Confederate States Of America (2005)

What's wrong about this photo? Or if you're a true-born Southerner, what's right?

While scanning through some of the up and coming movies in 2005, I ran across this intriguing title; "CSA: Confederate States of America (2005)". It's an "alternate universe" take on what would the country be like had the South won the civil war.

Suffice to say anything from Hollywood on this topic is sure to to bring about all sorts of controversial ideas and discussions. I was surprised that they are approaching such subject matter, and I'm more than a little interested.

For myself, I was more than pleased with the homage paid to General "Stonewall" Jackson in Turner's "Gods and Generals". Like him, I should have like to believe that the South would have been compelled to end slavery out of Christian dignity rather than continue to enslave their brothers of the freedom that belong equally to all men. Obviously it didn't happen that way.

Would I fight for a South that believed in Slavery today? I have to ask first, would I know any better back then? I don't know. I honestly don't know. My pride for my South and my heritage would have most likely doomed me as it did so many others. I won't skirt the issue, in all likelyhood, slavery may have been an afterthought. Had they been the staple of what I considered property, I possibly would have already been past the point of moral struggle on the point and preparing to kill Northern invaders.

So what do I feel about this? The photo above nearly brings me to tears, as I highly respect Abraham Lincoln. I don't care if they kick me out of the South. Imagine if GW was in prayer over what to do about a seperatist leftist California. That's how I imagine Lincoln. A great man. I wonder sometimes what my family would have been like today. How many more of us would there be? Would we have held onto the property and prosperity that sustained them before the war? Would I have double the amount of family in the area? How many would I have had to cook for last week for Christmas? Would I have needed to make more "Pate De Fois Gras"?

Well, dunno about that either. Depending on what the previous for this movie are like, I may or may not see it. If they portray it as the United Confederacy of the KKK I won't be attending.

This generation of our clan speaks some 5 languages in addition to English, those being of recent immigrants to this nation. All of them are good Americans. I believe the south would have succombed to the same forces that affected the North. Immigration, war, economics and other huma forces that have changed the map of the world since history began.

Whatever. At least in this alternate universe, it's safe for me to believe that we would have grown to be the benevolent and humane South that I know it is in my heart. I can believe that slavery would have died shortly before or after that lost victory. I can believe that Southern gentlemen would have served the world as the model for behavior. In my alternate universe, it's ok that Spock has a beard. It's my alternate universe after all, it can be what I want.

At any rate, I lived up North for many years. Wonderful people and difficult people. I will always sing their praises as a land full of beautiful Italian girls, maple syrup and Birch beer. My uncle ribbed us once before we left on how we were going up North to live "with all the Yankees". Afterwards I always refered to him as royalty. He is, really. He's "King of the Rednecks". I suppose I'm his court jester.

Harry Macarthy (or McCarthy) was a British-born vaudevillian. He also was a passionate partisan of secession, or at least he assumed that pose to win an audience. He joined the Confederate Army and performed for the troops. He also wrote a song to induce Missouri to secede. He did love the soil/toil rhyme, coming back to it in "Missouri, Bright Land of the West." Maybe he just wasn't that creative. Some versions of "The Bonnie Blue Flag" changed the second line from "Fighting for the property we gained by honest toil" to "Fighting for our Liberty, with treasure, blood and toil" -- a sign of changing attitudes, perhaps -- but it's clear that Macarthy wrote about "property we gained by honest toil" and thousands sang it in 1861 with no doubt about what property they were fighting for or about the legitimacy of their claim to it.

Another load of nonsense from FR's resident slavehound! Seriously, Mr. X, you resemble Jesse Jackson in this regard. Whereas Jesse sees a racist lurking behind every corner you see slavery, even when it is not there.

As noted previously, the soil/toil rhyme was taken directly from an Irish folk song called the Irish Jaunting Car. That tune predates Bonnie Blue Flag by decades and perhaps by centuries in various forms as it is a folk rendition. Then again, you derive from the same school of Lincoln idolaters who see a hidden Aristotle when Lincoln speaks of Artemus Ward, so finding unsubstantiated esoteric references is all part of the game to you.

