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."
"Delusional" by your beliefs put forth. "Freak" has nothing to do with anything.
In a post where he demonstrated, as I have also just done, that you are a liar.
Namecalling again, that didn't take long after the visit.
The only other option is that when confronted with your own words, you used your imagination when reading them to such an extent that you were able to cite them back and say they meant something else.
Do you even know what you just said? lol
I figured if Lincoln had slaves we would've heard about it by now. lol
It also speaks of compacts between states which the confederate states violated giving the president power to defend the Constitution in a direct way.
From Chief Justice Taney quoting Chief Justice Marshall (my blood cousin) concerning habeas corpus and Article I: 'If at any time, the public safety should require the suspension of the powers vested by this act in the courts of the United States, it is for the legislature to say so. That question depends on political considerations, on which the legislature is to decide; until the legislative will be expressed, this court can only see its duty, and must obey the laws.' I [Taney] can add nothing to these clear and emphatic words of my great predecessor [Marshall]. Among other things, Article II states the President should take an oath to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution. Lincoln violated it.
I don't care what any justice says, I can read the Constitution for myself.
You can assert this all you like, but I disagree with your constitutional theories.
And I with yours.
Lincoln took an action he know would provoke war...
The South stole property and attacked a US fort, that's what started war.
...and argued that the states were created by the Union rather than the other way around and thus didn't have the power to secede (balderdash, in my opinion).
Certainly not the way they did it. They would've had a better chance had they followed Article IV.
I have argued on these threads that it would have been better for the South to not fall into the trap Lincoln set at Fort Sumter and let Lincoln do an overt act of war like trying to collect tax revenue from ships going to the South.
It would've been better for you guys and your arguments for the south to not be the attackers, but the outcome of the Civil War would've been the same if there would've been a war.
Wow! Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!
How so?
Look, for instance, at your repeated claims of 39% mortality at Andersonville. You clearly did not read all of the linked information concerning Andersonville on the site I posted.
Anything over 15% is high.
You misquote my posts and attribute things to me I don't believe. This is not a junior high debating society or the Clinton Whitehouse.
What misquote?
There you go again.
Not at all. You start out by saying "some say...", later asssume it's true to expand further. Every time you expand further you drift farther from the truth.
That certainly is a factor for some people. Depends on the survey and what questions were asked. Small towns tend to be much friendlier than large cities,...
Every state has small towns.
...for example. I considered for a time accepting a job in the Chicago suburbs -- I'd have probably liked it. Our Southern lab is in a large city and our Northern lab is in a small suburban city in a large metropolitan area. The people transferring were all PhDs, none of them having any connection with the other area. For these people, it was a matter of life style. I'll buy that. My wife hated my assignment at the Northern lab. When we would head South to visit her mother in Georgia, by the time we got to North Carolina we could tell a distinct difference in people and their more friendly interactions. It was like a breath of fresh air.
Yeah, some places do have well-earned bad reputations for unfriendliness.
We do go back North on occasion. We spent a week with our eldest son on the beautiful Massachusetts coast a couple of years ago, and we have taken several trips to go to the Metropolitan Opera in NYC. I miss that. People were much more loyal to their home state in the old days. Lee probably thought of himself as a Virginian first and an American second. He would not be a traitor to his home, his people. I respect that and can relate to it.
He accepted God's judgment too, making him a great man. If the Confederacy was not to be it wasn't to be. Some here could learn from this.
You are probably too young to remember LBJ's TV commercials that had Goldwater sawing off the New England states. Sometimes I feel like sawing them off myself. I went to school in Massachusetts with people who had never been west of the Hudson. They considered Boston to be the only place where anything worthwhile was going on. I felt sorry for them and their self-centered arrogance.
A few bad apples can make the whole bunch seem rotten but I don't think it's as wide-spread as it may seem. The History Channel does their shows where they put old WW2 soldiers on to speak of their experiences. They had group of Northeasterners on and they had the attitude of typical Northeasterners, but they were as heroic as anyone. Being from the midwest, I'm put off by a lot of northeasterners too and wouldn't want to live around a lot of them, but that doesn't mean I think they're some of things that have been said on this thread or that I wish they were part of Canada instead. I just think that they have a different way of communicating. lol
I'll assume you are not intentionally trying to be insulting. You might try working on your posting style.
I was being honest. I think you guys are as far from the truth as can be and I think it's caused by your practice of reading books of one perspective. Nothing will lead a person farther astray than putting too much faith in another man's opinion.
The apparent lack Confederate rapes have been addressed extensively on a previous thread. It is old news. The letter you cited has been brought up before. I don't doubt there were rapes by Confederates. Some are documented on the web. On the other hand, there was opportunity to rape for Federal soldiers passing through Southern country where the men were often gone off to war and not around to protect the women. German soldiers and Japanese soldiers did the same thing during WWII.
