a fourth.”
When they hoist the battle flag of the Army of Northern Virginia, it is these soldiers Southerners honor.
Unable to defeat the South, the U.S. government resorted to terrorism—to an unprecedented war against Southern women and children.
With their battle flag, Southerners commemorate these innocents.
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After the War between the States, the North promised to honor the Confederate Flag. That changed during the Black Civil Rights and Black Power movement. It was true that leftists hated what the Stars and Bars stood for. However, there were also Black Nationalists, Muslims, and Panthers who began to fly the African American flag (green, red, and black). Blacks were attracted to the flag because of the violence perpetuated against them by whites (which has now manifested in the person of Dylan Roof). I think manys whites including Mrs. Mercer is heavily opposed to all manifestation of Black Nationalism (Is that correct?). So an agreement emerged: blacks would bury their flag if southern whites would bury theirs.
More on this subject. Now, some patriotic Confederate want to get rid of an African American monument. It’s a pleasure to see how this charade plays out.
http://www.cbs46.com/story/29390279/upstate-man-pushes-petition-to-remove-african-american-monument
http://reverbpress.com/news/us/south-carolina-responds-removal-confederate-flag-demanding-removal-african-american-monument/
It’s amazing how quickly conservatives decide as one that it’s time to completely surrender to the left on a particular issue. They have wilted as one on the confederate battle flag.
“It’s amazing how quickly conservatives decide as one that it’s time to completely surrender to the left on a particular issue. They have wilted as one on the confederate battle flag.”
People who identify as “Republicans,” may well have surrendered on this issue, but no American conservative has. To describe someone as both an American, and a conservative, who also favors lowering the Confederate Battle Flag, is innately contradictory. Its akin to describing a man as a homosexual, and then also charcterizing him as a womanizer.
You can’t be both.
The left understands how powerful symbols are, and the flag is one of the most powerful. Apparently, many so-called conservatives do not understand the power of the battle flag of Northern Virgina, Lee’s army..
Unbelievably, the Feds ordered Amazon to stop selling the flags, and any products embodying them—this demonstrates the point, the South fought against a totalitarian State in the making.
Oh, come off it. Virtually every article of secession indicated that the main reason was slavery. We’ve heard all this rubbish about states rights, high tariffs, etc. for generations and it is no more true now than it was in 1861. The Confederacy was not only a lost cause, it was a vile one.
Where did you hear that the Feds ordered Amazon to stop selling Confederate battle flags? That was a business decision on their part.
Steyn, Hannity and Coulter are not Yankee names. And South Africans shouldn’t be throwing the term around promiscuously.
State sovereignty is fine, but where were the Southerners when the fugitive slave laws and the Dred Scott decision made a mockery of it? (Yes, they were constitutional. But they were anti-sovereignty as well.)
Why did an African (who had no business on the North American continent by any sane reckoning) have to cross the Niagara or Detroit river, rather than the Ohio, to be free? What was so special about Upper Canada?
How was this different from “Finlandization” in the 20th century?
The Confederate flag started flying over South Carolina’s capitol in 1963, around the same time that a great many Southern states started renaming public property after Confederate leaders and incorporating Confederate imagery into their state symbols that had not been there before.
The message behind these symbolic choices was clear. They symbolized state opposition to the Civil Rights movement, to the demise of Jim Crow, and to desegregation. In a word, they were symbols of racism and white supremacy and have remained so until this day.
Those who claim otherwise are being dishonest and daft.
There’s a building in Bedford, Pennsylvania, just a few miles from Shanksville where the “Let’s roll” plane went down on 9/11, that flies the Stars and Stripes on one corner of the building and the Star of David on the opposite corner.
it’s visible from Rte 30, “Lincoln Highway.”
What is good for goose is good for the gander.
Various Black and Hispanic groups not only support racial supremacy but openly support the dismembering of the U.S. and in some cases slaughtering whites – yet the so called enlightened liberal whites won’t dare criticize them. See it’s okay to demonize whites in their book, even support the destruction of the U.S. and a race war. But have a Southern Flag, OMG that’s cause for a liberal Jihad.
When the college educated white liberals openly condemn Farrakhan as a hate monger, poverty pimp and general treasonous POS, condemn La Raza and Mecha. I’ll start listening to what they have to say. But as of now they are merely loathsome political opportunists and moral lepers who used the deaths of those parishioners to get rid of something they’ve been trying for decades to do.
They are as evil as Roof.
Of course they won’t stop with the flag. The Left never does, tyrants love power and control too much. In it last stages it ends with much bloodshed, they just can’t help themselves. Their kind has left hundreds of millions dead over the last hundred years. Their side is synonymous with mass graves and execution pits.
So let Johnny Reb ride. The other side has zero moral credibility to say one word bad about it until they clean up their own side and they never will. That would require them having a moral compass which they lack.
Indeed. But the “lost cause” myth making is an article of faith. None of it of course takes away from the bravery of individual Confederate units and soldiers.
Robert E. Lee said:
“Slavery as an institution is a moral and political evil,” wrote the South’s greatest hero, Gen. Lee. He did not go to war for that repugnant institution.
But actually Lee did go to war for slavery. His own state, Virginia went to war because the federal government was hindering its power, and those of other southern slaveholding states, to have slavery, translating into about 30% of the population held in permanent, mulch-generational bondage. Here’s what the Virginia Ordinance of Secession says:
What was the power they held most dear that triggered the secession- slavery – and notice they mention the “southern slaveholding states” – again- slavery is the central issue. As for Robert E. Lee, he thought slavery was bad, but a NECESSARY evil, good for black people. Let’s quote from the remainder of his spiel:
Some critics say that in like manner, this reasoning would hold that the Holocaust was good for Jews because it would prepare them for better things, like getting them out of those awful European ghettoes and so on. But as for Providence, Lee skips the other side of the coin- that perhaps it WAS divine providence that finally lowered the boom on the southern slave regime an released millions from permanent bondage. In fact Abolitionists were saying such a long time- that judgment FROM a divine hand, would come on the South.
Unable to defeat the South, the U.S. government resorted to terrorism-to an unprecedented war against Southern women and children.