It seems that secession was about, at least in part, white supremacy.

Anything to get away from white supremacist Abe & his dream of a Lily white land, his colonization schemes, his equivocating speeches and pandering to whatever crowd he was speaking to.

Prof. Charles Dew, in Apostles of Disunion, convincingly demonstrates that the motivation for secession had much less to do with "state's rights," than it did with the slavery issue.

Barf. Long before the states seceded, Lincoln et al made it known that that they had no intention of interfering with slavery, that they had no legal right to do so, and that he had 'no inclination to do so'. Congress passed an amendment guaranteeing the continued existance of slavery. To which Lincoln, in his inaugural speech made it clear - in no uncertain terms - that he favoured it being 'made express and irrevocable.' In other words, Lincoln favoured and even advocated PERMANENT slavery if the South would only remain.

The one issue in which he wouldn't budge, was tariff duties,

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

"Anything to get away from white supremacist Abe & his dream of a Lily white land, his colonization schemes, his equivocating speeches and pandering to whatever crowd he was speaking to."

No. Just a dose of reality for you "southrons." Here is a bit more "southron" pre-war political philosophy. From William L. Harris, Commissioner from Mississippi, speaking before the Georgia legislature, Dec 17, 1860:

To-day our government stands totally revolutionized in its main features, and our Constitution broken and overturned. The new [Lincoln] administration, which has effected this revolution, only awaits the 4th of march for the inauguration of the new government, the new principles, the new policy, upon the success of which they have proclaimed freedom to the slave, but eternal degradation for you and us....

Our fathers made this a government for the white man, rejecting the negro, as an ignorant, inferior, barbarian race, incapable of self-government, and not, therefore, entitled to be associated with the white man upon terms of civil, political, or social equality...."

"There were three candidates presented to the North by Southern men, all of whom represented the last degree of conservatism and concession [presumably Breckenridge, Douglas, and Bell] which their respective parties were willing to yield, to appease the fanaticism of the North. Some of them scarcely deemed sound, in the South, on the slavery question, and none of them suited to our ultra men [the fire-eaters]. And yet the North rejected them all; and their united voice, both before and since their overwhelming triumph in this election, has been more defiant and more intolerant than ever before. They have demanded and now demand, equality between the white and negro races, under our Constitution; equality in representation, equality in suffrage, equality in honors and emoluments if office, equality in the social circle, equality in matrimony."

It seems to me that you have little understanding of the philosophies of the secessionists; otherwise you would not so readily embrace their obvious racism and convoluted rationale.

It seems to me that you have little understanding of the philosophies of the secessionists; otherwise you would not so readily embrace their obvious racism and convoluted rationale.

Bravo Sierra. YOU are the one espousing the white separatist ideals of Lincoln, and ingonoring his oft repeated comments about NON-INTEREFERENCE with slavery. He wanted the money, plain and simple, and waged war to prevent utter economic devastation to the North:

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

And this on SLAVERY:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution--which amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

"YOU are the one espousing the white separatist ideals of Lincoln ..."

It should be abundantly clear, even to you, that slavery and white supremacy were the primary motivators for southern secession. One need only read the comments made by southerners, to southerners, explaining their reasons for secession during the critical winter of 1860-61, to understand that the "states' rights" argument is after-the-fact apologia. The surviving presentations, speeches, reports, pamphlets, etc., tell the story much better than I ever could - in the southerners own words.

"The final South Carolina mission in this initial wave of activity was former congressman John McQueen's journey to Texas. McQueen, a Bennettsville, South Carolina, lawyer, had served in Congress throughout the decade of the 1850's. His political views were at the radical end of the South Carolina spectrum, and he was one of the congressmen who signed the "Southern Manifesto" ....

"Before he could leave Washington, however, McQueen received a letter from a group of Richmond civic leaders inviting him and his fellow South Carolinians to stop off in the Virginia capital for a testimonial dinner .... McQueen graciously declined; his wife was ill, and most of his colleagues had already departed. But he took pains to thank the Richmonders for their expression of solidarity with his home state: 'I have never doubted what Virginia would do when the alternatives present themselves to her intelligent and gallant people, to choose between an association with her Southern sisters [or] the dominion of a people who have chosen their leader - Abraham Lincoln - upon the single idea that the African is equal to the Anglo-Saxon, and with the purpose of placing our slaves on [a position of] equality with ourselves and our friends of every condition....'

