[Jon Henke]
Before I step away from this blog to make way for Megan's return (tanned, rested and ready!), I want to make one more point about race. Matt Yglesias is exactly right here...
It seems that April is Confederate Heritage month. Why one would want to celebrate a heritage of violent rebellion against a democratically elected government in order to perpetuate a system of chattel slavery is a bit hard for me to say. [...] Even odder, as best I can tell these days (it was different in the past) most of the folks who like to wave the Confederate flag are perfectly genuine when they get offended that others see them as waving a banner of violent white supremacist ideology. But if that's not the ideology you mean to associate with, then why not drop the flag and adopt some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways?
This is a very complicated subject, particularly as it applies to the Confederate flag (let's not get into the tedious discussion over whether it was really the Confederate flag or simple a "battle flag"; it's irrelevant). Most Southerners have a relationship with the Confederate flag that has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. Over many years, it gradually became a symbol of regional identification, pride and, yes, rebellion. But rebellion in the sense of "James Dean" rather than "secession". This is exacerbated by the condescending, antagonizing way in which southerners are treated by outsiders, including the media and politicians.
In the South, the Confederate flag symbol is somewhat akin to the Washington Redskins name and logo, which also has offensive racial connotations. Owning/supporting a Confederate flag is generally understood to be no more intrinsically racist than, e.g., supporting, or owning the logo of, the Washington Redskins. The understood symbolism simply isn't racial.
On the other hand, there is no getting around the history of the Confederate flag, and no excuse for that history. Whatever people may intend by it now, it was, as Matt Yglesias writes, "a banner of violent white supremacist ideology." Many people, correctly, are deeply disturbed by the thing; they have no obligation to pretend it is anything but a banner of the ugliest, most inexcusable policy in American history.
So, we have one group of people who intend no offense, and another group who perceive great offense. Where do we go from there?
For starters, I'm reminded of a lesson I learned as a child: don't take offense where none is intended. It would be helpful if we stopped assuming that racism is at the root of every disagreement and misunderstanding. For instance, it's probably not helpful to reflexively assume that because somebody voted against a federal holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr, the motivation must have been racist. There are many great Americans without federal holidays, and - while racism was undoubtedly the case for some - one need not be bigoted against their ethnicity or race to disagree with creating a federal holiday in their honor. In Martin Luther King, Jr's case, however, they were wrong. Martin Luther King, Jr. ought to be considered the Last Founding Father for the work he did to finally hold those truths to be self-evident.
But the reflexive assumption of racism on the part of early opponents is counterproductive and unnecessary. When offense is not intended, it should not be taken...or assumed. Opponents of the Confederate flag and Confederate History Month ought not reflexively cry "racism" and demand penance.
But I'm also reminded of another lesson I learned in childhood: don't do things you know will offend others. Even if you mean no offense, courtesy and a decent respect for your fellow man demands you take their opinions and perceptions into account. Confederate History Month should be ended, and the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with "some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways". The Confederacy and the Confederate flag are not worth celebrating. Their revolting history is too inescapable.
I don't suppose such a change of course would be easy for either side of this cultural misapprehension, but it would be best, in the end, for all of us. So long as each side chooses to be antagonistic, however, they will get the fight they expect.
The only Federal holiday for any other individual American is Washington's Birthday.
No other American — not Jefferson, not Franklin, not Madison, not Lincoln, not FDR, not any of them — has a Federal holiday. It is not that merely that "[t]here many great Americans without federal holidays" — no "great American" had a Federal holiday other than the Father of his Country. Being a "great American" was not a qualification for a Federal holiday; it was a literally singular honor.
So, the implication of the Federal holiday "Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr." is that the Reverend King is clearly superior in importance and honor to every other American in history, with the sole exception of George Washington.
That, I think, cannot be fairly said to be anything but ridiculous. If Lincoln, who lead the country through a crisis that threatened its very existence, doesn't make the cut for a Federal holiday, then Reverend King clearly does not make the cut, either, "Last Founding Father" or not.
Well man theres only so many days you can shut down the government and banks. If we gave a day to everyone who deserved it we'd have to make it about as meaningful as all those Official ______ Weeks that no one gives a damn about.
Lunatic, you've got a little Columbus Day problem there. No, he wasn't American; does that imply that he is the greatest non-American human being who ever lived? Since he's the only non-American whose birthday is a Federal holiday?
Besides Jesus Christ, that is.
Obviously, what Columbus Day celebrates isn't that one Italian dude; it's the "discovery" of the American continent and the beginning of the American immigrant narrative, which is part of the groundwork of this nation's social contract and identity. And what MLK's birthday honors isn't that one black guy; it's the Civil Rights movement, which is the groundwork on which the US's contemporary social contract regarding racial identity is based. Essentially, Columbus Day, both in its iconography and the history of the holiday, solidifies the extension of the American social contract to ethnic immigrants. And MLK day, both in its iconography and the history of the holiday, solidifies the extension of that guarantee to include people of different racial groups, whom the America of the 1950s still excluded.
I disagree with this post, or at least some readings of it. The flag does not just mean rebellion for the James Dean hell of it - there is something southern about it, about being proud of being a southerner, different from the rest of the country, and yes, as you said, looked down upon for faults both past and present. I think that the main thrust of the post is correct, but this is an important point that we should not elide over too quickly.
With that in mind, my history teacher in high school always said that we should furl up the flags for 100 years, so that we could unfurl them again in 100 more years with pride. I don't know if that's right or not, but I know it does not make sense if there's nothing distinctly southern about it.
In all of this, it's always the vanquished who remember the wars. Leftists like Mr. Yglesias are quick to point out the psychological effects of a crushing defeat and humiliating occupation when it suits their other political objectives - I don't think it is too much to ask a bit of understanding from him for his fellow countrymen.
"So, we have one group of people who intend no offense...."
Really? You think I just fell off a turnip truck? "intend no offense..." Really? You got a bridge in Brooklyn you're trying to sell? It's pretty hard to fail to intend offense by an act whose history is well known and to which objections are regularly made. Your assertion that one group intends no offense is self-serving and disingenous.
"The understood symbolism simply isn't racial." Really? Really? Understood by whom? You ever get a contrary opinion from folks who may not be southern white or may have had family who suffered under or fought against the flag? Isn't your argument, "none of my friends think the way you describe when we waive our Confederate flag - so back off." Invoking the solipcism of the sons of Johnny Reb here?
You want to be a propagandist for a racist ideology, it's you're business. But the better class of propagandists tend to eschew arguments that insult the intelligence of their target audience.
But of course, I intend no offense.
The only problem is McCained comes from a state that have a rather interesting reputation.
See:
http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-na-arizimmig5apr05,1,6970275,full.story
No, voting against MLK Day is not automatically racially motivated.
In fact, it can be argued that those who are not black voting for MLK Day / Street / or Whatever are the true racists because to them, that first act will also be the absolute last act they will ever consent to for recognizing a distinguished American who happens to be black. You will never get a Colin Powell Road out of them.
Henke writes:
"Most Southerners have a relationship with the Confederate flag that has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery."
I'm a white southerner myself, and I can see where Henke is coming from here, but this is not exactly right. Most many White Southerners think this way, sure. But Black Southerners absolutely do not, and Southern Liberals don't either. Furthermore, people that fly the flag without racist intent are still demonstrating a serious lack of empathy and awareness, in that they should be aware that lots of people do see the flag as a symbol of treason in the defence of slavery.
This means that flying the flag, while not necessarily a sign of racism, isn't something that considerate people ought to do, and it certainly isn't something that state governments ought to do.
It is probably not a good idea to ignore history during Confederate Heritage or any other month.
The flag in question -- a bright red, rectangular version of the "battle ensign of the Army of Northern Virginia" -- was never the national flag of the CSA nor an actual battle ensign of or in the CSA. It was an entirely hypothetical naval ensign and the proposed personal standard of Gen. Joe Johnston, for a few weeks prior to this death. No flag of that design was probably ever flown in or by the CSA.
The flag in question was popularized across the South after the war -- in my family it is still just "the war" -- primarily by the KKK and the Sigma Chi fraternity, neither of which we had or have much use for being of rather more authentic Confederate heritage, for instance, land-rich, cash-poor, and racially integrated, indeed, intimate.
Interestingly, bright red (analine) dyes for cotton or, for that matter, bright red ink for lithography was not available in the CSA but only to later "media". So, nominally red square cantons on some CSA flags and red square battle ensign, that did exist, were almost always pink after one rain.
The preferred and practical color for both CSA and USA battle flags was actually blue inasmuch as a color-fast vegetable dye in dark blue for cotton was available.
The point here is that the flag in question was invented and has been used post-war and today for various reasons by people who neither know nor care much for actual Southern military heritage.
It gets worse:
The US military is somewhat goofy about this.
Inasmuch as the CSA national, state, and battle flags were instruments of armed rebellion -- "signals" in the strict military sense of the word -- regulations governing recognition and responses to display of these should come from the DoD or, to the extent the Klan, say, may still be a "terrorist organization", DoJ/DHS.
They should specify circumstances for, say, naval bombardment of a civil or military installation, certainly including the capitol building in Charleston, SC. And, of course, the regulations should provide various exemptions and waivers:
The USA should allow memorial displays in, say, Southern cemetaries, trophies in US Army and Navy dining facilities, and, of course, peaceful assemblies such as parades -- even KKK rallies conducted under police supervision (presumably not police sponsorship), ACLU court orders, and, of course, some political rallies and campaigns, and so on. After all, ex-Confederate states were re-admitted to the Union on condition of submitting to federal military authority but with all the privileges afforded uniformly to all people and states by the US constitution originally or, as we say today, residually.
Historical recreations and re-enanctments should require the same sort of licensing involved in war movies that utilize government ordnance, military facilities, or personnel.
In any case, the implicit threat to public order in public display of real or imagined artifacts of the CSA/ANV would be greatly diminished if there were more actual balance in (a) federal-state relations and (b) between various branches of government at all levels, as well well as (c) robust civic institutions with more patriotic potential than multi-national corporations and financial institutions, monopoly concessions, and criminal schemes promoted or protected by the US government.
These are peculiarly "Southern" grievances that give rise to "rebel" forms of artistic and even peaceful political expression that should and, sometimes do, pervade the entire Union. Those could, constructively, take the place of various cultures of racial grievance -- white, black, or, today, "whatever ..." that usually mask Whig-type economic and class discrimination.
Oildrilling Lunatic: Get over yourself. Why aren't you complaining about Columbus Day then? Huh? In any case Martin Luther King day celebrates more than the man, it is also about the fight for civil rights and that struggle is indeed worthy of a day.
The thesis hinges around an assertion - that the Confederate flag has no racial implications to its supporters. I doubt this. Racism is still alive and well in the US, even thought we are making progress. My guess is that Confederate flag proponents would be more likely to hold racist attitudes - but I'd be happy to be disproven. I could not (quickly) find any research on the subject.
My second objection is that is important to get history right. (Anecdote alert) Several times when I have spoken with non-African American Southeners, I have heard that they did not think the civil war was about slavery (even that they were taught this in schools). This kind of historical blindness is a roadblock to racial reconciliation today.
It is not just opponents who "have no obligation to pretend [the flag] is anything but a banner of the ugliest, most inexcusable policy in American history." It is everyone who should understand that. The Confederate flag should be understood for what it was, not made into some empty vessel of "rebellion."
Tom
This is a sample of one item, but it was instructive to me. There was a neighbor on our street who had a "Heritage Not Hate" bumper sticker on his car, and who flew a Confederate flag in front of his house every day. He took the flag down after the mixed-race family down the street moved out.
"On the other hand, there is no getting around the history of the Confederate flag, and no excuse for that history. Whatever people may intend by it now, it was, as Matt Yglesias writes, "a banner of violent white supremacist ideology." Many people, correctly, are deeply disturbed by the thing; they have no obligation to pretend it is anything but a banner of the ugliest, most inexcusable policy in American history."
Ironic, then, that the stars and stripes are viewed with such reverence despite the violent supremacy the US has carried out against not just white people, but Native Americans, Africans, Asians, and now Arabs.
What excuse is offered for the history of the horrendous and violent acts carried out under the current US flag?
Mith,
The United States has done good and bad things. We can argue about their relative weight, but I don't see how anyone can argue that the Confederacy was a good thing. It was conceived to defend slavery and led to enormous loss of life. The closest analogy to me, recognizing my violation of Goodwin's law, is Nazi Germany and the swastika
Tom
Y'all
The problem I see here with some of the more 'stuffed-shirt' types is that nobody ASKED the opinions or beliefs of those who actually fly Confederate flags or deal with Confederate Heritage.
It is Confederate Heritage and History month where I live, so proclaimed by our State Gov, my county commission, and my town's city council. The latter 2 were at my request, as I have sought out and received 21 CH&HM Proclamations from 21 area governmental jurisdictions.
I have 3 flag poles in my front yard, and during this month I fly (at different times) a total of 27 different Southern/Confederate flags. That would include 13 southern state flags as well as 14 different versions of Confederate flags (3 CS National flags, 11 different Battle flags [Polk, Hardee, Forrest, Price, Ky Orphan, Trans Miss, Citadel, etc...])
Do people get 'offended' ? Don't know and don't really care. Neighbors seem appreciative, as they like to get flags from me. I have been put on this earth for a short unknown amount of time, and I'll be darned if I am gonna tailor my life so that joe blow across town or next door can live his precious life 'un-offended'
Tons of stuff 'offend' me. I shake my head and go on. Life is hard, stupidity is easy.
Why do I honor my ancestors from the 1860s? Partly cause we are to honor our mothers and fathers, partly cause they are always unfairly attacked as Nazis and traitors and need defending, and partly cause I agree with some of the 'giving all for your beliefs' mantra.
Was there bad things behind the Confederate flag (by which is assumed every one means the 3x5 version Army of Tennessee standard) yes - mainly long after the war. I choose to focus on the positives.
Was there bad things behind the United States Flag? Slavery, Genocide of Indians, Jim Crow, Internment Camps, among others, but we as a nation focus on the positives. I don't recognize al sharpton, dick gephardt, pudentilla, mitt romney, or julian bond's qualifications to define the Confederate flag or my heritage.
As with any proclamation, it carries no force of law, and the individual citizen can become involved or ignore it. I am involved and enjoy participation. Come May, I furl my collection of flags and store my copies of the CH&HM proclamations and get ready for Cinco de Mayo.
I stand by to answer serious queries and to rebut idiotic statements.
God Bless
Good Americans fly a flag representing a rebellious nation every day. That nation is the United States of America. Are you saying we should all fly the Union Jack instead?
We have freedom of expression in this nation. Let people fly the Confederate flag if they want to. Hell, I've seen black people sporting that flag so it can't only be about slavery.
The Civil War claimed more American lives than any other war in our history. The real tragedy is we didn't or couldn't stop slavery at the inception of this nation, or at the very least, find some way to end it without all the death. I'm always amazed that people rate Lincoln so highly. If he were truly great he'd have figured out a less bloody solution.
Another viewpoint:
http://www.lizmichael.com/blkconfd.htm
OK Billy I'll ask your opinion. What about the Confederacy do you venerate?
Other than your ancestors' participation and giving it there all. After all our ancestors participated in a lot of stuff and presumably frequently gave it their all.
Tom
Nelson,
Are all rebellions equal? Isn't the motivation of the rebellion important?
Tom
The irony--at least here in the North is that the people who wave the Confederate Flag in the back of their pick-up truck are probably the same as the "God Bless America," Rah-Rah crowd. I'm not exactly sure whether they never learned that the Confederate Flag is the antithesis to the American flag, or whether they just want to look what is to them old-timie patriotic.
the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with "some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways".
Such as? The South is associated with slavery and segregation, which means that anything used to symbolise it will also become associated with those things.
(Incidentally, I always thought that if the North really cared only about ending slavery in the South, it would have been a lot cheaper to simply buy the slaves. And a lot less bloody.)
I honor, of course, the bravery, fortitude, sacrifice, and daring in the face against all odds, the service and dedication of the dirt poor and ill equiped average citizen (which includes my kin)
I am distant cousins with Thomas J Stonewall Jackson.
From Ironclads in Hampton Roads to Cottonclads in Galveston, from the submarine Hunley to Forrest's 'First with the most' to Stonewall's Valley Campaigns - Confederates were ingenious, and still studied today.
Some of my ancestors (late 1700's early 1800's owned a few slaves, but not my Confederate ancestors. One uncle came back, became a reverend, and started a small church that still meets today. That reminds me that from him to most of the leaders back then were very religious (Lee Jackson Polk Davis etc...) and that is a good thing - even put God into the CS Constitution.
States Rights - and not some code word phrase, was then and still is very important. Gambling in New Jersey to prostitution in Nevada to gay marraige in Massachusetts to riding a motorcycle without a mandated helmet in Indiana to no mandatory seat belts in pick up trucks in Georgia, states rights are very important and what our Founding Fathers envisioned for us - not the dictatorial nanny state of Big Brother we have now.
Finally, regional pride. I am a southerner. Part of that is Confederate roots, and I ain't gonna throw GGGrandpa in the trash to make joe blow happy. Joe and I can be friends, Lord knows I have tried, but he keeps making assumptions and throwing rocks. I just shake my head and walk away.
So, I see.
All of you believe that there was one, and only one, cause to the Civil War.
On an economics and politics blog, no less.
If I have my history correct the Confederate States were formed about a month before he was sworn in, and a month after that they attacked Fort Sumter.
I'm not sure exactly what Lincoln was supposed to do to stop the Civil War since the decision to start it was in the hands of the confederates and appears to have been make before he was even in office.
A fruitless battle.
On to more important things:
Megan has a tan? I will believe that when I see it.
I'm not sure exactly what Lincoln was supposed to do to stop the Civil War
Recognised Confederate independence?
Whatever the other effects of this, it would have stopped the Civil War.
the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with "some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways".
Such as? The South is associated with slavery and segregation, which means that anything used to symbolise it will also become associated with those things.
Key Lime Pie?
Fact is The Confederate States of America were formed leagly and Constitutionaly,The property of Ft.Sumter belonged to the people of the Confederate States of America,and was occupied by an insurgant army.No Nation has the right to attack another nation for any reason unless it is to prevent an attack upon it own soil.What the union army did was wrong in this regard.Secession in regards to preserving the institution of slavery became a civil matter to be worked out by those citizens of that nation and not by forced compliance by another nation.Slavery was Constitutionaly protected by the United States Constitution and was not fullyand properly amended untill the 1870's,so to say that the secession states did so in order to preserve slavery is a red herring issue,also the emansipation proclaimation did not stop slavery in thos estates that were not in as you state in rebelloin. The Confederate States of America were NOT in rebellion,they were their own Nation and should have been respected as such.
There was no constitutional method for withdrawal.
Point to the portion of constitution that allows for it please.
It was unconstitutional. As with all rebellions, they are only legal when the succeed.
Bill, you say that the Civil War was not about slavery but about states rights. And then you say:
"States Rights - and not some code word phrase, was then and still is very important. Gambling in New Jersey to prostitution in Nevada to gay marraige in Massachusetts to riding a motorcycle without a mandated helmet in Indiana to no mandatory seat belts in pick up trucks in Georgia, states rights are very important and what our Founding Fathers envisioned for us - not the dictatorial nanny state of Big Brother we have now."
Okay--but notice that all the examples you give are perfectly legal and accepted today, 140 years after the South LOST the Civil War. So obviously the "dictatorial nanny state" you despise actually hasn't eliminated states rights. The only right it eliminated that has anything to do with the Civil War is the right to hold other people as slaves.
So how can you say the South wasn't fighting to defend slavery? It sure wasn't fighting to protect the right of New Jersey to legalize gambling.
"It is Confederate Heritage and History month where I live, so proclaimed by our State Gov, my county commission, and my town's city council. The latter 2 were at my request, as I have sought out and received 21 CH&HM Proclamations from 21 area governmental jurisdictions."
In other words, institutionalized racism.
Toxic
The fact that is is not spicificly written in the Constutution is what makes if constitutional. Those laws not enumerated to the federal government are left to the states to deside.Now you show me where it states that secession is unconstitutional,you cannot, and if you can i will then show you a usurpitation of the constitution which is also unconstitutional.The presidence of secession is set by the second statement made in the "Declaration of Independence",which it the preamble to our Constitution sir.
Karl,
You said I stated the war wasn't fought over slavery. I couldn't find that quote above. Perhaps I missed the exact line?
OK lemme see here, let us pretend I did say that above, follow along and point out my errors....
Slavery was not limited to the south. EVER.
Slavery was protected by the United States Constitution.
Upon creation of said Confederacy, more Slave states (8) remained in the Union than joined (7) the CSA.
The War was due to Ft Sumter being fired on. It was fired on due to provocative acts of war by the Lincoln Adminstration with attempts to resupply it with troops and munitions instead of honoring an agreement to vacate the premises, all the while telling Confederate commissioners that nothing was being planned.
http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/csa/m042961.htm
Southerners thought it best to allow territories to decide for themselves to enter the Union free or slave. Lincoln admin dictates all new states will be free (replace free and slave with any current states right issue - abortion, marriage, etc.. )
Lincoln promoted the Corwin Amendment openly
Even as late as 2 years into the war, Lincoln was still writing his penpals like Greeley that slavery was not an issue.
Finally, when the Emancipation Proclamation was issued, it only covered areas out of the US control. Slavery remained in West Va, Ky, Mo, Md, De, and Noo Joysey.
You must first know how our government was formed before you can know how and why States fekt they could withdraw the the compact.Many of the states the followed the secession movement left provision of secession in their agreement to join the union of states and by exceptance of those agreement by the federal government allowing their partisipation in the union of states also adds legality to their secession.
I understand why many blacks don't like the flag as it is a visual link to a painful past (and a past whose difficulties did not end with slavery and carried on until the 1960's or so).
Also, I understand the desire to have the flag and don't think it should "disappear" as a cultural artifact. I think given the problems in the black community, the last thing that is a valuable use of energy is to focus on who is flying what flag.
What I think is most intellectually dishonest however, is the desire to shift the meaning of the Civil War to an issue of state's rights. Because immediately after you say, "Well gee whiz, what rights were being suppressed?" the immediate and most important right relates to slavery.
It's like Michael Jackson getting on the high ground and arguing he is being oppressed and just wants to be free, and that the issue is liberty.
"Free to do what Michael?" Michael thinks for a moment.
