Georgia governor wants vote on confederate flags

ATLANTA (AP) — Gov. Sonny Perdue, who campaigned with a promise to let voters decide whether to bring back the old state flag dominated by a Confederate emblem, will propose putting the question on the ballot at the same time as the 2004 presidential primary, a newspaper reported Wednesday.

Supporters of the emblem say it represents Southern heritage, while blacks and others say it represents racism and slavery.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution said voters will be asked two ballot questions, with the first being a yes-no question on whether the current flag should be kept.

Voters will then be asked whether they wish to revert to the previous state flag with its Confederate battle emblem, or a flag that flew until 1956 and did not bear a confederate St. Andrews Cross symbol.

State and national Republicans had worried that a flag referendum the same day as the presidential election could spark a huge turnout by blacks and moderate whites and potentially affect the fortunes of GOP candidates, including President Bush.

By choosing to schedule the referendum during the March primary instead, Perdue averts that problem, but that is expected to be fought by Democrats.

The vote would not be binding. If voters reject the current flag, the flag they favor would be submitted to the Legislature, which would have the final say.

The newspaper said it obtained details of Perdue's plan from people close to those who attended meetings with the governor Tuesday.

The current flag, featuring a tiny image of the Confederate emblem, was adopted in 2001 at the behest of Democratic Gov. Roy Barnes. He was defeated in a re-election bid in the fall, and blamed public anger over the new flag.

It replaced a banner adopted in 1956, in the midst of Southern segregationist defiance, that carried the Confederate battle emblem.

LOL, and exactly how is that? According to you, the north had everything and the kitchen sink, even though that's false.

"Alone in the south, Baltimore had the capital, expertise, and tooling to remake the southern rails as fast as they wore out (or were blown up). So too, alone in the South, Baltimore had the resources to create ironclad vessels up to Yankee standards. Instead, this pivotal slave-holding city boosted the Union's powerful advantage....In contrast, under the crushing Civil War tasks of moving gigantic quantities of food, troops and military equipment, Confederate railroads succumbed faster than Confederate troops. By midwar, an aid to the Confederacy's western commander lamented that, "locomotives had not been repaired for six months, and many of them lay disabled." The colonel knew "not one place in the South where a driving-wheel can be made, and not one where a whole locomotive can be constructed."

--The South vs. The South, p. 63-64 by William W. Freehling

Walt

According to you, the north had everything and the kitchen sink, even though that's false.

"The most succinct, compelling and balanced picture of the antebellum political economy is contained in McPherson's "Battle Cry of Freedom." The statistical portrait describes more than regional differences. The direction and momentum of those statistics show a fragile and severely distorted slave-based economy that is cruising towards an implosion, with or without the impetus of the ACW and reconstruction.

Population? "Three times as many people born in slave states had migrated to free states as vice versa...seven-eighths of the immigrants from abroad settled in the North, where jobs were plentiful and competition from slave-based labor nonexistent. " McPherson, P. 91

Infrastructure? "In 1840, the South had possessed 44 percent of the country's railroad mileage, but by 1850 the more rapid pace of Northern construction had dropped the South's share to 26 percent." McPherson, p. 91.

Industrial capacity? By 1850, "With 42 percent of the population, slave states possessed only 18 percent of the country's manufacturing capacity, a decline of twenty percent from 1840. Most alarming, nearly half this industrial capacity was located in four border states, whose commitment to southern rights was shaky." McPherson p. 91

The world's second ranking industrial power, didnt someone say? Hardly. That sort of leaves out Great Britain, doesn't it? "Using three per capita indices--railroad mileage, cotton textile production and pig iron production [two econometric historians] found that the south ranked just behind the north in railroads, but ahead of every other country. In textile production the South ranked sixth and in pig iron eighth. But the railroad index...is specious, for railroads connect places as well as people. By an index that combines population and square miles of territory, the South's railroad capacity was not only less than half the North's, but also less than that of several European countries in 1860. Combining the two measures of industrial capacity [textiles and pig iron]...the South produced only one-nineteenth as much per capita as Britain, one-seventh as much as Belgium, one-fifth as much as the North and one-fourth as much as Sweden..."

An industrial Eden whose slave economy should have been exported to the plains states?

"The per capita output of the principal southern food crops actually declined in the 1850's, and this agricultural society was headed toward the status of a food deficit region." McPherson p. 100

McPherson's summary of the statistics:

"...like Alice in Wonderland, the faster the South ran, the farther behind it seemed to fall." The South's decades--long struggle to recover from its colonial economic status as an exporter of commodity raw materials and an importer of capital manufactured goods is a consequence of the severe distortions of a slave based economy and society."

Walt

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