Actually it looks like the rates were about the same. 350 for the whole war for Union troops. That's not very many. And seeing that the governer took the time to write a letter complaining of Confederate rapes against their own women, then it must've been a situation that was ongoing and needed to be pursued to stop the trend. The criminal mind occupies about the same rate in one place here as to another.
I don't believe Southern men are any more virtuous than Northern men in this regard. There were some differences in Northern and Southern leadership, however. Lee admonished his troops to not molest the locals during their trip into Maryland and Pennsylvania. I've read soldiers' diaries (I can't locate them now) where the Southern troops grudgingly obeyed this directive -- their own homes had been burned by Northern troops and they were itching for revenge but didn't take it because of the directive.
Although I think Lee was a good man, this was probably more a political move than a charitable move by Lee. The war was unpopular enough that Lincoln thought he was going to lose the election, so Lee must've known that to get the northern people fired up about the war might cause ultimate defeat.
I know that Sherman issued orders calling for harsh punishment if his troops committed crimes, but there are enough reports of widespread looting and burning of homes and cities that I think he looked the other way. That is my belief and speculation and I label it as such.
And the letter proves that Confederate generals also didn't pursue a lot of their rapists. There was a war on. Generals on both sides had more to worry about.
I've posted the following story about the goodness of a Federal officer commanding a prison and his wife before, but I'll do it again for your benefit. I want to say a few words for Colonel Brown's wife. One day in a fit of desperation, I wrote Colonel Brown a note, asking him to grant me an interview. To my surprise, on the following day he granted it. A sergeant conducted me to his office quarters. The Colonel received me politely. I told him I had an uncle in St. Louis, St. Andrew Murray, who would gladly aid me with money if I were allowed to communicate with him. His reply was, "Sir, I, personally, would be glad to grant your request; but I am sorry indeed I can not, under my orders, do so. I am powerless." For a few moments he left the office. The lady who had been present during the interview was Colonel Brown's wife. Turning to me she said, "Write your draft to your uncle; you shall have the money." This kind noble lady...gave me, as I left the office, a paper containing two large slices of bread, butter, and ham. I took them to my sick comrade, Billy Funk.
Yeah, you're not as bad as your compatriots in this.
Some escaped Southern prisoners thought so highly of Colonel Brown's kindness in the face of orders for him to be harsh that they published an open letter thanking him for his professional behavior. Colonel Brown got disciplined by his superiors. I assume you have posted stories of the kindness of Southern guards.
I'm not into long-winded stories. When I come on these threads, I keep it simple and to the point so you won't see stories from me, unless forced into it when having to reveal facts to counter the exaggerations, one-sidedness, and omission of facts.
We have a clan of Mexican immigrants that opened a Mexican restaurant in my town. Pretty good.
You've touched on part of the problem between North and South. Slavery supporters pointed to the Bible as support for slavery,...
They were wrong in doing so. They should've studied better. The bible clearly says not to enslave Israelites and blacks are Israelites according to the promise by God to Abraham.
...and Northerners said there was a higher law than the Constitution. Southerners pushed for the Constitution to be obeyed with regard to fugitive slaves, and Northerners passed laws that public officials would lose their jobs, be fined, and be imprisoned if they in any way assisted in returning fugitive slaves. Such diametrically opposed views were almost bound to end in conflict.
When the Constitution had laws regarding slavery, it was in conflict with the Word and needed to be amended.
Slavery was an evil. Would that we could have gotten rid of it when we founded the country, if not before.
Some tried and Jefferson himself said that slavery meant trouble.
Good for you. First thing you've posted that I really concur with. When proven wrong, Walt will sometimes repost the discredited information on another thread. When called on it, he's said that he was posting it for the lurkers. When Walt posts something factual, I listen to him. Actually Walt is the reason I joined FreeRepublic -- he was making claims that I thought to be false and I wanted to be able to refute the claims.
He mostly posts the words of the men that lived at the time, I don't know how that could be very false.
I respect Non-Seq. He will usually acknowledge error, while Walt and others typically won't. While I think slavery was the main issue that brought on the war, it wasn't the only issue involved. I don't think you will find a poster on either side who will argue for slavery.
Actually, some have said they would've been good slavemasters and such.
If you see things only in terms of slavery you will miss a good part of what the other posters and I are concerned about. We are concerned by abuses of power by the central government and concerned about the preservation of the freedoms we have under the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. I hope that you share these concerns. That is something we should have in common.