"Free to have little kids eat jello and sleep in my racing car bed with me," he finally says.
Thus so often supporters of that flag want to add a type of "above the frey" intellectual gloss to their position, while ignoring both the truth and the feelings of others.
And you see that time again, that whole "Well I don't care what people say cause I am just doing my thing and if people want to toss rocks go ahead". Rebels without a decent cause.
It's interesting because you could sit and interview the parents or grandparents of many black people and likely will hear stories of how they were not permitted to live somewhere, did not have jobs open to them, had to attend segregated schools, could not get adequate insurance policies, etc.
You could do the same with many whites, and every parent or grandparent was a saint, and never did anything to anyone.
All those people from the videos showing blacks being hosed and screamed at, or kicked out of restaurants, or NOT in a host of jobs, but nobody remembers that.
Cognitive dissonance, intellectal and moral dishonesty.
There is a lot of denial and the issues at hand are not entirely historical, for a black person. When you can sit and hear your grandfather say, "Yea we couldn't eat there and left" and then you look over and see some guy in his pickup headed off to Nascar with his Confederate flag... you make a connection despite the fact that Nascar guy is probably just being himself and not even really thinking.
'Cause you know a lot of crap can happen when the masses are not really thinking about anyone else.
You must first know how our government was formed before you can know how and why States felt they could withdraw from the compact.Many of the states that followed the secession movement left provisions of secession in their agreement to join the union of states and by exceptance of those agreements by the federal government allowing their partisipation in the union of states also adds legality to their secession.Once a stste seceded that state became a sovriegn nation on its own,as it was before it became a state in the union.They were then free to form another government or union as they saw fit and join the world of nations in deplomacy as was fit.
Billy,
I can not venerate courage or skill in the abstract of cause (e.g. many criminals show plenty of courage). Do you think the cause your ancestors fought for was honorable?
Your comment on state rights makes me think so (or at least that there cause was not all bad). Are you arguing that motivation for the war was not slavery?
I do not understand your regional pride comment. I assume you would condemn slavery. Why can you do that, but not condemn the government formed to preserve it?
Tom
Vindiciamus makes the absurd argument that the right to secession was implied, which would seem to rather confound the purpose of a Constitution to begin with. And even if it was implied, one should expect an honorable reason to secede, no?
But all of that state's right stuff is the red herring. You could read the actual statements from local governments in places like Mississippi and see what the issue is:
In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.
Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery-- the greatest material interest of the world. Its labor supplies the product which constitutes by far the largest and most important portions of commerce of the earth. These products are peculiar to the climate verging on the tropical regions, and by an imperious law of nature, none but the black race can bear exposure to the tropical sun. These products have become necessities of the world, and a blow at slavery is a blow at commerce and civilization. That blow has been long aimed at the institution, and was at the point of reaching its consummation. There was no choice left us but submission to the mandates of abolition, or a dissolution of the Union, whose principles had been subverted to work out our ruin.
Yea, that's a principled stand.
Arguably it was more principled then, when slavery was a greater part of ordinary life and you cut them some retrospective slack for living in the times they lived. But when someone today goes out of there way to defend that, you can call it what it is.
"What I think is most intellectually dishonest however, is the desire to shift the meaning of the Civil War to an issue of state's rights".
The issue you speek of was shifted from right of secession of"compromised principles" to slavery between Dec 1861 to april 1862 during the Washington lecture association at the smithsonian institute.Slavery in the district of columbia did not end there untill after the lectures convinced the congress and lincolin to prosecute the war politicly and vigerously against the people of the South and the Confederate Army over slavery.
It is you that are being "intellectually dishonest" in regarde to our arguments,and you that will not look at the truth when it stands before you in plain view sir.
Confederate History Month should be ended, and the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with "some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways".
I believe I've witnessed the ideal solution. One of my favorite restaurants hangs a picture of MLK next to a painted portrait of Robert E. Lee. Why not have all the legislators voting for Confederate Heritage Month sport lapel pins featuring that tricolor Africa emblem?
Sir
You can call it any thing you wish,i defend my ancestor and not your belief for his actions.You imply that my ancestor fought to preserve slavery as an institution which he did not.He forught for the political Independence of his newly formed nation , what ever civil problems the were contained within that nation was for him and his contemperaries to deal with and not the busness of another nation.In your ststements you relinquish your position and shift to the emotional proposition that slavery is/was wrong and there you stand as if better than i for my defense of my nationality.If the attacking of another country is allowable as you imply in your defense then why have there been no other countries attacked by this benevolant union of yours in the defense of the abolition of slavery in say africa,and other countries where it still to this day excists?
I am not trying to uphold the institution of slavery as right because it is wrong;we do not wish a federal holiday for Confederate History month that would be hipocritical,all we wish is for an understanding and exceptance of the truth, of the reasons our Confederate ancestor fought the War for Southern Independence,and for all to take another view of our symbol the Confederate Battle Flag and NOT relate it so freely to racism as they do for political gain .
Without Columbus, the United States would not exist. Everybody else at the time actually knew how large the Earth was, and had no motive for making the long trip across what they believed was the combined width of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans to reach Asia. While the reason he was important was a delusion that the Earth was smaller than it was, his actual importance is clearly a threshold that Martin Luther King, Jr. does not meet, either.
An argument can of course be made that the Birthday of Martin Luther King, Jr. "celebrates more than the man, it is also about the fight for civil rights and that struggle is indeed worthy of a day." But that was not the argument made by Mr. Henke, so I saw no need to address it in my comment.
The response, of course, is that the appropriate day would be a "Civil Rights Day" directly honoring the movement, in all its fits and starts across the history of the Republic. We have a Labor Day and a Veterans Day, not a Walter P. Reuther Day and an Alvin York Day.
People react to symbols like flags for emotional reasons, not rational ones. I have seen no evidence that more than a tiny, tiny fraction of people who have a confederate flag support slavery, or even Jim Crow style legally supported racism. (Is there survey data on this? Because dualing anecdotes and armchair speculation isn't capable of furnishing any new information.) Similarly, almost nobody who flies the Stars and Stripes is expressing support for the Trail of Tears, or for the century of slavery our country legally enforced and supported, or occasional invasions and coups carried out on behalf of fruit or oil companies, or for legally supported discrimination and mistreatment of blacks, women, Chinese, American Indians, etc.
ISTM that some people see the confederate flag as a symbol of their home, heritage, people, community. And other see it as a symbol of discrimination, racism, and slavery. Similarly, I expect that a lot of folks in Iraq, or even on an Indian reservation, see a quite different set of things represented by the Stars and Stripes than I do.
Tom,
Criminals think they won't get caught. Southerners soon realized they were outmanned
10 - 1 but fought on.
Yes, I denounce slavery.
Yes, I think fighting a government you very strongly disagree with is a good cause.
As stated above, I do not believe that the war was fought solely exclusively over slavery. It became a war issue nearly 1/2way thru the conflict.
I take it then that Billy thinks that States should have the right to make slavery legal.
Is that about the size of it Billy?
Billy,
Maybe some criminals think they'll never get caught, but longer jail terms do have a deterrent effect because most of them do think about the risks.
But I am still not sure - do you think the Confederacy's cause was honorable?
You say "fighting a government you very strongly disagree with is a good cause." Would you say Timothy McVeigh fought in a good cause?
You appear to suggest that slavery became a "war issue" only after the emancipation proclamation. Lincoln operated until political constraints, which is why the proclamation only covered the states that had seceded. The South saw that the power of the slave states in the Union waning and acted out of fear of what was to come. The war and all the tensions the preceeded it was about slavery. The state right the South was concerned about was the right to indefinitely rob black men and women and their children of freedom.
Tom
Succession wasn't implied; the states while retaining many rights, were no longer nations. When they joined the constitution they were giving up the rights of a nation; such as withdrawing from an alliance. See the Articles of Confederation v. the Constitution. It was pretty clear at the time that any state which ratified the Constitution was giving up their sovereign status. It was not more Constitutional for them to leave than it would be for Boone county to declare their independence from the state of Missouri.
With the exception of Texas I suppose, since they are the only state to explicitly retain the right to secede.
From reading these South Bashing posts it is obvious they need CONFEDERATE HISTORY MONTH. Their information is so biased, wrong, proproganda and pure race baiting fiction.
Teach thyself by reading some recent books on Lincoln and his War. Instead of mouthing media and black activist slander try educating yourself.
ATTACKING SYMBOLS is the terrorism of the day! Bin Laden attacked in the US the White house a symbol of Power; British symbols of heritage have been attacked, French, Indonesia, monuments blasted off of rock in Afganstan, and on around the world. google it.
When you attack a Symbol you are attacking everything they stand for.
The Confederate Battle Flag stands for LIBERTY, and was used by our soldiers in our 2nd War of Independence.
The Confederate Battle Flag was used in Civil Rights 1960s protesting the usurpation of our STATES RIGHTS by the Federal Government. per the precedent set by lincoln's army of invasion and takeover, the black victicrats were used by politicians, media, and their own other black people. They played the race card for money and political gain: proof is evident in the race card, race baiting of today. The civil righters used federal kingdom force to gain the advantage instead of honorable discourse or mediation. Someday the true story will come out, but now we are in the pc race baiting mode and name calling.
The Confederate Battle Flag will always wave forever and forever, because it is the Flag of Truth. The kkk's flag is the US FLAG. Google it. you been lied to. What is the flag of the black kkk?
Re: Fact is The Confederate States of America were formed leagly and Constitutionaly
No they were not. The Constitution spells out in considerable detail how it may be abrogated and replaced with another such compact. The South did not abide those terms.
Re: The property of Ft.Sumter belonged to the people of the Confederate States of America,
No it did not. Fort Sumter sits on an artificial island, created at the expense of the Federal Government and built from granite slabs shipped in from New England. Moreover, property rights are not abrogated simply because a government changes. The Castros no doubt despise our presence in Gitmo, but they have to accept it.
Re: No Nation has the right to attack another nation for any reason unless it is to prevent an attack upon it own soil.
Right, and Fort Sumter was Federal property. Governments have the right to defend their territory, even abroad.
Re: Slavery was Constitutionaly protected by the United States Constitution and was not fullyand properly amended untill the 1870's
Umm, the 13th Amendment passed in 1865.
Re: say that the secession states did so in order to preserve slavery is a red herring issue
Apparently we are not to believe the word of the CSA's own politcal leaders who stated quite flatly and explicitly that they were founding a nation to protect slavery and enshrine the superiority of the white race.
And you know, if you going to put on this laughably phony act like some character that just stepped out of Gone With the Wind (one of the less intelligent characters to be sure) at least go whole hog and argue on favor of slavery too. Tell us the slaves never had it so good and liked slavery. At the least the old-time Confederate apologists were willing to be consistent in their defense of the South.
Re: The Confederate States of America were NOT in rebellion
By any common definition of the term they were-- just as the American colonies were in revolt against Britain 1776. Unlike the 13 Colonies the South had no set of grievances to justify the rebellion. The Federal Government had bent over backwards for much of the 19th century to appease their wishes.
Re: The fact that is is not spicificly written in the Constutution is what makes if constitutional
You know nothing about law. If I sign a contract that does not contain a clause describing how the contract may be abrogated, can I break the contract at will and be secure from a breach of contract lawsuit? I don't think so.
Re: The presidence of secession is set by the second statement made in the "Declaration of Independence
The Declaration is a philsophical document not a legal one. And even so it also specifies in minute details that revolution is justified in the face opf grievances (it goes into very great detail as to the Colonists' grievances) whose victims have exhausted all normal and legal methods of seeking redress.
Again, the flag in question is anachronistic, not authentic. It was likely never the actual battle flag of the Army of Tennessee for even one day.
Now, what the war was about originally and came to be were different for both the USA and the CSA.
Here the perspective from Texas was interesting:
Before the war, the slave-owning political faction was pro-Union and the anti-slavery faction was pro-secession. The pro-secession faction was further divided between those, German-speakers mostly, who wanted to revert to the Republic of Texas and, at least some on Galveston Island, who wanted to secede, join the CSA, and free the slaves in order to gain the support of the UK.
Yes, Texas and Galveston were "out of it" -- far from Charleston or Richmond in every respect.
And, the original positions disappeared quickly, once fighting began in earnest.
The CSA ultimately fought, after Sharpsburg with little hope of winning, increasingly against emancipation.
When Emanicipation finally came, it was on Galveston Island, where secession had been initially popular but emancipation was finally popular and is still celebrated. The war finally ended soon thereafter down on the Rio Grande at Palmetto Bend.
We can never know the past for sure, but some of those as fake Confederate heritage today are just signalling a contemporary political or social agenda.
Ironically, the actual purpose of flags in battle during the war was signalling. There is something fake about discussing the "symbolism" or "sacred" perceptions of flags.
All that smacks of rear-echelon sentimentality, not military practicality. Confederate armies were very practical, as they lacked logistical and political support from a ruling elite that owned slaves and a population that did not.
So, the CSA had to resort to the draft first and never got taxation right.
If the CSA had been willing to sacrifice the benefits of slavery -- "property rights" -- and to fight for "states rights" in a practical and popular way -- abandoning slavery to gain international support and arming black men to fight for their homes and future, the CSA could have won.
But, the South did not win: After Sharpsburg, there was little hope of even a settlement, much less victory.
After Vicksburg, there was nothing but grinding defeat, military occupation, and social division, rather than military, political, or economic integration of the black population of the South.
Don't offend if you don't intend to offend?
I'm reminded of the great Thomas Paine who stated,
"He who dares not offend cannot be honest." I at least would rather be honest.
Awesome Caji - thanks for taking care of the the central assumption of the original post.
Out of curiousity, would you like America to return to 1950's style race relations (before the Federal governnment started trampling on states rights)?
Tom
In getting into this topic, one wonders what Stonewall Jackson and Robert Edward Lee fought for. Not so much as a one should follow Plato kind of argument as an insight into the general viewpoint. Also it's hard to see them as evil men. Condoleeza Rice sees her history being in slavery as leaving her with an original sin. It's hard to see how being freed in 1865 vs. any other tine would affect 'original sin.' Lee and Jackson perhaps fought out of a (Edmund) Burkean conservatism, accepting that the institutions that had evolved in Virginia reflected some wisdom and also that, if they were going to be changed, it should be by the voters of Virginia.
You write: "But I'm also reminded of another lesson I learned in childhood: don't do things you know will offend others. Even if you mean no offense, courtesy and a decent respect for your fellow man demands you take their opinions and perceptions into account."
What? So, if I offend someone waving a Confederate flag by telling them that in my opinion it's emblematic of an incredibly destructive war to maintain slavery or [plug in what ever the inane reason], much to the detriment to the Southern states that participated in the rebellion, I'm...uh...boorish?
You should read your 'stuff' aloud and listen to yourself. My son used to say many people like to post on the web just to see their words on a monitor. In your case, I think he's right. Where are you from, anyway? The south? No offense intended.
The funny thing about the whole analogy is that most of us Indians neither use the "Native American" locution nor have a problem with the indian team names. (I mean, come on, think about it: I'm Crow Clan. Do I think Grandfather Crow is *unhappy* we named the clan for him? Teams get named the "redskins" because Indians are symbols of strength, fortitude, fighting spirit. This is not a bad thing.)
The exception is the "professional Indians", like Ward Churchill.
It's hard for me now not to suspect, by analogy, that the people most offended by the Stars and bars aren't also professional offense-takers.
I had family members on both sides who died in the conflict. My great-great uncle, the Confederate Colonel who was the son of a slaveholder and the biggest landowner in the county, fought and died bravely. However, he fought for a mistaken ideal.
The Civil War was about slavery, just as John Brown’s failed insurrection at Harper’s Ferry was about slavery. Secession was carried out by the slave-owning elites, because they realized that with the election of Lincoln they had lost the electoral veto. There would be no more hope of legitimizing slavery by expanding it into the territories. The Republican majority in Congress would see to that. Slavery would remain in the South, condemned by the rest of the country. There was no state-wide vote for secession: rather it was done by conventions, by the elite.
The vast majority of Southerners were not slaveholders. With the beginning of hostilities at Bull Run/Manassas Junction, the ranks of the Confederate soldiers were fighting for their homes, their home states. In summation: ultimately the war was about slavery. The elite seceded because of slavery, but the rank and file fought to defend their home states.
For those who claim that the Civil War was about states’ rights, consider the following. In the Dred Scott case, the Supreme Court ruled against the States’ Rights of the northern states to extend freedom to escaped slaves. The South was quite happy to tread on the States’ Rights of the northern states in order to recapture escaped slaves.
"In the absence of fact those who yell the loudest and longest will be accepted as purveyors of truth"
I have almost totally given up attempting to convince publicly educated folks of the facts relating to the War for Southern Independence. Though I realize I'm on a fool's errand here (yep makes me the fool) I will once again attempt to counter opinion with documented facts.
"The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice." - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
The supposed Cornerstone speech as recorded in the NY TIMES Archives:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9905E1DD143CE63ABC4E53DFB4678389679FDE
You will likely have to cut and paste the link in your browser window.
This link is a more thorough factual basis for the war than I can reproduce in a short form.
http://www.mises.org/story/952
This last link is the Platform of the Republican Party, the importance of the platform is that it tells the truth about why war was going to happen, it deals with increasing tariffs to twice what the current levels were. Southerner couldn't pay the increased tariffs and survive.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29620
Speaking before the Georgia legislature, in November 1860, Senator Robert Toombs said, ". . . They [Northern interests] demanded a monopoly of the business of shipbuilding, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign ships to the citizens of the United States. . . . They demanded a monopoly of the coasting trade, in order to get higher freight prices than they could get in open competition with the carriers of the world. . . . And now, today, if a foreign vessel in Savannah offer [sic] to take your rice, cotton, grain or lumber to New York, or any other American port, for nothing, your laws prohibit it, in order that Northern ship-owners may get enhanced prices for doing your carrying."
I understand it is difficult given the histrionics involved here, but for a second forget we are talking about the War for Southern Independence. Go back through every war, and you find, as I have, that wars are fought over only two issues, money/territory or alternately about power. During WWII everyone was against the Japanese, but German sympathy was great among the general population. Yet the US bombed the German civilian population into annihilation. When Germany was invaded we found the concentration camps and death chambers. After the war historians wrote the justification for going to war and destroying much of Germany was the Holocaust the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazi's. That was a noble cause, it wasn't true, but it reads well for future generations. Winners write histories, there is no record in history I can find, where the victors admit to being greedy, or power hungry.
The Confederate Battle Flag and indeed all the 163 flags of the Confederacy represent what the people who lived then: who fought and died under those flags believed them to represent. They earned that right by being willing to die for their beliefs. Anyone's disapproval of those flags is exactly like a Television show you don't like, change the channel or don't look. Southern/Confederate Americans are losing their regional identity because we are once again being invaded and most Northerners don't appreciate Confederate sentiments. The final question really is this, who has the right to say a person's respect and admiration for their ancestors is outweighed by another person's opinion that that symbol is bad?
My nationality is Confederate, just like theirs is yankee.They can have theirs and by their laws they must let me have mine.My Confederate brothers we have not yet surfaced from the depths of their continued reconstruction, if they will not allow us our heritage and nationality.It is as if they wish us to be them,they wish to force their nationality on us because they were alone.We know what we know, and they will not excetp we are our own.
Wow...Megan's readership appears to include honest-to-goodness, unreconstructed Confederates. I'm a Southerner myself, and I have trouble believing anyone is still around that's willing to put these kinds of arguments out. Good catch, McMegan.
And you know what guys? It's ok to stop defending your ancestors. My ancestors owned slaves and my great-great-great-grandfather surrendered with Lee at Appomatox, but this doesn't stop me from pointing out that those men where hugely, horribly, irrevocably wrong. Can any of these neo-confederates please tell me why the CSA seceded in the first place? Anyone? I seem to remember the election of an abolitionist president having something to do with it...
Ancestor worship is silly. Some of my ancestors were great men, others were undoubtedly evil. Most of them were probably ordinary folk just trying to get through the day. If you go back a ways, I have ancestors who were apes and monkeys (I'm not a primatologist...I don't actually know the difference between the two...don't bother to correct me). If you go back even further, some of my answers were quite like amoebas. I'm not ashamed of that fact, nor proud.
Toxic, do you have a problem with the existence of West Virginia?
"It's hard for me now not to suspect, by analogy, that the people most offended by the Stars and bars aren't also professional offense-takers."
Posted by Charlie (Colorado) | April 5, 2008 10:11 PM
X2
also, serious believers in, or dupes thereof, the 'divide and conquer' crowd..
""In the absence of fact those who yell the loudest and longest will be accepted as purveyors of truth"
I have almost totally given up attempting to convince publicly educated folks of the facts relating to the War for Southern Independence. Though I realize I'm on a fool's errand here (yep makes me the fool) I will once again attempt to counter opinion with documented facts.
"The first law of the historian is that he shall never dare utter an untruth. The second is that he shall suppress nothing that is true. Moreover, there shall be no suspicion of partiality in his writing, or of malice." - Cicero (106-43 B.C.)
The supposed Cornerstone speech as recorded in the NY TIMES Archives:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9905E1DD143CE63ABC4E53DFB4678389679FDE
You will likely have to cut and paste the link in your browser window.
This link is a more thorough factual basis for the war than I can reproduce in a short form.
http://www.mises.org/story/952
This last link is the Platform of the Republican Party, the importance of the platform is that it tells the truth about why war was going to happen, it deals with increasing tariffs to twice what the current levels were. Southerner couldn't pay the increased tariffs and survive.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=29620
Speaking before the Georgia legislature, in November 1860, Senator Robert Toombs said, ". . . They [Northern interests] demanded a monopoly of the business of shipbuilding, and got a prohibition against the sale of foreign ships to the citizens of the United States. . . . They demanded a monopoly of the coasting trade, in order to get higher freight prices than they could get in open competition with the carriers of the world. . . . And now, today, if a foreign vessel in Savannah offer [sic] to take your rice, cotton, grain or lumber to New York, or any other American port, for nothing, your laws prohibit it, in order that Northern ship-owners may get enhanced prices for doing your carrying."
