Commentary: Truth blown away in sugarcoated 'Gone With the Wind'

sacbee ^ | 11-13-04

[LouAvul]

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Based on Margaret Mitchell's hugely popular novel, producer David O. Selznick's four-hour epic tale of the American South during slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction is the all-time box-office champion.

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Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made.

It's also a lie.

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Along with D.W. Griffith's technically innovative but ethically reprehensible "The Birth of a Nation" (from 1915), which portrayed the Ku Klux Klan as heroic, "GWTW" presents a picture of the pre-Civil War South in which slavery is a noble institution and slaves are content with their status.

Furthermore, it puts forth an image of Reconstruction as one in which freed blacks, the occupying Union army, Southern "scalawags" and Northern "carpetbaggers" inflict great harm on the defeated South, which is saved - along with the honor of Southern womanhood - by the bravery of KKK-like vigilantes.

To his credit, Selznick did eliminate some of the most egregious racism in Mitchell's novel, including the frequent use of the N-word, and downplayed the role of the KKK, compared with "Birth of a Nation," by showing no hooded vigilantes.

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One can say that "GWTW" was a product of its times, when racial segregation was still the law of the South and a common practice in the North, and shouldn't be judged by today's political and moral standards. And it's true that most historical scholarship prior to the 1950s, like the movie, also portrayed slavery as a relatively benign institution and Reconstruction as unequivocally evil.

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Or as William L. Patterson of the Chicago Defender succinctly wrote: "('Gone With the Wind' is a) weapon of terror against black America."

[Colt .45]

The fugitive slave law was the law at that time, and Abolitionists were trying to start a massive slave uprising in the South in violation of the law.

Its really amazing how you Yankees purport to have the high moral ground yet when you get down to the bare bones of it, you were willing to usurp the law to achieve your ends. Not to mention the Yankees were the ones who were importing slaves up until the Slave Embargo was passed. No sir, your hands were just as bloody in the whole affair. So stop trying to play up the evil, white, racist Southerner image, its like the pot calling the kettle black.

If we choose to fly the CBF, who the hell are you to tell us we can't? Its called freedom of expression (1st Amendment). Or is it that that Amendment applies only to Yankees and not to Southerners? You are starting to sound like a screaming liberal - One set of rules for you Yankees, and another completely different set of rules for everyone else.

If you will note, another engagement of the WONA was finished on Nov 2nd with a victory supplied by the whole of the South. The Yankee liberal elitist Kerry was defeated.

[MEGoody]

"Considering its financial success and critical acclaim, "Gone With the Wind" may be the most famous movie ever made. It's also a lie."

No, sweetie, it's called 'fictional literature.' Look up the word 'fictional' in the dictionary.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Some people recognize a higher law than that made by man. Abolitionists for example and those opposed to Abortion. They undestood that Slavery was a complete contradiction of the ideals America was founded upon as well as the religion Americans professed to believe. So did the Southerners of the Revolutionary era who almost universally sought a way to end it with minimal damage.

But leaders with foresight like Jefferson, Madison and Washington were replaced by hacks who believed slavery was a wonderful thing something worth defending and even destroying the Union over. It is that generation of idiots which turned its back on the ideals of the Founders and replaced them with a totalitarian system which degraded all who came into contact with it.

Treason and treachery are treason and treachery no matter how you try to dress it in reason. Since I am Southern born and raised you can't pin any Yankee actions upon me wrt to slavery and will find me condemning Northern slavers and slave traders with equal enthusiasm as those of the South. But the facts are that most of the traders were English and, after the ban, rogue traders from the South in the 1840s and 50s when it was still a problem.

There is nothing Noble to defend in the RAT Rebellion, nothing Good in it, nothing worth defending. It was a disaster for the South to follow abject fools who did not understand anything modern and pinned themselves to a reactionary system and a retrograde economic structure. Those who pretend there was any justification for the Rebellion are spreading lies for the truth destroys their arguments without even working up a sweat.

