Southerners looking to share their Confederate holiday

Hartford Courant ^ | March 22, 2009 | Dahleen Glanton

[cowboyway]

ATLANTA — In a cultural war that has pitted Old South against new, defenders of the Confederate legacy have opened a fresh front in their campaign to polish an image tarnished, they said, by people who do not respect Southern values.

With the 150th anniversary of the War Between the States in 2011, efforts are under way in statehouses, small towns and counties across the South to push for proclamations or legislation promoting Confederate history.

[Ditto]

A graphic example of what Revolutionaries will do.

Richmond, April 1865.

Ruins in the burned district, Richmond, Virginia. 1865.

From the Richmond Whig, 4/4/1865
THE EVACUATION OF RICHMOND BY THE CONFEDERATE ARMY - ITS OCCUPATION BY THE FEDERAL FORCES - GREAT FIRE - THE ENTIRE BUSINESS PORTION OF THE CITY DESTROYED - LIVES LOST, ETC., ETC.
The evacuation of Richmond commenced in earnest Sunday night, closed at daylight on Monday morning with a terrific conflagration, which was kindled by the Confederate authorities, wantonly and recklessly applying the torch to Shockoe warehouse and other buildings in which was stored a large quantity of tobacco. The fire spread rapidly, and it was some time before the Fire Brigade could be gotten to work. A fresh breeze was blowing from the South, and the fire swept over great space in an incredible short space of time. By noon the flames had transformed into a desert waste that portion of the city bounded between 7th and 15th streets, from Main street to the river, comprising the main business portion. We can form no estimate at this moment of the number of houses destroyed, but public and private they will certainly number 600 to 800.

At present we cannot do more than enumerate some of the most prominent buildings destroyed. - These include the Bank of Richmond; Traders Bank; Bank of the Commonwealth; Bank of Virginia; Farmers’ Bank, all the banking houses, the American Hotel, the Columbian Hotel, the Enquirer Building on 12th street, the Dispatch office and job rooms, corner of 13th and Main streets; all that block of buildings known as Belvin’s Block, the Examiner office, engine and machinery rooms; the Confederate Post Office department building, the State Court House, a fine old building situated on Capitol Square, at its Franklin street entrance; the Mechanic’s Institute, vacated by the Confederate States War Department, and all the buildings on that Square up to 8th street, and back to Main street; the Confederate Arsenal and Laboratory, 7th streets.

At sunrise on Monday morning, Richmond presented a spectacle that we hope never to witness again. The last of the Confederate officials had gone; the air was lurid with the smoke and flame of hundreds of houses sweltering in a sea of fire.

The streets were crowded with furniture, and every description of wares, dashed down to be trampled in the mud or burned up, where it lay. - All the government store houses were thrown open, and what could not be gotten off by the government, was left to the people, who everywhere ahead of the flames, rushed in, and secured immense amounts of bacon, clothing, boots, &c.

Next to the river, the destruction of property has been fearfully complete. The Danville and Petersburg Railroad depots, and the buildings and shedding attached thereto. For the distance of half a mile from the north side of Main street to the river, and between 8th and 15th streets, embracing upwards of twenty blocks, presents one waste of smoking ruins, blackened walls and broken chimnies.

After the surrender of the city, and its occupation by Gen. Weitzel about 10 o’clock, vigorous efforts were set on foot to stop the progress of the flames. The soldiers reinforced the fire brigade, and labored nobly, and with great success. The flames east on Main street, were checked by the blowing up of the Traders’ Bank about noon.

The flames gradually died out at various points as material failed for it to feed upon; but in particular localities the work of destruction went on until towards 3 or 4 o’clock, when the mastery of the flames was obtained, and Richmond was saved from utter desolation.

LOSS OF LIFE

We regret to learn that a serious loss of life resulted from the blowing up of the powder magazine on the suburbs early on Monday morning. The shock was tremendous, jarring every house in the city, extinguishing the gas, and breaking a great quantity of glass in dwellings. It is said that thirty or forty persons, residents of the immediate neighborhood of the magazine, were either killed or wounded, but at this writing we have been unable to obtain particulars or names.