I think slavery was such an evil against humanity and against the preamble of the Constitution and against the Word that the Constitution wasn't complete until slavery was rid of. I see no abuse of power seeing that there was rebellion, the Constitution was broken in 4 places by the south, and the US was attacked with property stolen.
To me the War Between The States highlights all of these issues. These threads have discussed the meaning and intent of the Constitution in depth. It is like a graduate seminar on the Constitution and our history. More often than not, I will disagree with your Northern friends with respect to the Constitution. That's OK -- they've helped clarify my views and for that I thank them.
I simply think that one the reasons the president takes the oath that he does is for when there is rebellion and/or invasion. I think the founding fathers knew there would be emergencies.
Getting back to your point, what falsities, exaggerations, and omissions of facts have I made?
You claim high rape rates where there is no evidence and would not mention the confederate rapes. You won't admit POWs were treated badly. You put together about three "some say..."s to determine that Lincoln kept northern POWs locked up. You talk about the evil of northern high command without mentioning the case that I told you about...you should know this story given how much you study this. You speak of abuse of power but make no mention of the gavels of power be given to unelected officials at the conventions....off the top of my head.
I'm retired now and this is a nice hobby. I get engrossed in the first-hand newspaper reports of the war and the issues. I've copied pages from an old Northern newspaper to get their perspective and bought a bound volume of old Harper's Weekly pages to get the Northern view.
I don't think the press is the place to get the view of the northern people. I think documentary history is the place. The press is usually far behind and are usually biased.
Do you try to understand the other side's viewpoint?
I think it's made clear. Slavery is no big deal to many on your side. How can I respect their viewpoint when they're so willing to believe falsities and "some say..."s? They deny documents like the Declarations of Secession. They make up stories about those that disagree with them (me).
Like I said, this has been discussed on other threads. I bought a book, Military Justice in the Confederate States Armies to investigate the issue. Only one near case was documented in 9,475 military trials whose records survive, but these trials represent less than half of the trials known to have taken place. I discoved on the web that unlike in the North, rape was a civil court matter for the Confederates for most of the war.
And they were not being charged as the governer's letter said. How is a marshall (or whoever it was that supposed to arrest people) to arrest a soldier? Does he follow the army and pick the soldier out of a battle? I think you can see why a lot of confederate rapists were never charged.
Again, I'd advise you to look at your posting style. You make assertions about me that aren't true. Are you simply trying to provoke reaction? It is really a poor way of convincing someone in an argument.
What did I say that isn't true?
Now who is making assertions about the other side on this thread? Would you please take a look at what you've posted. With such assertions, you shouldn't be surprised that people react to your posts negatively.
I stand by my assertion that there are some on your side that know the general I'm talking about but won't tell me because they're not interested in truth, but propaganda. Some things are self-evident.
I don't doubt that such a general might exist. It is just that I've never heard of him. You apparently can't provide a name or information about him, yet fuss at me for mentioning claims made during the war? Try to be consistent.
I'm sure it would be easy for me to find him on the net. I'm making a point here and I'm going to let it linger for a while longer. Your claims are based on about three "some say..."s. You're drifting far with that tactic. My claim is based on fact.
I have no problem bombing supply lines. I do have problems with looting, burning civilian houses, and harassing civilians, strangling them until they tell where they've buried the family silver.
There were criminals in the confederate ranks too, a fact that you don't mention. Sherman's orders were against supplies, as were Ike's.
I support our use of the atomic bomb in WWII because in the end it saved lives on both sides. I understand that the same type of argument is made to justify what Sherman et al. did. I have a problem though with the kind of thievery that took place by Union troops in the South. Sherman said his troops could take only what they needed to survive -- they went wild instead and weren't reined in. Roads in Georgia were littered with stuff they took apparently just to break.
That's war and Sherman had a war to win. Those things will happen, proof being that confederates raped their own women. Does that make Lee a war criminal?
If you have facts to refute someone's post, then by all means please post them.
This thread is almost 1800 posts long. That's all I've done is refute you guy's posts.
We all learn from these threads.
Ain't much to learn from those that only tell one side of the story, and don't tell facts anyway.
Making blanket assertions about the other side is not the way to argue. If you've got the facts on your side, someone will listen.
My assertions are self-evident and I'm right.
Yes, prisoners often weren't treated well. I've made the point before that prisons on both sides weren't great places to be. No prison is. Some were deadly, in fact. On the other hand, some prisoners in Texas played baseball, or at least what was called baseball at the time, and there were good and kind guards in prisons on both sides. There were bad guards too, on both sides.
Yes, but on the whole, POWs were not treated well.
I've never followed you to any thread.
Anyway, to make a long story short I made subsequent reference to his abusive and hypocritical whining to the site administrators, which he followed up by claiming that he had not made the complaint.
