Posted on 04/30/2017 9:49:31 PM PDT by pboyington
The War against the Confederacy is a War against America.
The War against the Confederacy is a war on American history.
The War against the Confederacy is a war against all of us and a war on America’s institutions.
The War against the Confederacy is being waged by militant leftists, big government lackeys, aggrieved snowflakes and the hate America crowd.
Since a psychotic young man, who owned a Confederate flag, killed nine parishioners at a black church in South Carolina in June of 2015, the radical left, big government crowd in this country is doing something they’ve wanted to do since 1861, completely eradicate the Confederacy and every last vestige of its history.
For two years, the nation has watched as Confederate flags have been ripped down from city halls and state capitol buildings and have been banned from selling on Amazon, although one may freely purchase a Nazi, Soviet, Italian Fascist or a North Korean flag on the website. The harmless TV show, the Dukes of Hazzard was permanently cancelled by TV Land, even though it is one of the most popular shows in TV history. The reason being that the main characters drove a car named the General Lee that had a Rebel flag on the roof.
Yeah, those Duke Boys were some real racists.
It would be laughable if it wasn’t true. But, this is America in 2017, where cultural Marxists are running wild.
In every corner of the New South, the history of the Old South is being destroyed to placate the wishes of people who are motivated by the 21st Century version of fascism known as political correctness.
There is not a week that goes by now without seeing a news report concerning a Confederate monument that has been vandalized or is being torn down, in scenes that mimic the actions of ISIS in the Middle East or the SA in Nazi Germany. Statues of General Robert E. Lee are being carted off feet first, from Virginia to Texas, as if he was a deposed despot, instead of the most beloved general in American history.
In fact, last week in New Orleans, city officials began removing Confederate monuments that include statues of Lee, General P.T. Beauregard and Confederate President Jefferson Davis.
There is a dangerous trend infesting this country like malignant cancer cells. Anyone on the left who feels triggered or psychologically injured by a book, a speaker, a statue, a monument, a flag or a song, can claim some kind of special candyass status and demand that the speaker or in the case of the Confederacy, the flags, the statues and the monuments are destroyed.
You can’t eradicate history simply by removing statues, but that won’t stop the radical left.
Of course the most common argument for removing symbols of the Confederacy is that the symbols represent racism.
Is the Confederate flag racist? If it is in the hands of members of the KKK who are waving it, yes.
But, what about the person from North Carolina, for example, whose great, great grandfather served in the Army of Northern Virginia? Do they see that flag as a symbol of racism, or as the symbol of military history, or American history? I would assume the latter.
And, who has the right to tell them how to interpret history? When others order you to remove symbols of history, or to think a certain way that is simply fascism; nothing more and nothing less.
Still others would say that Robert E. Lee was a racist because he fought for the Confederacy. But, Lee himself never purchased or owned any slaves. He did inherit slaves from his father in law, George Custis. Some of the slaves were freed in 1857 and the rest in 1862. In fact if you had asked him, he would have told you he was opposed to slavery and that he fought the Civil War because his home state, Virginia, had been invaded by the Yankees.
What many of the wailing little fascists in America don’t know is that General Ulysses S. Grant, the man who prosecuted the war against Lee, the man whom Lee surrendered to in 1865, owned a slave named William Jones, whom he freed in 1859. In fact, Grant’s wife, Julia had four slaves, although they may have officially belonged to her father.
One would think the snowflakes and the liberal whining mayors would be demanding a removal of all Grant statues across the nation.
But, logic has never been a factor in the liberal thought process.
Do the liberal mayors, the PC governors and the little vandals of America know that only six percent of the soldiers fighting for the Confederacy actually owned any slaves?
If asked, Confederate soldiers would have said they were fighting because the North had invaded their land, or they were fighting against big government and the right to be left alone. Big government vs. small government; sounds familiar doesn’t it? It’s almost like it never really got resolved. Very few men were fighting to protect slavery, or the profits of King Cotton.
If asked, most soldiers in the Union Army would have said they were fighting to save the union. Except for abolitionists wearing blue, a majority weren’t fighting to free the slaves.
Sounds a little racist to me…
And, what about President Lincoln?
