Posted on 03/28/2008 12:15:10 PM PDT by cowboyway
Over the last few months, celebrations for Abraham Lincoln's 200th birthday have drawn attention to the Kentucky native's life and his legacy as president. But the 200-year anniversary of another Kentucky president's birth, Confederate President Jefferson Davis, is receiving mixed reviews.
"I'll say it this way - winners write history," said Ron Bryant, a Lexington historian writing a book on Davis. "We need heroes, we need villains. Lincoln became a hero and Davis a villain."
Davis was born in what is now Todd County, Ky., in 1808, one year before Lincoln. Davis served as the only president of the 11 southern states that seceded from the Union between 1861 and 1865. The Confederate States of America surrendered in 1865, and Davis was locked in prison the same year.
Despite being denounced by many civil rights groups, signs of Davis' legacy can still be found throughout the state.
In Southwest Kentucky, a structure resembling the Washington Monument stands in memory of Davis. At 351 feet tall, the Jefferson Davis Monument is the fourth largest freestanding obelisk in the world, according to Kentucky State Parks.
Although Kentucky never seceded from the Union, a statue of Davis stands in the rotunda in the state's Capitol building.
"The Civil War is still very much alive in many places," said Cliff Howard, a Jefferson Davis impersonator. "Kentucky was on both sides of the fence. It still is."
Having heard of Kentucky's reputation for "being a little backward," integrated strategic communications senior James Davidson Jr. was not surprised about Davis' statue in the Capitol building.
Davidson, first-vice president of UK's chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, said a statue of Davis leaves a bad impression.
"What is Frankfort saying to the rest of Kentucky with it being there?" Davidson said. "I respect everyone's heritage and Southern tradition, but given the history, I think it shouldn't be there."
The statue of Davis, installed in 1936, is one of five statues in the Capitol building. Lincoln is the largest in the center, and Davis stands in the corner behind his right shoulder. Former Kentucky Congressman Henry Clay, physician and drafter of the state constitution Ephraim McDowell and former Vice President Alben Barkley also stand in the rotunda.
The last time Davis' statue came into debate was 2003, when a coalition of African-American groups protested its presence in the Capitol building. A state advisory committee left the issue up to former Gov. Ernie Fletcher, who took no action during his term.
Gov. Steve Beshear does not plan to remove the statue because Davis is a historical figure who represents part of Kentucky's cultural history, a spokeswoman said.
Student Government President Nick Phelps said his feelings on the statue in the Capitol building resembled how he felt during a controversy two years ago about a 46-foot mural in Memorial Hall depicting the history of Lexington and its surrounding area. The mural, which some said stereotyped American Indians and blacks, was not removed.
"I was not in support of removing the mural, so I would not support removing Jefferson Davis," Phelps said. "I don't think we should remove history. I think it removes the question, 'Who is he?' "
Many students might ask the same question about Davis.
In Kentucky, the Civil War is part of the middle school curriculum. Unless students take an advanced placement history course in high school, that's usually the last time they focus on 19th century American history, said Nayasha Owens-Morton, a U.S. history and African-American history teacher at Bryan Station Traditional High School.
William Campbell has taught a class on Lincoln at UK for about 10 years as an English and honors professor. Students going into his class know little about the confederate president, he said.
"About Jefferson Davis, Kentuckians tend to know that he was from our state, that there's a memorial dedicated to him somewhere in the state, and that he was the president of the Confederacy," Campbell said. "Of Lincoln's writings, most have read only the Gettysburg Address. Of Davis's writings, most have read nothing."
He was still brown nosing for votes in 1854.
If you're talking about post #311, that was to rockrr. I included you because he had posted his 'schmuck' comment to you. It's a courtesy thing. (Besides, between x, non-sequitur, rockrr, and the rest, it gets hard to tell one of ya'll from the other.)
A great deal of this sympathy has dissipated, largely because of abusive Confederate apologists like you and SW.
Do you patronize on purpose? We don't want 'sympathy'. Just damn...........
I hope you take great pride in driving away your most likely allies in the fight against the continuing attempts to demonize southern and Confederate history.
I just wish I could be this effective on some of my yankee neighbors and 'drive' their damnyankee arses back up north.
A threat? OMG, are you retarded?!
Perhaps you should get your mama to sit down with ya and explain this Internet stuff to ya. For such an Internet Tough Guy you sure spook easy! All I was suggesting was that you might not want to embarrass yourself with your deviant behavior by parading it in public. But I’m nothing if not accommodating so go right ahead and display yourself - it’s more fun for the rest of us!
You lost cause losers are a laugh riot!
So, you're a racist?
Define 'deviant behavior'.
(This should be interesting coming from a guy(?) that lives in a state that is known for it's wackos, e.g. the man/horse sex ring.)
Oh, of course.
We really are learning a great deal about your personality on this thread.
Because of you POS ancestor,
Admin Moderator, I beg you to please let cowboyway's post stand as a monument to his moral worth and to his powers of argument, such as they are.
Cowboyway, are you able to make an argument in your own words, or are you limited to posting sets of prefabricated links?
In other words, you can't come up with an answer to a simple question.
I'll ask again: what act by Abraham Lincoln prior to February 8, 1861 provoked the measures undertaken on that date?