"'We, of South Carolina, hope soon to greet you in a Southern Confederacy, where white men shall rule our destinies, and from which we may transmit to our posterity the rights, privileges, and honors left us by our ancestors.'"

"Commissioner McQueen struck the same chord when he addressed the Texas Convention on February 1, 1861. 'Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to an equality with ourselves and our children....'Apostles of Disunion, pgs 47-49. The white southerners of 1860-61 seemed quite convinced that Lincoln was hellbent on marrying off their daughters to their former slaves, and that he intended to elevate former slaves to a position of with them. Of course, there were no "former" slaves because of anything the Lincoln Administration had done, at that point in time, because there would not be a Lincoln Adminstration until March 1861. Dew shows that very little was ever said about tariffs and states' rights by the Commissioners, during the winter of 1860-61. However, a great was said about slavery, fugitive slave laws, race equality, and wounded southern "honor."

BTW Prof. Dew is a son of the south; a Floridian and Virginian suckled on the myths of the lost cause. During his research on this subject (the secession commissioners), as the evidence mounted, he had cause to ask himself, "Could secession and racism be so intimately connected?" The answer was clear. "Like Jefferson Davis and Alexander H Stephens in their postwar writings, [other southern authors tried] to reframe the causes of the conflict in terms that would be much more favorable to the South." The truth of the matter was that, "The comissioners were arguing that disunion, even if it meant risking war, was the only way to save the white race."

That was the southerners point of view - not Lincoln's.

To continue our discussion -- or rather, your diatribal dissertation at #2629, let us resume where I left off my original reply. We were discussing Abolitionist propaganda and its moralizing, absolutist quality, which was no longer intended to debate or discuss, but precisely to demonize and incite to violence:

[You] So abolitionists tried to arouse sympathy for slaves and were accused of demonizing their opponents. You try to arouse sympathy for Southerners and demonize your opponents. What's the difference?

One difference is that I'm not trying to get anyone killed. They were. Doubt me? Explain "Beecher's Bibles", John Brown, and the Wide-Awake intrusions into Texas.

Another is that I am not trying to "demonize" Abolitionists, or you, but to show that their rhetoric, and yours, is at root fundamentally absolutist, inimical to reasoned discourse, and hostile.

They, like you, returned to the theme of slavery again and again, and for the same reason: they were playing "Blemish", which is not discourse but a dishonest transaction, and polemic. It isn't give and take: it's "bash the other guy's head in". Nobody is under any moral injunction to hold a "conversation" with a robber or rapist whose idea of discourse is "Down on the ground! Now!!" with polysyllabic obscenities mixed in.

By departing from Enlightenment standards of discussion and debate and repairing to red-meat polemic instead, Abolitionists ended the conversation about slavery. From that point on, their contribution to the subject was recrimination, bitter moral condemnation, propaganda and violence.

So to carry on was, for these New England-trained fanatics, more than just moral chutzpah, it was rank hypocrisy, inasmuch as their diatribe against slavery overlooked -- nay, blinked -- the Yankee participation in the slave trade; and their moral indictment of Southern customs and institutions overlooked conveniently New Englanders' own moral liabilities as the exterminators of the Pequod, Wampanoag, and Narragansett Indians only a little more than a century before. And let's not even start on the subject of labor relations.

How is your rhetoric any more rational or enlightened than theirs? For that matter, in what way was the abolitionists' rhetoric worse than anyone else's in 19th century America? Surely, Southern fire-eaters weren't more dispassionate and reasonable than others of that day.

Theirs was worse because a) they started it and b) by starting that kind of non-debating debate, coarsened public discourse to the point of failure and beyond. Indeed, they killed public comity and the spirit of reasonableness quite deliberately.