This is not so at all. The South was already on the ropes by the time Sherman made his long march. It was never a question of victory for the North in the latter stages- but simply a matter of time. And the South was soundly defeated using the same methods every other European nation used at the time. Sherman’s March was nothing special. European colonialists frequently used harsh “three all” methods- “burn all, kill all, destroy all” to crush the resistance of native peoples, including Native Americans. So did Napoleon in various of his conquests in Europe , as did Britain in its ruthless “scorched earth” campaigns in Ireland, and many others. In WW2 Allied bombers carpet bombed massive destruction and were cheered on by white American southerners, and indeed most Americans.
What rankles many about Sherman’s March is not simply the destruction of his logistics scorch campaign. As Victor Davis Hanson shows the young northern soldiers TOLD southerners WHY they were doing it- and didn’t mince words. They bluntly said that they were bringing home the costs of the war to the cotton barons and slave holders. Essentially they said, the free ride was over.
Here is what Hanson has to say about Sherman:
“Yet there was a method to Sherman’s mad five-week march. He burned plantations, freed slaves, destroyed factories, and tore up railroads—but more or less left alone the farms and small towns of ordinary Southerners. His purposes were threefold: to punish the plantation class, the small minority of Confederates who owned slaves, as the culprits for the war; to destroy the Southern economy and remind the general population, as Sherman put it, “that war and individual ruin were now to be synonymous”; and to humiliate the Confederate military, especially what he called the cavalier classes that boasted of their martial audacity but would not dare confront such a huge army of battle-hardened troopers from Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, and other Midwestern states. In this context, the message was not lost: Unionists were not just New England Yankee manufacturers, but farmers who did their own hard work in harsh, cold lands more challenging than temperate Georgia; material advantages and repeating rifles were not antithetical to martial audacity, as a Michigan farmer with a Sharps rifle was more than a match for a plumed Southern cavalryman who boasted of killing Yankees.
Sherman was hated not so much because he killed Southerners: in comparison to Grant’s bloodbath in northern Virginia, probably less than 1,000 Confederates were killed during the March to the Sea. Rather, he humiliated the South by having supposedly less-audacious Northerners taunting the South to attack them on their own turf, and exposing the plantation class as hollow, showing them more willing to flee their rich and hitherto untouched plantations than to die while protecting them.”
http://victorhanson.com/wordpress/?p=7734
Two of them were born in New York City and the third is a Canadian. So two of them are Yankees and the other is a dirty immigrant.
More accurately known as the Cross of St. Andrew.
Very prescient. I have always respected Gen. Lee, and now my estimation of the man has just increased again.
Blacks in the South have no particular grievance toward their fellow Southerners. They don’t care about the flag issue. It is almost totally a Northern-fanned conflagration. And I seriously doubt Obama understands much about our history and the Northern part played in slavery.
There is a LARGE body of historical documents that refute what you wrote. You might want to expand your reading horizons.
NO CONNECTION BETWEEN SHOOTING IN CHARLESTON AND THE CONFEDERATE FLAG.
BAN THE AMERICAN FLAG—SYMBOL OF GOVT. TERROR.
Thanks for the great article, Ma’m.
The call to remove the flag after the shooting has no connection to the shooting.
By that logic, since American troops have killed more people the world over than the Southerners ever did in the Civil War, the American flag should be banned instead.
“Those who claim otherwise are being dishonest and daft.”
Throwing a bit of poison in the well are we?
“The message behind these symbolic choices was clear. They symbolized state opposition to the Civil Rights movement”
Your disputable assignment of motives, although a self-referential exercise in long-distance regional mind reading, does not negate or even address Ann Coulter’s statements. The Virginian battle-flag was a symbol of brave resistance to federal oppression, not a symbol of slavery. The flag was carried into battle by brave men, very few of whom owned slaves, defending their homes and families from the rape and pillage that followed at the hand of the imperial federal army. To say otherwise is an example of historical and cultural ignorance driven by knee-jerk genuflecting to popular pap. There, I can toss a little packet down the well also.
It was also good that Coulter ripped on Haley for being an immigrant. One who doesn’t have ancestry that lived, fought, and died in the Civil War isn’t going to understand why certain controversial symbols of it are important.
The Southern white descendents of Confederate soldiers and Southern residents get to decide the future of the Stars and Bars. No one else does.
@Robert Kelley, @Enrique Cardova, @Epaminondas
Original sources are best. From Virginia’s articles of secession:
“The people of Virginia, in their ratification of the Constitution of the United States of America, adopted by them in Convention on the twenty-fifth day of June, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and eighty-eight, having declared that the powers granted under the said Constitution were derived from the people of the United States, and might be resumed whensoever the same should be perverted to their injury and oppression; and the Federal Government, having perverted said powers, not only to the injury of the people of Virginia, but to the oppression of the Southern Slaveholding States.
Now, therefore, we, the people of Virginia, do declare and ordain that the ordinance adopted by the people of this State in Convention, on the twenty-fifth day of June, eighty-eight, whereby the Constitution of the United States of America was ratified, and all acts of the General Assembly of this State, ratifying or adopting amendments to said Constitution, are hereby repealed and abrogated; that the Union between the State of Virginia and the other States under the Constitution aforesaid, is hereby dissolved, and that the State of Virginia is in the full possession and exercise of all the rights of sovereignty which belong and appertain to a free and independent State. And they do further declare that the said Constitution of the United States of America is no longer binding on any of the citizens of this State.”
From the Texas articles of secession:
“Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery– the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits– a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time…”
“We hold as undeniable truths that the governments of the various States, and of the confederacy itself, were established exclusively by the white race, for themselves and their posterity; that the African race had no agency in their establishment; that they were rightfully held and regarded as an inferior and dependent race, and in that condition only could their existence in this country be rendered beneficial or tolerable…”
I think his point is that Steyn is Jewish. Hannity and Coulter, I don’t know where that’s coming from. Hannity’s of Irish descent, and Coulter’s parents were from Albany and Kentucky. So I guess they weren’t *New England* Yankees, but my understanding is you just have to be from north of the Mason-Dixon line to count.
This is another attempt by our corporate New York based rulers to stamp out any sign of rebellion, hence their hatred of the rebel flag. They call it a symbol of racism, claiming that’s what it represents, even though 95% of those who fought for the South had no slaves. If you cite historical facts, it is only because you are a racist. Here are some snippets from my blog.