I didn't make a complaint when your first post was removed, I don't know who did. After you repeatedly falsely accuse me of crimes I began to have your posts removed when they would do it.
That quickly turned out to be a lie because (a) the same event occurred within moments of his return to this thread after I again referenced the apparently "forbidden verb," and (b) nolu_chan found him a couple days later on another completely unrelated thread attempting to post complaints about my use of the same "forbidden verb" there. He's literally like the fat kid on the gradeschool playground who doesn't have any friends and spends recess every day throwing mud at other kids and calling them names because he knows that he's fat and they aren't. Sure enough, somebody finally turns the table on him and says "look fatty, the reason nobody likes you is because you're so obnoxious to everybody else and because you do nothing but throw mud at them and call them names day after day after day." And the second that happens he runs to the teacher whining about how everyone else is being mean to him.Oh well, as the old saying goes, if you can't take the heat get out of the kitchen.
You pinged the moderator on Silas so maybe you should take your own advice.
If that's what he said and he meant it, he was.
Perhaps you would care to explain why a founder of the NAACP, a New York Black man with a Ph.D. from Harvard, would be full of hate for Abraham Lincoln?
I don't know nor do I care.
Telling the truth is not hate. It would appear that you are unable to prove your absurd contention that W.E.B. DuBois was a NewYorker full of hate, much less a Neo-Confederate full of hate.
His words if he meant them.
Further, it would appear that you are unable to provide any explanation why a founder of the NAACP, a New York Black man with a Ph.D. from Harvard, would be full of hate for Abraham Lincoln.
I don't care who he was or what he did or what he thought.
Nor do you deny the factual nature of the remarks of W.E.B. DuBois. Abraham Lincoln was a Southern poor white, Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact? poorly educated Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
Not a fact, Lincoln was a lawyer.
and unusually ugly, Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
Not a fact. Many men aren't purty so there's nithing "unusual" about it.
awkward, Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
Not a fact. Lincoln was a lawyer, how could he be awkward.
ill-dressed. Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
Not a fact. He dresses OK by me.
He liked smutty stories Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
Churchill did too.
and was a politician down to his toes. Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
Not a fact. A "poltician down to his toes" could not have wrote the Gettysburg Address.
Aristocrats -- Jeff Davis, Seward and their ilk -- despised him, Can you possibly deny that W.E.B. DuBois merely stated a fact?
He got two facts.
Did you even notice that DuBois negatively refers to Davis, Seward and their ilk? and indeed he had little outwardly that compelled respect.
Not a fact. He is the most respected president.
Perhaps this can be argued as opinion and not fact. of illegitimate birth, This may be the only point subject to real contention. And while you are justifying your condemnation of W.E.B. DuBois as a New Yorker full of hate, or a Neo-Confederate full of hate, consider the continuation of what he wrote back in 1922. But in that curious human way he was big inside. He had reserves and depths and when habit and convention were torn away there was something left to Lincoln-nothing to most of his contemners. There was something left, so that at the crisis he was big enough to be inconsistent -- cruel, merciful; peace-loving, a fighter; despising Negroes and letting them fight and vote; protecting slavery and freeing slaves. He was a man -- a big, inconsistent, brave man. There is an honest attempt to be accurate. There is no varnish -- and there is no hate. The only hate to be found in this was expressed by #3Fan.
So he didn't mean those words. You twisted the truth again by quoting out of context. See, this is why nothing you guys say can be trusted.
The fact that you mentioned the word "suicide" with my name shows what was really on your mind, joke or not.
I said "Cook", yeah it was Hood and you got it right. I know the opposition knows this but doesn't like to mention it. nolu will post his latest revisionist novel now showing Hood to actually be a saint. :^)
False accusations of crimes is slander.
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.
Look again and you'll see GOPCapitalist hit it on Silas first.
I don't know who hit hit the first time but it wasn't me. After your 20th false accusation of crimes, I started hitting it on you, but that was long after you hit it on Silas. Regardless of whether you hit it on Silas or not, false accusations of crimes should not be allowed.
Then, sure enough, he pops up on another completely unrelated thread and, in his psychological obsession, starts whining about it there.
Just as you whined about Silas? By the way, is nolu following me now? lol
And that's why they didn't tell the whole story. A lot of liberals hate Lincoln.
You need to learn more about the firebombing of Germany and Tokyo and the bombing of Hiroshima. That's how wars are won and it saves lives in the long run.
Your buddy hit it on Silas for much less, did you cry for him too?
I live closer to Arkansas than Chicago.
The 1903 link that rustbucket said was most accurate shows more Federal deaths. I never said the the POWs were treated well, I said they were treated badly.
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