So, in other words, Abraham Lincoln did not provoke the war until after the war had already begun.
Why has Lincoln's secret of time travel not been passed down to contemporary scientists?
That alleged quote was manufactured by a journalist. It was never said.
it was FREEDOM, rather than a hamlet that was DESTROYED.
The so-called "freedom" to deprive black men of their freedom was destroyed, indeed.
How fascinating that you feel the loss of that particular so-called "freedom" so deeply.
Thanks for this post, SL.
Your experience and mine have been quite similar.
Thanks.
Recently I’ve seen strong parallels between southern and “moderate” attitudes towards slavery in the 1850s and liberal attitudes towards communism in the 1960s thru 1980s.
In each case it was those who denounced a great moral evil who were held responsible for any disruption that arose. If everybody just pretended slavery (or communism) wasn’t evil then we could have peace in our time.
Anybody remember the uproar when Reagan called the USSR an “evil empire?” Most of those who criticized him at the time didn’t even bother to dispute the accuracy of his characterization, they were just infuriated that someone had dared to use forbidden language.
There was remarkably similar reaction to Lincoln’s rather more restrained statement that “a house divided against itself cannot stand.” Didn’t he know saying such things could lead to secession and civil war? Lincoln’s most effective counter-punch to his critics was to point out that they had an argument not with him, but with a somewhat higher authority, Christ, who first used the expression.
One significant difference between the reactions to Lincoln and Reagan is that Reagan’s policy was to drop the decades-old policy of containment and to drive communist forces back where possible.
Lincoln was only trying to reestablish the recently dropped policy of containment of slavery and prevent its further expansion.
In 1854 Lincoln had been out of office for six years. He later said that he had lost interest in poltitics and elective office until national events drew him back in.
His Peoria speech was in direct response to the Kansas-Nebraska Act, which allowed the spread of slavery into areas from which it had been banned for decades.
Lincoln did not run again for office for another four years after the Peoria speech, 1858, when he challenged Douglas for his Senate seat. Even then he wasn’t seeking votes in the way you mean, since the legislature, not the voters, elected the Senator.
Is it just possible that his Peoria speech, not made as part of a run for office, expressed nothing but his sincere beliefs?
Indeed.
Most people don't seem to realize exactly how hotheaded and ill-considered secession was.
The reaction to Lincoln's election among Democrats in 1860 was as hysterical and stupid as the reaction to Bush's election among Democrats in 2000.
Sometimes, in a republic, your favorite candidate does not win. That's one of the risks of living in a free society.
Lincoln's position was simple: he was not in favor of creating new slave states - he believed the existing roster of slave states was sufficient.
Not a particularly extreme position at all. And he was not really in a position to do a lot about that policy goal, since he would have been a Republican president with a Democrat majority in the House and Senate.
Yet the original Confederacy seceded before Lincoln was ever sworn in.
No honest analysis of the situation in 1860 would say that the architects of the Confederacy really believed that Lincoln would be an effective President capable of enacting even his own stated agenda, let alone any laws that would have injured slavery in the Southern section.
The reason why they acted without even having the specious justification that was later claimed was because the writing was on the wall: slavery was not catching on in the territories, the free state population was much larger and growing rapidly - close to 90% of all immigrants came to free states.
Informed Southerners knew that by 1870 there would be several new free states and that the 1870 and 1880 censuses would, at the then-current pace, reduce the South's Congressional delegation to a size where it could no longer automatically derail legislation perceived detrimental to its sectional interests.
Calhoun knew this in 1850 - hence his "concurrent majority" plan to give the South a legally-enshrined veto.
There was no legal way the South could stop the inexorable movement of demography. So they decided to act illegally before their self-created numerical and financial disadvantage grew any greater.
I've never been able to come up with a tabulation of what the party composition of Lincoln's first Congress would have been if secession had not intervened. Do you have a link to it?
I do that precisely because of you and your posse.
When an argument is posted, your team demands links, so I go straight to the links.
Now you get links and you question ones ability to formulate their own words, implying a non-thinker.
The truth is that you don't like the latest set of links I posted because you have no answer for them so you're trying to dodge the debate with personal attacks.
Keep it up. You're doing great.
Did you post that with a straight face? Really?
Don't freak out, but I'm gonna post a link. South Carolina Secession Declaration
Your characterizations of Southerners as 'hot-headed' is standard yankee talk that continues to this day. Compare the hot-headed cowboy, George Bush, with the intellectual, nuanced and haughty, John Kerry.
I submit to you that the SC Declaration is thoughtful and well written.
So they decided to act illegally
Show where secession was illegal in 1860.
before their self-created numerical and financial disadvantage grew any greater.
That's just a flat lie.
Didn't the north act in it's own self interest without any consideration for their 'fellow countrymen' in the South?
Question: If you join a club and they start making rules that will impoverish you, are you going to continue your membership or will you cut your losses and get out while you can?
It can't strictly be done.
Comparing the 36th with the 37th Congresses and proceeding on the assumption that the Unionists would have remained Democrats and the pre-Virginia Confederate states that were vacated would have returned exclusively Democrats, the House would have been 128 Democrats vs. 108 Republicans and the Senate 35 Democrat versus 31 Republican.
Did you post that with a straight face? Really?
It's from one of my posts. Sounds like something that would come from one of you yankees.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.