In 1861, Lincoln supported the original 13th Amendment or the Corwin Amendment. The Corwin Amendment was a proposed amendment to the United States Constitution that would shield “domestic institutions” of the states (which in 1861 included slavery) from the constitutional amendment process and from abolition or interference by Congress. It was passed by the 36th Congress on March 2, 1861, and submitted to the state legislatures for ratification. Senator William H. Seward of New York introduced the amendment in the Senate and Representative Thomas Corwin of Ohio introduced it in the House of Representatives. It was one of several measures considered by Congress in an ultimately unsuccessful attempt to attract the seceding states back into the Union and in an attempt to entice border slave states to stay.
The official text of the amendment reads: No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.
President Lincoln, in his first inaugural address on March 4, said of the Corwin Amendment:
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 … holding such a provision to now be implied constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocable.
Hmm…Sounds a little racist to me. Strangely, Steven Spielberg deleted any mention of the Corwin Amendment in his film, Lincoln. What a surprise.
Before the amendment could be ratified by all states, war broke out. But, the following states did ratify it: Kentucky, Ohio, Rhode Island, Illinois and Maryland.
Lincoln was a realist who would have done just about anything to save the Union, including tossing the constitution out the window, which he frequently did. Emancipation was a political legerdemain, to distract the nation from the series of Union Army defeats in the Eastern Theater and a litany of incompetent Union Army commanders. Lincoln needed the abolitionists behind him and something to rally the North; hence, the Emancipation Proclamation. Two years after emancipation, Lincoln was concocting ways for the black population to be relocated to British Colonies in the Caribbean before he was assassinated.
Whoaa…
Dirty little secret lefties, what if Lincoln was more of a racist than Lee?
Oh my God!
I bet your Marxist professor didn’t tell you that.
The victors wrote the history and sold the snake oil that they were the holy saviors defeating those evil slaver holders, even though almost all of the men they fought never owned a slave in their whole lives.
To compensate for their incompetence on the battlefield, the North developed the ‘holier than thou’ attitude. Lee may have run rings around the Army of the Potomac, but so what, he was evil and so was Jackson, Stuart, Longstreet, the entire Army of Northern Virginia and the Confederacy. Also included in the group of white nationalist racists were George Patton’s Confederate grandfather who was killed in 1864, Chesty Puller’s Confederate grandfather who was killed in 1863 and Woodrow Wilson’s father who was a CSA chaplain.
Combine a 150 year arrogant attitude with modern day political correctness and you have the current War against the Confederacy.
Don’t think for a moment that it will stop with Lee and Davis. There is no end to the militant fascism raging among left wing snowflakes.
Those who come for Lee today, will come for Lincoln tomorrow.
Soon, they will be demanding that statues of Jefferson, Washington and Andrew Jackson are destroyed. In fact Jackson has been run off the $20 bill to be replaced by Harriet Tubman.
After they are finished with them, they will go after Custer, Grant, Wyatt Earp, Teddy Roosevelt and FDR; after all he imprisoned the Japanese during WWII. When they’re done with FDR, they’ll come for Ike and Ronald Wilson Reagan.
Don’t think it will just be flags and statues. Next, there will be book burnings and destruction of private property belonging to people deemed enemies of the state.
It won’t stop until Americans put their feet down and say enough is enough. Frankly these people who try and tell us how to interpret our own history are nothing more than tyrants.
The War against the Confederacy is a war on freedom itself.
N.B. I’m not a Southerner. I’m from Northern Illinois and my relatives fought for the Union. In fact, my great, great, great uncle who served in the 2nd Indiana Cavalry, was captured during McCook’s Raid on Atlanta on July 30, 1864 and spent the rest of the war in Andersonville Prison.
He survived. But, it looks like American history won’t.
Let’s test your theory about “south-haters”.
Please point out the latest slander you’ve seen against REL and I’ll point out the latest ten slanders against Abraham Lincoln.
Point of order: I do not consider a criticism (or even a witless insult) of either to be representative of “south-hating” or north-hating.
Let’s see what ya got.
It is the same mania that lopped off the heads of young girls in Paris in 1793, for the sin of having been born in great landed families; that forced similarly Blessed girls into brothels to be worked to their deaths for the Red Army in the newly Bolshevik Russia in 1918; that forced frail scholars from their homes, to be worked to death in the boondocks, in Mao's Cultural Revolution.
It is what is really being manifested by the "Politically Correct." It benefits no one but demagogues & scoundrels.
If you have ever protested the removal of a memorial to Robert E. Lee or Stonewall Jackson, etc., and can provide a link, I will withdraw the impression, and apologize to you.
