Posted on 05/22/2016 6:17:11 PM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Congress passed a proposal on Thursday that essentially bans Confederate flags from national cemeteries. With a 265-159 vote, the proposal makes it illegal to display the Confederate flag in Department of Veteran Affairs cemeteries – even on individual grave sites that honor soldiers who fought for the Confederacy, except on Memorial Day and Confederate Memorial Day.
Introduced by Rep. Jared Huffman (D) of California, the proposal received support from 84 Republicans and all but two Democrats. Rep. Sanford Bishop (D) of Georgia, a member of the Congressional Black Caucus, voted against the amendment, while Representative Betty McCollum (D) of Minnesota voted "present."
Huffman's proposal was added as an amendment to the Veteran Affairs spending bill, and it remains uncertain whether it will become law....
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Lincoln sold the war to the north on "preserving the union", not "freeing slaves." Read his proclamation calling for volunteers to invade the South. Not a word, nary a syllable about slaves, slavery or freeing. A preserved union would keep the cotton flowing northward unimpeded, you see.... The war didn't become "about" slavery until well into the fighting.
You're an American? Fine. I don't care what you are. It's none of your business what I consider myself to be. This nation is no longer great, and hasn't been for a long time, and the South is not merely a point on a compass. Far from it, it is region, a separate and unique culture, long known as a nation within a nation and it pre-dates most of the rest of the USA. That is something I don't expect you to understand. In fact, the South is where America began, and I don't expect you'll like that much.
Sure, go ahead and speak for your flippin' ancestors who came South to kill, maim and steal... who invaded the Southern states, made war on war on women, children, the elderly, servants and other noncombatants, burned homes, barns, farms, crops in the field, and entire towns, shot pet dogs just for spite, killed livestock and threw the carcasses in streams and wells to contaminate the water and sicken the population (when there was no medicine, because that great humanitarian, A. Lincoln, had included medicine in the blockade -- makes you proud to be an American, don't it?), stabled horses in church sanctuaries to show contempt for the religion of Southerners (and for God), and dug up fresh corpses looking for valuables to steal.
Here's a partial list of Southern towns destroyed by the army from the north, most of them by burning... Notice how many occurred in fall and winter, forcing civilians to face cold, sometimes freezing, temperatures without food and shelter.
Osceola, Missouri, burned to the ground, September 24, 1861
Dayton, Missouri, burned, January 1 to 3, 1862
Columbus, Missouri, burned, reported on January 13, 1862
Bentonville, Arkansas, partly burned, February 23, 1862
Winton, North Carolina, burned, reported on February 21, 1862
Bluffton, South Carolina, burned, reported June 6, 1863
Bledsoe's Landing, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862
Hamblin's, Arkansas, burned, October 21, 1862
Donaldsonville, Louisiana, partly burned, August 10, 1862
And then there was the sack and pillage of Athens, Alabama, on June 30, 1862, by Colonel Turchin's men, who committed rapes and other atrocities on the inhabitants. Turchin was subsequently court-martialed and put out of the military. What happened next? Turchin was rewarded by lincoln, returned to the military and promoted to Brigadier General.
