Posted on 01/20/2016 5:03:47 AM PST by Kaslin
Last July, Anthony Hervey, an outspoken black advocate for the Confederate flag, was killed in a car crash. Arlene Barnum, a surviving passenger in the vehicle, told authorities and the media that they had been forced off the road by a carload of "angry young black men" after Hervey, while wearing his Confederate kepi, stopped at a convenience store en route to his home in Oxford, Mississippi. His death was in no small part caused by the gross level of ignorance, organized deceit and anger about the War of 1861. Much of the ignorance stems from the fact that most Americans believe the war was initiated to free slaves, when in truth, freeing slaves was little more than an afterthought. I want to lay out a few quotations and ask what you make of them.
During the "Civil War," ex-slave Frederick Douglass observed, "There are at the present moment many colored men in the Confederate army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders, and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops, and do all that soldiers may to destroy the Federal Government and build up that of the traitors and rebels" (Douglass' Monthly, September 1861).
"For more than two years, negroes had been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They had been embodied and drilled as Rebel soldiers, and had paraded with White troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union." (Horace Greeley, in his book, "The American Conflict").
"Over 3,000 negroes must be included in this number (of Confederate troops). These were clad in all kinds of uniforms, not only in cast-off or captured United States uniforms, but in coats with Southern buttons, State buttons, etc. These were shabby, but not shabbier or seedier than those worn by white men in rebel ranks. Most of the negroes had arms, rifles, muskets, sabres, bowie-knives, dirks, etc. They were supplied, in many instances, with knapsacks, haversacks, canteens, etc., and were manifestly an integral portion of the Southern Confederacy Army. They were seen riding on horses and mules, driving wagons, riding on caissons, in ambulances, with the staff of Generals, and promiscuously mixed up with all the rebel horde" (report by Dr. Lewis H. Steiner, chief inspector of the U.S. Sanitary Commission).
In April 1861, a Petersburg, Virginia, newspaper proposed "three cheers for the patriotic free Negroes of Lynchburg" after 70 blacks offered "to act in whatever capacity" had been "assigned to them" in defense of Virginia.
Those are but a few examples of the important role that blacks served as soldiers, freemen and slaves on the side of the Confederacy. The flap over the Confederate flag is not quite so simple as the nation's race "experts" make it. They want us to believe the flag is a symbol of racism. Yes, racists have used the Confederate flag as their symbol, but racists have also marched behind the U.S. flag and have used the Bible. Would anyone suggest banning the U.S. flag from state buildings and references to the Bible?
Black civil rights activists, their white liberal supporters and historically ignorant Americans who attack the Confederate flag have committed a deep, despicable dishonor to our patriotic Southern black ancestors who marched, fought and died not to protect slavery but to protect their homeland from Northern aggression. They don't deserve the dishonor. Dr. Leonard Haynes, a black professor at Southern University, stated, "When you eliminate the black Confederate soldier, you've eliminated the history of the South."
I dare say even British Socialists have eyes that can see. George Orwell has seemingly been proven correct regarding virtually all his Observations, Same for Aldous Huxley, so let's have a round of applause for the appallingly accurate pronouncements of early British Socialists.
More like they get tired of wading through a wall of text to find anything relevant to the point.
The declaration of independence says that people have a right to leave. Everything else is just so much obfuscation of the fundamental principle contested by the war; The right to Independence.
I will also point out that I am not a "Johnny Reb". I have never lived in a Southern State, and I have no family that fought in the conflict. We didn't arrive in this country until the early 1900s.
I am a person that learned bit by bit that we have been fundamentally misled by the winners who wrote the history books. Joe and others seem intent on continuing the effort to mislead us. They probably find it painful to contemplate their ancestors having done a very evil thing.
See what I mean? But at least it’s learned it’s name.
Absolutely right. Most of them seem to think a cadre of wealthy New England power brokers who control media and government in 2016 were not doing the same thing in 1861.
As always, whatever Liberal, Wealthy, New England decides to do, that is what the Nation will decide to do.