As to your babble about the CBF you can fly a Nazi flag if you want but don't expect anyone who understands history to support you.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Condi Rice's best friend as a little girl was blown apart by the Birmingham Church Bombers who believed the South was right and blacks had to be kept in their place. Thank God these killers did not get her as well.

I love America all of it including the South since most of my family remains there. It is a great country but not because of the actions of the slavers in trying to destroy it.

I can have sympathy for the common man of the South caught up in that horrible conflagration but cannot pretend that he acted with full knowledge as to why it occurred. Such folks were kept poor and ignorant by a ruling class as vile as ever existed. Their interests were diametrically opposed to those of the slavers since slavery kept THEM poor even if they did not understand it. It was a system which was condemned to death and its adherents seemed to be completely unaware of that fact. It wore out the land, destroyed the environment, crippled the white race and exploited the Black. Nothing noble or just in it as the Founders ALL recognized.

[justshutupandtakeit]

Where do you think the name "slave" came from?

[capitan_refugio]

Coming from you stand, I will take that as a compliment!

You are a fine spokesman for the "pro-Dixie movement."

[capitan_refugio]

"aren't you tired of being laughed AT????"

As long as you are doing the laughing, I know I'm effective.

[capitan_refugio]

"aren't you tired of SMART freepers laughing AT you for making STUPID, stereotypical ANTI-dixie rants????"

I wasn't aware that any "smart FReepers" were laughing.

(And try not to double-click the post button!)

[capitan_refugio]

Do you deny that "secession was inexorably linked to the propagation and expansion of chattel slavery?"

[capitan_refugio]

"what a STUPID, arrogantly IGNORANT & hateFILLED statement.
i hope they LAUGH you off the forum.
may i also point out that Robert Barret Browning said, "arrogant IGNORANCE is NOT innocence, but rather SIN."

Tell me, is your post an example of humility, kindness, and self-control - or pride, wrath, and anger?

You, of all people, shouldn't be casting stones.

[Chances Are]

Some years ago the People's Republic of San Francisco sought to ban a number of books from it's libraries, among them "Alice In Wonderland" (it may have been "Mary Poppins"), as it was written from the "White Man's Burden" point of view.

I can see the inmates are still in control of that asylum we call California.

CA....

[stand watie]

i DENY (as do virtually ALL traditional historiographers!)that it was the PRINCIPAL reason for the WBTS.

even U.S. Grant said that reason for the WBTS was Never to abolish the institution of chattel slavery. "the war was ONLY to preserve the integrity of the Union."

no matter what you WISH the TRUTH was, chattel slavery was DYING an UN-lamented natural death. my GUESS is that, absent the NEEDLESS war, slavery wouldn't have lasted over another 5-10 years.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

MORE NONSENSE.

are YOU trying to REPLACE #3 Fan, as FR's resident dumbbunny???? (you're more than 1/2-way there, right now.)

intelligent & knowledgeable FReepers are rotflol AT you.

don't you care that you are becoming the laughingstock of the forum?

free dixie,sw

[capitan_refugio]

Did you read the Charleston Mercury editorial (Robert Barnwell Rhett's paper) I posted? Rhett very clearly makes the case for the expansion of slavery. Prof. Stampp notes that many Southerners accepted the view that slavery was the most crucial issue in the sectional conflict.

stand, you are in a small minority who deny the importance of the slavery issue as an underlying cause of the war.

[capitan_refugio]

"i DENY (as do virtually ALL traditional historiographers!) that it was the PRINCIPAL reason for the WBTS."

You present the Northern viewpoint well! However, it is abundantly clear from the words, writings, and memoirs of the Southern leadership that that the protection and expansion of slavery was the driving issue for secession. All others were secondary.

[capitan_refugio]

Sorry stand, the post I referred to was on the Albert Sidney Johnston statue thread, not this one. Let me repost it for you edification:

Lentulusgracchus - "Hey, rustbucket -- where's all the impassioned defense of the spread of slavery that we were promised? 'It's all about slavery', you know."