I understand it is difficult given the histrionics involved here, but for a second forget we are talking about the War for Southern Independence. Go back through every war, and you find, as I have, that wars are fought over only two issues, money/territory or alternately about power. During WWII everyone was against the Japanese, but German sympathy was great among the general population. Yet the US bombed the German civilian population into annihilation. When Germany was invaded we found the concentration camps and death chambers. After the war historians wrote the justification for going to war and destroying much of Germany was the Holocaust the Jews suffered at the hands of the Nazi's. That was a noble cause, it wasn't true, but it reads well for future generations. Winners write histories, there is no record in history I can find, where the victors admit to being greedy, or power hungry.
The Confederate Battle Flag and indeed all the 163 flags of the Confederacy represent what the people who lived then: who fought and died under those flags believed them to represent. They earned that right by being willing to die for their beliefs. Anyone's disapproval of those flags is exactly like a Television show you don't like, change the channel or don't look. Southern/Confederate Americans are losing their regional identity because we are once again being invaded and most Northerners don't appreciate Confederate sentiments. The final question really is this, who has the right to say a person's respect and admiration for their ancestors is outweighed by another person's opinion that that symbol is bad?
Posted by Rev. Dr. William H. Swann | April 6, 2008 12:50 AM
X2
Thankfully, some learnedness is extant to slip through the cracks..
"And what MLK's birthday honors isn't that one black guy; it's the Civil Rights movement" brooksfoe
I agree, in principle. Still it's not called "Civil Rights Movement Day" or "Anti-racism Day" and I get the strong impression calling it that would be treated with hostility.
"the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with "some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways".
Such as?" the ad
This is something of a quandary, although I see it as a different quandary than you. Still I'm not sure there is another symbol for Southerness itself because the South was never unified otherwise. So you'd need to create a symbol and it might be difficult to make some newly invented symbol meaningful.
"The South is associated with slavery and segregation, which means that anything used to symbolise it will also become associated with those things." ad
I don't agree. There are many aspects of "Southerness" that can be seen early in colonial history, well before slavery became too widespread. If "Southerness" were always something equated to slavery or racism than it should be more similar to Afrikaaner or white Rhodesian culture than it ever was or will be.
The South is much more English, specifically South English, influenced than other regions. The influence of the Dutch, Poles, Italians, Quakers, or Catholics was generally less in the history of the US South. (Outside of Louisiana, which was an outlier in terms of Catholic or Italian population) The original Southern colonists also tended to be Cavaliers rather than Cromwellians. Hence Romanticism and Medievalism were more common in the South. The South was traditionally more agrarian, even from an early point. Southerness traditionally valued well tradition. Utopian movements or complete breaks with the past were less acceptable. Their Medievalism/Ruralism also relates to a more casual view of violence to animals. To a Yankee a young boy who shot at wild animals would be seen as more likely to be disturbed than a Southern boy traditionally would. And because of cultural factors a Yankee boy who did such things probably is more likely to be disturbed because he's bucking his society in favor of violence. (I think that's true when comparing either black or white Southern/Yankee children.) Although there is also a strong influence of pre-modern Scottish/Calvinist ideas in the South, particularly the mountainous segments. This relates to a strong degree of value for kinship ties and loyalties. A Southerner can accept a gay relative while simultaneously disliking "queers" or believe that girls should be shunned for illegitimacy while supporting his/her daughter's illegitimate family. A Northerner can do that too, but I think they worry more about it being hypocritical. Southerners, in my experience, don't worry about that. In their mind's eye you are supposed to be more forgiving of family and doing so is not inconsistent. Both the Scottish and English threads relate to a strong military tradition. None of the things just mentioned necessarily has anything to do with racism or slavery.
However it also has nothing to do with the Confederacy. The "Confederate States" only existed for a few years. So I think a "Confederate Heritage Month" is basically idiotic. It'd make more sense to have a "History of the US South" month or some such.
re: There would be no more hope of legitimizing slavery by expanding it into the territories.
The huge irony to this is that none of the remaining territories were apt for slavery. Slavery in, say, New Mexico or Nevada, would only have inolved domestic servants, not the labor intensive plantation agriculture of the Cotton Belt. The only way the South could have added new slave states where slavery was truly an economic force to be reckoned with was to conquer territory in the Carribbean, something that some Southerners agitated for.
If "Southerness" were always something equated to slavery or racism than it should be more similar to Afrikaaner or white Rhodesian culture than it ever was or will be. - Thomas R
Not so sure you're on solid ground here. Barbecues? Check. Gun ownership? Check. Intense religiosity? Check. Tendency towards anti-intellectualism? Check. Football/rugby (disproportionately over soccer, baseball, basketball, etc.)? Check. Privileging of rural roots over urban cosmopolitanism? Check. Etc.
Afrikaner and white Rhodesian culture aren't reducible to racism either, but the regions' histories have a lot in common and have shaped their respective cultures.
"the Confederate flag should be discarded, replaced, as Yglesias suggests, with "some less provocative emblem of Southern folkways".
Such as?" the ad
This is something of a quandary, although I see it as a different quandary than you. Still I'm not sure there is another symbol for Southerness itself because the South was never unified otherwise. So you'd need to create a symbol and it might be difficult to make some newly invented symbol meaningful.
Thomas, I don’t think it matters. Whenever people think of things unique to the South they think, perhaps amongst other things, of its “peculiar institution”, and segregation. So if your symbol makes people think of the South, it will make them think of this.
"The South is associated with slavery and segregation, which means that anything used to symbolise it will also become associated with those things." ad
I don't agree. There are many aspects of "Southerness" that can be seen early in colonial history, well before slavery became too widespread. If "Southerness" were always something equated to slavery or racism than it should be more similar to Afrikaaner or white Rhodesian culture than it ever was or will be.
South Carolina was originally founded to buy slaves from the American Indians for sale on Barbados. As the colony grew it switched into plantation rice production for the Caribbean and Europe. Then the South moved into cotton production.
I don’t hold it against them: anyone else on the Earth would have done the same.
I do hold segregation against their descendants. Those white Rhodesians and South Africans could look north, and what they saw could hardly have been expected to make anyone enthusiastic about majority rule. The segregation-era South had no such excuse.
In fact, I am tempted to blame segregation far more than slavery for the current mess about race.
"Barbecues? Check. Gun ownership? Check.
Intense religiosity? Check. Tendency towards anti-intellectualism? Check." brooksfoe
TR: Except I don't think I mentioned any of those things. I associate many of those more with Texas. Although Texas was in the Confederacy it's not really "South" per se. (Another part of why "Confederate Heritage" is largely meaningless)
The one I do link more to the South is religiosity. However Baptists or Pentecostals are significantly different from the Dutch Reformed faith of South Africa. Both in theology and culture.
True Afrikaner culture itself also has more than just racism and many Afrikaners were actively against racism. Still I think it's much more unfair to equate Southern culture simply with racism and slavery.
"Football/rugby (disproportionately over soccer, baseball, basketball, etc.)? Check. Privileging of rural roots over urban cosmopolitanism?"
TR: These were indeed similar though.
"Whenever people think of things unique to the South they think, perhaps amongst other things, of its “peculiar institution”, and segregation." ad
TR: People are ignorant in many ways. I'm not sure we need to just embrace that people are ignorant.
It wasn't a Southerner who committed the Sand Creek Massacre. The most genocidal racism in American history was, largely or mostly, perpetrated by Northerners on the American Indian. Southerners were not great on American Indian issues, "The Trail of Tears" largely being Southern, but they weren't so involved with outright slaughters in the West. Nor were these slaughters some new thing for Northerners. New Englanders gouged out people's eyes and wiped out whole villages in their day. Yet "The North" is not blamed for this so much as all the US even though all the US was not equally involved. Even with slavery the slaves who came here didn't come in ships that flew the Confederate flag or the Stars and Bars. They came in ships flying the Union Jack or the Stars and Stripes. No one is angry that Hawaii has the Union Jack on its corner.
Anyway if the South is "always going to be associated to the peculiar institution" than New England should always be associated with burning Indian villages, hanging Quakers, *state churches, and whaling. However I don't think it is really. New England brutality is quaint and charming, even when it lasted as long as Southern brutality.
*It was Connecticut, not any Southern state, that had a state church the longest. It was New Hampshire that forbid Catholics to vote until the 1870s.
Thomas R,
Your post makes me want to emphasis attacking the Confederate flag is not attacking the South as a region, or claiming moral superiority for my ancestors.
If New Englanders had a flag representing a short-lived movement formed for the purposes of exterminating Native Americans, then I would attack that flag as well.
There are plenty of things for all Americans to venerate in our history - I just wish people like Billy would stop venerating (27 flags on his lawn) one of our worst moments, out of a my ancestors-right-or-wrong ethic.
Tom
Who's to say the south wouldn't have given up slavery eventually on their own anyway?
If the Confederacy did not allow slavery,whould the yankee government then let them go ahead with their secession? Say this was 1860 and there was a secession movement and there did not contain a human rights issue,which way would the argument go?
"If the Confederacy did not allow slavery,whould the yankee government then let them go ahead with their secession?"
No. The Yanks would have still gone to war. I mean even as it was, they didn't willingly risk their lives to stop slavery, they went to war to keep the union whole.
I read one historian write that the US had high tariffs against foreign manufactured goods, so the South had to buy overpriced goods from the North. The North probably would have wanted things to stay as they were.
Vindiciamus,
The question is not whether the North was pure and selfless. It was not. Lincoln did not immediately emancipate the slaves for political reasons. Although it is to the North's credit, that is was willing to elect Lincoln.
The question on this thread is whether we should venerate the Confederacy by flying its flag. So the more relevant hypothetical is this - would the South have seceded if not for slavery?
Tom
"Ancestor worship is silly."
It's not really ancestor worship,anymore than pledging to the yankee flag.It is what they tried to do that is important.Slavery aside,they wished to form a government of the people by the people.If the people are not permitted the right to self governance they are slaves to government.If secession by process is denied then where lies the right to self-governance. If a man and woman are married by the laws of the land are they not permitted to divorce? perpetual union must be agreed upon,perpetualy not just one time and one time only,issues arise that must be addressed and remedied constantly,this would be the motor that perpetuates.Secession was not a new idea and the Southern States were not the only ones that tried.Race discrimination is/was a diobolicly created issue developed as a way to obtain the labor force of the South and relocate it in the north,and i assure you that benevolance was not the reasoning behind emancipation of the blackman.He was/is treated as badly in the north as he was/is in the South,and used in the same way as any labor force is used in order to multiply the profits of those that employ.To free him from his bondage and pay him a token for his labor did nothing to advance him any farther in his state of freedom as would have been premitted him in bondage.It is true he should have never been brought to this land in any capasity,because he was removed from a state of nature and lived by natures laws,his sociaty did not mesh to ours at the time and he would not have servived if freed when brought to our shores.Experiment this, by going into the jungles of Africa and bring some of those natives that closly resemble those brought in the 1850's,when they get here give them $100,000.00 and tell them they are now a free person in a new land,see how long they servive.How will be the first to abuse them,who will take their money from them,who will help them along and teech them how to comunicate.Lets get real here people Discrimination is everywhere,when do the rich mingle with the poor,except to gain what they can.
I grant you this,if slavery had not been premitted in America the South would not have wished secession. Slavery was not something that the south started,it started in the north and if in the beginning it had not been forced on the South as the South did not wish to continue slavery in the beginning but was forced by northern intrests legislaively we would not be having this conversation at all.Why was the process of amending slavery out of our Constitution not even tried? Because the federal government collected taxes for every slave owned and also collected taxes for all cotton sold,and also collected taxes in the way of all good sold other than cotton from the south.Slavery was important to the federal government and that is why it took a great deal of work by the abolisionist to convince them to prosecute the war for slavery,insted of trying to call it a rebellion in the same way Washington wanted to use the standing military to make those in the whiskey rebellion pay the tax placed on it by the federal government.I find it hard to believe that 160,000 Confederate soldiers lost their lives in order that a few rich plantation owners could own slaves.
We do not wish for any yankee to venerate our heritage,nor do we expect them to go along with what we state as the reasons we wish to celebrate our heritage.We only wish that we be left alone to do as we wish in this regard.We do not wave the Confederate Battle Flag as a racist symbol and would also wish that if a yankee finds a group doing this they help us to stop them from doing so.Flags don't kill ,people do,oh sorry wrong example. Flag History:The Battle flag was constructed during the early part of the War for Southern Independence,the reason the Stars & Bars was changed and the Battle Flag was abopted was because the two flags,Stars & Bars and the union flag looked to much alike and both sides were losing soldiers from friendly fire.After Stonewall Jackson was felled by friendly fire the flag was changes and by doing so the Confederacy saved lives on both sides as it became easier to tell which army was which.We were the benevolant ones.:o)
Re: Slavery was not something that the south started,it started in the north
Um, how about "started in prehistoric times"? In North America the very slaves were brought over by the Spaniards, only a few years after Columbus's voyage-- ironically, at the urging of a Spanish priest who was appalled at the cruelties done the Indians, but apparently regarded Africans as no more than beasts of burden. In the 13 colonies the first slaves were brought to Jamestown in 1619, before there were any other colonies.
Vindiciamus,
I am glad we agree that the South seceded because of slavery. Do you think this is a moral cause or an immoral one?
And I loved this: "if in the beginning it had not been forced on the South as the South did not wish to continue slavery in the beginning but was forced by northern intrests legislaively we would not be having this conversation at all." Can you back any of that?
I think your final sentence gets at the truth. "I find it hard to believe that 160,000 Confederate soldiers lost their lives in order that a few rich plantation owners could own slaves." It was a horrible moment in American history, not one for anyone to celebrate.
best,
Tom
A modest proposal: we eschew the Confederate flag, and any communist flags too. After growing up and living in the Bay Area, I saw more Soviet, Red Chinese, and North Vietnamese flags than I can recount, and they irritated me a lot more than the Confederate flag, and for a lot better reason, methinks.
Let's also eschew images of that bastard Guevara.
Swann is right. If you want to know why people fought the Civil War, then you must read what they wrote. And there are writings aplenty.
All four of my GGFs fought in the war, two for the North, and two for the South. My mother was roundly criticised for having married a Damn Yankee. Of the two who fought for the North, one was drafted as he got off of the boat and died a prisoner. He never had time to learn English. His daughter was raised on a generous (?) government pension. The other was one of three survivors of his company of the Third Iowa Volunteers, was reassigned to a Vetrans regiment after Shiloh, and marched on Atlanta in Sherman's Army. On the Southern side, one was wounded and nursed back to health by a northern girl, who hid him, then married him. The other made it through the war ok. Many of their desendents have served in the US Armed Forces.
I submit to you that nobody leaves their small farm, musters into the Southern Armies, and leaves their wife and children to fend for themselves, just so they can preserve the right of some big-time cotton farmer to have a slave. That would be like you enlisting in the U S Army because somebody wanted to expropriate some oil property from Standard Oil. There was a lot more to it than that, and it's complicated, not simple. It has become popular for modern politicians to make political points by oversimplifying and distorting what happened. That's no real surprise. If you actually want to know what happened, you can read about it, from the writings of the participants. Anyway, unless you're planning to repeal the First Amendment, you're not going to stop your neighbors from displaying whatever flags they choose to. By the way, I don't own a copy of the stars and bars.
"In the 13 colonies the first slaves were brought to Jamestown in 1619, before there were any other colonies."
This was while AMerica was under the influance of english rule.
The founding fathers wished to discontinue slavery in the whole of America but for some reason it was not to be so.Virginis and other Souther States were force to become dependent on the institution of slavery when it came to a vote of the Virginia legeslature,because the majority of the house of representatives for the State of Virginia voted it to be as a result of economic reasons premoted by northern intrests.Did y'all know that the First lawfull slave owner in America was a Blackman,and it was his case that set the presedence for all other slave owning laws to come,and you will find that this happened in Mass.i believe.
"I am glad we agree that the South seceded because of slavery."
The reason for the was was not because the South seceded because of slavery.The was was because the South seceded.After the act of secession no matter what State when it detaches itself from political influance it then becomes a sovreign nation and no other country has political influance over it.What was done was done and secession WAS legal.The slavery question for the abolitionist should have been answered and remedied by secession if they were concerned about the excistance of the institution in the united states of america.It was taken away,the question then becomes how does the united states of america servive economicly with this result,and the answer would have been it would not have servived.But still there was formed a new nation to the south called the Confederate States of America still with the question of slavery,and it was up to that new nation to answer that question and not up to the nation of the united states to answer,same as other nations answer their own question.Whereas slavery may have been one of the reasons for secession,the fact remains still that there was a Constitutional protection for the institution so there excisted no laws against secession nor were there laws against taking the institution by secession.So as you can see the war on a legal footing was not over slavery,it was over secession which was left to the states to deside,by the constitution which makes the war illegal and leaves the slavery question a purly emotional one without legal plausability.Someone quoted that the 13 amendment stopped slavery in 1865,this amendment was/is an illegal amendment as not all the states were aloud to partisipate in its ratification,and if this was the case and it was ,then secession was acknowlaged,or the states that were not allowed to partisipate were forced out of the union held politicl captave and forced to rewrite constitutions that by wording (censor)the federal government would except,that corrisponded with the illegal amendment,before they were permited back into the union.The Southern States became territories held by forcemand made to comply,and y'all call this the land of the free.
Vindiciamus,
I can't make sense of your first few sentences. "The reason for the was was not because the South seceded because of slavery.The was was because the South seceded."
Slaves made up a third of the Confederate population. Should they have been allowed a vote on secession?
Tom
wGraves,
I will not claim to speak as to why any particular individual went to war. Some, I am sure, fought because they were more loyal to their state & their neighbors than to their country. Others fought for different reasons. Wikipedia notes that 16% to 37% (depending on the state) of whites in the South owned slaves.
But the politicians who chose to secede were pretty clear about why they were seceding. Since you suggest reading about it, I would point to the declarations of the states on why they were seceding. Take a look at South Carolina's for example if you doubt that slavery was the cause of the war.
Finally, free speech is not an issue here. No one is arguing for a government ban, but rather we're trying to convince Confederate-sympathizers to find another better historical cause to honor.
Tom
Re: I submit to you that nobody leaves their small farm, musters into the Southern Armies, and leaves their wife and children to fend for themselves, just so they can preserve the right of some big-time cotton farmer to have a slave.
They weren't fighting for the rights of big planters no, but they were fighting to keep the slaves down. Again, you are underestimating the profound racism that motivated Southerners. Margaret Mitchell's Gone With The Wind (written before the War had entirely passed out of living memory) disapproved of the war and was ambiguous about slavery. But Ms Mitchell, despite her sympathetic Black characters, was unstinting in her racist diatribes once her story entered the period after the slaves were freed. If she felt that way in the 1930s (and her novel was not roundly condemned for it) how did her grandparents feel in the 1860s? Whites feared a vast free Black population competing with them for work, demanding political rights and (as racist demagogues endlessly reminded them) insisting on rights to white women.
Tom G.
But the politicians who chose to secede were pretty clear about why they were seceding. Since you suggest reading about it, I would point to the declarations of the states on why they were seceding. Take a look at South Carolina's for example if you doubt that slavery was the cause of the war.
Exactly. While the non-slaveholding rank and file of the Confederate were fighting to defends their homes/homelands/home states, the elite who made the decisions to secede did so mainly because of slavery. Again, I had family on both sides who died on the conflict, and respect the courage and bravery of those who fought for whatever reason they did so. That does not preclude me from tearing up at The Battle Hymn of the Republic.
"Slaves made up a third of the Confederate population. Should they have been allowed a vote on secession?"
Constitutionaly,slaves were not allowed to vote.Not even in the union constitution.What is your point.
"Finally, free speech is not an issue here. No one is arguing for a government ban, but rather we're trying to convince Confederate-sympathizers to find another better historical cause to honor."
First free speech in regards to out Battle flag is at issue here and you/they are trying to politicly remove it from sight.
Confederate is Confederate and that is what i am trying to do by stating that the War for Southern Independence was not about slavery,it was not even started over slavery,it in all was/is about property,personal sovreignty,and constitutional adhearance.The message becomes much bigger than slavery could ever be in relation to your form of government and yours and my ability to self govern as was intended.Usurpitation of the constitution in not permitted,and the ends justifing the means is also prohibited.If lincoln and or the black republican party would have centered their concerns with protecting the constitution as they were pledged to do,again we would not be having this conversation.In Representative Republic there are spicific principles that must he followed,when you constitution is usurped for the reasons of special interse you automaticly change your form of governance to democracy in form.There are spicific means to right those things that the people feel need to be changes,and that process was never used.It is those that wish to equate the Confederacy with racism and slavery that do not wish the true reasons to be known,because if enough people in A,erica open their eyes to how your form of governance has been meligned and intentionaly misconstrued to resemble democracy in form of government,they will lose popular emotional opinion and will not be able to sway government to do their bidding by unconstitutional means,majority rule.First and formost your elected representative must protect the constitution,when usurped it is not being protected it is being used against one faction for the motives of another.If the people as a majority were intended to make the decisions of government then the rights of the minority are infringed,that is democracy in form of governance,like they have in england.Our is Representative Republic and majority rule is to end at the ballot box and the elected representative take the power released to him by the people that elected him,he then by oath of office pledges to protect and defend the Constitution,this is where he is protecting the rights of all citizens.When he cercomes to special intrest or gives legislation in favor of a majority that infringes the rights of the minority for fear of gitting reelected he has in effect become a traitor to the oath he pledged and the Constitution and his constituantcy. Now you got me on a tangent as i digress.
This post underestimates the connection between the Confederate Battle Flag and much more recent racism than the civil war.
The Confederate flag had been virtually forgotten by the early 1950s. Its return to prominence was almost entirely the result of "massive resistance" to desegregation - the revival of the Confederate Battle Flag symbolized rebellion in the style of George Wallace and Orval Faubus much more than that of James Dean.
It would be one thing if the Confederate flag had been in all those southern state flags, or flying above the South Carolina state house, since the end of Reconstruction. The origins would obviously have racial baggage, but it would be the racial baggage of the distant past.
All these flags, and so forth, instead arose in the era of the civil rights movement, as a symbol of the white south's opposition to civil rights. It is very hard to get around this.
Vindiciamus,
You say free speech is at issue. Where is the government trying to restrict speech? Do you think a government not flying a flag violates the 1st ammendment?
I brought up slaves voting because you seem to regard secession as a great moral act with the South exercising a democratic right. But of course, there was little meaning to democracy when 1/3 of the population is held in bondage.
