Posted on 02/25/2004 11:52:26 AM PST by 4CJ
THOMASVILLE -- Nelson Winbush knows his voice isn't likely to be heard above the crowd that writes American history books. That doesn't keep him from speaking his mind, however.
A 75-year-old black man whose grandfather proudly fought in the gray uniform of the South during the Civil War, Winbush addressed a group of about 40 at the Thomas County Museum of History Sunday afternoon. To say the least, his perspective of the war differs greatly from what is taught in America's classrooms today.
"People have manufactured a lot of mistruths about why the war took place," he said. "It wasn't about slavery. It was about state's rights and tariffs."
Many of Winbush's words were reserved for the Confederate battle flag, which still swirls amid controversy more than 150 years after it originally flew.
"This flag has been lied about more than any flag in the world," Winbush said. "People see it and they don't really know what the hell they are looking at."
About midway through his 90-minute presentation, Winbush's comments were issued with extra force.
"This flag is the one that draped my grandfathers' coffin," he said while clutching it strongly in his left hand. "I would shudder to think what would happen if somebody tried to do something to this particular flag."
Winbush, a retired in educator and Korean War veteran who resides in Kissimmee, Fla., said the Confederate battle flag has been hijacked by racist groups, prompting unwarranted criticism from its detractors.
"This flag had nothing to with the (Ku Klux) klan or skinheads," he said while wearing a necktie that featured the Confederate emblem. "They weren't even heard of then. It was just a guide to follow in battle.
"That's all it ever was."
Winbush said Confederate soldiers started using the flag with the St. Andrews cross because its original flag closely resembled the U.S. flag. The first Confederate flag's blue patch in an upper corner and its alternating red and white stripes caused confusion on the battlefield, he said.
"Neither side (of the debate) knows what the flag represents," Winbush said. "It's dumb and dumber. You can turn it around, but it's still two dumb bunches.
"If you learn anything else today, don't be dumb."
Winbush learned about the Civil War at the knee of Louis Napoleon Nelson, who joined his master and one of his master's sons in battle voluntarily when he was 14. Nelson saw combat at Lookout Mountain, Bryson's Crossroads, Shiloh and Vicksburg.
"At Shiloh, my grandfather served as a chaplain even though he couldn't read or write," said Winbush, who bolstered his points with photos, letters and newspapers that used to belong to his grandfather. "I've never heard of a black Yankee holding such an office, so that makes him a little different."
Winbush said his grandfather, who also served as a "scavenger," never had any qualms about fighting for the South. He had plenty of chances to make a break for freedom, but never did. He attended 39 Confederate reunions, the final one in 1934. A Sons of Confederate Veterans Chapter in Tennessee is named after him.
"People ask why a black person would fight for the Confederacy. (It was) for the same damned reason a white Southerner did," Winbush explained.
Winbush said Southern blacks and whites often lived together as extended families., adding slaves and slave owners were outraged when Union forces raided their homes. He said history books rarely make mention of this.
"When the master and his older sons went to war, who did he leave his families with?" asked Winbush, who grandfather remained with his former owners 12 years after the hostilities ended. "It was with the slaves. Were his (family members) mistreated? Hell, no!
"They were protected."
Winbush said more than 90,000 blacks, some of them free, fought for the Confederacy. He has said in the past that he would have fought by his grandfather's side in the 7th Tennessee Cavalry led by Gen. Nathan Bedford Forest.
After his presentation, Winbush opened the floor for questions. Two black women, including Jule Anderson of the Thomas County Historical Society Board of Directors, told him the Confederate battle flag made them uncomfortable.
Winbush, who said he started speaking out about the Civil War in 1992 after growing weary of what he dubbed "political correctness," was also challenged about his opinions.
"I have difficulty in trying to apply today's standards with what happened 150 years ago," he said to Anderson's tearful comments. "...That's what a lot of people are attempting to do. I'm just presenting facts, not as I read from some book where somebody thought that they understood. This came straight from the horse's mouth, and I refute anybody to deny that."
Thomas County Historical Society Board member and SVC member Chip Bragg moved in to close the session after it took a political turn when a white audience member voiced disapproval of the use of Confederate symbols on the state flag. Georgia voters are set to go to the polls a week from today to pick a flag to replace the 1956 version, which featured the St. Andrew's cross prominently.
"Those of us who are serious about our Confederate heritage are very unhappy with the trivialization of Confederate symbols and their misuse," he said. "Part of what we are trying to do is correct this misunderstanding."
that's the first time i've heard of ANYONE doing that on one of the WBTS threads!
POOR, POOR, little abused fellow.he should run home to mommy & tell her.
free dixie,sw
i haven't seen the little fellow since. i'd guess that his "feelings" are HURT! BOO HOO!
free dixie,sw
if so, go change the tinfoil in your hat.
the NPS is & always has been PRO-damnyankee AND is now POLITICALLY CORRECT to the max.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
and then did you go tattle to mommy too???
i've NEVER even heard of ANYONE on the WBTS threads doing THAT before.
tears are streaming down my face that you got your FEELINGS hurt! i'm SOOOOOO SORRY!(said with tongue firmly planted in my cheek)
rotflmRao!
free dixie NOW,sw
LOL! -- the blast zone just keeps getting larger!