Our history books and corporate media simplify our greatest national disaster – the Civil War. For example, four slave states never declared a secession: Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. They were allowed to keep 800,000 slaves during the war as they sent troops with Union armies to reclaim federal property in the South, not to free slaves. (see my Jan 2, 2011 blog for details) These states are referred to as “border states” in books, rather than loyal slave states, so as not to confuse the public.
Lincoln’s 1863 Emancipation Proclamation did not apply to these states. Missouri and Maryland abolished slavery during the war. In Kentucky and Delaware, 40,000 slaves remained after the war, until freed by the ratification of the 13th Amendment in December 1865. One reason Lincoln finally acted was because as Union armies invaded the south, Generals did not know what to do about slaves in areas they occupied. Some Union Generals returned them to their owners, because that was the law.
Lincoln finally “freed the slaves” by enforcing the “Second Confiscation Act”, which was passed by Congress in July 1862 to free the slaves, but Lincoln took the position that Congress lacked power to free slaves unless Lincoln as commander-in-chief deemed it a proper military measure, which he did a year later. Note the British used a far more “civil” method of ending slavery in its Caribbean colonies. It banned the practice and compensated slave owners.
Delaware organized several Union regiments that fought in the Civil War. Here is photo of this slave state’s Union soldiers ready to die, to free slaves? They could have swept through their own state to accomplish that. As I’ve discussed many times, interesting history is whitewashed. The State of Delaware’s detailed website of the Civil War fails to mention that it remained a slave state during the war. No need to confuse the public with facts.
However, I agree that displaying the stars and bars on government property is unnecessary since some find it offensive. But I wish a reporter would corner Vice President Joe Biden and ask why his state remained a slave state during and after the civil war, and why its union soldiers invaded the south.
Hannity is Irish, therefore he cannot be a WASP which is what ‘Yankee’ actually means.
Once again, the forces of southern gallantry ride out into their mythic glory.
Bah. Reagan did the southern strategy to win, and in the process destroyed the Republican Party.
As one of those descendents of the South, put the stars and bars to rest in the pages of a history book.
Now, in reality, once again, the rich are using this to color their control of the populace.
The war was brought through the threat of losing the greater part of their wealth, which was slaves and the ability to use their labor to make the rich much richer.
And that resentment of the rich was a huge background issue for years in the south, and the fact crackers that died for the stars and bars and “States Rights” died in vain rubbed raw for a long time.
Now, once again, the rich are using state’s rights as a dog whistle to rally the fools to die for them.
Suckers.
They were suckers in 1861, and they are suckers today.
And if you can’t see those rich F&cks selling you out as fast as they can get it done, just look at the trade pact cash a thon. And a bunch of the most racist cracker southern Rep pols have their hands out, all the while selling their voters right down the river.
The nonwhite majority Democratic Party has exterminated over two thousand Conservative Orthodox Christian Russian speaking Ukranians in the past year….including the young pregnanat Conservative Orthodox Christian Woman hung from a street light. The majority nonwhite Democratic Party headed by a nosepicking narcissistic homosexual Kenyan Foriegner threatens Conservative Orthodox Christian Russia with thermonuclear annihilation every day.
The American Flag=nonwhite majority Democratic Party=the Party of MASS EXTERMINATION!!!!!!=SPLC=The Blessings of Diversity!!!!!!!
http://www.blackpast.org/perspectives/black-laws-oregon-1844-1857
Wait a few years, perhaps there will be a Jacobin mob against Portlandia
EVERY ONE OF YOU would give your left nut to be this Cool. Don’t lie, even the broads…
Video Link
Native Born White American Christians must withdraw their consent to be governed by the Decadent Giant Gay Pride Parade armed with several thousand ICBMS aimed at The Conservative Orthodox Christian Russian People.
DON’T VOTE……DON’T VOTE…VOTING GIVES CONSENT TO BE GOVERNED…let Hillary Clinton finish off the stinking rotting repellant Gay Bath-House Toilet Bowl known as AMURRRICA….
Curiously, but not surprisingly, you don’t list a singe one that refutes what Kelley says above. But here’s a historical document that backs Kelley up. Its a Declaration of Secession by another of the southern states, and um, you notice like the Virginia example above, it ALSO mentions slavery.. but of course we all “know,” slavery had little or nothing to do with the Civil War.. lol … right ………..
So much for “documentation”..
Leonidas was a king of a city-state built on Helot labor, so the parallel is better than the author thinks. I love that Herodotus claims to have memorized all the 300’s names, he thought so highly of their accomplishment.
Anyone from north of the Ohio River is a Yankee. Being born in the cesspit known as New York City makes you a Yankee by birth.
why the divide? aren’t we all americans? shouldn’t those that died for the south in the civil war be just americans?
I find it odd that conservative = being a southerner to some. that is some weird concept.
heh
NYC
Land of the self-hating zio-WASP
how ’bout them apples.
Actually, there is a small wrinkle in that in the actual North, a Yankee is a rural New Englander.
Conversely, in the rest of the world, a Yankee is any American, north or south.
But I’m pretty sure Mercer means a native of the states that fought for the Union in the Civil War.
There is a divide because each region has a different culture.
“Unbelievably, the Feds ordered Amazon to stop selling the flags…”
Yeah, that’s pretty unbelievable, alright. Like in the sense that if you do believe it, you’re kinda silly.
You ain’t from around here, are you?
Yes, but, it really doesn’t matter why the Southern states seceded. The war was fought over the fact that they did secede, not over why they did it. The war was fought over the issue of secession from the Union, period.
This 1862 quote from then-President Abraham Lincoln, supports my contention:
“My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union.”
It switches around. The South was Democratic for a while.
Besides, arguably, they died so they would not be Americans, but Southerners.
Jeez! Whatevah would give ya that idea? Do ya have to be a Southerneh to cawment on dese tawpics?
Yes, but, it really doesn’t matter why the Southern states seceded.
This is very true when it comes to the Battle Flag. If you have decades of experience reading the media, you know they never miss an opportunity for a good hate. There are a lot of hearts filled with hate out there, it seems.
“Amazing Grace”: Isn’t that by a whitey? Sounds like “cultural appropriation”, which my edition of the Libtard Dictionary says is a microaggression.
Oh, wait: I just received a tweet from Shit’avious Brown that says “Amazing Grace” was taken from an old Yoruba lullaby.