Athens, Alabama, partly burned, August 30, 1862
Randolph, Tennessee, burned, September 26, 1862
Elm Grove and Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, October 18, 1862
Napoleon, Arkansas, partly burned, January 17, 1863
Mound City, Arkansas, partly burned, January 13, 1863
Hopefield, Arkansas, burned, February 21, 1863
Eunice, Arkansas, burned, June 14, 1863
Gaines Landing, Arkansas, burned, June 15, 1863
Sibley, Missouri, burned June 28, 1863
Hernando, Mississippi, partly burned, April 21, 1863
Austin, Mississippi, burned, May 23, 1863
Columbus, Tennessee, burned, reported February 10, 1864
Meridian, Mississippi, destroyed, February 3 to March 6, 1864
"For 5 days 10,000 men worked hard and with a will...with axes, crowbars, sledges, clawbars, and with fire, and I have no hesitation in pronouncing the work as well done. Meridian, with its depots, store-houses, arsenal, hospitals, offices, hotels, and cantonments no longer exists." -- w.t.sherman
Washington, North Carolina, sacked and burned, April 20, 1864
Hallowell's Landing, Alabama, burned, reported May 14, 1864
Newtown, Virginia, ordered to be burned, ordered May 30, 1864
Virginia Military Institute, Lexington, Virginia, burned, June 12, 1864
Rome, Georgia, partly burned, November 11, 1864
Atlanta, Georgia, burned, November 15, 1864
Camden Point, Missouri, burned, July 14, 1864
Kendal's Grist-Mill, Arkansas, burned, September 3, 1864
Shenandoah Valley, devastated, reported October 1, 1864 by sheridan
Griswoldville, Georgia, burned, November 21, 1864
Somerville, Alabama, burned, January 17, 1865
McPhersonville, South Carolina, burned, January 30, 1865
Barnwell, South Carolina, burned, reported February 9, 1865
Columbia, South Carolina, burned, reported February 17, 1865
Winnsborough, South Carolina, pillaged and partly burned, February 21, 1865
Tuscaloosa, Alabama, burned, April 4, 1865
Here's something else for you to be proud of:
SOURCE: Official Records of the War of the Rebellion, United States Government, Series I, Volume XXXIX, Part III, p. 494
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Hdqrs. Military Division of the Mississippi, In the Field, Rome, Ga., October 29, 1864 Brigadier-General Watkins, Calhoun, Ga.:
Cannot you send over about Fairmount and Adairsville, burn ten or twelve houses of known secessionists, kill a few at random, and let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired on from Resaca to Kingston?
W.T. Sherman, Major-General, Commanding.
(Don't worry about their guilt or innocence in firing on trains. Just murder them and burn their families out of their homes....)
http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=Adairsville;rgn=full%20text;idno=waro0079;didno=waro0079;view=image;seq=0496
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Calhoun, October 30, 1864
Major-General Sherman: My men killed some of those fellows two or three days since, and I had their houses burned. Watkins is not here, but I will carry out your instructions thoroughly and leave the country east of the road uninhabitable, if necessary.
E.M. McCook, Brigadier-General
http://ebooks.library.cornell.edu/cgi/t/text/pageviewer-idx?c=moawar;cc=moawar;q1=Watkins;rgn=full%20text;idno=waro0079;didno=waro0079;view=image;seq=0513
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Confederate symbols, particularly the flag, not only represent the courage and valor, grit, determination, endurance and nobility of the Confederate soldier, who fought against that barbarous enemy, but the unimaginable suffering and death they experienced, not only on the battlefield, but in the north's POW camps. At Hellmira, (Elmira NY) Confederate POWS were fed potato peels and had to drink water befouled with sewage. One doctor there bragged that he had killed more Rebs than any union soldier by withholding medicine and blankets (which there was plenty of). The yanks built "observation decks" above the camp and charged townspeople 15c to sit there and watch the suffering of Confederate POWS in a land of plenty. Some townspeople were moved to donate bankets and such to the care of the soldiers, but camp officials refused to distribute them. Hellmira's death rate was about the same as Andersonville's in the South, where there was no donations to withhold, little food for either guards or prisoners.
There was no deliberate torture at Andersonville. It was so horrific because there was no food, no medicine (again, thanks to Lincoln's blockade), and the union refused prisoner exchanges. The north had plenty of food, blankets and medicine but deliberately withheld them from Confederate POWS. All the POW camps were overcrowded, though the union could have built more accommodations. At Camp Douglas, overflow prisoners slept in tents during the Chicago winter, as at Hellmira. Well, they spent the night in the tents; but sleep? Guards fired guns through the tents and barracks throughout the night to create sleep deprivation. They made prisoners sit bare-bottomed on blocks of ice. Made them sit astride a narrow rail raised high in the air, with weights on their ankles, for hours, and when they were taken down, they couldn't walk.
Whatever "sins" the South committed, the same and worse are racked up under the StarznStripes...
The USA was born in treason and rebellion. Confederacy -- slavery for 4 years. Under the US flag -- slavery for 89 years... this in a country founded on "all men are created equal and endowed by their creator with ... liberty."