From Kenneth Stampp, The Causes of the Civil War, Chapter 50."

"Before and during the Civil War many Southerners accepted the view that slavery was the most crucial issue in the sectional crisis. Northerners, they said, by attacking slavery were endangering the Union. Moreover, Southern expansionists denied that the right they claimed to carry slaves into the territories was a meaningless abstraction. The Charleston Mercury (February 28, 1860) insisted that it was neither geography nor climate, but Northern political interference, that prevented slavery from entering new territories:"

"The right to have [slave] property protected in the territory is not a mere abstraction without application or practical value. In the past there are instances where the people of the Southern States might have colonized and brought new slave States into the Union had the principle been recognized, and the Government, the trustee of the Southern States, exercised its appropriate powers to make good for the slaveholder the guarantees of the Constitution.... When the gold mines of California were discovered, slaveholders at the South saw that, with their command of labor, it would be easy at a moderate outlay to make fortunes digging gold. The inducements to go there were great, and there was no lack of inclination on their part. But to make the emigration profitable, it was necessary that the [slave] property of the Southern settlers should be safe, otherwise it was plainly a hazardous enterprise, neither wise nor feasible. Few were reckless enough to stake property, the accumulation of years, in a struggle with active prejudices amongst a mixed population, where for them the law was a dead letter through the hostile indifference of the General Government, whose duty it was, by the fundamental law of its existence, to afford adequate protection - executive, legislative and judicial - to the property of every man, of whatever sort, without discrimination. Had the people of the Southern States been satisfied they would received fair play and equal protection at the hands of the Government, they would have gone to California with their slaves.... California would probably now have been a Slave State in the Union....

"What has been the policy pursued in Kansas? Has the territory had a fair chance of becoming a Slave State? Has the principle of equal protection to slave property been carried out by the Government there in many of its departments? On the contrary, has not every appliance been used to thwart the South and expel or prohibit her sons from colonizing there>... In our opinion, had the principle of equal protection to Southern men and Southern property been rigorously observed by the General Government, both California and Kansas would undoubtedly have come into the Union as Slave States. The South lost those States for the lack of proper assertion of this great principle....

"New Mexico [Territory], it is asserted, is too barren and arid for Southern occupation or settlement.... Now, New Mexico ... teems with mineral resources.... There is no vocation in the world in which slavery can be more useful and profitable than mining.... [Is] it wise, in our present condition of ignorance of the resources of New Mexico, to jump to the conclusion that the South can have no interest in its territories, and therefore shall waive or abandon her right of colonizing them?...

"We frequently talk of the future glories of our republican destiny on the continent, and of the spread of our civilization and free institutions over Mexico and the Tropics. Already we have absorbed two of her states, Texas and California. Is it expected that our onward march will stop here? Is it not more probable and more philosophic to suppose that, as in the past, so in the future, the Anglo-Saxon race will, in the course of years, occupy and absorb the whole of that splendid but ill-peopled country, and to remove by gradual process, before them, the worthless mongrel races that now inhabit and curse the land? And in the accomplishment of this destiny is there a Southern man so bold as to say, the people of the South with their slave property are to consent to total exclusion...? Our people will never sit still and see themselves excluded from all expansion, to please the North."

"Lentulusgracchus - is this the true face of southern slave expansionism?"

And I might add for this post, if the last paragraph of the editorial represents the view point of the southern leadership regarding blacks and hispanics, how might they have viewed the indigenous people of the Indian Territory, Plains, and southwest, with respect to expansion of southern territory?