It’s mostly Jewish supremacists trashing the South, but whatever…..
Yes, but, it really doesn’t matter why the Southern states seceded. The war was fought over the fact that they did secede, not over why they did it. The war was fought over the issue of secession from the Union, period.
This is just plain sophistry. Of course it matters WHY they seceded. If “WHY” did not matter then almost every Southern state that seceded would not even have bothered to mention the central cause of that secession- slavery. The confederate states themselves did not hesitate to explain WHY. It is amusing to see today’s “heritage” types attempt to deny, what the Confederates back then, clearly and plainly affirm. Slavery was what it was all about.
Here’s the South Carolina Declaration of Secession. As can be seen, it mattered very much to them “why” and they do not attempt to do any heritage whitewash. The good folk f South Carolina lay out their central grievance in detail- SLAVERY. Quote:
^^Yet we keep being told today in many quarters that the war was “not about slavery,” even as statements by the Confederate states themselves debunk such claims….
——————————————- ————————–
As for the flag, it is often noted that its prominent modern use is VERY RECENT- back to the 1960s as a matter of fact, in response to the gains of the Civil Rights movement. As one writer says:
Unfortunately for many of today’s neo-Confederate heritage revisionists, the documents of their own lost cause contradict their claims..
Southerners, before the war, had a long standing tradition of being pro-Union. Presidents Jackson and A. Johnson typified this. It wasn’t until shortly before the war that southerners felt they had been pushed too far by federal power. Political circumstance and maneuvering – on both sides – lead to secession. The secession movement and the war were very avoidable, but special interests wouldn’t allow that to happen. The “war was necessary to end slavery” mythology was created to justify the death and destruction of the Civil War after the fact. A good article by Ilana Mercer.
Like it or not, the Confederate States did wage a war to try to sustain slavery. I would argue that it was a backwards cause in many ways and one that was morally bankrupt.
There were of course other causes that drove the US Civil War, such as issues of trade, the compromises that had been made in the US Constitution, and so on, but slavery was one of the central issues.
A simple look at the statements issued and the Confederate States Constitution should give an idea of the grievances that were levied by the South against the North.
As far as what is happening now though, I have always maintained that the Culture Wars as they are known (and are still continuing) are an attempt by the very wealthy to divide society. The Southern Strategy that was pioneered after the US Civil Rights movement was used to exploit the resentment of the white working class and get them to vote against their own interests.
The Democrats are not much better. They run on supposedly progressive platforms and betray them – enforcing neo-liberal economics and continuing the wars. Look at Obama as an example.
Do you think he is really that bad a singer or did he think it un-presidential to sing too good in public? But maybe good singing is specific to West Africans, and Kenyan blood results in notes held too long and poor pitch recognition.
In his notes to the online transcription of Douglas Freeman’s biography of Robert E. Lee, Thayer writes:
–Bill Thayer
Winners write the history. In other news, wars are generally fought over resources.
Now, why did tariffs matter so much at the time?
Jeezus, Troof. I have this horrible, sneaking suspicion, that you might actually mean what you’re saying, here.
Say it ain’t so!
Even more than Obama’s usual attempts to simulate honest-to-goodness negritude, that’s just so hopelessly gay.
My most recent two posts should address this:
200 Blog Posts – Everything You Need to Know (To Start) – section: The American Nations | JayMan’s Blog
and
The Rise of Universalism | JayMan’s Blog
1. I guess you’re screwed then, because this southern white isn’t burying anything.
2. No, of course I’m not opposed to black nationalism, at all. I’m heavily in favor. Why would any racial nationalist be opposed to racial nationalism, unless they’re hypocritical supremacists, like so many Jews?
Indeed, I’m quite pleased to see the Federal Monster hates Confederate flags. Wouldn’t want it any other way.
Nope. The cause was self-determination. That slavery helped set it in motion is immaterial.
Nonsense. Doesn’t matter why the enemies of freedom don’t want you to be free. Once they’ve taken that stand, doesn’t matter what else your symbol of freedom symbolizes, either.
Yankees saying that slavery de-legitimizes the Second War for Independence is like an abusive husband saying the way his wife treated her dog de-legitimizes her divorce application. I.e., it makes no sense. She is either free, and has the right to divorce, or she’s not free, and she doesn’t.
Nonsense. I am a Southerner, and a Protestant, and an Anglo-Saxon.
Your blood doesn’t mean much to me. The fact that you don’t know that no one’s fighting over the Stars and Bars does, though.
This. It’s fun to watch Yankees debase themselves by avoiding this (in service of those great leftist champions, the northeast and the federal gov’t).
Yankee “logic” is fun. Please explain to us, oh Yankee Aristotle, how one follows from the other.
Still wrong. You can fill in any reason you like for why the Southern States seceded, none of them would change the fact that the Union wasn’t going to allow it.
It’s fun to watch Yankees squirm and humiliate themselves over this. “Our wars of aggression are always justified! Justified I tell you!!!” they squeak.
A Yankee will always seek to cover his aggression in holiness. Something about their bad wiring.
Don’t you get it? Secession statements from southern state governments prove the war was fought over slavery. Lincoln threatening to invade any state not collecting the full tariff rate in his inaugural address, his support of a constitutional amendment to forever allow slavery, his enforcement of the fugitive slave act the war, statements like you quoted, and the Emancipation Proclamation exempting down to the county level any area in the south under northern control are all just more supporting evidence that Lincoln fought the war to end slavery!
Because it is not possible for secession to be for different reasons than a war being fought, which is why the Soviets should have invAded every state attempting to leave. Clearly, the same slave owning people who had just seceded from Britain a few decades before made it illegal to secede and Lincoln was correct to invade the state’s trying to leave. And while we bring up the quotes of state’s seceding, let’s make sure and avoid what those same states said about issues like secession in their ratification debates!
And don’t you neo confederates even think about questioning why all of the cultural MArxists have the exact same views on the war and Lincoln as do people calling themselves conservative. Al Sharpton, tanisha Coates, and Obama just happen to be 100 percent right!
Let’s get the facts straight about who the big southern US slave owners were.