Certainly you will admit that the dissolution of the Union was not a success case for the idea of reasoned discourse in a free society. And I repeat -- the Abolitionists were the culprits. They were the ones who kicked over the table and dumped the punch-bowl, forcing everyone they could to take sides and square off for a civil war.

Furthermore,

[You, quoting me] "Why is it 'cheesy' to refrain from laying moral judgments against people who operated in a different moral environment?"

It's cheesy because you demand that others abdicate their own judgment in the matter and submit to your own version of 1860s morality.

Ah, you're just annoyed that I insist you stop the Abolitionist hate-mongering. That's pure ego talking.

You're not withholding judgment across the board. You're making very definite condemnations of people you disagree with, and waiving moral criteria in discussing those you disagree [sic] with.

I assume you meant to say that I waive moral judgments when dealing with people I agree with.

You are complexly, and peevishly, wrong.

In the first place, slavery in the 1850's like smoking in the 1970's was legal and a right -- something you've conceded -- even if it was under strong attack by some people. My tendency is to defend the right, and to defend the right's owners, on the theory that curtailing rights is always suspect. Anyone who claims a need to curtail the rights of others, should be IMHO subjected to strong tests. This is what you see as moral favoritism toward the South, because I pay so little credit to the moralizing claims of Abolitionists -- just as I pay so little credit to the moralizing and rationalizing claims of tobacco Nazis.

The Abolitionists (and I include Lincoln among them, granted that others wouldn't), as advocates of a fundamental change in society's rules, should have been prepared to meet the full burden of proof that their proposed change was necessary for society, and also to accept an outcome adverse to their cause. They didn't. They cranked up the propanganda machine and began beating the drums for a crusade -- for civil war.

The equities are mostly on one side. It was the Abolitionists and Republicans who sought to disturb the status quo, it was they who departed from civilized norms of discourse to descend to demagoguery and polemic, it was they who formed paramilitary battalions and regiments that transformed themselves into United States troops at the twinkling of an eye, and it was they who had those regiments ready to descend on the South "like the wolf on the fold" at a moment's notice.

The South didn't do anything remotely like that to the North. The aggression vector is firmly in place, and the aggression was from the North onto the South for the duration of the war.

You're making the things you dislike into mortal sins and passing over greater offenses as simply a part of the way things were back then. You are moralistic as hell when you want to be, and condemn moralism in others.

I fault the moralism of the Abolitionists and Abraham Lincoln, in that the Abolitionists' moral appeal was actually a call to war against other, pacific States. This is something that they had the lights not to do -- they had to know that what they were doing, in calling the citizens of a peaceful nation to war, was deeply immoral by the lights of their own and every other age, and an insult to the spirit of the Constitution as well, and to the rights of their neighbors. They had the faculties to know that what they proposed was objectively evil, viz., to substitute war for peace, as the basic condition of the country, over a political difference between sections of a country otherwise at peace, and to institute a crusade in the midst of peace and prosperity. Even people who smoke tobacco, know not to do that.

I'm not going to condemn someone who took arms for what they thought was a just cause, but there are limits to such tolerance.

Yes, such as taking their monuments down, or forbidding them to be maintained, or other self-righteous cracker-bashing. I hear you, Kweisi.

New Orleans has a monument to a victory of the "White Leagues" over the police in 1874. One can understand why White Lousianans would have fought and why they would have commemorated their battle. But one has to decide if one thinks such a monument appropriate today.

You're a regular Winston Smith, aren't you? Why don't we NewThinkers run that one by Big Brother? I bellyfeel Big Brother historywise.

As for that monument in New Orleans, can you point it out to me today? Did Ernest Morial and his corrupt son miss any Confederate or other monuments put up by white Orleanians? The only one they haven't made bold to pull down is the column in Lee Circle. I expect them to wreck it just about any day, any year. As for this "White Leagues" monument, I never heard of it, not even when I was living there, on Rampart Street.

It should be abundantly clear, even to you, that slavery and white supremacy were the primary motivators for southern secession.

Sorry - I have an education, and can understand the ENGLISH language - which is what Lincoln spoke (ok, so I might have a typo here and there).