I am still note sure - do you think secession was a moral act? My perception is that you regard the rights of a state to secede as more important than rights of millions of slaves to freedom. Is that true?
Tom
Charles B. Strozier: Lincoln’s Quest for Union:A Psychological Portrait might be interesting reading. I suppose it would cast light on the potential place of black distress in public psychology. I found little to argue with above in the original, thoughtful blogpost. We seem to have devolved into a moral arm wrestle to establish what Zeke concedes, 'My ancestors owned slaves and my great-great-great-grandfather surrendered with Lee at Appomatox, but this doesn't stop me from pointing out that those men where hugely, horribly, irrevocably wrong.' Ideally this would have been the end of it. After all, the Jews got out of Egypt without continuing consequently to exist in 'original sin.' There still seems to be significant shame as Obama brought up in his speech about Wright. I'm not sure however 'the causes of the Civial War' justifies the continuing shame.
"Your post makes me want to emphasis attacking the Confederate flag is not attacking the South as a region," Tom G
TR: I've mostly been in agreement with that. "The Confederacy" represents only a few years in the history of the South. Sadly Southerners are as guilty of over-emphasizing it as anyone. On the whole I think "Confederate Heritage Month", or whatever, is a bad idea. The period represents a disastrous experiment in Southern history. My Southern ancestors at that time were Unionists in Kentucky. The Whigs and Unionists were just as "Southern" in my mind as the Confederates.
Admittedly I went a bit contradictory on that in discussing the slave trade. However this is partly because I couldn't think of any other flag or item to symbolize the South in comparison. The point of it was slaves often came here under the aegis of British or Northern efforts, but blame often is placed solely on the South. It ended up sounding like a defense of the Confederate flag though, which was wrong.
Still we're somewhat stuck on how to have a symbol of the South not associated with the Confederacy. If we were to use a Confederate flag I think the "Stars and Bars", for historical reasons, could be better. Granted it's just as symbolic of slavers, but it's less associated to the segregationist cause than the battle flag. Although possibly certain Southern songs would be even better.
Of course on another level the different Southern regions have clear enough differences from each other that in some ways it might be better to not think in terms of a "The South." The "Mountainous South" (Arkansas, Tennesse, Kentucky, West Virginia, and the western portions of North Carolina) is much more Scotch-Irish influenced and somewhat less linked to slavery. Religion is traditionalist revivalist and ecstatic with intellectual elements traditionally minimal. The "Old South" (Virginia, Maryland, South Carolina, most of Georgia, and some eastern parts of North Carolina) was the more English and aristocrat influenced region. Traditionally it had more of the educated gentleman-farmer types. There were relatively few high quality colleges in the region, but the wealthier planters were educated at Princeton or elite schools in Europe. (In the 19th c. Princeton was the most "Southern", in student body, of the Ivy Leagues) Religion allowed for somewhat more intellectualism. The "Deep South" (Mississippi, Alabama, Louisiana, and some of Georgia) is generally the most backward region. Slaves represented a much greater percentage of the population and education, from what I can tell, was generally worse. Many of the negatives said of the South are most directed at this region. I'm essentially of "Mountainous South" origin with ancestors who were racist, I'm not trying to deny the problems, but generally not pro-slavery.
...South exercising a democratic right...
It was a CONSTITUTIONAL right,not a democratic right,there is no such thing as a democratic right in our form of government Representative Republic.You people do not have the copasity to comprehend what was at statk then and as a result what is at stake now. Just go about your busness as sheepole and let them lead you to this democracy form of governance you think you would like. Dear God they know not what they do.
You go to war because someone is about to march an army through your town, burn your home, rape your wife and daughter, and kill your son. It was true then, and it's true now. The only way you might protect your family is to protect everyone else's. What caused the war doesn't matter. If somebody drops a building full of your fellow citizens and their children in Manhattan, then you go to war. The only good blank is a dead blank. Got it? During the Civil War, they fought for their families. Not some silly abstraction. They lost, and the North burned their homes, raped their women, and killed their sons. (That would also be some of my ancestors, killed by my other ancestors. I don't worship any of them.)
The tragedy is that well meaning politicians got us into the mess. Personal tragedy for my family, national tragedy for us all. The British settled it amicably, by act of Parliament. We had to go to war over it, whose consequences are still with us.
Johnny Rebs went up against a numerically superior force, better equipped, with superior weapons, and with greatly superior funding. Do you really think that they worried about the black population? That's nonsense. They could have killed them all in about two days if they was their purpose. We honor them for going up against a greatly superior force willingly, to protect their families.
Viewing the Civil War through the prism of Racism is like the viewpoint of Marxists, who ascribe every historical event to the conflict between Capitalists and the Prolatariat. Battle of Thermoplyle, must be due to Capitalists. This became a religious issue, which was devoid of meaning. The current attribution of all of human behavior to racism is also religious and devoid. Save it for someone else.
The Confederate flag had been virtually forgotten by the early 1950s.
This is an untrue statement.I belong to an organization called "The Sons of Confederate Veterans" It was established in 1896 by the Confederate Veterans themselves.As a son and a member of this organization,by oath i am to carry a "charge" handed to the Sons by the Confederate veterans to vindicate the cause for which they fought,and to protect the symbols and monuments erected in their good name.I am also to prepetuate his memory and emulate those principles he loved and that i also love.Those principles ARE NOT slavery and racism,the ARE the principles contained within our form of government Representative Republic and Constitutionaly protected rights,nothing more,not the right to freedom of slaves unless that was a right constitutionaly protecte HIM the slave by our form of government Representative Republic.Emotional rights are not protected unless you are to consider it your right to be emotional and even then your emotional right is NOT to infringe upon the rights of others.It was all about Constitution,If it was constitutional it was correct if it was not constitutional it was infringement,usurpitation and not allowed in our form of government.Y'all just simply DO NOT wish to understand,but still i have my duty to preform and on this forum i have done so to the best of my ability.
Sigh. Simple question, Vindiciamus. Do you think that states should have the right to legalize slavery? No waffling about the 13th amendment(I think that's the one.) Assume it doesn't exist, if need be.
A simple yes or no is required as a minimum, though you may elaborate at length.
I dearly love those folks who actually look up the Secession resolutions by the individual states, but like any message you have to read the entire document. Did any of the states stop at mentioning slavery as a point of contention? I have every state secession document on my desktop, I can't find one that stopped there with their list of grievances against the Federal Government at Slavery.
The problem with us is we are looking through the wrong end of the telescope, and failing to see the broad picture. Slavery was certainly a point of contention between the Union and the Confederacy. What most of you never hear about is the John Brown raid to free slaves and lead an uprising of slaves throughout the South. He was tried and hung, but people all over the north celebrated him as a martyr like slaughtering people in their sleep was a good idea. May I pose a question here, when the WTC was destroyed, and people celebrated in the streets of Afghanistan and other Middle Eastern countries, did it make you want to love your enemy, or like this old Country Preacher who is also a disabled Vietnam Veteran, did you want to want to punish those celebrating our dead? Most non-saints like folks preferred to kick butt, sort of like the Toby Keith song. If you remember your anger, you have a little bit of what the Southern People felt. The Nat Turner Slave Rebellion, John Brown's Raid and other acts of actual physical terrorism or helping the Slaves which were usually purchased in the North escape from their lawful owners was economic terrorism. The problem is looking backwards is our morals as a nation and as a people have evolved and changed. Most of us would agree that Slavery was morally wrong, and that is where most Union believers stop. If someone takes anything you legally own right now because they don't believe you have a right to it, even though you legally paid for it, are you likely to let them walk away with your property. That wasn't going to happen in the old South, or being honest about it, not in the present South, either.
Lastly I'd dare say the vast majority of those supporting the elimination of the Confederate Flags have never read the Confederate Constitution. It is eye opening.
http://www.libs.uga.edu/hargrett/selections/confed/trans.html
Please check out Article 1, Section 9! I'll bet you are shocked to see what is forbidden.
Lastly, some have suggested that the Confederate Battle Flag was used to represent segregation. Factually this is inescapable, it happened from the late 1950's until as recently as last year when a KKK thug, jerk, ass used it at a celebration at Antietam battlefield. The Sons of Confederate Veterans present then or any other time the Confederate flags are misused stood at attention, and turned their backs on the vermin misusing our beloved flag. (Hopefully I'm not being too subtle about my feelings about anyone misusing our flag).
The Official Flag of the KKK is today and throughout their history, has been, the US Flag. They are also known to burn Crosses, but the open every Klavern meeting with a pledge of allegiance to the US flag. Individuals misuse the Confederate Flag; institutionally the hate groups misuse Old Glory.
Someone mentioned the KKK using the Confederate Flag back in the 1920's in the KKK's second incarnation, wrong! Check out this link from the KKK Million man march on Washington DC
http://www.historicalstockphotos.com/images/xsmall/2853_kkk_parade_in_washington_dc.jpg
There were more than 350,000 men in that march, not a single Confederate Flag of any kind.
"but people all over the north celebrated him as a martyr"
TR: At first I don't think celebrating him was that common. The people who did so though were educated people of disproportionate influence. Later he took his execution in a fairly dignified manner and the war led to praise of him rising.
Still it's not reasonable to take one cause celebre and focus on that. In the South pro-slaveryite violence on abolitionists also occurred. At least some of those praising John Brown did so, to some degree, in a "tit-for-tat" way. It was also an age where violence was more often seen as solutions to affronts and problems. Dueling had only recently declined. If John Brown were alive today he'd have shot an abortion doctor, or a human trafficker, and be seen as a psycho or vigilante. However we're living in an age where non-violent solutions are more praised.
Re: You go to war because someone is about to march an army through your town, burn your home, rape your wife and daughter, and kill your son.
In 1861 no Union armies were poised to do this. In fact the scorched earth tactics you mention (minus the rape part, which was never part of Union tactics) did not begin until 1863, and not in earnest until 1864-- during which year the CSA armies began to have a serious problem with desertions.
Re: Viewing the Civil War through the prism of Racism is like the viewpoint of Marxists, who ascribe every historical event to the conflict between Capitalists and the Prolatariat
Deny away, but claiming that the Old South was not racist to the marrow of its bones is like denying that the sun rises in the east. And yes, people do fight for abstractions, otherwise half the wars of history would be hard to explain.
First they came for the confederate flag, and since I was not a southerner I did not object...
Re: Aaron
Please. Nobody is saying that displaying the flag should be illegal. We're saying that displaying the flag makes you an ass or a racist. If you're unaware or unconcerned with the flag's association with slavery, racism, terrorism, etc and the degree to which it offends the people around you, then flying it makes you an ass. This still applies if the flag represents heritage, history or your valiant ancestors fight against the Yankee Nation to you. If you fly it in order to celebrate said slavery, racism, terrorism, etc., then flying it makes you a racist.
As such, decent people ought not fly the flag, even though they certainly have a legal right to do so.
Zeke,
you make me sad that Duelling has been outlawed, that the Age of belief in One's Honor has been eclipsed--for the great many, for, if it were not so, I sincerely doubt you'd be stating your position, such that it is, on such little understanding..
Zeke,
Hey, the US flag flew over a lot of armies that killed a whole lot of innocents...the next logical step after making the confederate flag un-PC would be to make displays of US flags considered "gauche."
See Obama on why he can't wear a flag pin, etc.
What did Lincoln do after the North had won? Asked the plan to play Dixie.
MEH-
Like you, I once romanticized the days when an insult could be answered with gunpowder or steel, mostly as a result of reading Heinlein's _Beyond This Horizon_, which made dueling over petty grievances seem like a lot of fun. Then, I grew out of being a teenager, and I came to realize that such appeals a bygone age of "Honor" were just cryptic ways of saying, "I want to kill you for what you just said." There is nothing admirable about such sentiments, and to use the word "honor" in conjunction with them is to sully the very concept of honor.
rpl,
upon rereading what I wrote, you may find that this: "that the Age of belief in One's Honor has been eclipsed" is the main point.
further, I 'romanticize' nothing of the sort, I was merely wistful for a day when proper persons held their tongue, for want of anything to add to a conversation.
wist·ful (wstfl)
adj.
1. Full of wishful yearning.
2. Pensively sad; melancholy.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
[From obsolete wistly, intently.]
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wistful·ly adv.
wistful·ness n.
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition copyright ©2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Updated in 2003. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.
ThesaurusLegend: Synonyms Related Words AntonymsAdj. 1. wistful - showing pensive sadness; "the sensitive and wistful response of a poet to the gentler phases of beauty"
pensive
sad - experiencing or showing sorrow or unhappiness; "feeling sad because his dog had died"; "Better by far that you should forget and smile / Than that you should remember and be sad"- Christina Rossetti
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/wistful
I'm guessing from a lack of replies for all those nattering on about 'States Rights' that yes, they really and truly do think that states should have the right to legalize slavery.
To which I reply, if any of you Johnnies _ever_ try to make slavery legal again, expect to hear from us in the 'North' real quick. I could care less about 'States Rights' if this is what it implies.
MEH-
Rereading what you wrote, I see that you mention that you are sad that Dueling (with a capital D, no less) has been outlawed. If you meant your readers to conclude anything other than that you miss having the option of stabbing and/or shooting anyone who disagrees with you, then I'm afraid you were less than clear. One might wonder why you chose to put that first, much the same as one might wonder why South Carolina chose to mention slavery first in their articles of secession, if it were not in fact the most important of their concerns. At the very least you would have to allow that you (and they) buried the lede, just a bit.
SoV (and others) -
People have a powerful need to believe that they are descended from distinguished and honorable forebears. There is no end to the lengths they will go to in order to rationalize why their ancestors were not scoundrels or misguided fools. Recasting slavery as "states' rights" is pretty much in this vein. The intent is not so much to claim that slavery is a state's right as it is to sweep slavery under the rug entirely, making the Civil War about tariffs and other minutiae.
That's not to say that you should buy into it, but I think it would be foolish to assume that there is a significant constituency for a return to slavery, even in the deepest depths of the Deep South. Shaking your fist about what would happen if this non-existent constituency tried any funny business probably doesn't help much in the "increasing understanding and building bridges" department.
It is surely too late, but I do want to admit that as Vindiciamus noted, I lack the "copasity to comprehend what was at statk then."
Perhaps, because I lack his profound knowledge of American history: "The founding fathers wished to discontinue slavery in the whole of America but for some reason it was not to be so.Virginis and other Souther States were force to become dependent on the institution of slavery ..."
I did never get an answer though - was the Confederacy a good thing?
Tom
Rev. Dr. William H. Swann,
Beyond your historical ignorance, you wrote the most immoral phrase I have read in a long time.
"... helping the Slaves which were usually purchased in the North escape from their lawful owners was economic terrorism."
You condemn helping a man escape of lifetime of brutal captivity not just for himself but for all his descendents. To you that is not just wrong, but an act of terrorism. I hope none of your descendents ever have a "lawful owner."
Tom
"Sigh. Simple question, Vindiciamus. Do you think that states should have the right to legalize slavery? No waffling about the 13th amendment(I think that's the one.) Assume it doesn't exist, if need be."
The simple answer is no,not in this time,and in that time ot WAS Constitutionaly protected.Of course slavery is BAD and so is racism all i am mainly trying to convey is why the confederates fought for Independence,"compromised principles".
They felt that the Constitution as agreed upon by all was not being adheared to equaly as intended.I only wish to argue the Constitutional reason because in ours and there form of government Representative Republic,emotion has no place within governance.Constitution has no emotions only laws.I can no more except slavery as the reason for the war nor can i use as evidence the fact that the north raped,burned and otherwise ravaged the homes of fellow Confederates,as both are examples of emotional reasonings.This whole discourse changes when we stick to Constitutional,reasoning.
Tom
Why do i have to find the answer for you,when someone tells you something it is up to you to find out if it is true or not.Go find out,i assure you i am not telling you a lie.
From what i read when northerners found out how firtle the ground,and available the slaves,they moves to those places and communities and influanced the legeslatures of those areas.back then you had to be a land owner in order to vote,when they bought land and they all did they automaticly were able to vote/out vote those that did no wish slavery.This was way before the war.Also Washington ,Jefferson and others hated the fact that America enhearted the institution and really did not want it to excist.But Americans and baby capitolism overtook the whim to get rid of it. Anything i tell you is resurchable,on the web.
I think you may have misconstrued what I wrote: namely, that 'States Rights' is not a trump card. So in this instance, states do not have the right to legalize slavery, any more than they have the right to put all Catholics to the sword.
In a word, no. See above. 'States Rights' has meaning; you're diluting that meaning by applying it indiscriminantly, saying that states have the right to do _anything_ they please, so long as it's done up all legal and proper.
Needless to say, quite a few people disagree with this.
Vindiciamus, you might have an easier time convincing people of your position if you were -- what's the term? -- literate. (Of course, if you were, you wouldn't hold the position that you do, so that presents something of a Catch-22.)
rpl,
regarding: "If you meant your readers to conclude anything other than that you miss having the option of stabbing and/or shooting anyone who disagrees with you, then I'm afraid you were less than clear."
simply, I need not miss "having the option of stabbing and/or shooting anyone who disagrees with you", to miss Dueling. The mere existence of the practice made one think twice before cocking off.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Dueling
http://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/go+off+at+half-cock
It never fails; whenvever anyone starts talking about the Confederate flag and mentions "Southerners" or "the South," you can always, ALWAYS, put the word "white" in front of those words. Let's try:
"Most (white) Southerners have a relationship with the Confederate flag that has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery. Over many years, it gradually became a symbol of regional identification, pride and, yes, rebellion."
Are you arguing that the battle flag is an emblem of pride and rebellion for black Southerners, too, or do only white people get to count as "Southerners?"
I thought so. And that, in a nutshell, is the problem.
So the Confederacy is now equated with Nazi Germany? And Jefferson Davis is Adolph Hitler and Robert E. Lee is Heinrich Himmler? Yes, well I guess when one views history with cracked lense of cultural Marxism it doesn't matter if one's analogies are worth the toilet paper one wipes with.
If we carry this anaology to its logical conclusion, then the Sons of Confederate Veterans needs to be outlawed; every institution, county, street, school, anything bearing the name of a Confederate general needs to be changed to something else; Every monument to Confederate generals and Southern soldiers needs to be torn down; all the graves of Southern soldiers need to be dug up and the bones be placed in a giant furnance and their ashes be scattered to the four winds.
Finally all Southerners need to be branded with the Mark of Cain to remind them of their intrinsic evil, especially those who are currently the cannon fodder in Iraq because their rich New York brethern have better things to do with their time than join the military (just like Dick Cheney), like sell subprime mortgages on Wall Street to which they will be bailed out by the government in Washington for their losses. You know, the government that was the "good guys" during the War Between the States?
Incredible isn't it that such a flag for the Confederacy is considered so offensive when slavery was allowed under the U.S. flag as well, not mention Indian genocide, Filipino slaughter, Japanese internment, racial discrimination, My Lai and whole host of other "inconvient truths." While U.S. isn't perfect and on balance is no worse than most nations, how does one know that slavery still would have existed in the Confederacy 50 or even 100 years after its founding (which it probably would not have)? Hmmm?
The Confederacy was founded in same fashion the U.S was founded: a secession by one part of the whole, in this case, the South from the rest of the U.S. just as America seceeded from the British Empire. It was not the intention of the Confederacy to overthrow the U.S. government. Lincoln could happily presided as President over the rest of the Union, just not in the 13 states that seceeded.
Geez, talk about trying to re-fight the War Between the States. Let it go.
MEH-
Yeah, yeah, people wouldn't say foolish things if they thought they could get shot for it. Of course, they also wouldn't say things that perhaps needed to be said, if they thought that saying them might offend someone who might shoot them. That's why dueling is not considered a valid form of discourse; it rebuts truth as readily as falsehood. But then, I find that most people who invoke the good old days of dueling to settle arguments are thinking more about all the "fools" they could silence than about their own utterances that would be silenced, so maybe they consider that more of a feature than a bug.
SOV-
The point is, there isn't really anyone who thinks that states should have the right to re-institute slavery. Pretending that some significant constituency of Southerners (i.e., net.kooks need not apply) wants to bring back slavery is counterproductive, if your goal is to improve race relations. If, on the other hand, all you really want to do is pointlessly annoy a bunch of people that you don't like very much, then you're doing a fine job and should perhaps consider a career in talk radio.
Sean, great argument. By the way, enjoyed your book. Thanks for sending me a copy. I don't think we have too many folks on this site who have read much history.
Dr. Michael Hill
League of the South
rpl, you're not getting it: I'm not saying they want to bring slavery back, I'm saying that they think that 'States Rights' issues trump anything. They don't. States do not have the right to institute a religion tax against all non-Christians. States do not have the right to require that all first-born males serve for life in the military. States do not have the right to make having red hair a capital offense.
And states do not have the right to legalize slavery. Period. Irregardless of any constitutional amendment. If the South was all for 'States Rights', if it was truly not about the loss of economic power that slave-owning brought to the region, the South should have abolished slavery, and _then_ seceded.
I don't think anyone here would be against some sort of Confederate Month if this was the case.
Instead, their behavior reminds me of a certain relative of mine - who also, coincidentally, seems to have been eaten up by resentment - who makes any altercation an issue of authority: the "You're not the boss of me" ploy. As a recent example, she agreed to pay for damages when she sideswiped another relatives car and they shook on the deal (she didn't want the police involved.) Later, when the bill was presented, she refused to pay, on the grounds that she couldn't _possibly_ have caused that much damage, and when various other people stepped in and told her that she had made a deal, she turned it into an argument of "You're not the boss of me, and I'm mad at you now, justifiably so, and I'm going to stay mad until you admit that you're not the boss of me and 'pologize." Which of course stops (she thinks) any nosiness by this person.
Same thing, same dynamic with the South. A culture of resentment; it seems that some of these people live for grudges, for 'honor'. To them, being able to tell other people that "You're not the boss of me" seems to be the high point of their existence.
Thank you Dr. Hill. We may not have a lot of people here who haven't read history, but in reading through these comments there are more than one would think and due to in some ways, to your organization.
Thanks for the kind words, Sean, I have been impressed by several of the arguments. I am thinking of posting Clyde Wilson's essay entitled "The South" in order to show some on here a bit of real scholarly work on the questions at hand.