Black American scholar Dr. Tony Martin found that according to US census records 70% of pre-Civil War Jew households owned slaves in the US south. Vastly, vastly exceeding non-Jew southern households.
see:
Suppressing Jewry’s Role in Slavery
http://forum.codoh.com/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=7909
Something the hate mongering supremacist Jew dominated media & ‘academia’ will never discuss.
also see:
Dr. Tony Martin – The Jewish Role in the African Slave Trade
Video Linkand:
Dr. Tony Martin, Blacks, Self-Determination And The Jewish Onslaught
https://vidrebel.wordpress.com/2012/11/20/tony-morrison-blacks-self-determination-and-the-jewish-onslaught/
Not all conservatives are from the South, nor are all Republicans. Maybe they never cared.
No, he doesn’t “get” your embarrassingly bad Yankee logic. The war was fought over secession, not slavery.
Wrong; the states that attempted to secede are still in the Union.
“If the Confederacy had only seceded over States Rights (or some other unicorn-like reason that the Union would have supposedly accepted), and not Slavery, the Union would have gladly let them go in peace!”
That’s the argument the Yankee liars are making. All this to avoid acknowledging the fact that their precious Union fought an illegal war of aggression to prevent secession (which is always justified, btw; you don’t only have the right to quit your job for reasons that Yankee Imperialists approve). And the fact that from a Conservative POV, the former Confederate States would be far better off today if they’d won the Second War of Independence; pick any post-bellum liberal legislative monstrousity you like, and odds are about 19 in 20 that it originated in with the Yankees, and was passed over the opposition of the former Confederate States (the “neo-marxist” bit was a real laugh, seriously, thanks for that one, Yankee).
But whatever helps ’em sleep at night, I suppose.
“We must not allow the Vietnamese to succeed in their war of liberation to throw off the foreign yoke…because they chose communism. That makes their war against our aggression illegitimate.”
“We must not allow the South to succeed in the second war of American independence…because they chose slavery. That makes their war against our aggression illegitimate.”
Yankee imperialists are nothing if not consistent.
This is a long shot, but are you the same Carlton Meyer who wrote for The Oil Drum? If so, I liked your work.
How Jewish is Steyn? Sounds like a mongrel to me. (There are more Steyns in South Africa than anywhere else, but I don’t see a connection to Mark.) Hannity is Irish, Coulter Scots-Irish.
None of them trace to the Winthrop Fleet, let alone the Mayflower, and they don’t eat pie for breakfast. So they ain’t Yankees. (Does Ann even eat breakfast?)
Mark Steyn is not Jewish, by Jewish law or in any meaningful sense. Wikipedia says he’s some tiny fraction Jewish (one eighth), but his family–both sides–were Catholics and he was raised Catholic before becoming an Anglican.
I’ve read his quip that–paraphrasing–he gets to play being Jewish on TV. Folks just seem to assume he is.
The original sources you’re citing show that both states’ rights in general AND slavery in particular were reasons for secession. Also, the second wave of seceding states, Virginia, North Carolina, Tennessee and Arkansas, seceded in large part because they didn’t want to participate in an invasion of the seven states which had seceded first (Texas, Louisiana, Mississipppi, Alabama, Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina.)
Bankers in New York were at least as prone to manipulating the masses as were planters in Mississippi, and more adept at it. They won.
Mississippi was ONE of 11 Confederate states. It had the most slavery dominated economy of all of them. It consisted overwhelmingly of plantation country with only a small portion of hill country in its extreme northeast, which was populated by small independent white farmers. Mississippi was the last majority African-American state. It remained majority African-American up through the end of WWII.
[It is preferable not to leave a large number of short comments, but to combine them together into one or two much longer and more substantive ones.]
One line in an Irish song is “He bought himself a Yankee car, haul a-way-ay the di-zo.” The Irish in Ireland refer to Americans, including identifiable Irish-Americans, as “Yanks.”
It’s not beyond the realm of possibility that there was some unofficial pressure. More likely they saw the light on their own.
South Carolina was runner up to Mississippi for the title of Confederate state with the most slavery dominated economy. It remained majority African-American up through the end of WWI. There were two groups of states which seceded. Seven states seceded not long after Lincoln was elected. Four states seceded when Lincoln called for the loyal states to raise troops to invade the seven states which had already seceded. Someone here quoted an excerpt from the Virginia secession ordnance. The excerpt provided only weak evidence tending to show that slavery was THE issue which caused Virginia’s secession. Please enlighten us on the Arkansas, Tennessee, and North Carolina ordnances of secession.
Well, this is what happens when a person with no math literacy buys into half-truths peddled by racists.
If 70% of Jewish households in the Old South owned slaves, then the only thing that particular statistic shows is that Jewish households were inordinately wealthy. You can chalk that up to whatever conspiracy theory you like, but that’s all it means. It is not true, nor does this statistic imply, that Jews were the majority of slaveholders. To make that determination, you’d need to know a few things not discussed here, most importantly what percentage Jewish people made up of the general population in the South.
If we assume that the percentage of Jews living in the Old South was a smaller percentage than the percentage of Jews living in the United States overall today — which I think we must, given that the largest emigration of Jews from Europe (1880-1915) had yet to occur, then it’s 70% of 2%, or 1.4%. That’s of the 5% or so of all households that owned slaves overall. So non-Jews still were more likely to be slaveowners than Jews. Sorry to burst your Jew-hating bubble.
Right. It’s the “Jew dominated media” that’s hateful, not you.
P-R-O-J-E-C-T-I-O-N
The South has always been the rival to New England in politics, they almost never voted the same way in elections.
The Dixiecrats were conservative socially, and went both ways on fiscal issues. Their worst aspect was the unchecked support for the military-industrial complex, but it did industrialize the South.
New England formerly elected liberal Republicans like Ed Brooke from MA, John Chaffee from RI, Lowell Wiecker from CT, Jim Jeffords from VT. These Rs were diehard social liberals, but believed that balanced budgets required tax hikes, something Paul ‘Ayn’ Ryan will never get.
The New England settled WA and OR followed similar patterns. Someone like Mark Hatfield, who was pro-Soviet and pro-life, is unthinkable today.
Also important, the Northeast/Midwest has been losing House seats, and the South is gaining seats.
This isn’t harming the GOP/conservatism that much though, the worst aspect is mass immigration and the annihilation in California. In 1994, CA elected 26 Republicans to the House, in 2014, it elected 14.