[nolu chan]

[cr #236 quoting Stampp] The Charleston Mercury (February 28, 1860) insisted that it was neither geography nor climate, but Northern political interference, that prevented slavery from entering new territories

SOURCE: John Remington Graham, A Constitutional History of Secession, 2002, 279-280

It was increasingly obvious to thinking men in the South that geogra­phy barred their peculiar institution in the Federal territories. No amount of argument can change the unanswerable reality that, outside of Kansas where they were doomed before they started, planters from the Dixie States had made no serious effort to import slaves into the huge land mass affected by Compromise of 1850 and the repeal of the Missouri Compromise in 1854. They made no serious effort, because there was nothing attractive to them in those vast stretches. And the proof of this stubborn fact is that in 1860 there were no slaves at all in the New Mexico, Utah, and Washington Territories, none in the Indian or Oklahoma Territory, none in the Dakota Territory, virtually none in the Kansas Territory which entered the Union as a free State in 1861, and barely more than a dozen in the Nebraska Territory, nor was there a prospect that more would ever arrive.

[nolu chan]

[jsuati #223] As to your babble about the CBF you can fly a Nazi flag if you want but don't expect anyone who understands history to support you.

All drooling LIBERALS are invited to file their dissenting opinions.

All CONSERVATIVES -- here is Ann's advice on how to talk to the liberals about the Battle Flag.

HOW TO TALK TO A LIBERAL (IF YOU MUST)
ANN COULTER
pp. 170-77

The Battle Flag

During the Democratic primaries for the 2004 presidential election, Howard Dean set off a tsunami of indignation when he said he wanted to be "the candidate for guys with Confederate flags in their pickup trucks" (just like Bill Clinton was the candidate for the guy with the Astro-turf in the bed of his pickup truck). Like clockwork, every presidential election year the Confederate flag becomes a major campaign issue. This always thrills the Democrats, because it finally gives them an issue to run on: Their support for the Union side in the Civil War.

After Dean's contretemps, Al Sharpton denounced the Confederate flag as an "American swastika," saying, "Imagine if I said that I wanted to be the candidate of people with helmets and swastikas." After briefly con­sidering a personal-injury lawsuit, Senator John Edwards lectured Dean, saying, "Let me tell you, the last thing we need in the South is somebody like you coming down and telling us what we need to do." John Kerry said he wanted to be "the candidate of the guy whose limo driver keeps a Con­federate flag in the back window of his Towne Car" and Dennis Kucinich said he wanted to be "the candidate for the guys in the low-emission hy­brid vehicles with the Confederate flags in them."

At first, Dean refused to apologize, prolonging the Democrats' joyous self-righteousness. Dean defended himself saying, "I think the Confeder­ate flag is a racist symbol" -- apparently under the impression that it would help matters to explain that, yes, in fact, he did want to be the candidate of racists. But eventually Dean buckled and said it was Republicans' fault: "I think there are a lot of poor people who fly that flag because the Republicans have been dividing us by race since 1968 with their Southern race strategy." Carol Moseley Braun backed him up, saying the Democrats needed to "get past that racist strategy that the Republicans have foisted upon this country." Okay, so just for the record, this was Carol Moseley Braun urging someone not to play a race card.

In fact and needless to say, it is the Democrats who have turned the Confederate flag into a federal issue, because they relish nothing more than being morally indignant. Not about abortion, adultery, illegiti­macy, the divorce rate, or a president molesting an intern and lying to federal investigators. Indeed, not about anything of any practical conse­quence. Democrats stake out a clear moral position only on the issue of slavery. Of course, when it mattered, they were on the wrong side of that issue, too.

In addition to expressing outrage over a nonissue, Democrats take sadistic pleasure in telling blacks that everyone hates them. Demonstrat­ing their famous appreciation of "nuance," liberals believe the Confederate flag is pure evil and anyone who flies the flag is pure evil -- and George Bush is a moron who sees the world in simplistic black-and-white terms of good and evil. I guess that's what liberals mean by "nuance."

Despite recent revisionist history written by liberal know-nothings -- the "nuance" devotees -- the Civil War did not pit pure-of-heart Yankees against a mob of vicious racist Southerners. If it had, the North might not have fought so hard to keep Southerners as their fellow countrymen. Pres­ident Lincoln -- the Great Emancipator himself -- wrote to the editor of the New York Tribune in August 1862, "If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that." Indeed, Lincoln did not even issue the Emancipa­tion Proclamation until well into the Civil War, and then largely as a war tactic. Yes, the South had slaves. Martin Luther King was an adulterer. Life is messy.