They also control the education establishment, and they keep putting propaganda in the history books.
Yup, it's pretty hard to combat when some people on our side don't even seem to realize what social forces are behind this stuff.
I call you a “Johnny Reb’’ because you obviously are a supporter of the Confederacy.
No, just someone recognize that there right to leave was morally superior to every other argument put forth against it.
I think slavery is immoral, and that it always was. It is contrary to Christian principles, and it should never have been allowed to take root in this nation.
My argument is that the right of people to leave the Union is not contingent upon them exhibiting the proper sort of morality, especially as perceived by modern eyes.
"The principle [of the Proclamation] is not that a human being cannot justly own another, but that he cannot own him unless he is loyal to the United States."
D@mned English socialists always pointing stuff out!
"[T]he contest is really for empire on the side of the North, and for independence on that of the South, and in this respect we recognize an exact analogy between the North and the Government of George III, and the South and the Thirteen Revolted Provinces. These opinions...are the general opinions of the English nation."London Times, November 7, 1861
Yeah and America would have been a Balkanized nation of God knows what. Along with defending slavery it’s this that pisses the sh!t out of me about you Rebs. America is the greatest nation on Earth because it is a united country as in The United States of America! But that isn’t good enough for types like your and those of your ilk. The Civil War ended one hundred and fifty years ago and your side LOST! Academic debate about it’s causes/after affects in one thing but going on about secession is something else and it’s a pretty damn stupid idea as the Southerners of nearly two centuries ago found out.
It is the right of the people to decide for themselves if they want to be Balkanized. No one has the right to force association on others who do not want it.
The Civil War ended one hundred and fifty years ago and your side LOST!
My side is Freedom and yes, it did lose on that occasion. It won four score and seven years earlier though.
I’m sorry but that post is so long that replying to all the issues in it would take several days. :-( For more on the real economic reasons of the war see my couple posts farther up thread to PeaRidge and DiogenesLamp.
Of course I "grasp" your point, but it's ridiculous, fantasy & untrue by any objective measure.
Yes, certainly money was important, it always is.
But so were many other factors such as available manpower, industrial production, railroads & telegraph, ships, weapons, etc., etc.
However, none of those factors caused Deep South secession, none started Civil War, and none motivated the actual historical leaders involved.
What did motivate Deep South Fire-Eaters to declare secessions was protecting slavery, pure & simple, as they so clearly and so often proclaimed.
Nothing else is even seriously mentioned in their "Reasons for Secession" documents, or in Vice President Alexander Stephens' notorious Cornerstone Speech of March 21, 1861.
But of course, even Stephens himself, after the war, denied that his speech really meant what he said, and claimed then that he really meant to emphasize purely technical constitutional differences with the old Union.
And naturally, pro-Confederate propagandists today repeat such lies endlessly.
But regardless of how frequently, or loudly, they're repeated, facts remain facts, and those old lies are still lies.
But despite your repeated claims, there was no higher principle than slavery involved -- none.
Everything you keep repeating was actually irrelevant to historical leaders of the time.
And as I've often pointed out to you: slavery did not start Civil War, neither did declarations of secession nor did forming a new Confederacy, nor did tariffs & trade, or any such debate as you propose over a "right of secession" -- none of it.
All of those thing could have happened and still no Civil War between Union & Confederacy.
What provoked Civil War was dozens of Confederate seizures of major Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.
What started Civil War was the Confederate military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861.
What confirmed Civil War was the Confederates' formal declaration of war against the United States on May 6, 1861.
What made Civil War a "total war" was the Confederates' military aid to pro-Confederates fighting in Union states.
Again, the analogy is the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor -- whatever theoretical or philosophical reasons motivated them, those did not start WWII for the US.
All such debates could have gone on forever without war, until the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Then war began, and ended as the Civil War ended, with unconditional surrender.
DiogenesLamp: "Again, what happens to New York when 80% of that pile moves to Charleston and Savanna?"
But, as I have now explained, more than once on this thread, 80% of New York's trade could never move to Charleston, regardless of politics.
