Posted on 08/28/2013 8:03:18 PM PDT by NKP_Vet
This is the untold story of the Union's "hard war" against the people of the Confederacy. Styled the "Black Flag" campaign, it was agreed to by Lincoln in a council with his generals in 1864. Cisco reveals the shelling and burning of cities, systematic destruction of entire districts, mass arrests, forced expulsions, wholesale plundering of personal property, and even murder of civilians. Carefully researched largely from primary sources, this examination also gives full attention to the suffering of Black victims of Federal brutality.
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DManA the next time you feel that irresistible urge to go crazy on us, please shut down your computer, get up and go for a long walk to clear your head.
This post of yours, and several others like it are unworthy of Free Republic.
And you're making the rest of us look bad, pal.
So go do something else, please.
“Which they promptly did, at Fort Sumter and soon after formally declared war on the United States.”
Go back and read the hundreds of threads on this topic.
I have read virtually all CW threads in the past five years or so.
Regardless of who claims what, there are two irrefutable facts:
The fact is, the choice for war was made by the Confederacy for reasons which we can discuss, if you wish.
Possibly, but he still made provision in the law for an Israelite creditor to take a brother Israelite into slavery for debt. The Law treats slavery throughout as a fact of life. There is not a hint of it being a sin or wrong.
The Israelites didn't want to be slaves, no more than anybody else did. But they hated being slaves themselves, not slavery.
Joshua enslaved an entire people, the Gibeonites.
I seriously doubt you could hate slavery and slavers more than I do. It is very nearly the ultimate sin, the denial of humanity of a brother human.
But I also don't deceive myself that the Bible contains no single explicit denunciation of the institution. As I've said before, I believe the underlying principles of the Bible point to eventual end of slavery. But the words themselves, unfortunately, don't.
The most recently released Civil War movie was about northern Copperheads who were apparently early civil rights leaders. They were non-racist but anti-war. The bad guys are evil Republican violators of civil rights.
As anybody who knows anything about the Copperheads will attest, this portrayal is ludicrous.
The funny part about this is that to denounce Union policies as war crimes, one must denounce US policies in WWII far more forcefully. After all, Union forces never killed entire cities full of civilians, as the US Air Force did multiple times. The two Bomb strikes are only two of many.
Are the Greatest Generation the greatest criminals in history?
Here’s an interesting compilation of 47 biblical verses referencing slavery.
http://www.openbible.info/topics/slavery
The best way, IMO, to think of the practice in the ancient world, is that it never crossed anybody’s mind it could be abolished. Anymore than anybody in the modern world has suggested getting rid of gravity.
The notion that slavery can and should be denounced, opposed and eventually abolished evolved directly out of Christian doctrine. No other society in the history of the world has come up with the remarkably radical idea that “all men are created equal.”
Today we take the idea so for granted that Christianity and the Bible get no credit for it, which is a shame.
BTW, I believe your link regarding Civil War atrocities has at least one major inaccuracy.
It refers to Quantrill’s men raping the women of Lawrence.
I’ve read many accounts of this atrocity, and none refer to any such thing. In fact, there are many accounts of Quantrill’s men, despite being drunk out of their minds, tipping their hats to the women of Lawrence in deference as they toss their husbands and sons into the burning buildings.
Buchanan was praying for the clock to run out on his term before he would be forced to make a decision.
Forest meet trees, trees meet forest, you guys would get along great if you could only see each other... ;-)
I would argue that the Bible itself (forest) is a denunciation of slavery (trees) as an institution.
I'll say again: the strongest possible denunciation of slavery, and the biggest theme of the Old Testament, is God's leading a reluctant Israel out of slavery in Egypt.
Israelites don't really want to be free.
Freedom scares them.
They constantly look for excuses to return to slavery, and of course they want to make others their slaves too.
The relationship of slave & master is fundamental to human nature, and loyalty to God first is a difficult, conscious effort requiring much pain and sacrifice.
