[4CJ]

For information and discussion.

[facedown]

Making popcorn and pulling up a chair.

[MarcoPolo]

Excellent!

I've known about Nelson and several other black men who have the courage to stand up against PC history and remind us how it really happened for several years now. The PC crowd wants to ignore or even deny the existence of blacks in gray during the War. For those who may not know, another black Confederate activist, H.K. Edgerton, marches across the South every year to support respect for Confederate history, heritage and symbols.

[Indrid Cold]

Well there's something you don't see every day.

[2banana]

If next, they have the grandson of a free black who owned slaves, I am going to faint!

[don-o]

Years ago, I visited the Cyclorama in Atlanta. I did not know much, but was beginning my life long interest in the War Between the States. I asked a tour guide if any blacks had fought for the Confederacy.

She looked at me like I had two heads and sputtered, "Of course not."

I have since learned more of the truth, and it is an ongoing experience.

Thanks for posting this.

[Honcho]

"If you learn anything else today, don't be dumb."

Don't be dumb....don't be dumb...don't be dumb... OK Got it!

[Scott Mahrle]

Good to set the story straight about the flag. But for Mr. Winbush to say he would have fought alongside his grandfather strikes me as offensive, knowing what he knows now. Would he prefer the Confederacy had won the war? It is a fact that the war ended the immoral practice of slavery. And though some slaves were content with their conditions, this does not excuse the practice.

[Agnes Heep]

Patty Hearst fought for the SLA.

[EagleMamaMT]

Read later.

[stainlessbanner]

Honorable Nelson Winbush ping!

[Lee Heggy]

Finally!!! There are admittedly far too few who have taken the time and have the whit to properly study the Civil War and it's causes and participants. I have been re-ennacting at living history events for over fifteen years and we do try to get it right. There are even three black men in our unit that participate in roles that are taken from personal diaries and letters of their ancestors who were on one side or the other. It's never an issue with us if we are galvanised into a confederate outfit or into a Union one although it does seem that there are almost always more rebs than yanks. The fact is that there were many black people on both sides in the war and their story isn't told often enough.

[varina davis]

I know Mr. Winbush and have heard him speak several times. Bless his heart.

[mhking]

Black conservative ping

If you want on (or off) of my black conservative ping list, please let me know via FREEPmail. (And no, you don't have to be black to be on the list!)

Extra warning: this is a high-volume ping list.

[Gianni]

See? What did I tell you TLR?

[WhiskeyPapa]

"It's pure fantasy,' contends James McPherson, a Princeton historian and one of the nation's leading Civil War scholars. Adds Edwin Bearss, historian emeritus at the National Park Service: 'It's b.s., wishful thinking.' Robert Krick, author of 10 books on the Confederacy, has studied the records of 150,000 Southern soldiers and found fewer than a dozen were black. 'Of course, if I documented 12, someone would start adding zeros,' he says.

"These and other scholars say claims about black rebels derive from unreliable anecdotes, a blurring of soldiers and laborers, and the rapid spread on the Internet of what Mr. McPherson calls 'pseudohistory.' Thousands of blacks did accompany rebel troops -- as servants, cooks, teamsters and musicians. Most were slaves who served involuntarily; until the final days of the war, the Confederacy staunchly refused to enlist black soldiers.

"Some blacks carried guns for their masters and wore spare or cast-off uniforms, which may help explain eyewitness accounts of blacks units. But any blacks who actually fought did so unofficially, either out of personal loyalty or self-defense, many historians say. "They also bristle at what they see as the disingenuous twist on political correctness fueling the black Confederate fad. 'It's a search for a multicultural Confederacy, a desperate desire to feel better about your ancestors,' says Leslie Rowland, a University of Maryland historian. 'If you suggest that some blacks supported the South, then you can deny that the Confederacy was about slavery and white supremacy.'

"David Blight, an Amherst College historian, likens the trend to bygone notions about happy plantation darkies.' Confederate groups invited devoted ex-slaves to reunions and even won Senate approval in 1923 for a "mammy" monument in Washington (it was never built). Black Confederates, Mr. Blight says, are a new and more palatable way to 'legitimize the Confederacy.'"

-- Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1997

Had there been the number claimed by the SCV and the League of the South, they were certainly shamefully treated after the war.

"After Lincoln's assassination in April of 1865, President Andrew Johnson alienated Congress with his Reconstruction policy. He supported white supremacy in the South and favored pro-Union Southern political leaders who had aided the Confederacy once war had been declared.

Southerners, with Johnson's support, attempted to restore slavery in substance if not in name. In 1866, Congress and President Johnson battled for control of Reconstruction. The Congress won. Northern voters gave a smashing victory -- more than two-thirds of the seats in Congress -- to the Radical Republicans in the 1866 congressional election, enabling Congress to control Reconstruction and override any vetoes that Johnson might impose. Congress passed the Reconstruction Acts of 1867 that divided the Confederate states (except for Tennessee, which had been re-admitted to the Union) into five military districts. Each state was required to accept the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution, which granted freedom and political rights of blacks.

Each Southern state had to incorporate these requirements into their constitutions, and blacks were empowered with the vote. Yet Congress failed to secure land for blacks, thus allowing whites to economically control blacks. The Freedmen's Bureau was authorized to administer the new laws and help blacks attain their economic, civil, educational, and political rights. The newly created state governments were generally Republican in character and were governed by political coalitions of blacks, Northerners who had migrated to the South (called "carpetbaggers" by Southern Democrats), and Southerners who allied with the blacks and carpetbaggers (referred to as "scalawags" by their opponents). This uneasy coalition of black and white Republicans passed significant civil rights legislation in many states. Courts were reorganized, judicial procedures improved, and public school systems established. Segregation existed but it was flexible. But as blacks slowly progressed, white Southerners resented their achievements and their empowerment, even though they were in a political minority in every state but South Carolina.

Most whites rallied around the Democratic Party as the party of white supremacy. Between 1868 and 1871, terrorist organizations, especially the Ku Klux Klan, murdered blacks and whites who tried to exercise their right to vote or receive an education. The Klan, working with Democrats in several states, used fraud and violence to help whites regain control of their state governments. By the early 1870s, most Southern states had been "redeemed" -- as many white Southerners called it -- from Republican rule. By the time the last federal troops had been withdrawn in 1877, Reconstruction was all but over and the Democratic Party controlled the destiny of the South."

-- Richard Wormser

The fact that the whites in the south were able to reinstitute slavery in all but name is a big fly in the buttermilk over this "black confederate" crap.

It didn't happen.

Walt

[moonman]

Thanks for the post.

It appears that this is news to a lot of Northeasterners. It was to me also 18 years ago, when I moved to the South. After being the first of my direct decendants since 1620 to move south of the Mason/Dixon Line, I've learned a lot of history which was never taught me in public schools (1956-1968) and to appreciate the great contributions of the South and it's culture.

After these 18 years, I am proud to say that I am a proud Southerner. I made the right choice in moving here, both for me and my family. My grandson is the first native born Southerner.

Leave the ignorant Yankees believe what they wish. If I'd still live in that socialist bastion of a hell-hole, I'd be bitter every day also. It's because of the South's view on States' Rights and taxes (tariffs), along with the great weather, is why I live here. There is more opportunity (Florida has led the nation in economic growth and job creation for the last 3 years) then the Northeast has seen in over 30 years.

Last conservative to leave the Northeast, please turn the lights off.

[Dante3]

Interesting.

[BaBaStooey]

Gen. Nathan Bedford Forest

The guy Forrest Gump was named after!

Seriously, though, I found this article to be quite interesting.

[Dante3]

Articles that have provoked discussion on this topic include:
"Black re-enactor finds reality in Rebel gray" by Laura Moyer, The Washington Times, July 6, 2002 and
"Blacks, Jews fight on the side of the South" by Thomas C. Mandes, The Washington Times, June 15, 2002.

[The Last Rebel]

Those that win, get to re-write history to help them "cleanse" the minds of future generations.

To quote from the Confederate written song "Oh, I'm a good ole rebel"

300,000 yankees is stiff in southern dust
we got 300,000 before they conquored us
they died of southern fever
and southern steel and shot
I WISH IT WAS 3 MILLION
instead of what we got!!!!!!!!!!!


TLR