Posted on 07/06/2006 7:01:52 AM PDT by SquirrelKing
It appears that the Northern invasion of the South is complete -- at least it is on a patch of land known as Delta Plantation in Jasper County.
There, a diehard rebel named Henry E. Ingram Jr. made his last stand against the onslaught of Yankees, only to be thwarted by a man from Long Island, N.Y., and now -- gasp -- a French Canadian.
Ingram promised to keep Yankees out of Delta Plantation in Jasper County when he bought 1,700 acres there in 1998. His resolve to keep them out still is strong, but the covenants he put on the land don't seem to have any teeth.
Those covenants did, however, scare Canadian-raised Bluffton resident Louise Legare a bit as she was close to signing a contract to buy a three-bedroom, two-bathroom house on the land from Bluffton Home Builders.
The list of rules she got from the builders was missing the first pages, so she went to the Jasper County Courthouse to get the missing ones. There, she found the covenants, or rules, that Ingram demanded of buyers:
1. They could not be Yankees.
2. They could not have the last name Sherman (an obvious reference to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman).
3. And the land could not be sold or leased to those whose last names could be rearranged to spell Sherman.
Clearly, Ingram doesn't like Northern folk.
Now, however, Legare and Bluffton Home Builders are working with Ingram's son, Ashley Ingram, to remove the covenants. The former Delta Plantation is on both sides of U.S. 17, just north of the Georgia state line.
"When (Legare) brought it to us, we all kind of had a good laugh," said Jim Hobbs, a partner in the home-building firm.
In fact, Legare is buying the land and home from Bill Cook, another partner in the company, who happens to be a native of Long Island, N.Y. No one at Bluffton Home Builders had seen the covenants before Legare found the missing pages, and no one has ever tried to enforce them, Hobbs said.
If Henry Ingram had his way, he still would keep Yankees off of the 1,700 acres he once owned. His holdings on the plantation have dwindled to 10 acres.
Ingram, now a resident of Corpus Christi, Texas, said his son and attorney, who are both local, should be looking out for his anti-northerner wishes now.
"Yankees destroy everything they have up North, then they come down here," Ingram said. "When they destroy everything (in the South), where are they going to move next? Another country?"
Legare, who grew up north of Montreal, figures her far-northern upbringing must be especially abhorrent to Ingram.
"I must be more of a Yankee," she said. "I'm the person he really doesn't want to live there."
Amazingly, Legare is a much better choice to own Southern land than a New Yorker, according to Ingram.
"French people are much better and more desirable than a Yankee," said Ingram, who once owned video-poker casinos in Jasper County. "They don't stick their noses in other people's business."
The same feature drew Legare and Ingram to the land -- nature. Ingram said he's seen Carolina panthers, bald eagles and fox squirrels on the land. It is that quiet beauty Legare is after.
"I was raised in a very nature-like environment," Legare said. "I think the nature is beautiful in South Carolina."
Ingram, who says he is leaving Texas for Costa Rica soon, cites the boorish manners of Yankees as one of his prime dislikes for them.
"They look down their little pointy noses at the people in the South because we are polite and nice to them," Ingram said. "They think people who are polite and nice are dumb."
Contact Jim Faber at 706-8137 or jfaber@islandpacket.com. To comment on this story, please go to islandpacket.com.
I'm not sure why so many libertarians seem to point to the CSA as an ideal. Government oppression is just as oppressive at the state level and the history of the Southern state governments both before their Civil War defeat and also after Reconstruction was none too good. And a federal bureaucracy is just as heavy when the federal HQ is at Richmond as it is in Washington. The tendencies of the Richmond regime during the war were not promising for libertarian ideals.
I agree that unlimited federal power is not good, but just as the 10th Amendment to the Constitution rightly puts limits on federal power, Article 1, section 10 limits the states.
The fact that federal power is limited by the Constitution doesn't mean state power is unlimited.
Hillsdale Guy
Since May 26, 2006
I wonder what his nic is here.
A good sentiment that needs repeating. I never understood the need to agitate and exaggerate differences among fellow Americans from different regions.
Almighty God has a special place for hypocrites and traitors, I hope you enjoy very warm weather and the earthy smell of excrement.
No actually it does not. It says that powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, or prohibited by it to the States. Unilateral secession is prohibited, or so the Supreme Court decided.
the right of secession was NOT ceded & thus unilateral secession, despite your rather SILLY denial, was & remains LAWFUL.
It is not, your blathering to the contrary notwithstanding.
Who should we rely on? You?
Lincoln is dead, so he isn't anything. Before he was dead he was more melancholy than gay.
No, you try and present fairy tale as fact.
I'm surprised that you, as a libertarian, had a problem with the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo. After all, the U.S. Supreme Court refused to overturn the Connecticut Supreme Court decision, which means that the refused to interject the federal govenrment in a state matter. You may have a problem with the state court, but the federal court did what the Constitution and the 10th Amendment said that they should do; leave a state matter in the state where it belongs.
As for Scott v Sanford, I didn't agree with Taney's tortured logic denying citizenship to blacks or safeguarding slavery expansion. I may not have agreed with it, but I don't deny that it was a valid ruling by the court. Fortunately for us all it was negated by the 13th and 14th Amendments.