Michael Hill
The League of the South
The South
contributed by Dr Clyde Wilson
Columbia, South Carolina
An essay from The Best of the Southern Patriot (forthcoming June 2008), by The League of the South (www.dixienet.org)
What to say in brief compass about the South?—a subject that is worthy of the complete works of a Homer, a Shakespeare, or a Faulkner. The South is a geographical/historical/cultural reality that has provided a crucial source of identity for millions of people for three centuries. Long before there was an entity known as ‘the United States of America,’ there was the South. Possibly, there will still be a Southern people long after the American Empire has collapsed upon its hollow shell.
One fine historian defined the South as “not quite a nation within the nation, but the next thing to it.” The late M. E. Bradford, whose genial spirit watches over us even now, defined the South as “a vital and long-lasting bond, a corporate identity assumed by those who have contributed to it.” This is, characteristically, a broad and generous definition. He proceeded to illustrate that when visualising the South, he always thought “of Lee in the Wilderness that day when his men refused to let him assume a position in the line of fire and tugged at the bridle of Traveller until they had turned him aside.” This was clearly a society at war, not a government military machine.
The South is larger and more salient in population, territory, historical import, distinctive folkways, music, and literature than many of the separate nations of the earth. Were the South independent today, it would be the fourth or fifth largest economy in the world. Citizens of Minneapolis consider themselves cultured because of their Japanese-conducted symphony that plays European music, and assume that the Nashville geniuses who create music all the world loves are rubes and hayseeds. New Yorkers pride themselves on their literary culture. Yet in the second half of the twentieth century (if you subtract Southern writers) American literature would be on par with Denmark or Bulgaria and somewhere below Norway and Rumania.
Southerners are the most regionally loyal citizens of the United States. But paradoxically—or perhaps not—they have traditionally been the most loyal to the country at large, ready to repel insult or injury without the need to be dragooned by any ridiculous folderol about saving Haiti or Somalia for democracy. Southerners have given freely to the Union and generally avoided the demands for entitlements that now characterise American life. But their loyalty has been severely tested, especially considering all they have ever asked in return is to be left alone.
Southerners have less reason to be loyal to the collective enterprise of the United States than does any group of citizens. The South was invaded, laid waste, and conquered when it tried to uphold the original and correct understanding of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. It took twenty-two million Northerners, aided by the entire plutocracy and proletariat of the world, four years of the bloodiest warfare in American history and the most unparalleled terrorism against civilians, to subdue five million Southerners—all followed by the horror of Reconstruction. During this entire period, ‘the Northern conservatives’ never opposed the smallest obstacle to the devastations of the radicals. In fact, the Northern “conservatives” have never, in the course of American history, conserved anything.
Since the war, the South has been a colonial possession, economically and culturally, to whatever sleazy elements have been able to exercise national power. A major theme of the American media and popular culture is ridicule and contempt for everything Southern. A major theme of American historical writing is the portrayal of the South as the unique repository of evil in a society that is otherwise shining and pure.
A severely condensed but essentially accurate interpretation of American history could be stated thusly: There are two kinds of Americans. There are those who want to be left alone to pursue their destiny, restrained only by tradition and religion; and those whose identity revolves around compelling others to submit to their own manufactured vision of the good society.
These two aspects of American culture were formed in the 17th century, by the Virginians and Yankees, respectively. The Virginians moved into the interior of America and carved their farms and plantations out of the wilderness. Their goal was to re-create the best of English rural society. They merged with even more vigorous and independent people, the Scots-Irish, to form what is still the better side of the American character.
The Yankees of Massachusetts lived in villages with preacher and teacher. They viewed themselves as a superior, chosen people, a City upon a Hill. As far as they were concerned, they were the true Americans and the only Americans that counted, ignoring or slandering other Americans relentlessly—a sentiment persisting to this day.
The days of Jefferson and Jackson illustrate the freedom and honour underlying America when ruled by the South. During their eras, Virginians gave away their vast Western empire for the joint enjoyment of all Americans, (thus making possible the Midwest and West) and laboured to erect a limited, responsible government.
The New Englanders, during the same periods, demanded a reserve of lands for themselves in Ohio; instituted a national bank and funding system by which their money-men profited off the blood of the Revolution; passed the Alien and Sedition laws to essentially enforce their own narrow ideological code on others; opposed the Louisiana Purchase; and demanded tariffs to protect their industries at others’ expense. All of which was done in the name of “Americanism.” (One of the first laws passed by Congress was a measure to continue the British imperial subsidy for New England fisheries.)
This profiteering through government, which John Taylor of Caroline called the “paper aristocracy,” has always been accompanied by moral imperialism and assumptions of superiority that are even more offensive than the looting. It is from this that the South seceded. It is this combination of greed and moralism which constitutes the Yankee legacy, gives the American Empire whatever legitimacy it can claim, and fuels the never-ending reconstruction of society. That is why we use Marines for social work, so that our leaders can congratulate themselves on their moral posture. That is why every town in the land is burdened with empty parking spaces bearing the symbol of the empire, so that the Connecticut Yankee George Bush can posture over his charity to the disabled. That is why, right now, wealthy Harvard University receives from the treasury a 200 percent overhead bonus on its immense federal grants, while the impoverished University of South Carolina receives only 50 percent of its much smaller bounty.
The term American is an abstraction without human content—it refers, at best, to a government, territory, standard of living, and a set of dubious and dubiously observed propositions. It refers to nothing akin to values or culture, nothing that represents the humanness of human beings. It could reasonably be argued that there is no such thing as an American people, although we have persuaded ourselves there was when shouldering the burdens of several wars. There was perhaps a time earlier in this century when an American nationality might have emerged naturally. But that time has passed with the onslaught of new immigrants.
Unlike the term American, when we say Southern, we know we imply a certain history, literature, music, and speech, sets of folkways, attitudes and manners; a certain set of political responses and pieties; and a view of the proper dividing line between the private and the public. Things which are unique, clear, easily observable, and continual over many generations.
The bloody St. Andrew’s cross of the Confederacy is a symbol throughout the world of heroic resistance to oppression—except in the U.S., where it is in the process of suppression. Southerners are democratic in spirit, but they have never made a fetish of democracy and certainly not of what Mel Bradford called “Equality.” With T. S. Eliot, Southerners intuitively recognise that democracy is a procedure and not a goal, a content, or a substitute for an authentic social fabric. However free and equal we may be, we are nothing without a culture, and there is no culture without religion.
The South, many believe, still has a substantial authentic culture, both high and folk, and it still has a purchase on Christianity. That is, the South is a civilisational reality in a sense which the United States is not, and it will last longer than the American Empire.
A proper question to now ask is what can the United States do for the South? The Union is nothing except for its constituent parts. The Union is good and just to the degree that it fosters its authentic parts. That is precisely why our forefathers made the Constitution and the Union and gave consent, voluntarily, to them—to enhance themselves, not the government.
As the Southern poet Allen Tate pointed out, the wrong turn was taken in the War Between the States when the United States ceased living the Southern conception of a limited partnership and became instead a collection of buildings in Washington from which orders of self-justifying authority were issued. The great classical scholar and Confederate soldier Basil Gildersleeve remarked that the War was a conflict over grammar—whether the proper grammar was “the United States are” or “the United States is.”
The South’s lost political legacy was laid out by Rev. Robert Lewis Dabney, Presbyterian theologian and Stonewall Jackson’s chief of staff, several years following the war. Echoing Calhoun, he said:
Government is not the creator but the creature of human society. The Government has no mission from God to make the community; on the contrary the community is determined by Providence, where it is happily determined for us by far other causes than the meddling of governments—by historical causes in the distant past, by vital ideas propagated by great individual minds—especially by the church and its doctrines. The only communities which have had their characters manufactured for them by governments have had a villainously bad character.
Noble races make their governments. Ignoble ones are made by them.
The United States was created to serve the communities which make it up, not for the communities to serve the government. That is what the South and all authentic American communities need to recapture from a ruling class bent upon constantly remaking us. If we recapture that, we will again be citizens giving our consent to the necessary evil of a limited government, and not the serfs and cannon fodder of the American Empire.
From The Southern Patriot, Vol. 1 No. 2
November-December 1994
Clyde Wilson is professor emeritus of Southern history at The University of South Carolina and served on the founding Board of Directors of The League of the South.
Just ducking back in with a couple more examples from today's comments:
"Finally all Southerners need to be branded with the Mark of Cain to remind them of their intrinsic evil..."
Notice, again, how "Southerners" means "white Southerners." Says a lot, doesn't it?
And as for that bloviating essay, consider:
"It took twenty-two million Northerners...to subdue five million Southerners."
One notes that there were nine million people living in the Confederate States at the time of the Civil War. No prizes for guessing the ethnic identity of four million of them. But they aren't really "Southerners," are they? They probably aren't even really human beings.
Triple points for irony and prescience: note how the people 'who want to be left alone to pursue their destiny' are the _also_ ones who go 'around compelling others to submit to their own manufactured vision of the good society.'
And the prescience; look at the time-stamps, and my observation that these people love using the tactic of appearing to be the aggrieved party by turning everything into "You're not the boss of me." Making slavery illegal? That's "trying to be the boss of me."
Pardon me while I retch quietly in the magnolias and divest my stomach of that nasty southern comfort.
What's wrong with "Southerners" mostly referring to White Southerners?
Is it necessary to say "Black Haitians" or "hispanic Mexicans"? How silly.
"The South" is mostly a white thing and personally I don't really see a problem with that. Most others (non-whites) just wouldn't understand.
Oh, and for the record, I would have definitely voted agaisnt a "Dr." King holiday.
What spineless coward would vote for it? I guess that says alot about our elected leaders doesn't it?
King is certainly among the most undeserving people in the history of the world to get a holiday.
Do we not have one honorable elected man that will tell the truth about "Reverend" King?
I guess not.
Vindiciamus, you might have an easier time convincing people of your position if you were -- what's the term? -- literate. (Of course, if you were, you wouldn't hold the position that you do, so that presents something of a Catch-22.)
If this is your rendition of literate you are the pot calling the kettel black.I am not trying to convince anyone of anything.
Re: Since the war, the South has been a colonial possession
Either a howling absurdity, that, or else a screed from an alternate reality. We have just lived through a rather lengthy period when the South boomed economically (I live in the former CSA too, albeit south Florida is not culturally southern at all) and Southerners have dominated the politics of the country too: LBJ, Fulbright, Thurmond, Connolly, Carter, Clinton, Gore, the two younger Bushes, Gingrich, Frist, Lott, Armey, Delay...
I would like to thank Mr.Hill for posting this essay,but dought yankees on this list will understand.
I am Confederate, that is my Nationality. The only thing that stops this from being recognized is the question that still to this day remains, was secession legal? When this question is answered in the affirmative my nationality will be recognized and all those that call my flag, ancestor and country racist, and bigoted will at that point become racist and bigoted themselves. If the descendants of the slaves receive compensation for their ancestors then so shall i receive compensation for the loss of my country.
Has anyone asked why was none of those men that lead the so called rebellion never prosecuted for the crime of treason?
Answer: Because if they had all would have found that it was the yankee union that was in the wrong.
"Vindiciamus" the illiterate.
It was not untill 1977 that the Confederacy was deemed reconstructed officialy by the president,at the same time he gave citizenship back to Confederate presedent Jefferson Davis.Before the seded states were allowed back into the union they had to construct new state constitution that complied with the illegal 13th amendment to the fed constitution.Is this a resemblance to free?
Oh,Slavery was not written out of the constitution,it was simply reworded.And the only thing gone about slavery is the word,we are all slaves to the despotic Government,we lost our Representative Republic when the Confederacy lost its war for Independence.We are now governed by democracy in form,European Democracy to be exact.The majority are fools, and the mob rules We are lost when we disgard of grandfathers tools.Rally to the flag boys,Rally to the flag boys ,Dixie needs us again. Our ancestors did what they needed to, now it’s time for me and you. Rally to the flag boys,Rally to the flag boys, the rebellion has started anew.:o)
Vindiciamus,
"Why do i have to find the answer for you,when someone tells you something it is up to you to find out if it is true or not"
When you frequently assert novel points (slavery was forced on a reluctant South!) and are unable to support them, people will naturally take you less seriously. When there were disputes over slavery, it was Southern states that supported it. For example, Southern states fought to keep the slave trade going (see for example ). When you add phrases like "but for some reason it was not to be so" readers will tend to doubt your depth of knowledge.
And even if secession was legal, it will still be the supporters of slavery who are bigoted. That is why I keep asking you - was the Confereracy a good cause? If not, why celebrate it?
Tom
It is very tempting to make fun of Dr Clyde Wilson's essay. (Did white Southerners emphasis the "freedom to be left alone" when chased escaped slaves in the North? He actually manages to go the whole essay without mentioning slavery)
OK I could not entirely resist. But the more serious point is this - Southerners can and should take pride in many other things than their ancestors brief disastrous decision to secede to protect one of history's greatest evils.
Salute Southern literature, or military traditions. Just don't venerate the worst of the region's history.
Tom
Tom
The Convederacy was a country,and if secession was legal it was no one busness in the union what happens concerning slavery. The union could have employed some sort of deplomatic restrictions but as to what a nation does in regards to perceived
human rights is only the busness of that nation.
I will try to locate what i read concerning slavery being forced on a reluctant south for you.
My arguement have nothing to do with today,had the south not went for secession slavery would have lasted for much longer than it did as lincoln had no intentions of stoping slavery even in the beginning of the WSI.He even told a delegation of blacks that he felt whites were superior than blacks.Y'all gotta study history before you get into these kinds of discourses.
Tom
Salute Southern literature, or military traditions. Just don't venerate the worst of the region's history.
I am saluting "military tridition" the Battle flag is a military flag.I posted here how the Battle flag came into excistance.The problem is that it is the flag that everyone has a problem with.
I have told you i do not wish for slavery,i am not racist,and i am proud of my Nationality all warts and blemishes just as i suppose you are.Why then do i get greef from yankees? I do not point out to you how your nationality has been racist,bigoted and how badly y'all treat the blacks,why then do you do it to me?
The Northern Response to Slavery
by
By Martin Duberman
The abolitionist movement never became a major channel of the Northern antislavery sentiment. It remained in 1860 what it had been in 1830: the small but not still voice of radical reform. An important analytical problem this arises: why did most Northerners who disapproved of slavery become "nonextensionists" rather than abolitionists? Why did they prefer to attack slavery indirectly, by limiting its spread, rather than directly, by seeking to destroy it wherever it existed?
On the broad level, the answer involves certain traits in the national character. In our society of abundance, prosperity has been the actual condition--or the plausible aspiration--of the majority. Most Americans have been too absorbed in the
enjoyment or pursuit of possessions to take much notice of the exactions of the system. Even when inequalities have become too pronounced or too inclusive any longer to be comfortably ignored, efforts at relief have usually been of a
partial and half-hearted kind. Any radical attack on social problems would compromise the national optimism; it would suggest fundamental defects, rather than occasional malfunctions. And so the majority has generally found it necessary to
label "extreme" any measures which call for large scale readjustment. No one, reasonably consented, welcomes extensive dislocation; what seems peculiarly American is the disbelief, under all circumstances, in the necessity of such dislocation.
Our traditional recoil from "extremism" can be defended. Complex problems, it might be said, require complex solutions; or, to be more precise, complex problems have two solutions--at best, they can be partially adjusted. If even this much is to
be possible, the approach must be flexible, piecemeal, pragmatic. The clear-cut blueprint for reform, with its utopian demand for total solution, intensifies rather than ameliorates disorder.
There is much to be said for this defense of the American way--in the abstract. The trouble is that the theory of gradualism and the practice of it have not been the same. Too often Americans have used the gradualist argument as a technique of
evasion rather than as a tool for change, not as a way of dealing with difficult problems slowly and carefully, but as an excuse for not dealing with them at all. We do not want time for working out our problems--we so not want problems, and
we will use the argument of time as a way of not facing them. As a chosen people, we are meant only to have problems which are self-liquidating. All of which is symptomatic of our conviction that history is the story of inevitable progress,
that every day in every way we will get better and better even though we make no positive efforts toward that end.
Before 1845, the Northern attitude toward slavery rested on this comfortable belief in the benevolence of history. Earlier, during the 1830s, the abolitionists had managed to excite a certain amount of uneasiness about the institution by invoking
the authority of the Bible and the Declaration of Independence against it. Alarm spread still further when mobs began to prevent abolitionists from speaking their minds or publishing their opinions, and when the national government interfered
with the mails and the right of petition. Was it possible, men began to ask, that the abolitionists were right in contending that slavery, if left alone, would not die out but expand, would become more not less vital to the country's interests? Was
is possible that slavery might even end by infecting free institutions themselves?
The apathetic majority was shaken, but not yet profoundly aroused; the groundwork for widespread antislavery protest was laid, but its flowering awaited further developments. The real watershed came in 1845, when Texas was annexed to the
Union, and war with Mexico followed. The prospect now loomed of a whole series of new slave states. It finally seemed clear that the mere passage of time would not bring a solution; if slavery was ever to be destroyed, more active resistance
would be necessary. For the first time large numbers of Northerners prepared to challenge the dogma that slavery was a local matter in which the free states had no concern. A new era of widespread, positive resistance to slavery had opened.
Yet such new resolve as had been found was not channeled into a heightened demand for the abolition of the institution, but only into a demand that its further extension be prevented. By 1845 Northerners may have lost partial, but not total
confidence in "Natural Benevolence;" they were now wiser Americans perhaps, but Americans nonetheless. More positive actions against slavery, they seemed to be saying, was indeed required, but nothing too positive. Containing the institution
would, in the long run, be tantamount to destroying it; a more direct assault was unnecessary. In this sense, the doctrine of nonextension was but a more sophisticated version of the standard faith in "time".
One need not question the sincerity of those who believed that nonextension would ultimately destroy slavery,, in order to recognize that such a belief partook of wishful thinking. Even if slavery was contained, there remained large areas in the
Southern states into which the institution would still expand; even without further expansion, there was no guarantee that slavery would cease to be profitable; and finally, even should slavery cease to be profitable, there was no certainty that the
South, psychologically, would feel able to abandon it. Nonextension, in short, was hardly a fool-proof formula. Yes many Northerners close to so regard it. And thus, the question remains: why did not an aroused antislavery conscience turn to
more certain measures and demand more unequivocal action?
To have adopted the path of direct abolition, first of all, might have meant risking individual respectability. The unsavory reputation of those already associated with abolitionism was not likely to encourage converts to it. Still, if this doctrine had
been really appealing, the disrepute of its earlier adherents could not alone have kept men from embracing it. Association with the "fanatics" could have been smoothed simply by rehabilitating their reputations; their notoriety, it could have been said, earlier had been exaggerated--it had been the convenient invention of an apathetic majority to justify its own indifference to slavery. When after 1861, public opinion did finally demand a new image of the abolitionists, it was readily
enough produced. The mere reputation of abolitionism, therefore, would have been sufficient to repel men from joining its ranks. Hostility to the movement had to be grounded in a deeper source--fear of the doctrine of "immediatism" itself.
Immediatism challenged the Northern hierarchy of values. To many, a direct assault on slavery meant a direct assault on private property and the Union as well. Fear for these values clearly inhibited antislavery fervor (though possibly a reverse
trend operated as well--concern for property and Union may have been stressed in order to justify the convenience of "going slow" on slavery).
As devout Lockeians, Americans did believe that the sanctity of private property constituted the essential cornerstone for all other liberties. If property could not be protected in a nation, neither could life or liberty. And the Constitution, so many
felt, had upheld the legitimacy of holding property in men. True, the Constitution had not mentioned slavery by name, and had not evenly declared in its favor, but in giving the institution certain indirect guarantees (the three-fifths clause;
noninterference for twenty-one years with the slave trade; the fugitive slave proviso), the Constitution had seemed to sanction it. At any rate no one could be sure. The intentions of the Founding Fathers remained uncertain, and one of the
standing debates of the antebellum generation was whether the Constitution had been meant by them to be a pro- or an antislavery document. Since the issue was unresolved, Northerners remained uneasy, uncertain how far they could go in
attacking slavery without at the same time attacking property.
Fear for property rights was underscored by fear for the Union. The South had many times warned that if her rights and interests were not heeded, she would leave the Union and for a separate confederation. The tocsin had been sounded with
enough regularity so that to some it had begun to sound like a hollow bluster. But there was always a chance that if the south felt sufficiently provoked she might yet carry out the threat. It is difficult today to fully appreciate the horror with
which most Northerners regarded the potential breakup of the Union. The mystical quantities which surrounded "Union" were no less real for being in part irrational. Lincoln struck a deep chord for his generation when he spoke of the Union as
the "last best hope of earth"; that was the American experiment was thought the "best" hope may have been arrogant, a hope at all, naive, but such it was to the average American, convinced of his own superiority and the possibility of the
world learning by example. Today, more concerned with survival than improvement, we are bemused (when we are not cynical) about "standing examples for mankind," and having seen the ghastly deeds done in the name of patriotism, we are
impatient at signs of national fervor. But 100 years ago, the world saw less danger in nationalism, and Americans, enamored with their own extraordinary success story, were especially prone to look on love of country as one of the
noblest of human sentiments. Even those Southerners who had ceased to love the Union had not ceased to love the idea of nationhood; they merely wished to transfer allegiance to a more worthy object.
Those who wanted the preserve the old Union acted from a variety of motives: the Lincolns, who seem primarily to have valued its spiritual potential, were joined by those more concerned with maintaining its power potential; the Union was
symbol of man's quest for a benevolent society--and for domination. But if Northerners valued their government for differing reasons, they generally agreed on the necessity of preserving it. Even so, their devotion to the Union had its
oscillations. In 1861 Lincoln and his party, in rejecting the Crittenden Compromise, seemed willing to jeopardize Union rather than risk the further expansion of slavery (perhaps because they never believed secession would really follow,
though this complacency, in turn, might only have been a way of convincing themselves that a strong stand would not necessarily destroy the Union). After war broke out, the value stress once more shifted: Lincoln's party now loudly
insisted that the war was indeed being fought to preserve the Union, not to free the slaves. Thus did the coexisting values of Union and antislavery tear the Northern mind and confuse its allegiance. The tension was compounded by the North's
ambivalent attitude toward the Negro. The Northern majority, unlike most of the abolitionists, did not believe in the equality of races. The Bible (and the new science of anthropology) seemed to suggest that the Negro had been a separate,
inferior creation meant for a position of servitude. Where there was doubt on the doctrine of racial equality, its advocacy by the distrusted abolitionists helped to settle the matter in the negative.