In his second inaugural address, Lincoln said the Civil War was God's retribution to both the North and the South for the institution of slavery. By allowing slavery to continue past God's appointed time, Lincoln said, all of us had sinned: God "gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came." Jerry Falwell, please pick up the white courtesy phone. Jerry Falwell... If only Falwell had said the9/11 terrorist attack was God's retribution for abortion, sodomy, and slav­ery, maybe liberals wouldn't have been so snippy. Six hundred thousand white men died to end the offense to God of slavery. Never have so many died to prove what "all men are created equal" means. God have mercy on us when the country is called to account for abortion.

What is commonly known as the "Confederate flag" -- by Vermonters, for example -- is the Southern Cross, the battle flag Confederate troops carried into the field. It was not the official flag of the Confederacy and never flew over any Confederate buildings. It was the flag of the Confed­erate army.

The great Confederate general Robert E. Lee opposed slavery and freed his slaves. Lee fought on the Confederate side because Virginia was his home and he thought Virginia had the right to be wrong. Lee was an honorable man as well as a great general. His men followed him, many of them hungry and barefoot, because of his personal qualities and because they lived in the South -- not because they held a brief for slavery. Shelby Foote describes perplexed Union soldiers asking a captured Confederate, poor and shoeless, why he was fighting when he clearly didn't own any slaves. The soldier answered, "Because you're down here." Indeed, a small number of blacks served in the Confederate army, presumably for reasons other than their vigorous support of slavery. At an abstract level, of course, the war was about slavery, but that's not why the soldiers fought. They didn't own slaves -- their honor is really inviolate.

And they were good soldiers. The Confederate battle flag is a symbol of military valor, a separation from the "Do as I say, not as I do" North. It symbolizes what F. Scott Fitzgerald called a romantic lost cause fought by charming people. Ask any male who ever played Civil War games as a boy if there was a marked preference for one side or the other. Invariably, little boys fight bitterly over who gets to play the Confederates. This obviously has nothing whatsoever to do with slavery: The preference for the South is based purely on the military criteria of little boys. Soldiers in the Confed­erate army were simply cooler than those in the Union army. They had better uniforms, better songs, and better generals. And they had the rebel yell. Who would you rather be -- J.E.B. Stuart in the dashing gray uniform and a plume in his hat or some clodhopper from Maine?

The Civil War was hideous as only civil wars can be. But the victors al­lowed the vanquished to go home knowing they had done their duty with unsurpassed courage and devotion. Because the South was treated with honor and respect, the war did not degenerate into an unending guerrilla war, as has happened with other nations' civil wars. Confederate soldiers became a romantic army of legend, not sullen losers.

When Confederate soldiers surrendered their arms, the Union general accepting the surrender, Joshua Chamberlain, ordered his men to salute the defeated army. In response, Confederate general John Gordon reared his horse and -- as Chamberlain described it -- "horse and rider made one motion, the horse's head swung down with a graceful bow and General Gordon dropped his sword point to his toe in salutation." General Ulysses S. Grant drew up generous surrender papers for Lee to sign, precluding trials for treason. After Lee had signed, General Grant ordered Union troops to turn over a portion of their food rations to hungry Confederate troops. Years later, Lee would allow his students to say no unkind words about Grant, calling him a great man who had honored the dignity of the South. When the news came to Washington that Robert E. Lee had sur­rendered, President Lincoln came out on the White House lawn to an­nounce the South's defeat. He asked the band to play "Dixie." This was an unbelievable way to end a war -- and ensured that it really did end. Win­ston Churchill described the Civil War as the "last war fought between gentlemen." (Perhaps F. Scott Fitzgerald and Churchill should be banned along with the Confederate flag.)

It is the proud military heritage of the South that the Confederate flag represents -- a heritage that belongs to all Southerners, both black and white. The whole country's military history is shot through with South­erners. Obviously boys from all over fought in this country's wars, and fought bravely, but it is simply a fact that Southerners are overrepresented in this country's heroic annals.