Remove all items that honor the US government because of its official policy of killing off the buffalo to genocide red people -- the Plains Indians -- by starvation and take their land for white settlers; and for confining more red people to concentration camps artfully known as "reservations" in conditions worse than plantation slavery; the same government that imprisoned Japanese Americans in concentration camps during WWII.
This is my bottom line, and I don't care what you think of it:
There was NO justification for the union army's presence in the seceded states and no justification for a union soldier so much as kicking a Southern dog. Regardless of how much or how little destruction Sherman and his rapacious men did, regardless the efforts of every Confederacy-bashing "historian" to santitize Sherman, Sheridan, Butler, etc., and downplay the destruction wrought upon the South by the union army, it was ALL too much because the union army should not have been down here to begin with.
Nothing -- not secession, not "preserving the union," not ending slavery, not anything -- justified the union's barbaric war on the South.
You’ve a right to your opinion but not your facts. The North didn’t come to murder , maim and steal anything. The South stole the labor of slaves. Northern bankers got rich? And no Southern bankers did, right? Who got all the money, just Yankees? And virtually every Southerner tells of having a home destroyed by the Yankees. Truth is the Yankees weren’t any where near the locations. Anyone can make up facts on the internet. You’re placing all the blame for slavery on the North when it was being preserved in the South. This nation is no longer great? She ain’t done yet and people with your attitude are part of the problem. Tribalism, factionalism whatever you call it by black or white is what is destroying this country. You’re an embittered person. You venerate an age you know nothing about and certainly would not have wanted to live in, truth be told. I’m done talking to Madame, good bye.
If I had an ancestor in a national cemetery I would want him moved to a private cemetery where the Confederate flag could be flown. The Battle flag also.
On what grounds? What law is the government breaking by not flying the confederate flag?
Virtually EVERY Southerner? Do you know how many Southerners there are? Over 121 million and some of them had no ancestors in the antebellum South or during the war. Yet they (virtually) all tell/told (told who, you?) about having a home destroyed by the yankees in locations where there were no yankees? Please.
I didn't make up anything, although you certainly did with that "virtually all Southerners" claim. I quoted the Official Records of the War of Rebellion and primary sources from the day (William Gilmore Sims record of the destruction of Columbia, SC, diaries, letters, etc).
I am not placing ALL the blame for slavery on the north. My very first sentence was, "The north's economy was also dependent on slave-grown cotton." ALSO. ALSO. ALSO. That means both north and South shared in the blame. I mentioned the north's refusing to quit buying cotton (and thus ending slavery that way) because the north is portrayed as being oh, so concerned about the slaves and wanting to end slavery. That is not true. They could have done it without bloodshed, but they didn't want to give up the cotton, and the cotton derived money. At best, a handful of abolitionists wanted to end slavery, more or less. But basically, the north benefited from Southern slaves. (Did you know that a generation before the war, there were more anti-slavery societies in the South than in the north?)
Slaves were domiciled in the South because that's where the work was located. But slavery was PRESERVED by north and South -- in the South, which provided the location and work, and in the north, which provided the financing.
Here's an example. In 1860, The Virginia Life Insurance Company ran a newspaper ad (Richmond Post Dispatch) naming directors and such. One sentence of the ad is very telling: "The Chief object of the Company is to aid in retaining at home the immense amount of money which goes annually from our state for Life Premiums to Northern Companies." Yes, slaves were included among those who were insured by those northern companies.
Immense amount of money was going annually from Virginia to the north for insurance.....
Yes, Southern banks benefited from slavery, but not to the extent northern banks did.
Yes, they invading army murdered, maimed and stole. Of course not every single soldier, but the army as a whole. Do you know how "Spoons" Butler got his nickname? I think it was Jeffrey Rogers Hummel who documented in "Emancipating Slaves, Enslaving Free Men: A History of the American Civil War" that 50,000 Southern civilians were killed as a direct or indirect result of the war ... most by disease and many by the shelling of cities and towns by the union army.
I share no blame for the deterioration of the USA. I bled red, white and blue since before I was a preschooler, got choked up at the sight of Old Glory, sang the national anthem with feeling... My country left me, not the other way around. And no, "tribalism, factionalism whatever you call it by black or white" is NOT what is destroying this country. Leftism, socialism, is what's destroying the country. The kind of leftism that has resulted in the law to remove Confederate flags in VA cemeteries....