------------------------------------------

War is hell.

[4CJ]

So apparently you are suggesting the South stood for "licentious commerce and gambling speculations for a few, with eternal war for the many..." An opinion I wonder how many of your fellow rebs share?

Nope. licentious commerce and gambling speculations = yankee slavers.What Jefferson said, in context, was:

[C]onsidering that what might be wise and good for a nation essentially commercial, and entangled in complicated intercourse with numerous and powerful neighbors [Yankees], might not be so for one essentially agricultural [the South/Midwest], and insulated by nature from the abusive governments of the old world.

The exercise, by our own citizens, of so much commerce as may suffice to exchange our superfluities for our wants, may be advantageous for the whole. But it does not follow, that with a territory so boundless, it is the interest of the whole to become a mere city of London, to carry on the business of one half the world at the expense of eternal war with the other half.

The agricultural capacities of our country constitute its distinguishing feature; and the adapting our policy and pursuits to that, is more likely to make us a numerous and happy people, than the mimicry of an Amsterdam, a Hamburgh, or a city of London. ... Had we carried but our own produce, and brought back but our own wants, no nation would have troubled us. Our commercial dashers, then, have already cost us so many thousand lives, so many millions of dollars, more than their persons and all their commerce were worth. When war was declared, and especially after Massachusetts, who had produced it, took side with the enemy waging it, I pressed on some confidential friends in Congress to avail us of the happy opportunity of repealing the draw-back.

Note: a drawback is a payment made to exporters utilizing dutiable imported materials in the manufacture of domestically manufactured articles. Drawbacks are protectionist, increasing domestic profits while maintaining the protection for domestic industries.

Jefferson was a fair-trade advocate, and he was protesting against protectionist polices and international commerce/materialism.

And what you also ignore is that in Jefferson's letter the decision to separate is clearly a mutual decision. One reached by both sides. Nothing in that could possibly be misconstrued to support the idea of unilateral secession, like that practiced by the rebel states.

Nope. Jefferson wrote,

Every society has a right to fix the fundamental principles of its association, and to say to all individuals, that, if they contemplate pursuits beyond the limits of these principles, and involving dangers which the society chooses to avoid, they must go somewhere else for their exercise; that we want no citizens, and still less ephemeral and pseudo-citizens, on such terms. We may exclude them from our territory, as we do persons infected with disease.

[4CJ]

Sherman says otherwise:

I will bear in mind your hint as to Charleston, and do not think that 'salt' will be necessary. When I move the Fifteenth corps will be on the right of the right wing, and their position will naturally bring them into Charleston first, and if you have watched the history of that corps, you will have remarked that they generally do their work pretty well; the truth is, the whole army is burning with an insatiable desire to wreak vengeance upon South Carolina. I almost tremble for her fate, but feel that she deserves all that seems in store for her. I look upon Columbia as quite as bad as Charleston, and I doubt if we shall spare the public buildings there, as we did at Milledgeville.

[4CJ]

Is that possibly in the same memoirs you mentioned before? Gee, I must have missed that part, too.

I don't know about his memoirs, but what Sherman said was,

The amount of burning, stealing, and plundering done by our army makes me ashamed of it. I would quit the service if I could, because I fear that we are drifting to the worst sort of vandalism. I have endeavored to repress this class of crime, but you know how difficult it is to fix the guilt among the great mass of an army. In this case I caught the man in the act. He is acquitted because his superior officer ordered it. The superior officer is acquitted because, I suppose, he had not set the fire with his own hands, and thus you and I and every commander must go through the war justly chargeable with crimes at which we blush.
The War Of the Rebellion. A Compilation Of The Official Records Of The Union And Confederate Armies, Series I, Volume 24, Part 3, Washington DC: Government Printing Office (1889), p. 574

[Non-Sequitur]

A more fitting inscription would be: "Here lies an arsonist and murderer of innocents, butcher". Anyone need to go? Just checkin'

Y'all just hate a winner, don't you?

