Free Republic

This is a re-post of an article I wrote last year to celebrate the anniversary of General Lee's birth on January 19, 1807. My concerns for the future remain about the same, although the current threats to freedom of speech and of religion from Islam and its advocates are now higher. We have changed as a nation, often not for the better.We, as a nation, seem to have done with heroes of his type. Yet he inspired a fledgling nation, the Confederate States of America -- young, old, rich and poor alike. Those who reminisce about him do so mainly because of his devotion to...

"Patton's familial ties to Confederate veterans is quite fascinating (Chapter One is titled, "Ghosts of the Confederacy") and had a significant impact on his view of history, as well as his role it it. (An extremely important and influential factor, despite what some think.) Patton's great-grandmother once wrote, "I am crying because I have only seven sons left to fight the Yankees."

An “extremely rare” Civil War-era photograph of the enslaved woman who helped save Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee's Virginia home has been obtained by the National Park Service after a volunteer spotted the image on eBay. The previously unknown photograph depicts Selina Gray, the head housekeeper to Lee and his family, along with two girls thought to be her daughters. The photograph was unveiled Thursday at the Arlington House plantation overlooking the nation's capital that was home to Lee and dozens of slaves before the Civil War. An inscription on the back of the image reads "Gen Lees Slaves Arlington...

What happened to those days when it was cool for bands to play Dixie at both Northern and Southern schools while students cheered and waved Confederate flags?

First Manassas. In the 90-degree heat, the Union fords Bull Run and then busts through line after line of Confederate troops, aiming for the railroad to Richmond. Under the grassy shield of Henry House Hill’s western slope, the Confederates scramble for reinforcements. Somebody overhears General Bee comparing Colonel Jackson to a “stone wall.” This either compliments Jackson’s steadfastness or jeers the corporal’s languor. No one will ever know for certain, since Bee is shot dead shortly after the quip leaves his lips.

Washington and Lee University expressed regret Tuesday for the school’s past ownership of slaves and promised to remove Confederate flags from the main chamber of its Lee Chapel after a group of black students protested that the historic Virginia school was unwelcoming to minorities. President Kenneth P. Ruscio’s announcement was a surprising move for the small, private liberal arts college in Lexington, which has long celebrated its Southern heritage. Confederate Gen. Robert E. Lee served as the university’s president after the Civil War, his crypt is beneath the chapel, and the school has gingerly addressed its ties to the Confederacy...

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — California state government departments will be prohibited from selling or displaying items with an image of the Confederate flag under a bill that passed the Assembly on Monday.

INTRODUCTION On May 27, 1861, the army of the United States of America (the "Union")--a nation formed by consecutive secessions, first from Great Britain in 1776, and then from itself in 17881--invaded the State of Virginia,2 which had recently seceded from the Union, in an effort to negate that secession by violent force. The historical result of the effort begun that day is well known and indisputable: after four years of brutal warfare, which killed 620,000 Americans, the United States negated the secession of the Confederate States of America, and forcibly re-enrolled them into the Union. The Civil War ended...

This was the flag of slave holding states in the United States that seceded in 1861, causing Civil War. Today the symbol is used by the Ku Klux Klan, Neo-Nazi groups, and other organizations who are hostile to African-Americans. For the last several decades, protests have continued, demanding that this flag not be displayed in public places. Many people were greatly disturbed to see that the Confederate Flag is now being displayed, not in the United States, but in Kiev, the capital city of Ukraine. Larry Holmes, a civil rights activist in New York City, explained why the flag is...

Often you need to hit bottom before you can start working your way back up. We Southern Democrats are basically at that point. With control of only two of 22 legislative bodies, three of 11 governors’ mansions and precious few other statewide offices, Southern Democrats are an endangered species indeed. In 1969, Republican strategist Kevin Phillips argued that the South was “shaping up as the pillar of a national conservative party.” He was half right: Although Democrats have made great strides elsewhere, between 1992 and 2012 Republicans won the governorships and legislatures of all but two Southern states. The last...

President Lincoln has been all but deified in America, with a god-like giant statue at a Parthenon-like memorial in Washington. Generations of school children have been indoctrinated with the story that “Honest Abe” Lincoln is a national hero who saved the Union and fought a noble war to end slavery, and that the “evil” Southern states seceded from the Union to protect slavery. This is the Yankee myth of history, written and promulgated by Northerners, and it is a complete falsity. It was produced and entrenched in the culture in large part to gloss over the terrible war crimes...

However if one truly wants to make such a big deal out of what we call the armed conflict which occurred in America from 1861 to 1865 , and if its historical accuracy and honesty that one truly seeks, then I think Douglas Southall Freeman is, perhaps, the truest to historical accuracy in coining the proper term . . .

The Georgia Division Sons of Confederate Veterans will again sponsor their annual Robert E. Lee Birthday Commemorative on Saturday January 18, 2014 at the Old Capitol Building, 201 E. Greene St., Milledgeville, Georgia.

Why is the national pride of that era gone? Could it possibly have anything to do with . . .

One of my posts on the Civil War just got its 40,000th "view." On December 27, 2011, I posted an article titled The U.S. Constitution and Civil War. It had 42 views that year, 18,728 in 2012 and has had 21,234 so far this year, for a total of 40,004. That amounts to just over thirty percent of the views at my little blog since it began. The progression, suggesting a current level of interest in the Civil War, strikes me as interesting and I thought that maybe others might be similarly interested.For anyone who may be interested, here is...

Born as a symbol of rebellion, the Confederate battle flag retains much of that symbolism to this very day. What is even more intriguing is the fact that the very commissioning of the original Confederate battle flag was itself, an act of rebellion. This little-known part of the flag’s story is told in a fascinating new documentary written and produced by historian Kent Masterson Brown.

One of the more interesting stories I came across while researching and writing "Lexington, Virginia and the Civil War" was that of slave Robert Price. Price is little more than a forgotten footnote in the history of the Civil War and Hunter's raid on Lexington, but he provided a valuable service to the Virginia Military Institute and the family of Superintendent Francis Smith. As I tell the story in the book . . .

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.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson said in a Tuesday interview with a national news outlet that there’s no question about it — Republicans are constantly pushing the race button on all matters of policy and politics, and tea party activists are akin to redneck racist throwbacks from the Civil War era. “The tea party is the resurrection of the Confederacy,” he said, in an interview with Politico. “It’s the Fort Sumter tea party.” He added: The GOP is “absolutely” using race as a reason to oppose President Obama and White House police proposals.

During my childhood of the 50s, songs like “Swanee River”, “Mammy” and “Waiting for the Robert E. Lee”, all best sung by the late great Al Jolson, were very popular in the South and throughout the USA.