Old Times Here Are Apparently Forgotten

Last month, Ithaca High School administrators sent a letter home with students, informing their parents that the flag of the Confederacy had been banned. Ithaca High School students can no longer display the emblem on belt buckles, t-shirts, or anywhere else while on school property. Apparently, the students wearing their Dixie Outfitters t-shirts, in a proud nod to our country’s better half, were white. It is unfortunate that civil liberties apply only to those in privileged groups, such as blacks or Hispanics.

Because the United States Supreme Court has ruled in favor of protecting the freedom of speech exercised in displaying the stars and bars, Ithaca High School had to claim that the flag was creating some sort of disruption in the school that hindered the educational process. No specific instances were mentioned in the administration’s letter.

I found the claim interesting, though, because, were it true, it would clearly indicate that racism is much more of a problem in Upstate New York than in my hometown in Southern Virginia. To think that racial hatred could be stirred up by a high school student’s belt buckle is frightening, indeed. The school’s objection to the battle flag is even more astonishing considering the fact that only 6.7% of the population of Ithaca is black. But apparently the race wars here are far more intense than in my hometown, of which 13.34% of the population was black. And yet, in my public high school, where displays of the confederate flag were common on car bumpers, t-shirts, or belt buckles, and where a significant minority of the student body was black, and even in a state that historically had supported slavery, the flag was never accused of disturbing a classroom, much less of inciting racial hatred.

Ithaca’s black population is proportionately only slightly more than half that of the United States. This is an unusually white city. And apparently race relations here are in such tension that they can be upset by a kid’s t-shirt. Schools in the South, much less segregated, are clearly more at ease and have put issues of racism farther behind them;thus, students there can better appreciate the historic and cultural value of the Confederate flag. It leads one to wonder on which side of the Mason-Dixon Line racism is still prevalent today.

The Confederate flag is not—and was never—a representation of the institution of slavery. The North, in an attempt to glorify its states’ fight to suppress the South’s effort to free themselves from the North’s exploitation, has oversimplified and at times even falsified history by painting the War of Northern Aggression as a war fought over issues of morality. Children in Northern schools are never made aware that there were no more abolitionists in the North than in the South.They are never taught that the North never claimed to want to abolish slavery but merely to stop its expansion to ensure that the free states would not be outnumbered in Congress. Many Northerners do no even know that the majority of Southerners who fought and died in the Civil War did not even own slaves.

In accordance with their favored depiction of the Civil War as a moral battle in which they fought for good while the South defended evil, the North has emphasized the issue of slavery while allowing the issues of representation in national politics, economics, and regional identities which primarily caused the war to recede into the background. Erased from history are the values of self-government, freedom, and honor that led Confederates to fight to preserve their home. This is what the Confederate flag represents, and this is why it is still of the utmost importance to Southerners today. It is why black Southerners will proudly call themselves Southern and will fly the Confederate flag. The South is, above all, a cultural entity. Southerners have a dramatically different culture from Northerners; this culture of chivalry, modesty, graciousness, and hospitality is represented by the stars and bars, and it must be remembered and preserved.

If the Confederate flag has in fact caused the feelings of ill will in Ithaca High School that the administration claims, the blame must fall on the administration itself. No Southerner would be so naive as to equate the Confederate flag with support of slavery. It is a failure of Yankee schools that children are not taught the broad scope of economic, political, and even cultural factors which led to the Civil War but are only presented with a gross caricature of a war between good and evil.

Even more frightening than this restriction of freedom of speech in Ithaca High School is what has caused this common misunderstanding of the Confederate flag. In perpetuating their myth of the North as the force of good in the Civil War, the North has revised history in a way that should frighten all Americans. An emblem of a group of people’s heritage and culture has been banned because others have formed prejudices and misconceptions about it. Moreover, these prejudices and misconceptions are fueled by the public school system itself. By banning the Confederate flag, the state attempts to erase from memory the Civil War. To forget that Americans in the past were capable of such atrocities as slavery robs us of the lesson that can be learned and leaves us dangerously vulnerable to repeating past mistakes.

If the Confederate flag calls to mind slavery, and schools wish to erase from common memory all remnants of this dark period in American history, why stop at the flag? Perhaps next, Ithaca parents will receive letters requesting that their children be sent to school clothed in only synthetic fabrics because cotton was once produced through the slave labor of blacks. Or, in order to really be free of uncomfortable memories of our national history, maybe Ithaca High School will ban all black students from school property.

What a load of crap! The Northern States were first to exploit the Southern States waaaaaaaaaaaay back after the Revolutionary War ended.

Oh, bull. Tarrifs didn't become an issue until 1828, and a compromise was soon found that both north and south supported. If you're talking about Navigation Acts, read what Alexander Stephens has to say about the motivation behind them below.

As to your statement about the territories, that too is crap as the Southern States wanted parity of representation in Congress and the North wanting the territories to be admitted as "free" soil which would later become states, the South rightly figured that they would be the minority in Congress.