But, of course, not to any offender. Getting Conservatives to work together in the present conflict is too important, to get drawn into a counter-productive game.
ek_hornbeck: ** “ Many of the problems between blacks and whites today are the consequence of the government trying to create “equality” and coexistence by force rather than by allowing acclimation to run its natural course. “ **
I “get” all that, but I want to be 100% certain that **Democrats** get 10O% of the “credit” for first slavery itself, then secession & Civil War and now all the Big Government evils we see.
Yes, Republicans did contribute to 1960s era civil rights laws, but far less to LBJ’s hugely destructive “Great Society” and “War on Poverty”.
Our Lost Causers here like to blame “Northerners” for everything wicked, so I’m saying not “Northerner” , but **Democrats** many of whom (i.e., LBJ) were Southern.
Coward. Lying, slanderous coward. If you were sincere about your allegation (as silly and weird as it is!) and you had anything you would post it. Instead you mealy-mouth and then slander me. Poor butthurt ohio.
Civil Rights laws, busing, affirmative action, and the Great Society are all the heirs to and logical outcome of Reconstruction and of the Radical Abolitionists.
The fact that Democrats spearheaded these programs in the 1960's and Republicans spearheaded Reconstruction in the 1860's is irrelevant. I don't care about party labels or affiliations (because the political issues defining the parties today simply didn't apply 150 years ago), I care about policies and programs. Many of the political blights of the 1960's wouldn't have been possible without the precedent set the Reconstruction.
Calling names does not make an argument. You do it so frequently, that you must think it persuasive.
Ohioan: ** “...posters on various of the historic debate threads who have viciously denounced Robert E. Lee and other Confederate heroes.
Of course some of those denounced were heroes to all traditional Americans.
Lee certainly was.” **
First, no one ever starts denouncing, say, RE Lee, until somebody from the pro-Confederate side launches some cockamamie nonsense against, say, Lincoln or Grant.
Even then, the only real knock on Lee I’ve seen amounts to, “he’s overrated”.
It’s pretty mild stuff, compared to the crap they routinely throw at Union leaders.
Regardless, Pelham’s quote on Lee from President Eisenhower should settle the matter.
Ohioan: ** “I was really startled, the first time I encountered a verbal assault on Robert E. Lee on Free Republic. Having gone to Oberlin... “ **
So, you’re a snowflake, can’t stand hard truths?
I don’t know what set you off, but was it true or false?
If it was false, then correct it, if true you might want to contextualize it, or support it with more data.
Regardless, I can almost guarantee that “attack” on Lee was in response to some earlier attack on Union leaders.
Ohioan: ** “I was certainly acquainted with Abolitionist venom—just not used to seeing it in Conservative circles. “ **
“Abolitionist venom” I have no idea what that means, but pro-Confederate venom against Northerners in general, or specific leaders, is on display in every CW thread.
At the same time nobody admits to supporting slavery, all say they are glad it’s gone now, so everyone here is a self-professed abolitionist, and yet they cannot stop themselves from condemning those who actually abolished slavery.
Ohioan: ** “the quotation marks were in recognition of the fact that American slavery did not involve Slavic people; and, as such might have been as well or better referenced by different terms for bondage.” **
“Slaves” and “slavery” are historical terms used universally throughout the period, so there’s no need to put them in quotation marks as if such words are somehow false.
But slave “owner” is a false term since nobody really owns another.
The term “slaveholder” was used then and now more accurately.
Ohioan: ** “ Another example of our misconnection was in your comment suggesting that the Booker T. Washington address was about freed slaves voluntarily returning to slavery.
The linked address... “ **
Your link didn’t work for me, but regardless my response was appropriate, since your point was that *some* slaves were better off than *some* freed workers.
My point is that while many slaves escaped to freedom, none to my knowledge went the other way voluntarily.
Ohioan: ** “Granting ex-slaves the suffrage, letting them be exploited as voters by those preaching a form of dependence on big government, was hardly a useful education, for those not seeking political office.” **
*Republicans* in 1865 or later did not teach “dependence on big government”, progressive *Democrats* did that.
What post-war Republicans did was enforce emancipation, the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments.
*Democrats* after the 1876 election compromises undid much Republican work.
Ohioan: ** “The present disaster in inner city high school education is too obvious for anyone to try to defend.” **
Brought to you by *Democrats* not Republicans.
My point here throughout is that comparing the two, Republicans have always been your friends, Democrats are responsible for every bad political outcome.