Playing “what if” is fun, but limited. A Confederate landing on Mars may have been just as likely as a “North Haiti”.
The proper solution to our regional problems is to divide this country into 5 confederacies of 10 states or so. The significantly weakened federal government would control only the state and defense departments. It would be like a slightly more influential British Commonwealth.
While I’m blowing smoke, how about a “war of liberation” in Alberta to remove the NDP government.
What will GOP do about its Jew Envy and Jew Deficit?
There was a time when both Dems and GOP were white gentile parties.
GOP was the Wasp and wanna-be-Wasp party.
Dem was the southern party, working class party, NE elite party, and immigrant party(and most immigrants were non-Jews).
But over time, Dems became the Jewish country club party.
But GOP remained the wasp country club party.
Why did this matter?
Jewish talent was considerable. Also, Jews had moral capital with the Holocaust and by associating Holocaust with ‘genocide’ of Indians and slavery of blacks.
As a result white gentiles got stuck with moral deficit whereas Jews gained infinite moral surplus.
Jews had three M’s. Mental capital, material capital(lots of wealth), and moral capital.
GOP had material capital and some mental capital(but increasingly lagging behind Jews and libs as too much GOP power was based on tradition and privilege than drive and talent).
So, GOP, filled with Jew Envy, figured they gotta woo the Jews to overcome the Jew Deficit.
But what this did was mute conservative criticism of Jewish power while Jewish power worked 24/7 to destroy conservative white power.
Trump and Coulter beats up on Mexicans, Chinese, Arabs, Russians, and etc but are totally shhhhhhhhh about Jews.
—————
I think there was a time when the Dems might have lost the Jews… if not for Clinton.
As Jews got richer and richer, it was harder for them to be leaders of a party of white working class, endless black resentment(especially as black violence was destroying centers of Jewish power like NY and LA–oh the riots), unions, and etc.
But Jews still wanted to be associated with ‘victim’-hood than with privilege. So, they didn’t want to go over to GOP. Instead, they used Neocon proxies to schmooze the GOP with the false hope of winning over more Jews.
With Clinton as president, blacks got locked up big time(and Jewish-dominant cities sprung back to life with the aid of homo gentrification pioneers), Dems became the ‘free trade’ party(look at Obama’s new trade deal), Wall Street and big business got special prizes, and etc.
So, the Dem party was essentially remade into the Jewish wealth and privilege party that expends most energy on homo, homo, and homo.. and now tranny, tranny, tranny.
Who would have the thought the first black president would be the ‘first homo president’.
Obama, as in his younger days, pimps himself out to the powerful.
A very good point when you think of what the Yankee Northern flag stands for. Let us see we have a centralized dictatorial government that conducts the foreign policy of perpetual war. We have a nation that has never been at peace for more than a two year period. We have a nation that completely ignored the Geneva Convention which it signed and which forbade the targeting of non combatants; in the Second European War of the 20th century American bombers continually bombed civilian targets throughout Europe and Germany resulting in the deaths of four million German civilians. We also can add in the unrestricted bombing of Japanese civilians which terminated in the nuking of two major Japanese cities reducing them to rubble and causing hundreds of thousands of civilian deaths. We also have the historical behavior of Abe Lincoln’s army in unrestricted warfare against the South resulting the burning of at least six American cities and the resulting thousands of civilian casualties. Now in the modern times the Yankee flag flies over the abortion mills in the American Empire where in the course of forty years over fifty million babies were aborted i.e. murdered by their mothers. There is so much innocent blood on the Yankee banner any decent person should be ashamed to bow down to it and or salute it. Robert E Lee was a man of deep Christian faith and a man of basic decency who regularly advised his troops to not commit atrocities. American Yankee presidents have rarely been Christian or God fearing men; most of them worshipped the international banks and their culture. And finally the American Civil War was not started over the evils of slavery but rather on the desire of Northern bankers to plunder the South and to show the rest of the country that they were in control. Their poster boy was John Brown an abolitionist terrorist who preached nothing but hatred and murder towards Southerners . Their hymn is a blood curdling cry of killing and slaughter and anyone who is not drunk and hears the “Battle Hymn of the Republic” hears the cries of murdering mobs seeking to kill in order to establish their brave new world.
Whether slavery was an issue or not, the fact is the main reason for the war was secession.
Think of it this way. Suppose the South had ended slavery in 1850, a decade before the Civil War. Suppose all of America became free. Then, suppose for some reason or other, the South decided to secede as it was guaranteed in the Constitution. Would Lincoln called for a war to preserve the union? Yes.
So, even if the South had been free, there would have been a war if the South had opted to leave the Union. So, secession was more the issue than slavery.
Also, every people have a right to defend itself EVEN IF they have slavery.
After all, Russia had serfdom when Napoleon and the French invaded in the name of liberating Russia with ‘liberty, equality, and fraternity’. But Russians fought and resisted because they hated the idea of foreigners invading their motherland.
Likewise, Iraqis have been resisting the American Invasion. Americans can talk about ending tyranny and bringing democracy, but a people don’t like to be invaded and occupied.
“A Yankee will always seek to cover his aggression in holiness. Something about their bad wiring.”
It seems anti-southern zealotry is more the feature of Judeo-supremacism than Yankee supremacism.
I am south of the Line and I can count.
Henry Clay had a plan to sell off western lands to fund the purchase of slaves and their ‘colonization’ to Africa. It may have happened, if the cotton gin was never invented.
The first attempt at secession was in New England in 1815. Some of the Radical abolitionists talked about it before 1861, but they chose the John Brown option instead.
—
The likeliest we will see a secession effort soon, would be if Sessions (or some other nationalist) is elected President next year. Presuming a GOP congress, immigration would be halted, and services to illegals barred by legislation. If the court challenges failed, some states and cities will resist.
California would nullify that legislation. Imagine a Southern conservative faced with the choice to send the Army into a liberal state.
“Jewish talent was considerable. Also, Jews had moral capital with the Holocaust and by associating Holocaust with ‘genocide’ of Indians and slavery of blacks.
As a result white gentiles got stuck with moral deficit whereas Jews gained infinite moral surplus.”
I mostly chalk Jewish success up to being extremely tribal, while pushing to have white cohesiveness outlawed. Nothing admirable about making war on fellow citizens, or in being dishonest racial middlemen.