It was possible, of course, to disbelieve in Negro equality, and yet disapprove of Negro slavery. Negroes were obviously men, even of an inferior sort, and as men they could not in conscience (the Christian-Democratic version) be denied the right to control their own souls and bodies. But if anti-Negro and antislavery sentiments were not actually compatible, they were not mutually supportive either. Doubt of the Negro's capacity for citizenship continually blunted the edge of antislavery fervor. If God had intended the Negro for some subordinate role in society, perhaps a kind of benevolent slavery was, after all, the most suitable arrangement; so long as there was uncertainty, it might be better to await the slow unfolding of His intentions in His good name.
And so the average Northerner, even after he came actively to disapprove of slavery, continued to be hamstrung in his opposition to it by the competitive pull of other values. Should prime consideration be given to freeing slaves, even though
in the process the rights of property and the preservation of the Union were threatened? Should the future of the superior race be endangered in order to improve the lot of people seemingly marked by Nature for a degraded station? Ideally, the North would have liked to satisfy its conscience about slavery and at the same time preserve the rest of its value system intact--to free the Negro and yet do so without threatening property rights or dislocating the Union. This struggle to achieve the best of all possible worlds runs like a forlorn hope throughout the antebellum period- the sad, almost plaintive quest by the American Adam for the perfect world he considered his birthright.
The formula of nonextension did seem, for the time, the perfect device for balancing these multiple needs. Nonextension would put slavery on the course of ultimate extinction without producing excessive dislocation; since slavery would not be
attacked directly, or its existence immediately threatened, the South would not be unduly fearful for her property rights, the Union would not be needlessly jeopardized, and a mass of free Negroes would not be precipitously thrust upon an
unprepared public. Nonextension, in short seemed a panacea, a formula which promised in time to do everything while for the present risking nothing. But like all panaceas, it ignored the certain hard realities: would containment really lead to the
extinction of slavery? Would the South accept even the gradual dissolution of her peculiar institution? Would it be right to sacrifice two or three more generations of Negroes in the name of uncertain future possibilities? Alas for the American
Adam, so soon to be expelled from Eden.
The abolitionists, unlike most Northerners, were not willing to rely on future intangibles. Though often called impractical Romans, they were in some ways the most tough-minded of Americans. They had no easy faith in the benevolent
workings of time or in the inevitable triumphs of gradualism. If change was to come, they argued, it would be the result of man's effort to produce it; patience and inactivity had never yet helped the world's ills. Persistently, sometimes harshly, the
abolitionists denounced delay and those who advocated it; they were tired, they said, of men using councils of moderation to perpetuate injustice.
In their own day, and ever since, the abolitionists have faced a hostile majority; their policies have been ridiculed, they personalities reviled. Yet ridicule, like its opposite, adoration, is not the result of analysis but a substitute for it. Historians
have for so long been absorbed in denouncing the abolitionists, that they have had scant energy left over for understanding them. The result is that we still know surprisingly little about the movement, and certainly not enough to warrant the
general assumptions so long current in the historical profession.
Historians have assumed that the abolitionists were unified in their advocacy of certain broad policies--immediate emancipation, without compensation--and also unified in refusing to spell out the details for implementing these policies.
To some extent this traditional view is warranted. The abolitionists did agree almost unanimously (Gerrit Smith was one of the few exceptions) that slaveholders must not be compensated. One does not pay a man, they argued, for ceasing to
commit a sin. Besides, the slaveholder had already been paid many times over in labor for which he had never given wages. Defensible though this position may have been in logic of morals, the abolitionists should perhaps have realized
that public opinion would never support the confiscation of property, and should have modified their stand accordingly. But they saw themselves as prophets, not politicians; they were concerned with what was "right," not what was possible,
though they had hoped that if men were once made aware of their right, they would find some practical way of implementing it.
The abolitionists were far less united on the doctrine of immediate emancipation--at least in the 1830's, before Southern intransigence and British experience in the West Indies convinced almost all of them that gradualism was hopeless. But during the 1830's, there was a considerable spectrum of opinion as to when and how to emancipate the slave. Contrary to common myth, some of the abolitionists did advocate a period of prior education and training before the granting of full
freedom. Men like Weld, Birney, and the Tappans's, stressed the debasing experience of slavery, insisted only that gradual emancipation be immediately begun, not that emancipation itself be at once achieved. This range of opinion has never been
fully appreciated. It has been convenient, then and now, to believe that all abolitionists always advocated instantaneous freedom, for it thus became possible to denounce any call for emancipation as "patently impractical."
By 1840, however, most abolitionists had become immediatists, and that position, "practical" or not, did have a compelling moral urgency. Men learned how to be free, the immediatists argued, only by being free; slavery, no matter how
attenuated, was by its very nature incapable of preparing men for those independent decisions necessary to adult responsibility. Besides, they insisted, the Negro, though perhaps debased by slavery, was no more incapacitated for citizenship than were many poor whites, whose rights no one seriously suggested curtailing.
The immediatists position was not free of contradiction. If slavery had been as horrendous as the abolitionists claimed, it was logical to expect that its victims would bear deep personality scars--greater than any disabilities born by a poor white,
no matter how degraded his position. Whether slavery had not been this deadly, or, if it had, those recently freed form its toils could not be expected to move at once into the responsibilities of freedom. This contradiction was apparent to some
immediatists, but there was reason for refusing to resolve it. Ordinarily, they said, a system of apprenticeship might be desirable, but if conditions to emancipation were once established, they could be used as a standing rationale for
postponement; the Negro could be kept in a condition of semi-slavery by the self perpetuating argument that he was not yet ready for his freedom.
Moreover, any intermediary stage before full freedom would require the spelling out of precise "plans," and these would give the enemies of emancipation an opportunity to pick away at the impracticality of those of that detail. They would have
an excuse for disavowing the broader policy under the guise of disagreeing with the specific means for achieving it. Better to concentrate on that alone, the abolitionists agreed, than to give them a chance to hide their opposition behind some
supposed disapproval of detail. Wendell Philips, for one, saw the abolitionists' role as exclusively that of agitating the broader question. Their primary job, Philips insisted, was to arouse the country's conscience rather than to spell it out in
precise plans and formulas. After that conscience had been aroused, it would be time to talk about specific proposals; let the moral urgency of the problem be recognized, let the country be brought to a determination to rid itself of slavery, and ways
and means to accomplish that purpose would be readily enough found.
No tactical position could really have saved the abolitionists from the denunciation of those hostile to their basic goal. If the abolitionists spelled out a program for emancipation, their enemies would have a chance to pick at details; if they did not
spell out a program, they could then be accused of vagueness and impracticality. Hostility can always find its own justification.
A second mode of attack on the abolitionists has centered on their personalities rather than their policies. The stereotype which has long had currency sees the abolitionist as a disturbed fanatic, a man self-righteous and self-deceived, motivated
not by concern for the Negro, as he may have believed, but by an unconscious drive to gratify certain needs of his own. Seeking to discharge either individual anxieties or those frustrations which came from membership in a "displaced elite",
his anti-slavery protest was, in any case, a mere disguise for personal anguish. [*]
A broad assumption underlies this analysis which has never been made explicit--namely, that strong protest by an individual against social injustice is ipso facto proof for his disturbance. Injustice itself, in this view, is apparently never
sufficient to arouse unusual ire in "normal" men, for normal men, so goes the canon, are always cautious, discrete, circumspect. Those who hold to this model of human behavior seem rarely to suspect that it may tell us more about out
hierarchy of values than about the reform impulse it pretends to describe. Argued in another context, the inadequacies of the stereotype become more apparent: if normal people do not protest "excessively" against prejudice, the we should be
forced to condemn as neurotic as those who protested with passion against the Nazi persecution of the Jews.
Some of the abolitionists, it is true, were palpably neurotic, men who were not comfortable within themselves and therefore were not comfortable with others., men whose "reality-testing" was poor, whose lifestyles were pronouncedly
more compulsive, whose relationships were unusual compounds of demand and phantasy. Such neurotics were in the abolitionist movement--the Parker Pillbury's, Stephen Foster's, Abby Folsom's. Yet even here we must be cautious, for
our diagnostic accuracy can be blurred if the life style under evaluation is sharply different from our own. Many of the traits of the abolitionists which today "is put off" were not peculiar to them, but rather to their age--the declamatory style,
the abstraction and idealization of issues, the tone of righteous certainty, the religious context of argumentation. Thus the evangelical rhetoric of the movement, with its thunderous emphasis on sin and retribution, can sound downright "queer"
(and thus "neurotic") to the 20th century skeptic, though in its day common enough to abolitionists and non-abolitionists alike.
Here, too, even when dealing with the "obvious" neurotics, we must be careful in the link we establish between their pathology and their protest activity. It is one thing to demonstrate an individual's "disturbance" and quite another then to explain all of his behavior in terms of it. Let us suppose, for example, that Mr. Jones is a reformer; he is also demonstrably "insecure." It does not necessarily follow that he is a reformer because he is insecure. The two may seem ideologically related (that is, if one's mind automatically links "protest" with "neurosis") but we all know that many things can be logical without being true.
Even if we establish the neurotic behavior of certain members of a group, we have not, thereby, established the neurotic behavior of all members of that group. This tendency to leap from the particular to the general is always tempting, but
because we have caught one benighted monsignor with a boy scout does not mean that we have conclusively proved that all priests are pederasts. Some members of every group are disturbed; put the local police force, the Medal of Honor winners,
or the faculty of a university under the Freudian microscope, and the number of cases of "palpable disturbance" would probably be disconcertingly high. But what precisely does their disturbance tell us about the common activities of the group
to which they belong--let alone about the activities of the disturbed individuals themselves?
Actually, behavioral patterns for many abolitionists do not seem to be noticeably eccentric. Man like Birney, Lowell, Quincy--abolitionists all--formed good relationships saw themselves in perspective, played and worked with zest and
spontaneity, developed their talents, were aware of worlds beyond their own private horizons. They all had their tics and their traumas--as who does not--but the evidence of health is abundant and predominant. Yet most historians have preferred
to ignore such men when discussing the abolitionists movement. And the reason, I believe, is that such men conform less well that do the Garrisons's to the assumption that those who became deeply involved in social protest are necessarily those
who are deeply disturbed.
To evaluate this assumption further, some effort must be made to understand the current findings in the theory of human motivation. This is difficult terrain for the historian, not made more inviting by the sharp disagreements which exist among
psychologists themselves (though these disagreements do help make us aware of the complexities involved). Recent motivational research, though not conclusive, throws some useful new perspectives on "reformers."
A reaction has currently set in among psychologists against the older behaviorist model of human conduct. The behaviorists told us that men's actions were determined by the nature of the stimulus exerted upon them, and that their actions always pointed towards the goal of "tension reduction." There was little room in behaviorist theory for freedom of choice, for rationality, or complex motives involving abstract ideas as well as instinctive drives.
Without identifying the tension-reducing motives of certain kinds of human behavior, a number of psychologists are now insisting on making room for another order of motivation, involving more than the mere "restoration of equilibrium."
Mature people, they believe--that is, those who have a realistic sense of self--can act with deliberation and can exercise control over their actions. This new view presumes an active intellect, an intellect capable of interpreting sensory data in a
purposive way. The power of reflection, of self-objectification, makes possible a dynamic as opposed to a merely instinctive life. Men, in short, need not be wholly driven by habit and reflex; they need not be mere automatons who respond in predictable ways to given stimuli. Rather, they can be reasoning organisms capable of decision and choice. Among the rational choices mature men may make is to commit themselves to a certain set of ethical values. They are not
necessarily forced to such a commitment by personal or social tensions (of which they are usually unaware), but may come to that commitment deliberately, after reflective consideration.
The new psychology goes even one step further. It suggests that the very definition of maturity may be the ability to commit oneself to abstract ideals, to get beyond the selfish, egocentric worlds of children. This does not mean that every man who reaches outward does so from mature motives; external involvement may also be a way of acting out sick fantasies. The point is only that "commitment" need not be a symptom of personality disturbance. It is just as likely to be a symptom of maturity and health.
It does not follow, of course, that all abolitionists protested against slavery out of mature motives; some may have been, indeed were, "childish neurotics." But if we agree that slavery was a fearful injustice, and if motivational theory now
suggests that injustice will bring forth protest from mature men, it seems reasonable to conclude that at least some of those who protested strongly against slavery must have done so from "healthy" motives.
The hostile critic will say that the abolitionists protested too strongly to have been maturely motivated. But when is a protest too strong? For a defender of the status quo, the answer (though never stated in these terms) would be: when it succeeds. For those dedicated to the current status, the answer is likely to be: a protest is too strong when it is out of all proportion to the injustice it indicts. Could any verbal protest have been too strong against holding fellow human beings as property? From a moral point of view, certainly not, though from a practical point of view, perhaps. That is, the abolitonists protest might have been too strong if it somehow jeopardized the very goal it sought to achieve--the destruction of human slavery. But no one has yet shown this to have been the case.
At any rate, current findings in motivational theory suggest that at the very least we must cease dealing in blanket indictments, in simple-minded categorizing and elementary stereotyping. Such exercises may satisfy our present-day
hostility to "reformers," but they do not satisfy the complex demands of historical truth. We need an awareness of the wide variety of human beings who became involved in the abolitionists movement, and an awareness of the complexity of
human motivation sufficient to save us from summing up men and movement in two or three unexamined adjectives.
Surely there is now evidence enough to suggest that commitment and concern need not be aberrations; they may represent the profoundest elements of our humanity. Surely there are grounds for believing that those who protested strongly against
slavery were not all misguided fanatics or frustrated neurotics--though by so believing it becomes easier to ignore the injustice against which they protested. Perhaps it is time to ask whether the abolitionists, in insisting that slavery be ended,
were indeed those men of their generation furthest removed from reality, or whether that description should be reserved for those Northerners who remained indifferent to the institution, and those Southerners who defended it as a "positive good." From the point of view of these men, the abolitionists were indeed mad, but it is time we questioned the sanity of the point of view.
Those Northerners who were not indifferent to slavery--a large number after 1845--were nonetheless prone to view the abolitionist protest as "excessive," for it threatened the cherished values of private property and Union. The average
Northerner may have found slavery disturbing, but convinced as he was that the Negro was an inferior, he did not find slavery monstrous. Certainly he did not think it an evil sufficiently profound to risk, by "precipitous action," the nation's
present wealth or its future power. The abolitionists were willing the risk both. They thought it tragic that men should weigh human lives in the same scale as material possessions and abstractions of government. It is no less tragic that we
continue to do so.
Tom G:
Yes the Confederacy was a good idea, the only problem was SC should have seceded in the 1830's when they first threatened to. The CSA was the last Nation that belived in the original US Constitution which hardly exist anymore.
Obviously you are so busy writing responses that you failed to look at the Confederate Constitution, even though I gave you the link to it. The Confederate Constitution "Forbade any trafficking in African Slaves, and prohibited even bringing them into the Confederate States of America from the Union to their north. Slavery was ended in Great Britain and other parts of the world because in the age of machinery, slavery became unprofitable. Forget all the noble sounding reasons Slavery ended, as long as it made financial sense it would have continued. So too would it have ended in the CSA for exactly the same reason, it was becoming too costly.
Then Tom you make the comment about my family being slaves, well you missed again. My Grandmother was a FBI, which is full blooded Indian to you. Cherokee, though no princesses, Chiefs, Medicine Men or the like in my family. Apparently we are the only Indians with no royalty in our blood. So my family has the Trail of Tears in our background too.
Lastly Tom, since you enjoy asking other folks questions, how about a few for you?
What was the last Slave State admitted to the Union and when was it admitted?
Since several people have demonstrated ignorance by comparing the Confederacy to Germany, a simple question, but the answer isn't so simple. Was there ever a Slave/Negro Holocaust? Bonus points if you can name it, more bonus points if you can approximate the numbers.
One state holds the distinction of having over 50% of all the Slaves who arrived in the United States land on its shores, can you name that state? (Hint, this state refused to join the Confederation of States {not to be confused with the CSA} in 1778 unless they were assured that Slavery would be legal in the New Nation?
These questions are on 6th grade American History class taught in our Private Christian Academy.
I'll provide the answers tomorrow, lets see how you to Tom G?
Yir article's gittin' some coverage over at th' League of the South's blog.
https://www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=7205107949341817795&postID=904967269613535453
By the way, who cares wut Matt Yglesias writes? He's Matt Yglesias, fir heck's sake. 'N as fir me, a Southron conservative of th' diaspora (livin' here in Colorader), I'll tell ye flat out: my Navy Jack ain't comin' down.
The fight ain't over. Resurgam.
Y'all
Please, as hard as it may be, please stop attempting to overlay 21st century values and morals on the civilizations of the 19th century. Won't work, illogical, pointless.
We today in 2008 say (as Americans, not Africans) slavery is a bad thing, an evil, an immoral repugnant institution. We are glad it doesn't exist here and now (except for some child sex workers and underground 3rd world workers like chinese etc... for which we still despise)
Let us look at that time thru the eyes of the players of that era. Slavery was widely accepted in many segments of society, just as the murder of millions of infants are today (abortion).
If someone was raised by 'Mammy' from a child, fed by house servants, and had their fields toiled over by farm slaves until they get married and move away, why then would it not follow that such a way of life is something they would want for their progeny. It was legal, protected by the highest laws, and taught by parents, teachers and clergy for over 220 years.
We go gleefully to wal-mart and by slave labor goods simply to save a dime (80% of non food items are made from this pool at wally world)
And once again, the war was NOT about slavery, most secession was. Ft Sumter was the cause of the war. This took place after 2 months of peace. All the secession documents in the world does not make the war a slave issue.
Swann,
I did follow your link and read the continuation of the existing ban on the slave trade. Also I made no claim that your family history was free of suffering.
As for your history quiz, I'll take a shot. In return, I hope you'll answer my questions below.
1) I'd guess West Virgnia, the date I'm not as sure - 61 or 62 is my thought. As I noted before, Northern voters were not pure of heart and for political reasons, Lincoln moved slowly on slavery.
2) I consider slavery to be one of history's greatest horrors. Is genocide worse? I'll say yes, but I don't see a huge difference. I've seen some high estimates on the deaths in Africa, but I am guessing you're thinking of the Middle Passage. The number who died? 1-2 million I have heard but never really looked into.
3) I would have to say Maryland, although I did need your helpful hints.
Since I took a shot at your questions, will you take a shot of two of mine?
1) Your wrote "helping the Slaves ... escape from their lawful owners was economic terrorism." Is freeing a man deprived of liberty through no fault of his own is wrong? If you had lived in the 1850s and you encountered a slave trying to escape, would you have helped him or returned him to his "lawful owner"?
2) You claimed that tariffs rather than slavery were the cause of the civil war. Would say state's declarations of secession had more references to tariffs or to slavery?
Tom
Billy,
I am pretty sympathetic to your broader point. I can honor individuals like many of our Founding Fathers who were slaveholders. But I don't praise their slave-holding. Flying the Confederate flag is not a way to honor your ancestors in general but instead to praise their worst decision.
I completely disagree about Wal-Mart. Free trade lessens the awful poverty of the third world.
Tom
You know, this is all very... thorough. But it doesn't matter a whit. Those who look down on the South do so for their own reasons. Sometimes it's the legacy of slavery, sometimes conservative mores, sometimes religiosity, sometimes anti-intellectualism, sometimes purely "we're better than you". Doesn't matter, and all the well-sourced counterargument - even assuming every word of it is true and accurate - will not convince them. Why bother?
Race relations in the South are unlike those in much of the country because we have black people and most of the country doesn't. Excluding the CSA, the states with >=10% black population are CT DE DC IL MD MI MO NJ NY OH PA. All are heavily urban, which is where the black population is concentrated.
If you look at middle-class homes in the South, there's a very good self-reinforcing reason to be racist: my home, worth about $180k in an all-white neighborhood, is worth about $120k in an all-black neighborhood. I don't doubt the story earlier in comments about a neighbor dropping the Evil Flag when a mixed-race family moved out; they are, as they say, the thin end of the wedge, and I have the example of people from my parents' and grandparents' generations, who watched their home values evaporate due to integration. Why? Because black and white cultures in the South are utterly not integrated. Standards of behavior are different - blacks seem like lazy boors to whites, while whites seem like priggish workaholics to blacks. Those who adopt white mannerisms - while still remaining fully within the black cultural schema - can and do short-circuit this, but the overwhelming majority of blacks in the South have the same problem that the overwhelming majority of whites do: if their potential ancestors had better opportunities elsewhere, they left. My parents didn't, but then my father held a degree from a less-than-lofty university and my mother was from the sort of family where only boys go to college, and only if they manage to acquire a scholarship (athletic, in the case of my two uncles on that side). It doesn't take long to figure out that the breeding pool consists of a consistently weakening strain of people, as many of those with decent prospects depart.
"The principle for which we contend is bound to reassert itself, though it may be at another time and in another form."
President Jefferson Davis C.S.A
"I Shall Remain Confederate"
Ok Folks;
I'm a southern racist. I fly the FLAG.
But note that my racism is not directed where you think it is. An example will suffice.
Other Southern Heros:
1. John Wilkes Booth
2. Lee Harvey Oswald
3. Mohamand Atta
Regards,
Val Green
Blair, SC
Ok Folks;
I'm a southern racist. I fly the FLAG.
But note that my racism is not directed where you think it is. An example will suffice.
Other Southern Heros:
1. John Wilkes Booth
2. Lee Harvey Oswald
3. Mohammad Atta
Regards,
Val Green
Blair, SC
Fred G. I am purely amazed, no one I've ever met has even heard about the middle Passage (have you read some of my previous writing?) Congratulations on being the first non school age person to get both the first two questions right. West Virginia was admitted to the Union in June 1863 pretty much because President Lincoln needed their electoral votes. That is a fairly easy question, but you got it right. The Slave/Negro Holocaust and it was just that, was the middle passage. This isn't taught in any public school because it doesn't fit neatly into organized history. The two primary countries who brought slaves to the US were Great Britain and US Flagged Ships. According to "Mannix's White Cargo, usually between 30% and 50% of the Slave who boarded the ships never arrived at their destination whether it was the US or South America. Since most historians agree that roughly 3 million slaves entered the US, that gives a death toll of between 900,000 and possibly as high as 1.5 million slaves which died crossing the ocean. Seriously, I wonder why there isn't more of an outcry from Black Groups about that.