You're just a lying, disinformationist: a race-baiting poverty-pimp, a Jackson or a Sharpton, intent on inflaming a situation for your benefit, hoping to entice me and others to rise and take the bait, to ACCURATELY quote Lincoln - not once - but dozens of times - wherein he calls blacks by a very derogatory term beginning with an 'N' (even calling Tyler such). You have to, because slavery was already legal, and protected by the US Constitution - so there was no motivation for the South to secede on that account.

This from Lincoln on the object of the war (HINT: It aint slavery - it's MONEY):

The power confided to me will be used to hold, occupy, and possess the property and places belonging to the Government and to collect the duties and imposts; but beyond what may be necessary for these objects, there will be no invasion, no using of force against or among the people anywhere.

In other words, for those on your side that are mentally challeneged, as long as the Confederate States - the seceded states - handed over the tariff revenues, there would NOT be an INVASION (his own words). And this by Lincoln on SLAVERY:

I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution--which amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.

Lincoln supported PERMANENT, IRREVOCABLE slavery to exist FOREVER as long as he had the MONEY.

Holy Cow, stop the presses, Lincoln was going to uphold the Constitution! Um, no. He was attempting to violate a ruling of the Supreme Court.

What ruling was that?

Dred Scott?

Since when did the Supreme Court have veto power over the other two branches of Government?

That is called Judical tyranny.

The Democrats split on that phony ruling as well, hence the election of Lincoln.

So because Lincoln was not going to obey a Supreme Court ruling (like say Jackson?) that gave the South the right to secede?

The territories in question had been open for decades. There were only a handful of blacks enumerated in the census. Lincoln simply wanted his white supremacist Mecca - a lily white west

No, Lincoln wanted slavery to end not grow.

Moreover, free labor did not want to compete against slave labor.

I am sure that you are the exception to that, you would not mind someone bringing in slave labor to compete for your job.

The Confederate Constitution had the Negro race signaled out as the slave race-forever.

So, stop talking about Yankee racism when the South split its own party over keeping one race in slavery.

On slavery "My tendency is to defend the right, and to defend the right's owners.." With this line of thinking if you were all of a sudden subject to slavery, you would still defend the right of the slave 'owner' as being "legal"?.

'Overall, the engraved images show the slaves as happy, well-treated, and healthy workers in an “unnatural” state of bliss. We do not see hardships, such as slaves being whipped. These images of slavery by engravers of that period are similar to the work of present day photo–journalists, except the positive slave images were used as propaganda. They were designed to actively affirm and aggressively promote the slave labor system of their plantation economy.'>

In 1865 any known pro-slaver should be forced into the same hell they dished out, for at least one year, and then, maybe post-Civil War problems in the South would have been reversed.

..."for these New England-trained fanatics.. as the exterminators of the Pequod, Wampanoag, and Narragansett Indians..."

Such as whom? Roger Williams? Who in 1635 spent three months living with local Indians after being fully excepted by the Indians. 'In 1636, he and a number of followers established the settlement of Providence on Narragansett Bay, a colony notable for the fact that the Indians were paid for the title to their lands.' These people were real 'fanatics'? Pro-slavers each and every one ..Right?

The hard-core neo-confederates would also hate the fact these New England fanatics, under Williams' influence, Rhode Island became a haven for those who suffered from religious persecution, including Jews and Quakers.

'On October 28th, 1646, Reverend John Eliot preached his first sermon to Native Americans in their own language in the wigwam of Waban who became the first convert of his tribe in Nonantum (near Newton, Massachusetts).' Another New England fanatic correct?

'Eventually Christian Indian Towns were located in Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, New Plymouth, New Norwich (Connecticut Colony), and the following in Massachusetts Colony known as the Old Praying Indian Towns: Wamesit (Chelmsford), Nashobah (Littleton), Okkokonimesit (Marlborough), Hassannamesit (Grafton), Makunkokoag (Hopkinton), Natick (Natick), and Punkapog or Pakomit (Stoughton).'

More worthless money depicting something a few in here would love to see alive & well in 2005, but refuse to admit.

Imitation paper currency

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