Israelites don't want to do it, and are constantly back-sliding to the old ways.
This, by the way, is precisely what's happening in the USA today -- freedom takes courage, honor and self-discipline, and we now have majorities who find slavery to the Government far easier and more enjoyable.
We are the old Israelites...
The New Testament takes the word "slave" and turns it into a metaphor: 2 Peter 2:19 -- "people are slaves to whatever has mastered them."
The New Testament tells us to be "slaves" to God's law, slaves to Christ and, if we wish to be leaders, slaves to each other.
It does not tell slaves to escape their masters, but rather advises slaves in precisely that behavior which is most likely to win them their freedom.
In the mean time, it offers "slavery to Christ" as the alternative which makes all lesser-human forms of slavery irrelevant.
Truly, FRiend, the forest is huge and beautiful.
So take some time away from examining the trees with your microscope, and look at the forest through a telescope... ;-)
I'm thinking of movies like "Gettysburg" (1993) and "Gods and Generals." (2003)
Seems to me that both movies treated both sides with respect, certainly in no-way matching Shadowstrike's description.
Thanks, we could begin with this one:
Exodus 21:16 ESV / 51:
Both literally and metaphorically, the Bible is all about exchanging our slavery to lesser human masters & vices, for devotion to God's law, Christ's love and to our brothers and sisters in Christ.
Yes we did provoke it, I never said we didnt. First rule of war is strike first, best defense is a strong offense.
As for the rest If you say so...
Of course the evidence says otherwise, ask the director at the Atlanta Archives...
But we’ll go with your account, I have the fresh shrimp, sunshine and southern women, along with an influx of folks moving here to the terrible backwards south for some reason to console myself against your “superior position” so like I said up thread I am not so sure who really won the war...
Now that is the true spirit of Confederacy!
If all our pro-Confederates would also admit as much, then about half the debate on these threads would go away...
ejonesie22: "Of course the evidence says otherwise, ask the director at the Atlanta Archives..."
When the director at the Atlanta Archives posts their evidence on Free Republic, I'll be happy to consider it.
But in the mean time, all reports I've seen show serious efforts made to prevent atrocities against civilians on both sides, with occasional exceptions which pale in comparison to those committed in other wars -- WWI & WWII for examples.
ejonesie22: "so like I said up thread I am not so sure who really won the war..."
The same could easily be said of Germany and Japan since WWII.
Both enjoy wealth beyond the dreams of their grandparents' generation, both vacation in the world's most exotic locations, both are highly respected by their neighbors and the world community as a whole.
Both spend about 1% of their GDPs on national defense -- while the US spends 4.6%.
Who won the war?
Who shoulders the responsibilities?
Whose economy is groaning under the weight of now 70+ years of massive investments in blood & treasure for national defense and international peace?
How does that saying go about loneliness at the top?
Maybe it's not just loneliness, but also poverty.
Years earlier there was “The Great Locomotive Chase” and “The Hunley” - neither potentials for the Oscar, but both interesting treatments of their respective subjects, and both respectful of both sides of the war.
If there is a movie that fits Shadowstrike’s prescription I don’t know what it is. Josie Wales stands as the most revisionist treatment I’ve seen (FTR: I still liked the movie in spite of their flight of fancy).
And I am not really Pro Confederate, I am pro South, the Confederacy is long gone. Ironically its’ spirit is being reborn in the desire of all Americans to throw off the shackles of an ever more burdensome Federal Government. Ironic in that I have seen “Yankees” sounding like the Southerns of 1860...
What goes around comes around. It may even be folks coming out of the South that strike first again, this time to defend the USA, if it ever rises to that level...
I have seen lost causers lament, “The south shall rise again!” and remarked on several occasions that they should pry their eyes a bit wider open so that they could notice that the south HAS risen - and doing comparatively well (all things considered).