DiogenesLamp: "Imagine most of that trade represented by those tariffs being taken away from New York and given to Charleston.
Easily a financial hyper crises in New England.
Well worth starting a war to prevent."
Pure rubbish, words written by somebody who understands little of Lincoln or America at that time.
You are speaking of Jefferson Davis & company, of course.
The British government was certainly wise enough to withhold diplomatic recognition for the Confederacy, regardless of how sympathetic many in the British elite may have been.
DiogenesLamp: "Of course his masters in the Wealthy circles of New England probably would brook no other outcome than that their money streams continue. "
But Jefferson Davis certainly recognized no such masters, nor did President Lincoln.
So they are purely a product of your own overheated imagination, FRiend.
No, only in the case of an unjust Union, where a long list of grievances is not lawfully addressed, thus making separation "necessary".
Since no such conditions existed in November 1860, any "right to leave" was still superseded by obligations accepted with the US Constitution of 1787.
Yes, we all "get" that you are here to insist on an unlimited "right of separation", but that's just nonsense.
It did not exist in 1776 for our Founders, nor in 1787 with the new Constitution, nor in November 1860 in the US Deep South.
But the "right to leave" was restricted by our Founders' intentions in forming the new Constitution.
They intended that it should be by "mutual consent" or from some "usurpation" or "oppression" having that same effect.
Since those conditions did not exist in late 1860, Deep South Fire-Eaters declared secession "at pleasure", which our Founders did not consider lawful.
Regardless, it was not some legal debate which started Civil War, it was the Confederate military assault on Union troops in Fort Sumter that started Civil War.
Our FRiend DiogenesLamp says he's not a reb, has never lived in the South, and we must take him at his word on such things.
But he is actually not here to defend the Confederacy per se, rather, just one minor (or major!) philosophical point relating to it: his alleged unlimited "right to secede" -- any time, any where, for any reasons or for no reason at all, secession "at pleasure"!
DiogenesLamp claims this is just what the 1776 Declaration of Independence establishes, and therefore no implied obligations of the 1787 Constitution can override it.
But DiogenesLamp is wrong on every philosophical point here, beginning with the Declaration's alleged unlimited "right of secession".
In fact, the 1776 Declaration of Independence lays out in detail specific conditions which motivated our Founders.
Since no such conditions existed in 1860, the Declaration is not correctly applied to justify Fire-Eater secessions.
Foolishly, embarrassingly wrong.
As I've said repeatedly, the right to form a free and independent nation is NOT DEPENDENT on whether you agree with their morals or not. It is also entirely beside the point of the fact that the Union was not insisting they give up slavery, it was insisting they give up independence.
In other words, the assertion that the Union fought to end slavery is a lie, and you are doing everything you can to continue promulgating that lie, because the TRUTH makes your cause immoral and vile.
You KEEP the focus on slavery, because that is the only ad hoc moral position your side can claim in the entire horrible disaster.
Stop being a fool. Lincoln and the North cynically used the slavery ploy to assert a post hoc justification for the bloodshed they created by fighting against the independence of the Southern states.
It was the only massageable bit of propaganda they had to work with to justify putting down Independence.
You can't seem to grasp the fact that they were going to sell you down the river for the first year and a half.
No, the higher principle involved is whether or not the Union was voluntary or coercive. We found out it is coercive, like a Mafia family.
What provoked Civil War was dozens of Confederate seizures of major Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc. What started Civil War was the Confederate military assault on Union troops in Union Fort Sumter, April 12, 1861. What confirmed Civil War was the Confederates' formal declaration of war against the United States on May 6, 1861. What made Civil War a "total war" was the Confederates' military aid to pro-Confederates fighting in Union states.
Bullsh*t. If that were true, Lincoln would not have offered Ft. Sumter in exchange for Virginia remaining in the Union. He would not have gone "all is forgiven, if Virginia doesn't secede." As the old joke goes, "We've already learned what kind of a girl you are, now we are just haggling over the price. "
No, the decision to go to war was entirely in Lincoln's hands, and he chose to do so.
And he did it with an "Executive order."
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