These are just some of the sons of the South:

• Sergeant Alvin York, who received the Medal of Honor in World War I for leading seven men to capture 128 Germans, including four officers, was from Tennessee.
• The most decorated soldier of World War II, Audie Murphy, was from Texas.
• The first Marine awarded the Medal of Honor in World War II, Hank Elrod, was from Georgia.
• General Lucius Clay, commander of the Berlin Airlift, was from Georgia.
• General Dwight Eisenhower was born in Texas.
• Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, the Pacific commander in chief of the Navy during World War II, was from Texas.
• General Douglas MacArthur, who commanded Allied forces in World War II in the Southwest Pacific, was from Arkansas.
• General William Westmoreland, commander of U.S. troops in Vietnam, was from South Carolina.
• Lieutenant General Lewis Burwell "Chesty" Puller, considered by many to be the greatest Marine ever and the only Marine to be awarded the Navy Cross five times for heroism and gallantry in combat, was from Virginia.
• Tommy Franks, the army general who led the attack on the Taliban in Afghanistan after the attack of 9/11, grew up in Texas.
• Famous draft-dodger Bill Clinton was from Arkansas -- showing once again that the exception proves the rule.

Phil Caputo, author of the anti-Vietnam book Rumor of War, was one of the first Marines in Vietnam. He says all his best soldiers were South­erners: They could walk for hours and hit anything -- as he puts it -- just like their Confederate grandfathers.

In his book about World War II, Citizen Soldiers, Stephen Ambrose tells of the amazing feats of Lieutenant Waverly Wray from Batesville, Mississippi: "A Baptist, each month he sent half his pay home to help build a new church. He never swore.... He didn't drink, smoke, or chase girls. Some troopers called him 'The Deacon,' but in an admiring rather than critical way." With his "Deep South religious convictions," Wray's worst curse was to exclaim "John Brown!" -- referring to the abolitionist whose actions helped spark the Civil War. Wray single-handedly killed eight German officers by sneaking up on them "like the deer stalker he was," Ambrose writes. "You don't get more than one Wray to a division, or even to an army." There was only one like him in World War I, Ambrose reports -- "also a Southern boy."

The love of home that motivated Confederate soldiers would be trans­muted generations later into a virulent patriotism in the South. James Webb, former secretary of the navy, describes Southern soldiers in his mil­itary novels whispering "and for the South" under their breath when say­ing their duty to their country (as if Southerners need to be reminded not to commit treason). They die at war not for Old Glory, "but for this ves­tige of lost hope called the South." When General George Pickett rallied his men before their history-making charge at Gettysburg, all he had to say was "Don't forget today that you are from old Virginia."

The majority of military bases in the continental United States are named after Confederate officers -- Fort Bragg, Fort Benning, Fort Hood, Fort Polk, Fort Rucker. Are you beginning to see the pattern? Or consider this: When was the last time you heard a GI being interviewed on TV who didn't have a Southern accent? These are the guys who are in the mil­itary when there isn't even a war. It is career military people -- largely Southerners -- who are left with the job of drafting fresh-faced kids from civilian life and whipping them into shape when it's time to go to war. Southerners are truly America's warrior class.

This is a shared cultural ethic among all Southerners, not just the "Sons of the Confederacy." And there are, incidentally, black members of "Sons of the Confederacy." In February 2003, just a few months before the Democrats were working themselves into a lather over Dean's remark about the Confederate flag, a Confederate funeral was held for Rich­ard Quarls, whose unmarked grave had recently been unearthed. The memorial service was organized by the Sons of Confederate Veterans and the United Daughters of the Confederacy. Though Quarls had died in 1925, the service was packed with about 150 people, including Quarls's descendants, community leaders, Civil War reenactors, and Confederate daughters. They sang "Dixie." Quarls's great-granddaughter told the newspapers, "He was a proud man and would have been honored to see this." The honored man was a former slave who had fought for the Confederacy.