If they can see past their small-minded southern bigotry and look at dispassionately at the true indicators they would see that it was leftism - not “northern-ism” that killed much of the rust-belt. The same leftism (or progression-ism or liberalism if you will) that threatens the new south - not northerners. Y’all ain’t immune and the notion that it comes from some sort of “norther invasion” of the south bringing leftist views to the pure south is simply nonsense. Your enemy lives amongst you, and they were there long before any damn yankees moved in.
“Ironically its’ spirit is being reborn in the desire of all Americans to throw off the shackles of an ever more burdensome Federal Government.”
There’s no irony there because it was the southern slavers who sought to expand the burdensome federal government by imposing the Peculiar Institution upon the rest of the nation. The irony was that southerners rebelled against the homeland only to impose an even greater burden upon themselves.
“Ironic in that I have seen “Yankees” sounding like the Southerns of 1860...”
Now that IS ironic - and sad as well.
No, didn't miss it.
Sherman's March is listed as Number 8 of the "top ten" worst atrocities of the US Civil War.
This particular site claims 1,000 civilians may have died, but the fact is there are no contemporary records (i.e., news reports, legal actions) to confirm anything remotely close to that number.
Further, much of the Atlanta destruction blamed on Sherman was actually caused by Confederate General Hood's orders to burn anything of military value there.
The report also claims Sherman's troops raped or murdered many slaves (not white women), and that Sherman himself saw and did not stop that.
I've never seen such charges analyzed (who, what, when, where, why, etc.) or confirmed.
The same report lists the Number One Civil War atrocity as Camp Sumter, Andersonville Prison, Georgia, where the death toll of Union POWs was 13,000 of 45,000 held there -- about 30%.
But notice that overall, most of those "top ten" atrocities, while real and tragic, involved only a few dozen people at most, are few in number, and pale in comparison to other notorious war crimes -- the WWI "Rape of Belgium" and WWII's Holocaust, come to mind.
ejonesie: "Ironically its’ spirit is being reborn in the desire of all Americans to throw off the shackles of an ever more burdensome Federal Government."
And of course, that is the Big Lie being told by today's pro-Confederates.
It's the opposite of historical truth, it's infuriating nonsense, and cannot possibly lead to political success today.
The historical truth of 1860 was that the "ever more burdensome government" of that day was the Slave Power, which by 1860 had all but made slavery constitutionally legal in not just the South, but in every state.
With the Compromise of 1850 making the Federal Government responsible for enforcing Fugitive Slave Laws, and the Supreme Court's 1857 Dred-Scot decision letting slave-holders take their "property" to any state, it was the Slave Power which oppressed the consciences and fears of most Northerners.
And when it began declaring secession in late 1860 the Slave Power's reasons had nothing to do with real oppressions (i.e., as spelled out in the 1776 Declaration of Independence), but rather with their fears about what might happen in the future under a "Black Republican" President Lincoln.
So, all claims that the North was somehow "oppressing" the South in 1860 are total distortions, and cannot, must not become the basis for some New Conservative mythology justifying... what?
Another insane attack on some future Fort Sumter?
ejonesie: "It may even be folks coming out of the South that strike first again, this time to defend the USA, if it ever rises to that level..."
(sigh...)
The “leftism” you speak of IS COMING from the North and the Far Western US, and not just to the South but to the Midwest and such as well. We do have Yankees who move here wanting to “change” us backwards Southerners and they find more than a few wistful local Utopians to cheer them on. Indeed we have a paper here in Jackson that is full of their tripe. Fortunately the vast majority of folks that move here love what they see and fit right in rather quickly with the bulk of us who tend to be on the conservative side. Pure, no but old American values seem to be holding faster here than elsewhere this day and age.
I won't even begin to address the South wanting to expand the fed. That Hokum is put to bed by history rather well. But your side "won" so of course you are correct.
“Now that IS ironic - and sad as well.”
Why is it sad, are you a fan of Government over reach?
"Sigh" if you want be we are going down a road that is fundamentally chaining the entire nation. Is your bias against the South going to paralyze you from saving the whole?
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