And you disagree, why exactly?
ek_hornbeck: ** “Civil Rights laws, busing, affirmative action, and the Great Society are all the heirs to and logical outcome of Reconstruction and of the Radical Abolitionists.” **
Let’s be very clear here: *Republicans* have always aspired to equal rights for all, as proclaimed in our Declaration of Independence and more specifically in the 13th, 14th & 15th amendments.
By stark contrast,*Democrats* have always favored special privileges for *their voters* including antebellum slaveholders, post-war Jim Crow laws and today’s welfare for descendants of slaves.
Only the beneficiaries & payers have changed.
But Democrats today are the same kinds of people they always were — using government to reward their voters.
ek_hornbeck: ** “The fact that Democrats spearheaded these programs in the 1960’s and Republicans spearheaded Reconstruction in the 1860’s is irrelevant...
Many of the political blights of the 1960’s wouldn’t have been possible without the precedent set the Reconstruction.” **
No, there’s a huge difference.
*Republicans* have always been about equal rights for all, while *Democrats* have always been about special privileges for *their voters*.
Think about it.
You notice that they never had a southbound "underground railroad" ;'}
The inconvenient truth for many of these LCL's is that their ancestors supported the very dhimmicrats that brought us this mess.
Robert E. Lee has been a roll model for Conservative American youth, North & South since his days at West Point, well before the War in the 1860s. The threads, where I have challenged those insulting him, were on the subjects of a cultural war against the heritage of our Southern compatriots. The subject was the ongoing attack on the old South. How does that provide an excuse for retaliating against Lee, Davis, etc., simply because someone said something you did not like about Lincoln. Hurling playground insults is not the way to score points in a debate over heritage.
Now, Lincoln & Lee are both fair game, if you want to challenge their judgment. My anger goes only to the gratuitous attack on Lee's honor, which has been a model for American youth for almost two centuries. If you are really interested in my position on the war on the southern heritage, here you may view it in depth: Civil War, Reconstruction & Creating Hate In America
Secondly, you are completely confused about the "Abolitionists." Their tactics were vicious. Even Daniel Webster distanced himself from them in his classic address on the Compromise of 1850. (Webster Address.)
And here is another link to Booker T. Washington Address.
My familiarity with Abolitionist tactics is based not only on the testimony of witnesses like Edgar Allan Poe, but on shelve full of their obsession filled propaganda in the stacks of the Oberlin College Library. (Incidentally, if you think I exaggerate the Oberlin role, the Anti -Saloon League, which put Prohibition over in 1919, was founded in the Oberlin College Library in 1896. You perhaps remember that the Abolitionists actually had three major projects, Abolition, Feminism & Prohibition. Oberlin was the Western anchor of the movement.)
Finally, you have confused where the parties stood in different eras. The Democrats were the more Conservative Party in the 1850s & 1860s--indeed until they were taken over by the Free Silver crowd after the Panic of 1893. The Republicans really only became the clearly more Conservative Party, after Strom Thurmond changed parties in 1964, to better support Barry Goldwater. That started an avalanche of Conservative Southerners switching parties over the next decade or so, and made possible the election of Ronald Reagan.
Lincoln was a moderate; but there was already a radical wing of the new Republican Party, in 1860, when Lincoln was elected because of the split in the Democratic Party. But both the Douglas & Buchanan wings of the Democrats were more Conservative. The Republicans led by Thad Stevens, after the War, were as far Left as the French Jacobins. (And I believe Stevens had friendly correspondence with Karl Marx. Though I am not sure which of the fanatic egalitarians initiated it.)
As for dependence on big government! From promises of "40 acres and a mule" to the big government authorizations in the 14th Amendment--which is the authorization, among other things, for the "Anchor Baby" phenomenon, Court ordered abortion rights, purging Religion from public institutions, and Judicial Activism in general; it is all part of the harvest from "Reconstruction." Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anything further from the symmetry of the Founders' vision, than the very idea of a Central Government "reconstructing" the once sovereign States.
And, if you are so great a defender of Lincoln, how can you possibly support the wholesale repudiation of his "With Malice Towards None" Address, with the arrogant punishments incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment?
Hear hear
As I mentioned before, a lot of the anti-Confederate rhetoric among some conservatives comes from a tendency to stupidly retroject the issues and agendas that define the political parties today back into the 19th Century. Just because Republicans are the (somewhat/sometimes) conservative party today and Democrats are the radical party doesn't mean that was true in the 1860 or even in the 1890's.