The third question was easy; you missed it by several miles. Providence RI was the answer and destination. There were more than 150 distillers of rum in RI that was the primary trade good traded with the Slavers in Africa. RI refused to join the initial Confederation of States unless a Slavery plank was added to the documents, it was and they joined.
My answer about an escaped slave is a very tough question. It reminds me of the man who tempted JESUS with a similar question about a little bird he held in his hands. He asked JESUS if the bird was alive or dead, thinking if he said alive he would crush the bird, if he said dead, he would open his hands and let the bird fly away. JESUS knew the man's heart, and answered, “it will be as you wish". I'm not JESUS, but the only honest answer I or anyone else can offer about your question is, I don't know. I'd have to have been living then to know.
There is no question that every state mentioned the Slaves in their declarations. Most mentioned the Tariffs or some other mention of being strangled by the Federal Government which was the same thing since the tariff was the only means for the Federal Government to raise money. One of my acquaintances recently wrote a paper on the cause of the war, the link is:
http://www.ashevilletribune.com/archives/censored-truths/Morrill%20Tariff.html
He answered that better than I can in such an abbreviated space.
I understand you and I will never agree about the issues being discussed here, but I respect the fact you have a knowledge base most Yankees don't even know exist. I salute you as a worthy debater.
Swann,
I appreciate your final courtesy - rare on the internet. But I still cannot fathom your moral code.
Can we agree that a great injustice was done to any man or woman either kidnapped or born into slavery? How could his basic right to freedom be trumped?
Tom
Tom:
The very first slaves in the New World were Indians, we just didn't civilize well. Once again you are looking at our past with present day morals. Slavery was never right, taking people from their native soil, spliting up families, raping, beating, killing them, unfortunately that was what happened in Africa before being sold to Slave runners (ship owners/buyers).
This is were I can see the hand of GOD entering the picture. Once the Slaves were captured in Africa their expected life span was short indeed, those who captured them were usually deadly enemies of the tribes people captured and enslaved. The Slaves once aboard ship had a better chance of surviving than they did if they remained in bondage in Africa, and that is taking in to consideration that 6 out of 10 who entered the slave ships were likely to die. Remaining in Africa there was 100% chance they would perish.
Once they arrived in the United States, they were usually treated fairly, certainly much better than if they had remained in Africa. They were fed, sheltered, clothed and in a lot of cases became like members of families. Even in those cases Slavery was wrong, but look at the end result. Most Slaves eventually were freed, or their children were. They had a chance to learn and succeed, to own property, and to live free lives. I'm still not defending slavery, just pointing out that once again GOD's plan is greater than man's injustice to other men.
To summerize this book I just wrote. Slavery was morally wrong always, but something good came out of a horrible institution (though this was never the intention of Slave ship owners nor slave owners). Lives were spared, and a race through misfortune and injustice have certainly prospered compared to their brothers and sisters who remained in Africa, not through the intentions of man, but through the grace of GOD.
Tom
Why is it that every time this subject comes up the progressive thinkers of your side always sidestep the issue and center their arguments on the moral integrity of our side? You have admitted that the union at the time also had moral deficiencies and were not pure of character. Why do you not try to look at the constitutional actions of the union, and consider how you might feel if after you had agreed on laws of the land, and felt that your rights were being infringed, and when you ask for a redress of grievance you got the cold shoulder, what might you feel compelled to do? Protected right were at question and the main one that started the war was the right of sovereignty ,when violated it then reverted and remained the right to own property. First ,the right to own your own destiny ,(personal sovereignty ) this is a property. Secondly, the right to secession or self determination and governance, this too is a property . Yes slaves at the time were also personal property protected by the Constitution of the United States of America. Third, Ft. Sumter, property of the sovereign nation of the Confederate States of America not to mention all the homes, lands and personal processions of the Confederate citizens all of this property was taken. If this were not enough the union took the property of human lives from the Confederacy, at Ft, Sumter the Confederates bombarded the fort for some 32 hours and kill no one, not one yankee soldier lost his life. The Lincoln administration allowed an underling, favor boy to cross the river and entered the premises of a Confederate citizen (private property)inn and proceeded to disgrace his national banner and was shot for the infraction to the law. Upon hearing this Lincoln called for 1,000,000 troops to invade the Confederacy. And you always inquire about the moral fiber of your debater in association with the inhuman treatment of another human being.
Now y’all have a problem with the Confederate Battle flag, because you say it is a symbol of racism, and that it remind those that never experienced slavery of the horrible treatment of slaves, this they experience by the books they read and the propaganda they are told. A truism is that there were a large number of slaves that wish to fight alongside the Confederate soldier, am I to believe that they were wishing to fight in order to preserve their own bondage? Fact, that if the Confederacy had won the war 450,000 slaves were going to become free men. Laws would have been reversed from servant for life to servant to a certain age and education then free. The way it went was the Yankees won the war and the “freed” slave was treated worse than when in bondage. There were many ex-slaves that wished they could become slaves again because they had no way to make a living and were treated worse. But no, those people that wave that Battle flag are racist, and bigots and want the return of slavery. Son you are in need of a strong look at your priorities, when it comes to your progressive thinking processes because if you think me racist and bigoted because someone told you that the flag I wave is a racist flag your thinking goes no farther than what you are told and is void of personal confirmation of fact, and it is you then that becomes racist and bigoted because to consider all who revere the Battle Flag of the Confederacy as racist and bigoted would be the same as considering all blacks as criminal and gangsters and as we all know this is simply not true.
How could his basic right to freedom be trumped?
If you are not a citizen of this country you are not privileged to the rights guaranteed by our Constitution and “Bill of Rights“. I do not believe slaves were considered citizens.
How do you feel about illegal mexicans entering our country and spending our tax money because someone told them it is their right?
The Civil War almost began years earlier under Andrew Jackson's presidency. At that time, both North and South owned slaves. It wasn't until the 1820's and 30's that the North gave up slavery. I find it hard to believe that Slavery was the sole reason for the war.
The Civil War almost began years earlier under Andrew Jackson's presidency. At that time, both North and South owned slaves. It wasn't until the 1820's and 30's that the North gave up slavery.
The Civil War almost began years earlier under Andrew Jackson's presidency. At that time, both North and South owned slaves. It wasn't until the 1820's and 30's that the North gave up slavery.
"Violent rebellion?" You need a lesson in true history, which will not be obtained in the public schools, or from the History Channel.
Here is a little dose of it for you.
Secession Wasn't Treason
Secession, and the knee-jerk reactions to it, have been of interest to me ever since I got into historical research. Yankee politicians, in 1861, portrayed secession by the Southern states as the most monstrous of crimes ever visited upon the human race - conveniently forgetting that earlier Yankee politicians had entertained exactly the same thoughts as they gathered at the Hartford (Connecticut) Convention in 1814, regarding New England secession from the rest of the country because New England did not approve of the War of 1812.
Between 1814 and 1861, secession went from a favoured possibility to a horrendous crime, especially if the South did it. Even in our day, many of our revisionist 'historians' howl about how secession was treason and about how the Confederate States sought to overthrow the Northern government - all of which is patent hogwash - and most of them know it in their hearts. All the Southern states wanted was to go in peace. They had no interest whatever in overthrowing the government in Washington; they just wanted to depart and set up their own government.
When the 'late unpleasentness' was over and the Confederacy, which never officially surrendered, by the way, was in ruins, the benevolent Yankee government took Jeff Davis, President of the Confederate States and tossed him into prison at Fortress Monroe, Virginia for two years, planning at the outset to bring him to trial for treason and secession, which they claimed were one in the same. After two years of political horseplay, the Union government finally decided it could not afford to bring Davis to trial because should that event transpire, it might well be proven in court that Davis and the South had been right - secession was not at all illegal, nor was it unconstitutional.
A few years ago [1995, I think] I wrote a short 26 page booklet on secession. In it I quoted an author by the name of James Street, who had written a book entitled simply The Civil War. Street had a few comments about what happened to Jeff Davis at the end of the war. He said: "The North didnt dare give him a trial, knowing that a trial would establish that secession was not unconstitutional, that there had been no 'rebellion' and that the South had got a raw deal." That's pretty straightforward.
Recently, I picked up another book, written by Burke Davis [no relative to Jeff that I know of,] and entitled The Long Surrender. It dealt with much of what happened and with the characters involved during the final days of the Confederacy, when Richmond fell and the Confederate government fled the city and tried to set up somewhere else to carry on the struggle.
After Jeff Davis was captured, the vindictive radical Yankee Secretary of War Edwin Stanton [who some feel may have known more about Lincoln's assassination than is admitted] wanted to implicate Davis both as a co-conspirator in Lincoln's assassination and as a traitor for leading the secessionist government in Richmond, even though secession had not been original with Davis. Try as they might, the radical Republicans in Washington couldn't quite bring it off. Burke Davis notes, on page 204 of his book, a quote by Chief Justice Salmom P. Chase, telling Stanton "If you bring these leaders to trial, it will condemn the North, for by the Constitution, secession is not rebellion....His [Jeff Davis'] capture was a mistake. His trial will be a greater one. We cannot convict him of treason. Secession is settled. Let it stay settled." Burke Davis continued on page 214 of the book, noting that a congressional committee proposed a special court for Davis' trial, headed by Judge Franz Lieber. Davis noted: "After studying more than 270,000 Confederate documents, seeking evidence against Davis, this court discouraged the War Department: 'Davis will be found not guilty,' Lieber reported, 'and we shall stand there completely beaten'." What the radical Northern politicians were admitting among themselves [but not for the historical record] was that they had just fought a 'civil war' that had taken or maimed the lives of over 600,000 Americans, both North and South, and they had no constitutional justification for having done so, nor had they had any constitutional right to impede the Southern states when they chose to withdraw from the constitutional compact. They had fought solely for the right to keep an empire together. Call it 'manifest destiny' or whatever other noble-sounding euphemism you may tack onto it, either way, they had been wrong. Now they could not afford to let Jeff Davis go to trial, else their grievous crime would become public knowledge and beget them even more problems in the future. Needless to say, you probably have not read much about this in most of your 'history' books. As the narrator at the beginning of the movie Braveheart so correctly stated: "History is written by those who've hanged heroes."
Human rights in both North and South had been trampled on, and have continued to be so up until this day. What the Lincoln administration started and the radical/aboliitonist Republicans kept up during 'reconstruction' has finally come to full fruition in our day, with such legislation as 'the Patriot Act' which effectively cancels out much of the Bill of Rights. The War of Northern Aggression started a trend in this country in which politicians have ever sought to usurp the rights of individual Americans, and to rule over us rather than to represent us as they were originally delegated the responsibility for. Truly, there is nothing new under the sun.
Copyright ©, Al Benson Jr.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED
P.O. Box 1883
Arlington Heights, IL 60006
Originally Published at http://www.patriotist.com/abarch/ab20011126.htm
Attacking the Confederate Battle Flag:
An Example of Northern White Hypocrisy
By: Joseph E. Fallon
Those Northern whites who love "the Stars and Stripes" but attack, or condone the attack, upon the Confederate Battle Flag are engaged in an act of self-righteous hypocrisy that will come back to haunt them.
The Confederate Battle Flag is incorporated into the State Flags of both Georgia and Mississippi, and was the inspiration for the designs of the State Flags of Alabama, Arkansas, and Florida. In its own right, the Confederate Battle Flag officially flies in an honorary position over the South Carolina legislature below the U.S. and South Carolina flags.
Opponents of the Confederate Battle Flag allege it is a symbol of slavery, treason, and sedition. They, therefore, demand it be expunged from the State Flags and prohibited from being officially displayed.
Other writers have documented how the Southern soldiers who fought under the Confederate Battle Flag did not fight to protect slavery -- there were fewer than 350,000 slave owners in a population of more than 5 million whites -- but to defend their families, homes, and States from a rapacious, invading army.
However, for argument's sake, let us agree that any flag associated with slavery, treason, and sedition should be banned from being officially displayed by the federal and State governments of the United States. When can we expect the official banning of "the Stars and Stripes"?
A far more compelling case can be made against "the Stars and Stripes" as a symbol of slavery, treason, and sedition than against the Confederate Battle Flag.
Before examining slavery, the allegations of treason and sedition should first be addressed. Treason is defined as an overt act in violation of the allegiance one owes his sovereign or state such as levying war against it, or giving aid or comfort to its enemies. Sedition is defined as incitement to commit acts for the purpose of overthrowing one's government. The American Revolutionaries were guilty of both crimes.
There was no legal right under British law for a colony to secede from the British Empire. The actions of the American Revolutionaries -- from the Boston Tea Party, to publishing pamphlets calling for independence, to convening the Continental Congress, to taking up arms at Lexington and Concord -- were treasonous and seditious. Their flag, "the Stars and Stripes", therefore, was a symbol of treason and sedition. Patrick Henry was most candid when he allegedly declared in his 1765 speech against the Stamp Act: "Caesar had his Brutus -- Charles the First, his Cromwell -- and George the Third -- may profit by their example. If this be treason, make the most of it."
But there is more. The revolutionaries in 1776 represented a minority of the population of the thirteen colonies -- perhaps as little as twenty percent. So much for the American Revolution being a "popular" movement.
In many cases, to insure colonial legislatures enacted the "proper" laws, the revolutionaries often expelled loyalist members. So much for the American Revolution being a "democratic" movement.
Often, the revolutionaries simply established their own rival local governments. This second tactic was styled "dual power" or "double sovereignty" by the Bolsheviks who successfully employed it during the Russian Revolution. So much for the American Revolution being a model for the emergence of "democratic" governments elsewhere.
The revolutionaries rejected the British peace proposals of 1778, which, in effect, would have conceded most of their demands. Instead, they pursued their war against the United Kingdom with all its faults the most democratic government in Europe. To win that war, the revolutionaries solicited the support of France and Spain -- two of the most powerful, anti-democratic regimes in Europe. So much for the American Revolution being a movement motivated by the principle of "liberty".
After the success of the American Revolution with the political independence of the United States officially recognized by London, "the Stars and Stripes" became the symbol for what is now termed "ethnic cleansing". An estimated one hundred thousand loyalists, colonists who had been faithful to the British government during the American Revolution, were forced to flee the new republic.
But "the Stars and Stripes" did not cease being a symbol of sedition even after the United States achieved its independence in 1783. Six years later, the first republic of the United States under the "Articles of Confederation and Perpetual Union" was overthrown by the Constitutional Convention. The legitimate government of the United States did not authorize a new constitution. Its instruction to the Constitutional Convention was explicit "for the sole and express purpose of revising the Articles of Confederation". Under Article 13 of the Articles of Confederation, no revision was legally permitted "unless such alteration be agreed to in a Congress of the United States, and be afterward confirmed by the Legislatures of every State."
Despite instructions and procedures, the Constitutional Convention, boycotted by Rhode Island, illegally drafted a new constitution, which unconstitutionally declared that ratification by only nine of the thirteen States was necessary for adoption. Many of the Founding Fathers of the first republic, including Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and George Washington, were among the delegates to the Constitutional Convention. They were making a habit of engaging in sedition.
Unlike the British Empire in 1776, the right of secession was recognized as a constitutional right in the United States after 1789. The charges of "treason and sedition" against the Confederate Battle Flag -- 1861 to 1865 -- are, therefore, false. The right of secession from the second republic established by the U.S. Constitution was explicitly asserted as a reserved right of the States by Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island in their respective ratifications of that document. The other States acknowledged secession as a constitutional right when they accepted without any qualifications the ratifications of Virginia, New York, and Rhode Island. The constitutional right of a State to secede from the Union was taught at the United States Military Academy at West Point. The books used were Views of the Constitution by William Rawle, an abolitionist, and a friend of Franklin and Washington, which expressly affirmed a State's right to secede and Commentaries on American Law by James Kent, which implicitly acknowledged the reserved rights of the States. Historically, the most zealous proponent of secession was Massachusetts. Massachusetts, and other New England States, threatened to secede from the United States in 1787, 1796, 1800, 1803, 1811, 1814, and 1845.
Under Abraham Lincoln, it was "the Stars and Stripes", not the Confederate Battle Flag, that became the symbol of sedition in 1861. Lincoln overthrew the second republic of the United States established by the U.S. Constitution when he launched his war against the South. As the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in the "Prize Cases, December 1862: "[Congress] cannot declare war against a State or any number of States by virtue of any clause in the Constitution... [The President] has no power to initiate or declare war against a foreign nation or a domestic State…Several of these States have combined to form a new Confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the world as a Sovereign State … Their right to do so is now being decided by wager of Battle."
"The Stars and Stripes" was the symbol of a regime that made arbitrary arrests, suspended habeas corpus, curtailed freedom of speech, press, and assembly. The number of political prisoners has been estimated as high as 38,000. The Legislature of Maryland was overthrown by Lincoln's military. The Chicago Times was among hundreds of Northern newspapers suppressed for expressing "incorrect" views. As late as May 18, 1864, Lincoln was ordering his military to "arrest and imprison…the editors, proprietors and publishers of the New York World and the New York Journal of Commerce."
Now to the issue of slavery. "The Stars and Stripes" symbolizes a country that was conceived and established as a slave republic. Boston's Faneuil Hall, "Cradle of American Independence", had been built by money from the slave trade. John Hancock of Massachusetts -- President of the Continental Congress that issued the Declaration of Independence on July 4, 1776 -- was, himself, involved in the slave trade.
When the Declaration of Independence was signed, the institution of slavery was legally sanctioned in all thirteen colonies. There were, in fact, twice as many slaves in New York than in Georgia.
One of the grievances cited in the Declaration of Independence for the thirteen colonies seceding from the British Empire was London's policy of freeing the slaves. Or as the revolutionaries euphemistically phrased it -- "excit[ing] domestic insurrection".
The defense of slavery opens and closes the American Revolution. Prior to the Declaration of Independence, revolutionaries overthrew the Royal Governor of Virginia, Lord Dunmore, because of his proclamation of November 7, 1775 freeing any slave who would fight to defend the government of King George III.
And in 1783 when the British army withdrew from an independent United States, at least 18,000 slaves freed by the Crown joined the British exodus. South Carolina lost as much as one-third of its black population.
During the war, itself, the revolutionaries allied themselves with two of the largest slave empires -- France and Spain. In the latter case, "the Stars and Stripes" allied itself with the Inquisition.
Under the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1789, slavery constituted the basis for taxation and representation in the second republic. This new Constitution not only legally recognized and protected the institution of slavery, but that of the slave trade as well. The former was the South's peculiar institution; the latter was the North's peculiar institution.
The U.S. Constitution recognized slavery in perpetuity unless the Constitution, itself, was amended, while the existence of the slave trade was guaranteed for, at least, twenty years. Northern States held a monopoly on the lucrative slave trade. Therefore, when the slave trade to the United States was outlawed in 1808, the Northern slave ships, flying "the Stars and Stripes", simply smuggled the slaves into the country. As late as December 1858, a New York City slave ship smuggled several hundred slaves into Georgia. Under the protection of "the Stars and Stripes", Northern slave ships sold slaves to Cuba and Brazil.
But, it will be argued by Northern whites that the United States, or at least the Northern States, evolved. They became "free" States outlawing slavery, and, thereby, converting "the Stars and Stripes" into a Northern symbol of opposition to slavery and affirmation that "all men are created equal". Really?
What were the conditions of blacks in the Northern States of the United States? Alexis de Tocqueville wrote: "[T]he prejudice of the race appears stronger in the States that have abolished slaves than in the States where slavery still exists. White carpenters, white bricklayers, and white painters will not work side by side with the blacks in the North but do it in almost every Southern State…"
A number of Northern States, led by New Jersey, enacted laws forbidding free blacks from residing in their "free" States. Massachusetts passed a law to flog blacks that entered that State and remained there longer than two months. In 1853, the Constitution of Indiana declared that "no negro or mulatto shall come into or settle in the state." That same year, Illinois, "Land of Lincoln", passed a law "to prevent the immigration of free negroes into this state". In 1862, while the Civil War was raging, the citizens of Illinois amended their State constitution declaring: "No negro or mulatto shall immigrate or settle in this state." In 1857, the Constitution of Oregon stated: "No free negro or mulatto, not residing in this state at the time of adoption [of this constitution]… shall come, reside, or be within this state."
Northern "free" States had already enacted laws disenfranchising their existing free black populations. New Jersey initiated this policy in 1808, followed by Connecticut in 1814, Rhode Island in 1822 and Pennsylvania 1838. By 1860, only five of twenty-four Northern "free" States allowed free blacks to vote. Immediately after the Civil War, laws to enfranchise blacks were rejected by eight of those Northern States.
Then there was the lucrative Northern business of kidnapping free blacks living in Northern "free" States and selling them into slavery. New York was a major center of this activity.
Between July 13-16, 1863, shortly after the Battle of Gettysburg, New York City was the scene of one of the worst race riots in United States history, the infamous "draft riots", in which an estimated one thousand blacks, possibly more, were murdered.
Northern whites will protest what about the Civil War? "The Stars and Stripes" was the flag of freedom. The war was a war to end slavery and establish racial equality throughout the United States. Really?
In his First Inaugural Address, on March 4, 1861, Lincoln reiterated his position: "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."
On September 11, 1861, Lincoln countermanded General Fremont's order freeing the slaves in Missouri. Eight months later, on May 19, 1862, he countermanded General Hunter's order freeing the slaves in Georgia, Florida, and South Carolina.
On August 14, 1862, Lincoln spoke to a delegation of blacks at the White House on his proposal that blacks should leave the United States and colonize some other land. His reason: "But even when you cease to be slaves, you are yet far removed from being placed on an equality with the white race… It is better for us both [black and white], therefore, to be separated… I suppose one of the principal difficulties in the way of colonization is that the free colored man cannot see that his comfort would be advanced by it… This is (I speak in no unkind sense) an extremely selfish view of the case… If intelligent colored men, such as are before me, would move in this matter, much might be accomplished…The place I am thinking about for a colony is in Central America".
A week later, in a letter to Horace Greeley dated August 22, 1862, Lincoln wrote: "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."
In his Annual Message to Congress, December 1, 1862, Lincoln urged Congress to adopt constitutional amendments to postpone final emancipation until January 1, 1900 and to ship "free colored persons, with their own consent" out of the country.