I'm sure the bureaucracy thanks their lucky stars for 'conservatives' who can turn their back on plain English--otherwise, we wouldn't have a federal Leviathan.
If it's that easy then why do we need a Supreme Court to begin with? What, in your opinion, is its function and purpose?
"I'm not sure why so many libertarians seem to point to the CSA as an ideal. Government oppression is just as oppressive at the state level and the history of the Southern state governments both before their Civil War defeat and also after Reconstruction was none too good. And a federal bureaucracy is just as heavy when the federal HQ is at Richmond as it is in Washington. The tendencies of the Richmond regime during the war were not promising for libertarian ideals."
Two responses:
1) To some of us, the Lost Cause is admired as a representative of the last days before the 9th and 10th amendment were toothless. I'm not an admirer of the CSA because it was libertarian as much as I admire the CSA for exercising its right to secede and showing that "consent of the governed" no longer mattered to the Union...nor does it. Otherwise we would have no issues with pork or 'guest workers.' I admire the Confederates for fighting for their freedom to be left alone. Who knows what that principle would have led the Confederacy to be after the war had been won? We'll never know, the remaining States having determined that they had the power to force other States into Union. So much for consent of the governed, as I previously noted.
2) The CSA federal government was a war bureaucracy of some size, no doubt, and would not have been any dream come true for libertarians. But no doubt that it'd have been better than the current Union nightmare that has usurped it.
Admittedly, I was a bit torn on the issue for the reason you state. However, either the SCOTUS determines Constitutional protections are incorporated to the states, or not. If they are incorporating some, all should be. And if any right is clear and easy to historically interpret, it is the right to own property and not give it up to others without the compensation of your choice. Government intervention to take property away from some to give to other private parties is reminiscent of aristocracy.
"As for Scott v Sanford, I didn't agree with Taney's tortured logic denying citizenship to blacks or safeguarding slavery expansion. I may not have agreed with it, but I don't deny that it was a valid ruling by the court. Fortunately for us all it was negated by the 13th and 14th Amendments."
I didn't agree with Taney's odd, twisting ruling either--but I don't think it was all that fortunate it was superseded that way. The equal protection clause has been a dream for those bent on federal expansion. But whatever floats your boat.
And I notice you had not thing one to say about Hamdan.
"If it's that easy then why do we need a Supreme Court to begin with? What, in your opinion, is its function and purpose?"
I certainly don't believe it was intended to be what it is. Otherwise why would Marbury be so important? I think the American SCOTUS was initially intended to fill the role of the Law Lords in Britain, and has since been able to turn itself into an oligarchy. Its current function and purpose is obvious, but I think its intended purpose was merely to interpret ambiguities between statute and Constitution, ambiguities that the Congress could have overcome with clarifying legislation as Parliament may in England. Now, unfortunately, SCOTUS 'interprets' the Constitution, which is clearly beyond the Founders' intention of having the People rule and Congress be the preeminent branch. As Jefferson noted,
"Who should we rely on? You?"
If we're making snide comments, well, here's mine: I'm sure you'd prefer Ginsburg or Souter to me.
But of course, in trying to smack ME as some lousy Constitutional 'interpreter,' you fail to address my contention at all, which, to restate, is that the SCOTUS has overreached since Marbury, certainly since Dred Scott, and most recently in Kelo and Hamdan. To cite them now as authorities on the Constitution is to acknowledge their authority in these other cases--when they clearly have ignored the plain text so many times before they are untrustworthy arbiters of that document's meaning.
At least I would be a justice that can be predictably 'interpretive.' I'd be reading the language to mean what it says, not what I wish it said or what the EU thinks it ought to say. So if you REALLY want to know if I'm more reliable than a randomly chosen SCOTUS justice in the last hundred years, I can answer you seriously: unquestionably, YES. So yes, you may in the future defer to my view of the Constitution, thanks for asking. Let the usurpers know at your earliest convenience to leave their purloined robes on the bench and file out quietly, locking up behind them.
You know as someone that would crawl across a mile of broken glass using only his chin as locomotion to prove that Lincoln was the Hitler of his age, I really have to call you a traitor to the Republican party as well as a traitor to the United States based upon your singlemind devotion to The Democrat's confederacy.
Don't call it a personal attack, call it what it is, an expose of your own beliefs.
1. They could not be Yankees.
2. They could not have the last name Sherman (an obvious reference to Gen. William Tecumseh Sherman).
3. And the land could not be sold or leased to those whose last names could be rearranged to spell Sherman.
This belongs on the Official Friday Silliness Thread
"i'm NOT a lawyer, but it seems to me that the !@#$%^&*! government/judicial/academic/social/financial "ELITES" have one set of rules & we "regular folks" have a different & subordinate set. Can you guess which set of rules ALWAYS wins in court?"
Seems that way far too often. It will change, or the elites will. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but the meek inherit the earth, right?
Guerrilla warfare works. Almost half of the people of the USA are ready to capitulate right now in Iraq because of it.
and the total destruction of the south
What the hell are you talking about? The South was totally destroyed. And Reconstruction should be renamed Further Destruction.
I believe it was your beloved Lincoln that said something like, "The Constitution is not a suicide pact."
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