What does the holocaust have to do with America, anyway? Time will tell how much of the official story is even true. What happens if the official story, like the civil rights myth, is built on considerable dishonesty?
“The blacks are immeasurably better off here than in Africa, morally, physically, and socially. The painful discipline they are undergoing is necessary for their further instruction as a race, and will prepare them, I hope, for better things. How long their servitude may be necessary is known and ordered by a merciful Providence.”
Dear Enrique:
That is all true. If you want a real history of slavery, read Thomas Sowell’s “Black Rednecks and White liberals.” Don’t watch “Roots.” Dr. Sowell, a black conservative, highlights that slavery has been around since the dawn of man, that it was practiced in nearly every civilization around the world, that it was all about the strong taking advantage of the weak (as opposed to whites of blacks), that American blacks were more fortunate that other slaves around the world, and that white southerners were not so much opposed to freedom for black slaves so much as allowing them to remain within the Deep South. Many white elites wanted to relocate the freedmen to the unsettled Western territories and put them on reservations like the Native Americans. That way, they couldn’t cause any problems.
My post was not so much speculating on the morality of the Confederate flag. It was more on the view of the flag by American blacks and the opposition faced by its white southern supporters.
The dark blue counties on this map voted for your bloodthirsty baby bomber, the red ones, against. The same fellow who tricked us into that Second European War.
Take a few minutes to piece your skull back together after viewing that. You’re going to need it to switch from “Yankees supported firebombing” to “Yankees supported Hitler”.
South Carolina was blacker even than Mississippi. Both had black majorities until the 1940 Census. 1950 was the first Census since 1810 to show a white majority in every state, and the last ever to do so, as Hawaii was admitted before the next one.
Steyn(i.e. Stone in English and pronounced like “stain” in Dutch or Afrikaans) is a very common surname in Holland and northern Belgium.
Mark Steyn’ s grandfather or great-grandfather was Flemish.
He might have some Jewish ancestry but I’m pretty sure it would not have come through that Flemish Steyn ancestor.
Not all of what you cite necessarily supports your point of view. But whatever. Point of contention: if it matters WHY Southern states seceded (and as a purely observational matter I agree that it does, although I have no moral problem per se with the holding of slaves), then it also matters when and why “Honest” Abe chose to emancipate the slaves. Here’s a hint: it wasn’t out of some moralistic Human Rights fervor, that’s for sure.
There won’t be any nationalists nominated by either party. It is a dirty word to the New York-Washington elites who run the former US. The scenario described by Tom Chittum years ago in Civil War 2 looks a lot more likely. Tom did not anticipate the emergence of a fourth tribe contending for lebensraum though – the urban LGBT trendy/techno crowd – obviously a power now with their President Obama.
It’s instructive that few New Englanders feel much pride in their ancestors from that period. They really don’t celebrate them. They just want to humiliate and denigrate the South.
Which is the same attitude their great-great grandpappy had. Don’t let anyone tell you hate doesn’t affect history.
makes no sense! but a person .0000000000001% of African ancestry is ” black”!
It is obvious that slavery has been around for millenia! The problem is the Pilgrims fleeing religious persecution and the monarchy only to position slavery as part of an economic system along with racist laws to prop up said system despite it being immoral, unethical but legal under a system pretending that all men were equal before the law when picking winners and losers!
Aren’t Southerners just another people conquered by an empire and then used by it? Like the Highlanders and the Gurkhas, they screw you and then they use you. Especially when your boys have the “fighting spirit” (i.e. make such fine cannon fodder). They admire your martial prowess in public but privately agree on your inferiority and backwardness.
I lived in the Southland for quite some time and never understood that weird cultural cognitive dissonance. You’d spout pro-U.S. propaganda and demonize the Soviets by day, and then retire to the beer joints in the evening to bitch about what Lincoln and Sherman did to you. I suppose it’s partly explained by the fact that you’ve been enjoying the benefits of Imperial membership (albeit junior) for 150 years (not to mention industrialization and electrification). But not entirely.
If your heritage means that much to you, then why don’t you fight for it? I mean fight, like your ancestors did, with guns (this comment would apply Americans in general these days). You can find a Federal garrison much closer to your home than Fort Sumter, wherever you live in the South (and whose fault is that, by the way?). Make some history, instead of pissing and moaning about that gone by.
Or show some dignity and recognize that the Confederate flag is just a sop from your Imperial overlords, and if they decide to take it away from you (and no, it’s no more your state capitol than it’s your state guard) then the correct response is: “Yes sir, we see your point sir, just like we did when the Vietnam war was raging, sir.”
P.S. The anti-flag people are wrong, of course. The Union Jack and the Rising Sun both flew proudly over the deaths of millions, and are still in use, still respected by many. But I notice those precedents don’t seem very useful to the 21st-century rebels, perhaps for understandable reasons.
So where is the black / white dividing line?
%1 Black? %10? %25?
I’m giving you the power right now to make this decision right now, and your decision is to be unquestioned and universal in perpetuity from this day on, so tell us…
“So where is the black / white dividing line?”
He be drinking Colt 45.
“This is just plain sophistry. Of course it matters WHY they seceded.”
I don’t see why. If the South had seceeded for some other reason, say because they really liked jellybeans, for example, the war still wouldve transpired. The war occured because the USA is a prison, and you’re not allowed to leave. It doesn’t matter why you want to leave. If you try to leave, there will be a war. Whether your motivation is White Supremacy, or a disproportionate fondness for waffles. It makes no difference.
“Don’t you get it? Secession statements from southern state governments prove the war was fought over slavery.”
No, as I’ve already explained, the war was fought over secession, period. It doesn’t matter why the Southern states seceeded from the Union, as there would have been a war on any secessionary basis what-so-ever. The motives of the Southerners in choosing to secede, were supremely irrelevant. If they had seceeded for astrological motivations, the war still would’ve occurred. The USA is simply not a voluntary association, despite what people who’ve read the 9th & 10th Amendments might otherwise be inclined to suppose. The USA is a prison, for its various member states.
“Like it or not, the Confederate States did wage a war to try to sustain slavery. I would argue that it was a backwards cause in many ways and one that was morally bankrupt.”
It was, of course Lincoln who “waged war” and his first Inaugural Address- you know, the one they didn’t teach you in school, laid out exactly why he waged it.
http://www.bartleby.com/124/pres31.html
“I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so.”
