Banned sign riles heritage group

A Confederate heritage group says its free-speech rights were violated when a landowner removed a billboard promoting Southern history near the famed Darlington Raceway.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans plans to demonstrate at the State House next month and buy radio advertisements to complain about losing its billboard on U.S. 52, about two miles from the racetrack.

“This is the most chilling thing I’ve seen against freedom of speech,” spokesman Don Gordon said.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans bought the billboard this spring in response to remarks by a NASCAR executive about the rebel flag.

The billboard featured a Confederate flag and a checkered race flag. The message said, “Victory is Great, but Honor is Greater. Defend your Southern heritage.”

The billboard, taken down briefly in May, also listed the group’s phone number and name.

Officials of the S.C. Central Railroad, which owns the land where the billboard stood, said the message was “controversial” and needed to come down.

“It is not in our commercial interests to have billboards on our property displaying messages that might be controversial in the local community, whatever the substance of the messages,” a company spokeswoman said in a prepared statement.

“We made no judgment as to the content of the billboard, but we did understand it to be controversial and therefore asked that it be removed.”

An outdoor advertising company, hired by the Sons of Confederate Veterans, installed the sign just before Darlington’s annual Mother’s Day race. It was removed permanently June 16, according to a July 11 letter from the S.C. Sons of Confederate Veterans commander, Randall Burbage, to fellow members.

The Sons of Confederate Veterans says it is an international, nonprofit historical society. The group, which says it has 30,000 members nationally, has taken positions in defense of the Confederate flag in South Carolina.

In October, NASCAR’s chief executive, Brian France, told the CBS television show “60 Minutes” the Confederate flag was “not a flag that I look at with anything favorable. That’s for sure.”

As it branches away from its traditional Southern fan base, NASCAR has tried to shed its rebel-flag-waving image. The nation’s largest stock car racing organization has started diversity programs and tried to appeal to black and Hispanic fans. The Darlington Raceway, in business for more than 50 years, has served as a pillar of NASCAR.

“A member of the France family said some uncomplimentary things, so we put that billboard up to make a statement and to stimulate new members,” the confederate veterans’ Gordon said. “We really didn’t expect anything like this to occur.”

Attempts to reach NASCAR spokesman Jim Hunter were unsuccessful. However, Hunter said last spring that NASCAR did not seek to have the sign removed.

“If we find out NASCAR is involved, you can expect airplanes towing Confederate banners over every NASCAR race anywhere in this nation — forever,” Gordon said.

Mac Josey, vice president at the Darlington Raceway, said he knew nothing about the billboard and did not ask that it be removed. He said the track does not fly Confederate flags, although some fans do.

Wesley Blackwell, chairman of the Darlington County Council, said he heard about the billboard during a social gathering at the Darlington speedway in May. Blackwell said the county did not ask that the sign be removed.

The Confederate veterans group paid Palmetto Outdoor Media more than $5,000 to put up the advertisement, Gordon said. Most of the money was refunded when the sign was removed.

“What if it was a sign trying to bring new members to the NAACP? We all know not a word would be said,” Gordon said.

Palmetto Outdoor Media co-owner Rodney Monroe said his company’s land-lease agreement with S.C. Central Railroad has a section that called for the removal of offensive advertisements.

“We lease the property from the company and we, obviously, crossed the line as far as what was acceptable to them ... and were asked to remove the sign,” Monroe said. “We are not in the business to cause or create controversy.”

Gordon said his group had a contract with Palmetto Outdoor for the sign to stay up through part of next year.

The First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution guarantees every American the right to free speech. However, the sign was on private property, and the property’s owner ordered it down.

Bill Rogers, director of the S.C. Press Association, said that removal violated the principle of free speech, if nothing else. The sign did not appear to be inflammatory, he said.

“I can see why they would feel their rights are violated, that if someone doesn’t like the message, they take it down,” Rogers said.

I found this interesting obit from 76 years ago...

The obituary of George Sanford Chamberlin, Sr., a Confederate veteran, who died in 1936. Last Veteran of Confederate Army in County is Buried in Micanopy The flag of the Confederate states of America was flown for perhaps the last time in this county last week when it was unfurled above the open grave of George S. Chamberlin, whose death and burial at Micanopy Thursday brought to a conclusion the age-long straggling march of the "thin" Gray line" of the hosts of Lee and Jackson in the county.

A veteran of four full years of service in the Confederate Army, Mr. Chamberlin at the age of 94 had survived all the rigorous hardships of active warfare and lived to see each of his scores of comrades in the county go down before him at the hands of time until he alone stood out as the sole representative of the Glory of the Lost Cause for which he and his fellows fought and died.