I don't venerate an age; I venerate the truth, and the truth has not been told about the north's war on Southerners -- which continued for generations after the fighting stopped. The victors write the history and they write it to make themselves look good and right, regardless of facts and truth. I'm not embittered, but I am certainly cynical in the face of all the gung-ho Americanism, greatest-country-on-earth when we haven't respected or lived by the Founders' principles for over 150 years. We're 20 trillion dollars in debt -- an incomprehensible amount that can never be repaid. We are decimating our military; we are being overrun by hostile lawbreakers who are draining our country's lifeblood. We are throwing out decency and morals and embracing vile immorality...
And in the face of that, some people get their knickers in a knot over the display of Confederate flags....
I'm not surprised you're done talking to me. I know more about it than you do.
Northern banks got rich financing the purchase of plantations and slaves
Little did i know how many Northerners came south with money(from New York investors) to start plantations in the South until i visited Natchez, Ms and learned the whole story....very eye opening...Poor Irish and Scots had it tougher than the Negros....Not to mention the Natchez Indians. that got pushed out before slavery.
#87
This was never an issue before the Marxist took over the two parties and congress.
That’s a major reasonj why Natchez wasn’t burned by the federals.
That is a FACT....found that out too.
ping
“I don’t venerate an age; I venerate the truth, and the truth has not been told about the north’s war on Southerners — which continued for generations after the fighting stopped. “
The northern war against the South began as early as the election of Thomas Jefferson, and the Essex Junto’s threat of New England secession. There were decades of hatemongering of the South that predated the outbreak of gunfire, not to mention northern funding for John Brown’s campaign of murder.
The best source for this ante-bellum campaign is Thomas Fleming’s “A Disease in the Public Mind: A New Understanding of Why We Fought the Civil War”. Well worth your time.
Shot in the back.
Sic Semper Tyrannis.
During the war, Winchester VA suffered greatly under five major periods of Union occupation:
The Occupation of Major General Nathaniel Banks – (March 12 to May 25, 1862, and June 4 to September 2, 1862)
The Occupation of Major General Robert Milroy – (December 24, 1862, to June 15, 1863)
The Burning and Occupation of Major General Philip Sheridan – (September 19, 1864, to February 27, 1865)
The Occupation of Major General Winfield Scott Hancock – February 27, 1865, to June 27, 1865
The Occupation of the First Military District of Major General John Schofield – (End of War to January 26, 1870)
During the Federal occupation of Winchester, many residents were exiled from town, personal property was stolen, citizens rendering medical assistance to wounded soldiers were shot and murdered, homes were illegally stolen, occupied and destroyed, a medical school was burned down, and the citizens of the Commonwealth were not allowed to vote on re-admittance to the Union under the reign of Major General Schofield.
An officer and a gentleman...
/s
Congress made CSA soldiers American veterans around 1901 if I recall, so it makes no sense to drop CSA cemeteries from the VA system if they are in it.
Congress recognized Confederates as “civil war veterans,” not American veterans. The purpose was to allocate funds for headstones for Confederate graves, and for widow’s pensions.
Nevertheless, Confederates were “American veterans,” not because of any act of Congress but for the same reason Union soldiers were — “America” was part of their country’s name.
Most veteran legislation doesn’t refer to “American veterans” at all, even when referencing U.S. vets; it refers to the war in which they fought — Mexican war veteran, civil war veteran, Spanish-American war veteran....
The fact that Confederates were recognized as “civil war veterans” means this legislation prohibiting their flag — which has apparently been displayed in these cemeteries for generations — is simply to insult and to stir up conflict and negative emotions.
In the Declaration of Independence, Thomas Jefferson established that people are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, and that governments are instituted to secure those rights. One right he specifically identifies is the right of the people to alter or abolish their government and create another that suits them better. This right both pre-exists and transcends the U.S. Constitution. How grotesque, then, that the only time Americans have attempted to exercise this right, the government that was supposed to secure it for them made brutal war on them instead.
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