The disproportionate number of blacks in the military is a reflection of the disproportionate number of Southerners in the military. Five black Marines were posthumously awarded the Medal of Honor for their ser­vice in Vietnam. In mind-boggling acts of heroism, they actually dove on exploding enemy grenades to protect their comrades. This is what they were trained to do. Three of the five were from the South.

In 2001, about 30 percent of blacks in Mississippi voted to keep the 1894 state flag, which displays the Confederate flag in the upper left cor­ner. As Larry Elder has noted, would 30 percent of Jews vote to keep a swastika on a state flag? After touring the South, General Colin Powell concluded that there was no impediment to a black being elected presi­dent in America, noting that he received his strongest support from white Southerners.

Slavery is among the ugliest chapters in this nation's history -- the ugli­est after abortion, which Democrats will get around to opposing in the year 3093. But it was not unique to this country and it was not unique to the South. The American flag could more plausibly be said to symbolize slavery than can the Confederate flag. Slavery was legal under the Stars and Stripes for more than seventy years -- far longer than any Confeder­ate flag ever flew. The Ku Klux Klan did not begin using the Confederate flag until the fifties. Before that, they flew the Stars and Stripes. White-supremacist nuts living in their mothers' basements don't have a copyright to the Confederate battle flag any more than they own the copyright for the Chevy pickup truck or the Christian cross -- another symbol appropri­ated by the Klan.

And why does native African kinte cloth get a free pass? It is a histor­ical fact that American slaves were purchased from their slave masters in Africa, where slavery exists in some parts to this day. Indeed, slavery is the only African institution America has ever adopted. But while some Amer­icans express pride in their slave-trading ancestors by calling themselves "African-Americans" and donning African garb, pride in Confederate an­cestors is deemed a hate crime. Perhaps, in a bid for the Catholic vote, Democrats could demand that those Masonic symbols be removed from the Great Seal of the United States. And how about the American eagle? The eagle is a bird of prey and hence offensive to rodents, a key Democrat constituency.

It is a vicious slander against the South to claim the Confederate battle flag represents admiration for slavery. It is pride in the South -- having nothing to do with race -- and its honorable military history that the Con­federate battle flag represents, values that exist independently of the insti­tution of slavery. Anyone who has ever met a Texan has an inkling of what Southern pride is about. Ever heard of a bar fight starting because some­body said something derogatory about the North? The battle flag symbol­izes an ethic and honor that belongs to all the sons of the South.

Liberals love to cluck their tongues at such admiration for militaristic values. (The only time liberals pretend to like the military is when they claim to love soldiers so much they don't want them to get hurt fighting a war.) We do well to remember that it was disproportionately Southern­ers -- some wearing Confederate battle flags under their uniforms -- who formed the backbone of the military that threw back tyrants from Adolf Hitler to Saddam Hussein. Somebody had to engage in all those insane, mind-boggling acts of heroism, and it wasn't going to be graduates of Horace Mann High School (Anthony Lewis's alma mater). It was gradu­ates of places like the Citadel and the Virginia Military Institute.

Every year after the war was over, Civil War veterans used to return to Gettysburg to reenact the famous battle. On the 50th anniversary, as the Confederate veterans began reenacting Pickett's charge, the Northerners burst into tears and ran down the hill to embrace the Rebels, overcome with emotion at how insanely brave Pickett's charge had been. That's how much Union soldiers respected Confederate soldiers. Man for man, the Confederate army was the greatest army the world had ever seen. It is outrageous for Northern liberals and race demagogues to try to turn the Confederate battle flag into a badge of shame, in the process spitting on America's gallant warrior class.

[nolu chan]

[jsuati #202] That "respect and affection" by the Slavers was combined with a strict police control over the slaves complete with the hiring of scumbags to retrieve runaways.

It happened in the best of families, too.

Thomas Jefferson
The Virginia Gazette,
Williamsburg, September 14, 1769.