[Non-Sequitur]

Grits are to yankees as stakes are to vampires, scares the c**p out of them.

Scare the Southerner out of me, you mean.

[central_va]

Q. : What's the difference between a heavily armed, rampaging mongol horde and a disciplined Army?

A. : W. T. Sherman

[Non-Sequitur]

A disciplined, victorious army. Don't forget the 'victorious' part.

[central_va]

War isYankee's are Hell.

There, fixed it.

Thank God the people of Iraq were not invaded by an Army led by a 21st Century Sherman. I wouldn’t wish that fate on anyone.

[central_va]

A disciplined, victorious armymongol horde. Don't forget the 'victorious' part.

There, fixed it.

[Non-Sequitur]

Waaaah, waaaah, waaah. Classic Southron whine, vintage 1865.

[Non-Sequitur]

One of Sherman’s biographers (Lee Kennett, Sherman: A Soldier’s Life, Harper, 2002),

First you attribute the quote to Sherman's memoirs. When we point out that the quote isn't in Sherman's memoirs then you change it to Kennett's book. (*sigh*) I guess we'll have to go look that one up, too. I don't suppose you could provide a page number, make it easier on us, could you?

[Non-Sequitur]

A more fitting inscription would be: "Here lies an arsonist and murderer of innocents, butcher".

"Sherman is not only a great soldier, but a great man. He is one of the very great men in our country's history. He is an orator with few superiors. As a writer he is among the first. As a general I know of no man I would put above him. Above all - he has a fine character - so frank, so sincere, so outspoken, so genuine. There is not a false line in Sherman's character - nothing to regret." - Ulysses S. Grant, 1879

[central_va]

Ulysses S. Grant, 1879

Isn't that like one reprobate arsonist criminal glad handing another on his abilities to concoct fantasy excuses?.

Here's some more Yankee porn.

[antisocial]

“”Sherman is not only a great soldier, but a great man. He is one of the very great men in our country’s history. He is an orator with few superiors. As a writer he is among the first. As a general I know of no man I would put above him. Above all - he has a fine character - so frank, so sincere, so outspoken, so genuine. There is not a false line in Sherman’s character - nothing to regret.” - Ulysses S. Grant, 1879 “

That says more about Grant than Sherman.

[Non-Sequitur]

That says more about Grant than Sherman.

That he is an excellent judge of character, at least where generals are concerned.

[Non-Sequitur]

Here's one of my favorites. It's called "Furling the Flag" but I think they should have called it "Losers on Parade".

[Non-Sequitur]

Till Tomorrow Yankee!!

Mizzou - 102, Memphis - 91

Good morning, losers.

[Non-Sequitur]

Continue please

"I should have executed the soldier on the spot, and would have been justified, but he pleaded his superior orders, and now a volunteer court-martial, tainted with the technicalities of our old civil courts, absolves the officer on the old pleads, good when all men were held responsible alone for the acts done with their own hands. I believe there is a remedy; General Grant can stamp the act as a crime, and can pronounce the officer unworthy a commission in the Army of the United States. This will in measure relieve our General Government of the obloquy attached to such acts of vandalism, and this would form a good occasion for a general order announcing to all that oru province is to maintain good law, and not to break it. The burning of this building in no way aided our military plans. No enemy was within 50 miles. A major riding behind his regiment is not the man to know the policy of the General Government of the United States. I have issued orders again and again on this subject, but our commands change so often that time is not afforded to prohibit all sorts of misdemeanors to each new command..."

In this letter Sherman is making a clear distinction between destruction of private property as part of the war effort, and destruction for the sake of destuction alone. Not the portrait you all like to paint of him.

[DrewsMum]

“y’all should of seen her face when a “oppressed colored” showed up!!!!”

I think that is the funniest thing I’ve heard in a while.