The Democrats were historically the agrarian party - Jeffersonians who would have preferred the Articles of Confederation to the Constitution (the anti-Federalists). They were anti-central government and anti central bank. Post Civil War, their archetype would be Grover Cleveland and the Bourbon Democrats. Cleveland was so opposed to expansion of Federal government that he opposed the use of Federal $ and personnel for natural disaster relief. The Democrats only started on their path to being the party of the welfare state with Bryan and Wilson, and didn't fully consolidate in this direction until the 1950's.
The Republicans, strictly speaking, were ideologically neutral at the time of their founding on every issue except non-expansion of slavery. This meant that the party had both old-school Whig conservatives as well as radicals - not just on the issue of abolition, but on every issue.
The Republican Party had both a conservative and a "progressive" wing well into the 20th century - Teddy Roosevelt was arguably as "progressive" as Wilson on many issues. And the liberal Rockefeller wing of the GOP had a lot of power even in the Goldwater years (and its influence persists to this day, e.g. neoconservatism, the Bushes, etc).
The point is, only extreme ignorance or extreme dishonesty could claim that there's some kind of ideological straight line leading from Jackson or Cleveland to Barack Obama. Jackson had about as much in common with Obama as Thaddeus Stevens had in common with Ronald Reagan: a party affiliation, and nothing else.
Just an aside - a lot of the confusion that I see about the politics of countries other than the US and of US politics prior to the late 20th century comes from a failure to acknowledge the fact that the political issues that define parties and the ideological spectrum here and now often aren't relevant or didn't even exist in other times/places.
That's why you hear stupid things like "LePen isn't really right wing because she's not in favor of free markets" - this in spite of the fact that in Europe, the ideological spectrum is defined almost entirely by the National Question (i.e. globalism vs. nationalism) rather than by the extent of state intervention in the economy. Similarly, you hear things like "Confederates were liberal Democrats" because people assume that being a Democrat/Republican today meant the same thing 150+ years ago.
While I went over to the Republican Party in 1964, also to support Barry Goldwater, I had remained a Democrat through my College & Law School efforts on behalf of Conservative values and the original intent of the Constitution, because up until the Goldwater nomination, the most Conservative spokesmen in Congress had been Democrats, even though there were certainly also some fine Conservative Republicans, like Ohio's own Senator Robert A. Taft, Sr.
For example, consider James A. Reed, of Missouri, or the Virginia Harry Byrd family.
Man you and Bill are on a roll!
Man you and Bill are on a roll!
You think these guys even know what the Conservative Coalition was?
Ironically I just attended a huge delta wedding at the plantation of one of the leaders of that group
Now the home is his son who is a big GOP guy of course nowadays
Beautiful place
Man I’d love to have had some of these south haters with me just to watch them squirm
Seersucker and pinfeather and gorgeous girls in hats and pearls everywhere
Cypress balds and moss and cotton fields currently planted with alfalfa for 1000s of acres
Home
I am coaching my boys to go to ole miss and look for a planters only child daughter..lol
Hopefully a KD or DDD or chi omega
As for your detractors, I doubt that they would have been able to handle a wedding reception, where good spirits, good will and the shared joy in the prospects of a happy couple, prevailed. But I will not speculate further on any of that.
Ohioan: ** “Your continuous error is in very selective focus on things taken out of context...” **
No, that’s your continuous error, not mine.
But let me concede this much: I’ve never before attempted to defend Reconstruction because I didn’t think it defensible.
But I do defend the 13th, 14th (not anchor babies!) & 15th amendments which in this context means Reconstruction also.
And I defend the fact that *Republicans* after 1865 granted civil rights which *Democrats* then revoked after the 1876 election.
So, here goes.
Ohioan: ** “The subject was the ongoing attack on the old South.
How does that provide an excuse for retaliating against Lee, Davis, etc., simply because someone said something you did not like about Lincoln.
Hurling *playground insults* is not the way to score points in a debate over heritage.” **
I’ve never seen an FR thread where playground insults didn’t start from pro-Confederates.
Nor does anyone on FR assault Southern Heritage in general, except as minimally necessary to correct pro-Confederate exaggerations.
Of course, as a snowflake, you may have taken offense at “slights” I never noticed.
Ohioan:** “My anger goes only to the gratuitous attack on Lee’s honor” **
And you were equally outraged by pro-Confederate assaults on “Ape” Lincoln’s honor?