On February 3, 1865, at the Hampton Roads Conference, Lincoln and Secretary of State, William Seward, met official representatives of the Confederate Government to discuss terms for ending the war. Lincoln supported Seward's proposal that the Southern States quickly rejoin the Union so that the 13th Amendment -- abolishing slavery -- then pending before Congress could be voted down.
Northern whites will claim "the Stars and Stripes", nevertheless, became a symbol of liberty when Lincoln issued his own "Emancipation Proclamation" freeing the slaves. His Emancipation Proclamation did not free a single slave. It applied only to those areas of the Confederacy still in rebel hands. As Lincoln's own Secretary of State, William Seward, declared, with disgust, "We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them, and holding them in bondage where we can set them free." The Emancipation Proclamation stated: "all persons held as slaves within any State, or designated part of a State, the people whereof shall then be in rebellion against the United States, shall be then, thenceforth, and forever free". Under its terms, slavery remained legally intact in the slave States that remained "loyal" to the Union -- Delaware, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri -- and in those portions of the Confederacy under Union occupation. When West Virginia, through the intervention of an invading Union Army, seceded from Virginia and was unconstitutionally admitted into the United States on June 20, 1863, six months after the final Emancipation Proclamation was issued, it entered as a -- slave State.
The Emancipation Proclamation was a propaganda devise. As Lincoln explained to a delegation of clergy on September 13, 1862, nine days before his preliminary proclamation was issued: "I view this matter as a practical war measure, to be decided on according to the advantages or disadvantages it may offer to the suppression of the rebellion." Lincoln countermanded the earlier emancipation proclamations issued by his Generals Fremont and Hunter because he believed their decrees would increase Northern opposition to his war. But with the demise of the Confederacy nowhere in sight, Lincoln then decided to employ "emancipation" as a military necessity.
His Emancipation Proclamation sought two objectives. Internationally, it was to dissuade the United Kingdom and France from recognizing the independence of the Confederate States of America. As Lincoln explained, the proclamation: "would help us in Europe, and convince them that we are incited by something more than ambition." "Domestically", it was to incite slaves to murder defenseless white women and children on the farms and in the cities of the Confederacy, thereby, resulting in the disintegration of the Confederate Armies as individual soldiers abandon the field to return home to save the lives of their families. The Emancipation Proclamation was a call not for liberty, but for a race war and genocide. Lincoln admitted this to those visiting clerics in September 1862. He proclaimed: "I have a right to take any measure which may best subdue the enemy; nor do I urge objections of a moral nature, in view of possible consequences of insurrection and massacre at the South."
In issuing his Emancipation Proclamation as an incitement for slaves to massacre Southern white women and children, Lincoln was continuing his policy of deliberately violating international rules of war -- rules that had evolved over the course of centuries to limit the scope of war's death and destruction. "The Stars and Stripes", under Lincoln, became a symbol of total war against the innocent. Food and medicine were declared to be contraband. Women and children, the sick and the elderly were considered legitimate targets of war.
Lincoln's policy was enunciated in "Instructions for the Government of Armies of the United States in the Field" (General Orders, No. 100, 1863). Among the acts declared to be lawful were subjecting Southern non-combatants to the "hardships of war", starving Southern non-combatants, and bombarding places housing Southern women and children.
In a letter dated January 31, 1864, General W.T. Sherman elaborated on how all Southerners may be treated under these instructions. He wrote: "the Government of the United States has…any and all rights which they may choose to enforce war, to take their lives, their homes, their lands, their every thing…to the petulant and persistent secessionist, why death is mercy, and the quicker he or she is disposed of, the better". Six months later, June 21, 1864, Sherman added Southern white children to that "class of people…who must be killed or banished".
With this official license to kill and destroy, wanton destruction -- including raping, pillaging, plundering, and arson on unprecedented scales -- was unleashed upon Georgia and the Carolinas by General Sherman, upon the Shenandoah Valley of Virginia by General Sheridan and upon the western counties of Missouri by General Ewing.
Under Lincoln, "the Stars and Stripes" became a symbol of political assassination as well. The instructions found on the body of Colonel Dahlgren after he and many of his men were killed in their failed raid on Richmond, March 3, 1864, revealed his mission was to assassinate President Jefferson Davis and the entire Confederate cabinet.
But, back to the issue of slavery. Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation declared all the slaves in areas of the Confederacy still in rebel hands "forever free". But what happened to those "freed" slaves when they finally came under the protection of "the Stars and Stripes"? They were told by the North they could now "choose" their employers and that they must be "paid" for their labor. But in reality, "freed" slaves were often re-enslaved by the North under the fiction of a one-year work contract. Many slaves were forced to work on plantations operated by Northerners, or Southerners who had taken the oath of allegiance to the U.S. government. They could suffer a loss of pay or rations for acts of laziness, disobedience or insolence. They were often required to obtain a pass if they wished to leave the plantation. And they were subject to provost marshals who were employed to insure that the "freed" slaves displayed "faithful service, respectful deportment, correct discipline and perfect subordination". Other slaves "freed" by Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation found themselves forced to build installations and fortifications for the Union Army.
What of the approximately 180,000 blacks, mostly Southern slaves, who rushed to join the Union army, Northern whites will ask? Did they not fight for freedom under "the Stars and Stripes"? Did they?
In May 1862, Secretary of the Treasury, Salmon Chase received this report: "The negroes were sad…Sometimes whole plantations, learning what was going on, ran off to the woods for refuge…This mode of [enlistment by] violent seizure is repugnant."
In a communiqué to General Ulysses S. Grant, General John A. Logan noted: "A major of colored troops is here with his party capturing negroes, with or without their consent….They are being conscripted."
From Tennessee, General Rousseau to General Thomas: "Officers in command of colored troops are in constant habit of pressing all able-bodied slaves into the military service of the U.S."
From Virginia, 1864, General Innis N. Palmer to General Butler: "The negroes will not go voluntarily, so I am obliged to force them…The matter of collecting the colored men for laborers has been one of some difficulty…They must be forced to go,…this may be considered a harsh measure, but…we must not stop at trifles."
From South Carolina, August 16, 1864, General Hunter, (the same officer who had earlier issued an emancipation order that was countermanded by Lincoln) issued an order from the headquarters of the Department of the South at Hilton Head declaring: "All able-bodied colored men between the ages of eighteen and fifty within the lines of the Department of the South, who have had an opportunity to enlist voluntarily and refused to do so, shall be drafted into the military services of the United States, to serve as non-commissioned officers and soldiers in the various regiments and batteries now being organized in the Department."
From the Memoir of General W.T. Sherman; "When we reached Savannah we were beset by ravenous State Agents from Hilton Head, South Carolina, who enticed and carried away our servants and the corps of pioneers [i.e. laborers]…On one occasion my own aide-de-camp…found at least a hundred poor negroes shut up in a house and pen, waiting for night, to be conveyed stealthily to Hilton Head. They appealed to him for protection alleging that they had been told they must be soldiers...I knew that the State Agents were more influenced by the profit they derived from the large bounties than by any love of country or of the colored race."
As late as February 7, 1865, Lincoln wrote to Lieutenant-Colonel Glenn operating in Kentucky, that "Complaint is made to me that you are forcing negroes into the military service, and even torturing them".
This is the history of "the Stars and Stripes" those Northern whites who attack, or condone the attack, upon the Confederate Battle Flag choose to ignore.
If as these Northern whites demand the Confederate Battle Flag should be banned on the ground it is a symbol of a country which recognized slavery as a legal institution, what of "the Stars and Stripes"? The Confederate States of America existed for just four years. By the logic of their argument, "the Stars and Stripes" must be banned because it, too, is a symbol of a country which also recognized slavery as a legal institution. And not for four years, but for eighty-five years prior to the birth of the Southern Confederacy -- and for more than half a year after that Confederacy had been crushed.
Northern whites should not dismiss the idea that "the Stars and Stripes" could be banned. In October 1996, in an article for The Atlantic Monthly, Conor Cruise O'Brien, called for the removal of Thomas Jefferson from the pantheon of American heroes because the author of the Declaration of Independence was a "racist". That same month, in the Washington Times, Richard Grenier, after comparing Jefferson to Nazi Gestapo chief, Heinrich Himmler, demanded that the Jefferson Memorial in Washington, DC be demolished "stone by stone". In November 1997, the black-controlled New Orleans school board had George Washington's name removed from a local elementary school because Washington was a slave owner.
Well, "the Stars and Stripes" was the flag of Washington and Jefferson. If official recognition can be withdrawn from two of the Founding Fathers, why not withdraw it from their flag as well? Such a demand, in fact, has already been made. "The Stars and Stripes" was temporally removed from two schoolrooms -- one in California, the other in Michigan -- in response to the demand of Third World militants who claimed that the flag was a symbol of "racism" and "oppression".
As Third World immigration undemocratically transforms the United States from a European-American majority nation into a European-American minority nation, the demand to ban "the Stars and Stripes" -- because it is a symbol of "racism", "oppression", "white supremacy", "Eurocentrism", "exclusion", "intolerance", etc. -- will grow.
If, or when, the "Stars and Stripes" is banned, Northern whites will have no one to blame but themselves. For in their unjustified attack upon the Confederate Battle Flag, they have provided the very arguments that most effectively undermine the legitimacy of "the Stars and Stripes".
© 2000, Joseph E. Fallon
Originally Published at: http://www.vdare.com/fallon/confederate.htm
Now, for some truth about your hero, MLK, for whom it is a national disgrace to have a holiday in his name.
The Beast As Saint
The Truth About "Martin Luther King"
by Kevin Alfred Strom
(the text of a speech given by Mr. Strom on the nationwide radio program, American Dissident Voices)
WHEN THE COMMUNISTS TOOK OVER a country, one of the first things that they did was to confiscate all the privately-held weapons, to deny the people the physical ability to resist tyranny. But even more insidious than the theft of the people's weapons was the theft of their history. Official Communist "historians" rewrote history to fit the current party line. In many countries, revered national heroes were excised from the history books, or their real deeds were distorted to fit Communist ideology, and Communist killers and criminals were converted into official "saints." Holidays were declared in honor of the beasts who murdered countless nations.
Did you know that much the same process has occurred right here in America?
Every January, the media go into a kind of almost spastic frenzy of adulation for the so-called "Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr." King has even had a national holiday declared in his honor, an honor accorded to no other American, not Washington, not Jefferson, not Lincoln. (Washington and Lincoln no longer have holidays — they share the generic-sounding "President's Day.") A liberal judge has sealed the FBI files on King until the year 2027. What are they hiding? Let's take a look at this modern-day plastic god.
Born in 1929, King was the son of a Black preacher known at the time only as "Daddy King." "Daddy King" named his son Michael. In 1935, "Daddy King" had an inspiration to name himself after the Protestant reformer Martin Luther. He declared to his congregation that henceforth they were to refer to him as "Martin Luther King" and to his son as "Martin Luther King, Jr." None of this name changing was ever legalized in court. "Daddy" King's son's real name is to this day Michael King.
King's Brazen Cheating
We read in Michael Hoffman's Holiday for a Cheater:
The first public sermon that King ever gave, in 1947 at the Ebenezer Baptist Church, was plagiarized from a homily by Protestant clergyman Harry Emerson Fosdick entitled "Life is What You Make It," according to the testimony of King's best friend of that time, Reverend Larry H. Williams. The first book that King wrote, Stride Toward Freedom, was plagiarized from numerous sources, all unattributed, according to documentation recently assembled by sympathetic King scholars Keith D. Miller, Ira G. Zepp, Jr., and David J. Garrow.
And no less an authoritative source than the four senior editors of The Papers of Martin Luther King, Jr. (an official publication of the Martin Luther King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Inc., whose staff includes King's widow Coretta), stated of King's writings at both Boston University and Crozer Theological Seminary: "Judged retroactively by the standards of academic scholarship, [his writings] are tragically flawed by numerous instances of plagiarism.... Appropriated passages are particularly evident in his writings in his major field of graduate study, systematic theology." King's essay, "The Place of Reason and Experience in Finding God," written at Crozer, pirated passages from the work of theologian Edgar S. Brightman, author of The Finding of God. Another of King's theses, "Contemporary Continental Theology," written shortly after he entered Boston University, was largely stolen from a book by Walter Marshall Horton. King's doctoral dissertation, "A Comparison of the Conceptions of God in the Thinking of Paul Tillich and Harry Nelson Wieman," for which he was awarded a PhD in theology, contains more than fifty complete sentences plagiarized from the PhD dissertation of Dr. Jack Boozer, "The Place of Reason in Paul Tillich's Concept of God."
According to The Martin Luther King Papers, in King's dissertation "only 49 per cent. of sentences in the section on Tillich contain five or more words that were King's own...."!
In The Journal of American History, June 1991, page 87, David J. Garrow, a leftist academic who is sympathetic to King, says that King's wife, Coretta Scott King, who also served as his secretary, was an accomplice in his repeated cheating. Reading Garrow's article, one is led to the inescapable conclusion that King cheated because he had chosen for himself a political role in which a PhD would be useful, and, lacking the intellectual ability to obtain the title fairly, went after it by any means necessary. Why, then, one might ask, did the professors at Crozer Theological Seminary and Boston University grant him passing grades and a PhD? Garrow states on page 89: "King's academic compositions, especially at Boston University, were almost without exception little more than summary descriptions... and comparisons of other's writings. Nonetheless, the papers almost always received desirable letter grades, strongly suggesting that King's professors did not expect more...."
The editors of The Martin Luther King Jr. Papers state that "...the failure of King's teachers to notice his pattern of textual appropriation is somewhat remarkable...."
But researcher Michael Hoffman tells us "...actually the malfeasance of the professors is not at all remarkable. King was politically correct, he was Black, and he had ambitions. The leftist [professors were] happy to award a doctorate to such a candidate no matter how much fraud was involved. Nor is it any wonder that it has taken forty years for the truth about King's record of nearly constant intellectual piracy to be made public."
Supposed scholars, who in reality shared King's vision of a racially mixed and Marxist America, purposely covered up his cheating for decades. The cover-up still continues. From the New York Times of October 11, 1991, page 15, we learn that on October 10th of that year, a committee of researchers at Boston University admitted that, "There is no question but that Dr. King plagiarized in the dissertation." However, despite its finding, the committee said that "No thought should be given to the revocation of Dr. King's doctoral degree," an action the panel said "would serve no purpose."
No purpose, indeed! Justice demands that, in light of his willful fraud as a student, the titles "reverend" and the "doctor" should be removed from King's name.
Communist Beliefs and Connections
Well friends, he is not a legitimate reverend, he is not a bona fide PhD, and his name isn't really "Martin Luther King, Jr." What's left? Just a sexual degenerate, an America-hating Communist, and a criminal betrayer of even the interests of his own people.
On Labor Day, 1957, a special meeting was attended by Martin Luther King and four others at a strange institution called the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee. The Highlander Folk School was a Communist front, having been founded by Myles Horton (Communist Party organizer for Tennessee) and Don West (Communist Party organizer for North Carolina). The leaders of this meeting with King were the aforementioned Horton and West, along with Abner Berry and James Dumbrowski, all open and acknowledged members of the Communist Party, USA. The agenda of the meeting was a plan to tour the Southern states to initiate demonstrations and riots.
From 1955 to 1960, Martin Luther King's associate, advisor, and personal secretary was one Bayard Rustin. In 1936 Rustin joined the Young Communist League at New York City College. Convicted of draft-dodging, he went to prison for two years in 1944. On January 23, 1953 the Los Angeles Times reported his conviction and sentencing to jail for 60 days for lewd vagrancy and homosexual perversion. Rustin attended the 16th Convention of the Communist Party, USA in February, 1957. One month later, he and King founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, or SCLC for short. The president of the SCLC was Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. The vice-president of the SCLC was the Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth, who was also the president of an identified Communist front known as the Southern Conference Educational Fund, an organization whose field director, a Mr. Carl Braden, was simultaneously a national sponsor of the Fair Play for Cuba Committee, of which you may have heard. The program director of the SCLC was the Reverend Andrew Young, in more recent years Jimmy Carter's ambassador to the UN and mayor of Atlanta. Young, by the way, was trained at the Highlander Folk School, previously mentioned.
Soon after returning from a trip to Moscow in 1958, Rustin organized the first of King's famous marches on Washington. The official organ of the Communist Party, The Worker, openly declared the march to be a Communist project. Although he left King's employ as secretary in 1961, Rustin was called upon by King to be second in command of the much larger march on Washington which took place on August 28, 1964.
Bayard Rustin's replacement in 1961 as secretary and advisor to King was Jack O'Dell, also known as Hunter Pitts O'Dell. According to official records, in 1962 Jack O'Dell was a member of the National Committee of the Communist Party, USA. He had been listed as a Communist Party member as early as 1956. O'Dell was also given the job of acting executive director for SCLC activities for the entire Southeast, according to the St. Louis Globe-Democrat of October 26, 1962. At that time, there were still some patriots in the press corps, and word of O'Dell's party membership became known.
What did King do? Shortly after the negative news reports, King fired O'Dell with much fanfare. And he then, without the fanfare, immediately hired him again as director of the New York office of the SCLC, as confirmed by the Richmond News-Leader of September 27, 1963.
In 1963 a Black man from Monroe, North Carolina named Robert Williams made a trip to Peking, China. Exactly 20 days before King's 1964 march on Washington, Williams successfully urged Mao Tse-Tung to speak out on behalf of King's movement. Mr. Williams was also around this time maintaining his primary residence in Cuba, from which he made regular broadcasts to the southern United States, three times a week, from high-power AM transmitters in Havana under the title "Radio Free Dixie." In these broadcasts, he urged violent attacks by Blacks against White Americans.
During this period, Williams wrote a book entitled Negroes With Guns. The writer of the foreword for this book? None other than "Martin Luther King, Jr." It is also interesting to note that the editors and publishers of this book were to a man all supporters of the infamous Fair Play for Cuba Committee.
According to King's biographer and sympathizer David J. Garrow, "King privately described himself as a Marxist." In his 1981 book, The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., Garrow quotes King as saying in SCLC staff meetings, "...we have moved into a new era, which must be an era of revolution.... The whole structure of American life must be changed.... We are engaged in the class struggle."
Jewish Communist Stanley Levison can best be described as King's behind-the-scenes "handler." Levison, who had for years been in charge of the secret funnelling of Soviet funds to the Communist Party, USA, was King's mentor and was actually the brains behind many of King's more successful ploys. It was Levison who edited King's book, Stride Toward Freedom. It was Levison who arranged for a publisher. Levison even prepared King's income tax returns! It was Levison who really controlled the fund-raising and agitation activities of the SCLC. Levison wrote many of King's speeches. King described Levison as one of his "closest friends."
FBI: King Bought Sex With SCLC Money
The Federal Bureau of Investigation had for many years been aware of Stanley Levison's Communist activities. It was Levison's close association with King that brought about the initial FBI interest in King.
Lest you be tempted to believe the controlled media's lie about "racists" in the FBI being out to "get" King, you should be aware that the man most responsible for the FBI's probe of King was Assistant Director William C. Sullivan. Sullivan describes himself as a liberal, and says that initially "I was one hundred per cent. for King...because I saw him as an effective and badly needed leader for the Black people in their desire for civil rights." The probe of King not only confirmed their suspicions about King's Communist beliefs and associations, but it also revealed King to be a despicable hypocrite, an immoral degenerate, and a worthless charlatan.
According to Assistant Director Sullivan, who had direct access to the surveillance files on King which are denied the American people, King had embezzled or misapplied substantial amounts of money contributed to the "civil rights" movement. King used SCLC funds to pay for liquor, and numerous prostitutes both Black and White, who were brought to his hotel rooms, often two at a time, for drunken sex parties which sometimes lasted for several days. These types of activities were the norm for King's speaking and organizing tours.
In fact, an outfit called the "National Civil Rights Museum" in Memphis, Tennessee, which is putting on display the two bedrooms from the Lorraine Motel where King stayed the night before he was shot, has declined to depict in any way the occupants of those rooms. That—according to exhibit designer Gerard Eisterhold—would be "close to blasphemy." The reason? "Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr." spent his last night on Earth having sexual intercourse with two women at the motel and physically beating and abusing a third.
Sullivan also stated that King had alienated the affections of numerous married women. According to Sullivan, who in 30 years with the Bureau had seen everything there was to be seen of the seamy side of life, King was one of only seven people he had ever encountered who was such a total degenerate.
Noting the violence that almost invariably attended King's supposedly "non-violent" marches, Sullivan's probe revealed a very different King from the carefully crafted public image. King welcomed members of many different Black groups as members of his SCLC, many of them advocates and practitioners of violence. King's only admonition on the subject was that they should embrace "tactical nonviolence."
Sullivan also relates an incident in which King met in a financial conference with Communist Party representatives, not knowing that one of the participants was an infiltrator actually working for the FBI.
J. Edgar Hoover personally saw to it that documented information on King's Communist connections was provided to the President and to Congress. And conclusive information from FBI files was also provided to major newspapers and news wire services. But were the American people informed of King's real nature? No, for even in the 1960s, the fix was in—the controlled media and the bought politicians were bound and determined to push their racial mixing program on America. King was their man and nothing was going to get in their way. With a few minor exceptions, these facts have been kept from the American people. The pro-King propaganda machine grinds on, and it is even reported that a serious proposal has been made to add some of King's writings as a new book in the Bible.
Ladies and gentlemen, the purpose of this radio program is far greater than to prove to you the immorality and subversion of this man called King.
I want you to start to think for yourselves.
I want you to consider this: What are the forces and motivation behind the controlled media's active promotion of King?
What does it tell you about our politicians when you see them, almost without exception, falling all over themselves to honor King as a national hero?
What does it tell you about our society when any public criticism of this moral leper and Communist functionary is considered grounds for dismissal?
What does it tell you about the controlled media when you see how they have successfully suppressed the truth and held out a picture of King that can only be described as a colossal lie?
You need to think, my fellow Americans. You desperately need to wake up.
Bibliography
1. Hoffman, Michael A., Holiday for a Cheater, (Wiswell Ruffin House, Dresden, New York, 1992)
2. Steffgen, Kent H., Bondage of the Free, (Vanguard Books, Berkeley, California, 1966)
3. Garrow, David J., The FBI and Martin Luther King, Jr., (W. W. Norton & Co, New York City, 1981)
Further information on King's Communist connections and the FBI surveillance of Stanley Levison can be found in the Congressional Record.
The broadcast version of this article was originally published by National Vanguard.