Born at Monteocha. in this county on January 31, 1842, Mr. Chamberlin had been a lifelong resident of the county--and during all of his years never set foot outside of Florida. His father came here from Massachusetts as a United States soldier sent to subdue the Indians: but during the California gold rush he departed for the West and was never heard of again leaving the young Chamberlin an orphan to to be reared by relatives.

Mr. Chamberlin was educated at the old East Florida Seminary, then located at Micanopy. At the opening of the Civil War he enlisted with the Marion Dragoons under Capt. James B. Owens, later transferring to the Second Florida Cavalry, serving in C Troop under Capt. Chambers. He saw action but twice during the the war, in a battle fought at Gainesville and in a single skirmish with Union troops near here.

Following the Civil War Mr. Chamberlin joined with a group of friends in forming the community known as Tacoma, which was as developed into one of the finest truck and citrus growing sections of its day.
Mr. Chamberlin fractured a hip in an accident in 1929, and since that time had been confined to bed at his home at Tacoma.

Surviving him are three sons. R. M., J. W. and G. S. Charnberlin; two daughters, Mrs. I. E. Jones and Miss Martha Chamberlin, all of Micanopy; 12 grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren .

Mr. Chamberlin for many years s was an active member of Stonewall Jackson Chapter Confederate Veterans, which formerly was one of the largest and most active chapters in the state. The passing of years 80 thinned its ranks however, that three years ago the post was declared dissolved, Mr. Chamberlin remaining its only member. Records of the chapter, upon its dissolution, were placed in the county's archives at the Court House.

Daughters of the Confederacy joined friends of the old veteran at his graveside and it was they who followed the time-honored custom of unfurling over the grave the flag of the Confederacy, the flag which may never again be unfurled in the county.

1. Spamming. Multiple posts of the same material.

2. Many of the quotes don't support the thesis advanced. Examples follow.

Remember, dbehsman originally asked you (to keep the question at hand uppermost in mind as we go forward),

REALLY? Care to provide us with some quotes that specifically claim that the problem was primarily with slavery?

And now, to your examples:

- Rev John Wrightman, South Carolina, 1861.

Obscure reference, supportive but non-authoritative. One man's opinion, until you show otherwise.

"African slavery is the cornerstone of the industrial, social, and political fabric of the South; and whatever wars against it, wars against her very existence. Strike down the institution of African slavery and you reduce the South to depoulation and barbarism." - South Carolina Congressman Lawrence Keitt, 1860

This observation by Congressman Keitt describes the economy of the South and the likely effect of abolition on it, in his view. How does this quote support your contention that "the war was about slavery?"

Keeping in mind, of course, that the "war was about slavery" is a Marxist theme, intended to support vanguardism and (by extension) absolutism of the vanguard elite. Lincoln is their hero for that very reason, and you've never dealt with that.

"[Recruiting slaves into the army] is abolition doctrine ... the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." - Editorial, Jan 1865, North Carolina Standard

Support from the editorialist, but your quote shows signs of selective pruning -- an ellipse, and some words supplied. May we see the entire quote, in context? You aren't capitan_refugio, and I've seldom seen posters sink as low as he did in dredging up alleged support for his fanatical and hate-filled positions, but let's just say that, when your argument is about an overarching theme, context matters.

"What did we go to war for, if not to protect our [slave] property?" - CSA senator from Virgina, Robert Hunter, 1865

How do we know he was talking about slaves? Your insertion points us in that direction, but would his words exclude his other valuable property? If he were a plantation owner, does anyone think he'd be happy to give up the land, house, and cotton crop to Lincoln's punitive confiscations, if only he could keep his slaves?

The insertion may not be appropriate after all.

Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.
What, then are the circumstances....?......He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky [Emphasis added.]

To correct him at the outset, Mr. Hale oversimplifies by a vast stretch, for rhetorical effect (unfortunately -- he had a better argument working), the platform of the Republican Party. He mischaracterizes it as well, since I doubt that a canvass of that idea among Republican voters of 1860 would have broken into double digits, that the Republican platform included the advancement of Negro equality. Even Lincoln, no matter what his private opinion might have been, said that he didn't believe that that equality was possible.

The advancement of the idea of giving the Negro the franchise, and then using his vote to annihilate the South politically and turn its population on one another, was a later, Radical addition to the platform and as yet untrue when Hale directed his words to the governor of Kentucky.

Notice, however, the commissioner's repeated references to safety and Northern fanaticism (underscored) -- how do you explain them, if the issue was simply about Southern slaveholders' rights in human property?

There's much more to say, but I'll have to adjourn for now.

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