Why did I never notice?
Ohioan:** “ Secondly, you are completely confused about the “Abolitionists.” Their tactics were vicious. Even Daniel Webster distanced himself from them in his classic address on the Compromise of 1850. “ **
Thanks for the link to your close FRiend, Mr. Webster, I had not read those words before.
But it does seem to me your FRiend has been reading my posts here and has copied some word for word, amazing!
Of course, I would never insist that your FRiend Webster should give me credit for his words, it’s enough satisfaction to know I’ve had some effect!
;-) Ha!
Seriously, I’m delighted to learn how closely my ideas mimic those of the great Whig Senator from Massachusetts, Daniel Webster.
However, I am not an old-time Whig, I’m Republican, and the crucial difference which caused the Whig downfall is slavery.
Whigs tolerated slavery as the precondition for Union, Republicans not so much.
I noted with interest your FRiend Webster’s discussion on the results of Abolitionist agitation on Southerners.
He said it made Southerners more pro-slavery and less tolerant of abolition proposals.
I think he’s wrong in that.
The change in Southern attitudes toward slavery were not caused by Northern abolitionists, but rather by the explosion in profitability of slavery, especially relating to cotton.
So, what had been in 1787 a matter of agreed-on long term abolition later became impossible due to slavery’s necessity to Southern life & prosperity.
Northern abolition societies were the *result of*, not the cause of, Southern attitude changes.
Ohioan:** “My familiarity with Abolitionist tactics is based not only on the testimony of witnesses like Edgar Allan Poe, but on shelve full of their obsession filled propaganda in the stacks of the Oberlin College Library.” **
And yet, those tactics were totally unsuccessful in convincing any Southern state to abolish slavery.
Their only success was in helping flip former Northern Whigs & Democrats to vote Republican, some in 1856, many more in 1860.
Ohioan: ** “Finally, you have confused where the parties stood in different eras.” **
No, I’m not in the least confused, but you obviously have been drinking a lot of Democrat propaganda koolaid, if you refuse to see similarities between antebellum slavocrat Democrats and today’s “progressive” variety Democrats.
In a nutshell it’s this: Democrats have always used government to grant special privileges to Democrats.
That’s not “conservative” it’s the essence of liberal/progressive/Big Government Democrats.
Ohioan:** “The Republicans really only became the clearly more Conservative Party, after Strom Thurmond changed parties in 1964, to better support Barry Goldwater.” **
I stipulate the importance of Barry Goldwater’s 1964 run, but I will never concede that, for example, Dwight Eisenhower in 1952 was less conservative than Democrat Adlai Stevenson.
And yet the “Solid South” voted solidly for Stevenson.
So much for alleged Southern conservatism.
Ohioan: ** “But both the Douglas & Buchanan wings of the Democrats were more Conservative.” **
Only if by “conservative” you mean pro-slavery, but I don’t define it that way.
“Conservative” means you don’t use Big Government to enforce special privileges of one group (i.e., slaveholders) over another, (i.e., slaves).
That makes it impossible for any Democrat to ever be “conservative”, regardless of their claims.
Ohioan: ** “As for dependence on big government! From promises of “40 acres and a mule” “ **
A limited offer to help feed them, almost immediately withdrawn which, however, was was also in effect offered to millions of white farmers on land in territories out west. So there was nothing special about it.
Ohioan: ** “ big government authorizations in the 14th Amendment—which is the authorization, among other things, for the “Anchor Baby” phenomenon... “ **
Nothing in that amendment at the time was intended to produce the results you decry.
Those results took Democrats corrupting Original Intent which is what Democrats by their political DNA always do.
Ohioan: ** “Indeed, it is difficult to imagine anything further from the symmetry of the Founders’ vision, than the very idea of a Central Government “reconstructing” the once sovereign States.” **
But our Founders had no tolerance for rebellion, insurrection, invasion or treason and would have responded similarly.
Ohioan: ** “ And, if you are so great a defender of Lincoln, how can you possibly support the wholesale repudiation of his “With Malice Towards None” Address, with the arrogant punishments incorporated in the Fourteenth Amendment? “ **
Malice toward none included freed slaves whom Republicans defended as best they could until forced to withdraw after 1876 by Democrats.
But I certainly can’t defend **everything** that happened during Reconstruction, can only say that good people like President Grant did the best they could with difficult circumstances.
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