It's a funny thing about geography that you can't actually make the south bigger, or cram more states into it. On the other hand, you can expand slavery into the west, and the growing wave of sentiment to deny that is what led to southern secession in the first place. And what kind of parity is it that allows property (i.e.: slaves) to be counted toward representation in Congress?

These things along with the Abolitionists attempts to incite servile insurrection on several occasions "the Nat Turner Rebellion" being one of them

Again, bull. Abolitionism was hardly a blip on the social radar in 1831, when Nat Turner's Rebellion took place, and there's no evidence that he was inspired by anything but his own religious visions (which started in 1821) If anything, it inspired the movement, with the American Abolition Society formed two years later. The Amistad case was still 8 years off.

Finally, I'll let Alexander Stephens talk about the tarrif, Navigation Acts, and other alleged southern "grievances":

Where will you go, following the sun in its circuit round our globe, to find a Government that better protects the liberties of its people, and secures to them the blessings we enjoy? (Applause.) I thinkk that one of the evils that beset us is a surfeit of liberty, and exuberance of the priceless blessings for which we are ungrateful. We listened to my honorable friend who addressed you last night (Mr. Toombs) as he recounted the evils of this Government. The first was the Fishing Bounties, paid mostly to the sailors of New England. Our friend states that forty-eight years of our Government was under the administration of Southern Presidents. Well, these fishing bounties begain under the rule of a Southern President, I believe. No one of them, during the whole forty-eight years, ever set his administration against the principle or policy of them. It is not for me to say whether it was a wise policy in the beginning; it probably was not, and I have nothing to say in its defence. But the reason given for it was to encourage our young men to go to sea, and learn to manage ships. We had at the time but a small navy. It was thought best to encourage a class of our people to become acquainted with seafaring life; to become sailors, to man our naval ships. It requires practice to walk the deck of a ship, to pull the ropes, to furl the sails, to go aloft, to climb the mast; and it was thought by offering this bounty, a nursery might be formed, in which young men would become perfected in these arts, and it applied to one section of the country as well as to any other. The result of this was, that in the war of 1812, our sailors, many of whom came from this nursery, were equal to any that England brought against us. At any rate, no small part of the glories of that war were gained by the veteran tars of America, and the object of these national bounties was to foster that branch of the national defence. My opinion is, that whatever may have been the reason at first, this bounty ought to be discontinued-- the reason for it at first no longer exists. A bill for this object did pass the Senate the last Congress I was in, to which my honorable friend contributed greatly, but it was not reached in the House of Representatives. I trust that he will yet see that he may with honor continue his connection with the Government, and that his eloquence, unrivalled in the Senate, may hereafter, as heretofore, be displayed in having this bounty, so obnoxious to him, repealed and wiped off from the statute book.
The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that.
[Mr. Toombs: That tariff lessened the duties.]
[Mr. Stephens:[ Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. If reason and argument, with experience, produced such changes in the sentiments of Massachusetts from 1832 to 1857, on the subject of the tariff, may not like changes be effected there by the same means, reason and argument, and appeals to patriotism on the present vexed question? And who can say that by 1875 or 1890, Massachusetts may not vote with South Carolina and Georgia upon all those questions that now distract the country and threaten its peace and existence? I believe in the power and efficiency of truth, in the omnipotence of truth, and its ultimate triumph when properly wielded. (Applause.)
Another matter of grievance alluded to by my honorable friend, was the Navigation Laws. This policy was also commenced under the administration of one of these Southern Presidents, who ruled so well, and has been continued through all of them since. The gentleman's views of the policy of these laws and my own do not disagree. We occupied the same ground in relation to them in Congress. It is not my purpose to defend them now. But it is proper to state some matters connected with their origin.
One of the objects was to build up a commercial American marine by giving American bottoms the exclusive carrying trade between our own ports. This is a great arm of national power. This object was accomplished. We now have an amount of shipping, not only coastwise but to foreign countries, which puts us in the front rank of the nations of the world. England can no longer be styled the mistress of the seas. What American is not proud of the result? Whether those laws should be continued it another question. But one thing is certain, no President, Northern or Southern, has ever yet recommended their repeal. And my friend's effort to get them repealed has met with little favor North or South.
These were three of the grievances or grounds of complaint against the general system of our Government and its workings; I mean the administration of the federal government. As to the acts of several of the States, I shall speak presently, but these three were the main ones urged against the common Head. Now suppose it be admitted that all of these are evils in the system; do they overbalance and outweight the advantages and great good which this same Government affords in a thousand innumerable ways that cannot be estimated? Have we not at the South, as well as the North, grown great, prosperouse and happy under its operation? Has any part of the world ever shown such rapid progess in the development of wealth, and all the material resources of national power and greatness, as the Southern States have under the general government, notwithstanding all its defects?

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