Doncha love Chicago guyz? They're like Monty Python's Black Knight!
I hadn't read of this prolonged bombardment. What was their military objective in so doing? At Vicksburg, it was investment and seige, with the object of a general surrender.
Deaths of Federals in Confederate prisons: 22,576
Deaths of Confederates in Federal prisons: 26,436
Which raises the point again of #3Fan's moral objurgation against the South, in a manner unfavorable to his own "cause" (if that's what it is)....
If the South arguendo was morally reprobated in failing to free Union prisoners they couldn't care for properly, notwithstanding that the Union government made it impossible to exchange them, in #3Fan's construction of the moral balance, then what was the Union government's excuse -- more specifically, what was Abraham Lincoln's excuse (since he was in fact in charge, in every way) for the large numbers of Confederates who died in captivity, given the North's nearly illimitable resources both for prosecuting the war, enlarging its economy, and (if it had wanted to) keeping its Confederate prisoners alive?
I thought indentured servitude was illegal in the U.S. since, well, at least since the Constitution was ratified in 1787, and maybe since the Articles of Confederation, which would be 1777. They had indentures in Illinois? If they had indentures, how could they condemn chattel slavery? Bondage is bondage -- that's why Hewlett-Packard's employees sued H-P and Tata International in the 90's over some of the H-1B's Tata was bringing to work for H-P, that had (what the plaintiffs complained were) indenture clauses in their contracts.
Something doesn't add up.
I second that. I'm unaware of any situation in the Second World War in which Eisenhower ordered attacks on civilians. The air war was another story, but at least the American raids had legitimate targets, like the notorious ball-bearing factory at Schweinfurt and the refineries around Ploesti. The British night raids were more problematic, but even at night the British made attempts to target, using visual references and the "H2S" black boxes, and in any case they resorted to night raiding (as had the Germans) because of their casualty experience in attempting daylight raids.
Deliberate savaging of civilian targets was something more typical of the German side (Rotterdam, London, the V-weapon offensives, the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau's gratuitous shelling of Deal during their Channel breakout, Ouradour, Lidice, half a hundred Polish and Russian towns).
However, any fairminded person would have to admit that Sherman's march to the sea did adumbrate this kind of warfare, which had no precedent since the Thirty Years' War, or even the Hundred Years' War.
Nah, they just bombed the crap out of them.
What would make you think that indentured servitude was banned by the Constitution when slavery was not?
Initially the firing on civilians was an attempt to force the Confederate military to give up some forts. Sounds somewhat like modern day terrorism, doesn't it. I think it eventually progressed into a general punishment of those who had the temerity to withdraw from the Union, much like Sherman's troops saved their worst for South Carolina civilians.
On August 21, 1863, Federal General Gilmore sent a communication to CSA General Beauregard demanding immediate evacuation of Morris Island and Fort Sumter or he would fire on the city within 4 hours. He sent the message at the night without his signature. He opened fire on the city about 2 AM in the morning, some 3 hours after his unsigned communique reached Beauregard's headquarters. Gillmore fired incendiary shells filled with a mixture termed "Greek Fire" after the fabled incendiary of old.
Beauregard responded, "It would appear, sir, that despairing of reducing these works, you now resort to the novel measure of turning your guns against the old men, the women and children, and the hospitals of a sleeping city, an act of inexcusable barbarity..." This went on for some days and weeks. Most of the shelling in the fall of 1863 was directed at the forts in an attempt to subjugate them, the attack on civilians not having achieved its goal. The fall shelling of the city did succeed in killing one Negro woman but I've not been able to find her name or the date of her death.
The bombardment of the forts didn't work, so Gillmore started shelling civilians again, with a particularly severe bombardment on Christmas night. Some 1,500 shells were fired on the city in 9 days in mid-January 1864. The Feds aimed at church steeples, even on Sunday mornings.
The bombardment continued day by day and month by month into 1865, sometimes heavy, sometimes light. The Charleston civilians largely moved out of the lower part of the city that Union guns could reach, but the citizens refused to yield. Finally on February 14, 1865, Beauregard ordered the evacuation of the city as his troops were needed elsewhere. Fort Sumter and other installations were evacuated by the Confederates on February 18-19. The city was looted extensively by Federal troops on February 19.
I don't know how many civilians died or were wounded in the 18-month bombardment. I've made no effort to do a thorough search in the old newspapers. I just compiled casualty reports as I ran into them.
Is it something in their water? I do love those guys in a 'roundabout way - they're entertaining to say the least!
Yep.
Simple. Like all yankees, they adhered to the "do as we say, not as we do" school of government.
A Wall Street Journal story about the Hewlett-Packard lawsuit. It made the statement flatly, quoting an attorney who I assumed was familiar with the law in this area.
Oh, yes. The famous Massachusetts maxim. Also known in veterinary circles as "Heel, boy!"
A. I thought that indentured servitude had been abolished by the Articles of Confederation. I've heard that explicitly propounded somewhere -- it might have been in a U of H "distance lecture" about the American Revolution, or it might have been that WSJ story, or both. Fact-check time. Oh, man.
B. If your statements are correct, then the Abolitionists, and particularly the Illinois ones (thud, clangg! hint) have got, like Lucy, just a whole lot of 'splainin' to do!
Oh, man.
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