He said, but threatened “bloodshed.. violence..invasion..using of force.. ”
” In doing this there needs to be no bloodshed or violence, and there shall be none unless it be forced upon the national authority. The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere. ”
Only if he was unable to collect the taxes and tariffs ( that he had tripled)
That was the cause of his war on the South.
There’s a reason governments want a monopoly on what kids are taught in school.
It took 1,635 years for the Assyrians to retrieve the statue of their goddess Nana from the Elamites, after which Elam disappeared from the historical record. Start the clock.
Great summery. If the original seven Confederate state seceded due to a real or perceived threat to slavery on their home soil that does not automatically give moral justification to Lincoln’s war, because as you pointed out he waged the war not to free the slaves but to enforce the territorial extortion racket claimed by the U.S. government.
Furthermore, as loathsome as chattel slavery is-I would submit that even if Lincoln had, from the very first, stated that he was waging the war only to free the slaves, it would still not have made the war morally justifiable because in my view governments and nations must be held to the same moral standards as individuals. If an individual sees a man being held in involuntary servitude does that individual then have the right to murder the captor? Does he have the right to burn his home, rape his wife, and starve his children in order to pay some kind of blood debt owed to the captive?
It is not wrong to help someone escape unjustified captivity, so long as the person escaping has made the choice to be free. No one is a slave, truly, unless he consents to that status and using injustice perpetrated against others as an excuse to initiate violence is an unbelievably slippery slope. That’s why the use of violence, especially deadly violence, should be reserved only for true self defense.
That is why I hold the attempts by many state and local governments in the north to nullify the fugitive slave law in great esteem, and find those who risked so much to establish and operate the Underground Railroad to be true heroes, while still seeing Lincoln and his armies as the thieving, murderous bandits that they were.
Can you name a single New Englander tracing to “that period” who is engaged in humiliating and denigrating the South? I think you are talking about Ellis Islanders, but don’t want to say so.
People of old New England stock prefer to brag about their 17th-century ancestors. They also meet up with Confederate descendants at genealogical and historical conferences and at reenactments. Everybody gets along famously. No “denigration”.
If you have a problem with people with alien surnames like Foner and McPherson and Malinowski and Hanson, take it up with them. Don’t drag Yankees into the fight.
You do? Everyone in the South then, and more than a few in the South today, considered such people to be the worst sort of criminal.
Sending bounty hunters into northern states to retrieve escaped livestock was, in their minds, a perfectly justifiable exercise, even though it made a mockery of the very state sovereignty they demanded for themselves. (However, they generally respected the sovereignty of Upper Canada.)
If they really wanted to keep their beloved African pets at home, they could have built a Berlin-style wall along the length of the Potomac and Ohio rivers. There were more than enough trees for the job, and the Chinese offered a good example of their own.
Wrong. The Confederate flag first went up over the South Carolina capitol on April 14, 1961, in commemoration of the 100th anniversary of the firing on Ft. Sumter. You could look it up if you cared to set aside your erroneous talking points for five minutes. Now who is being dishonest and daft?
Yes, I do. Have you had a lot of conversations with living, breathing Southerners where they stated that the nullification attempts of northern states regarding the fugitive slave law and the operatives of the underground railroad were criminal? I’ve lived in the South my whole life and have never once heard anyone say any such thing. Of course, the only time nullification was ever discussed in my school was in relation to the nullification crisis of 1832-1833, and the overall message was that nullification is baaaaad.
Very true. Hypocrisy is very common in politics. There was constant conflict between various groups which wanted to control the central government in order to promote or enforce their own interests from the moment the Constitution of 1787 was ratified. That just shows me that the creation of a much more powerful central government was, ultimately, a mistake.
The living, breathing, fire-eating Southerners I tend to meet have been at paleo functions. I certainly don’t take them to be a cross-section of Dixie, not by any means. Even they prefer to be oblique about it, e.g., citing John Randolph on the justice of it all. But, yes, there is the undercurrent of “It was different when we did it.”
Either way, the pot is being stirred today by the likes of the man with the clownish name of Jamie Malanowski, who argued in USA Today that naming US Army bases after generals who fought the US Army was “absurd”. It certainly is unusual. But even he had to admit it was part of an understandable effort at conciliation.
I think it’s honorable that Anglo-Saxons can shake hands and make up after one of their too-frequent “cousin’s wars”. If the descendants of the unwise northern importations of the 19th century want to ally with the descendants of the unwise Southern importations of the 17th century, we don’t have to give them aid and comfort. Tossing around pejoratives-that-by-rights-should-be-compliments, like “Yankee” and “cracker”, doesn’t help us, either.
In my brief time in Boston, New Englanders don’t seem that obsessed with tracing their direct lineage, but love to go on about the history of the region, make museums about it, and are convinced of the intellectual superiority of New England to the rest of the USA.
In short, it’s not about family so much as culture, and of that they are quite proud.
Trump’s made his money in New York City real estate. You think he wants to be known as anti-Semitic?
Why does it have to be all or none? All of the “supposed ” reasons you listed, and hinted at, were/are REAL reasons. No one,I suppose, denies that Slavery played a part in Secession, but only someone completely ignorant of the history of this country would argue that the ONLY reason for secession was slavery, BUT that was not the reason for the WAR! Lincoln’s first response to the news that the Deep South states were seceeding was not “What about those poor slaves”, rather it was “What about my Tariff”. All of this argument begs the Question that “you people” do not like asked:Why was a war fought to free slaves, a war that cost the lives of 850,000 people. Can you site ONE example of where a war was fought by a third party[the north] in order to free a population of slaves? In the 19th century Slavery ended all over Western Civilization without wars. Why only in the US? Because that is a LIE! None of this is to justify Slavery, please, get your History right.
Singing Flat, Off-Key, and changing Keys is not something I would sacrifice ANY nut for, left or right. Plus, that is NOT cool!
This has extended even to those Reg calls “Ellis Islanders,” who seem not to care very much about the anti-Catholicism of the Puritans (these days – it was not too long ago that many of them were obsessively resentful, but those days seem to have mostly passed).
What you say about the articles of secession is true, but I arrive at a different conclusion: http://fexl.com/slavery_in_the_usa