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."
free dixie,sw
the FACT is that NONE iof you unionist fanatics will accept as FACT, NOTHING (no matter how well documented/peer-reviewed/footnoted), IF the facts make the DAMNyankees/radical unionists LOOK stupid/immoral/amoral/hypocritical or ANYTHING BUT "saintly"/perfect/"wunnerful wunnerful, in every way". (such an attitude is called: WILFUL BLINDNESS and/or INTENTIONAL IGNORANCE.)
free dixie,sw
No, what you said was that you'd hit the abuse button and report me to the moderators if I ever responded to another of your posts. Do you want me to show you the post where you said that? Did you wimp out on your threat, or was it simply laughed at by the mods?
the TRUTH is that ANYONE who believes that the WBTS was mostly/mainly/solely about anything BUT:
a. (from the northern view) keeping the south/southerners IN the union against their will AND permanently subservient to the northern business/social/intellectual/financial elites
OR
b. (from the southern view) winning our freedom from the north/elites
is NAIVE,a "useful idiot"/FOOL and/or a south-HATING BIGOT, who "knows NOT & knows NOT that he knows NOT'.
there were FEW persons north OR south in 1860 who cared about "the plight of the slaves". they SHOULD have cared;they did NOT care. that, too, is the UNcomfortable FACT. thus "chattel slavery" as the sole/main/most important "cause of the war" is , in one word, a LIE.
free dixie,sw
could it be that you KNOW the answer & are UN-comfortable with telling everyone here???
the CS Marine Corps was ALWAYS desegregated (and about 20% NON-white) from 1861-1865.
the US Marines swore in their FIRST Black Marines in 1943.
80 years surely seems an awfully long time to wait for Black US Marines, don't you think???
free dixie,sw
laughing AT the members of "the DAMNyankee coven".
free dixie,sw
He won’t do it - he hasn’t got the stones for it. He would prefer to stand there in his pee-soaked trousers and bellow at the world...
Haven’t read the gentleman’s book.
However, do you contest that there were less than 500,000 free blacks in 1860? That’s what the census says.
Of the total Union state population of roughly 25M, about 2.5M served in the military. The CSA percentage of service by white men was somewhat higher, but they had all those slaves to take up the slack on the home front.
Applying that same percentage to free blacks would give a total of less than 50,000 as potential recruits to the CSA. Since the considerable majority of free blacks lived in northern states, it is reasonable to assume most of them would have chosen to fight for the Union, even leaving out of the discussion the obvious racial politics and the fact that northern blacks wouldn’t have found it easy to even get to the CSA recruiting offices.
The other option for the CSA to come up with 100,000+ “volunteers” is that slaves served in the CSA, albeit in informal ways, since the CSA government quite carefully prohibited their serving legally until 1865.
Are you seriously contending that a black slave who traveled and fought with an Alabama regiment was a volunteer in any legitimate sense of the word? A slave, by definition, cannot be a volunteer.
I am, BTW, well aware of Forrest’s black scouts, although I’m unclear whether they were free or, if they were slaves, who “owned” them.
I’m not ignoring your issue. I just don’t think the racial composition of a force that never reached its authorized strength of 1000 men is particularly relevant to a war in which something around 3.5M to 4.0M men fought.
I see. I agree that disunion/secession/war was a result of many complex factors, among them those you mention. Although I believe, in common with just about every single person alive at the time, that slavery was at the root of the conflict.
But if I don’t agree 100% with you that secession was ONLY about “freedom,” then I am “NAIVE,a “useful idiot”/FOOL and/or a south-HATING BIGOT.”
I think a reasonable person would conclude that your position is the one that is simplistic and naive.
Kentucky Senator Crittenden proposed a series of compromises in 1860 that some think came close to ending the crisis. Every single part of this compromise dealt with slavery, fugitive slaves, slavery in the territories, slavery in DC, etc.
It made no attempt whatsoever to address tariffs, internal improvements, or any of the the other issues dredged up as “root causes” after the war by the losers to justify their rebellion as “not about slavery.”
Was the Senator stupid? Why did he bring up this irrelevant issue to defuse the secession crisis?
Moral of the story is: "Winning is good."
The difference between 1776 and 1860 is that the Founders made no attempt to promote slavery as a positive good or to encourage its spread. Quite the opposite. They all, AFAIK, wanted it to eventually die out and were convinced that it would.
In 1860 many southern leaders wanted to spread slavery across Latin America and eventually around the world, defending it as a positive good and the only true basis for a free society.
There is considerable evidence that prior to 1860 there was a loosely organized conspiracy in the South to force slavery on the free states, a perfectly logical extension of the Dred Scott ruling. It was only when the South's overreaching led to a backlash in the North and their loss of the election that they decided to secede.
And I agree that the Founders who were slaveowners were to some extent hypocrites. Most of them were well aware of this themselves, and it bothered them. They just didn't know how to escape the trap they were in. That's quite different from denying a trap exists, while simultaneously building a larger trap and planning to drag others into it.
I've always defended secession, never slavery. You obviously don't have the intellectual agility to reconcile the difference and be able to debate the merits of secession in it's own right.
Whatever.
I have no objection to arguments in favor of secession based on legalities, although I don't find them particularly convincing.
What I object to is the attempt to justify secession as being in the interests of "freedom."
IMHO that argument can ONLY be logically sustained by denying the full humanity of those you are enslaving. Numerous southern leaders, including the Chief Justice, agreed with me. Blacks weren't "really" men.
There are consequences to ideology. The USA is based on the ideology that "all men are created equal," however imperfectly applied that ideology may have been at times. Carried to its logical conclusions, we wind up roughly where we are today, at least from a legal standpoint.
The CSA was based on an emerging master race ideology. I think most of us have a pretty good idea where ideologies of this type quite inevitably lead a society.
IOW, my disagreement with you is not about secession as such, it's with your claim that secession was legitimately motivated by a desire for freedom. It was, of course, but it was mostly the desire for freedom to continue denying freedom to others.
Sure did.
So some random northern people, including a general, made comments that can be interpreted in the way you do. I'll take your word for it that such documents exist and even that the writers had such intentions.
So what?
Your statement is that "northerners" intended to keep their own slaves while freeing those of southerners. Presumably you didn't mean two or three random northerners, you meant a majority, or at least a large enough group that they would have some chance of putting their plans into action.
Their plans didn't work out very well, did they?
My comments have been based on what northerners DID, not random extractions from casual letters.
Union states had freed all slaves, with the exception of about 20,000, before the war had even ended. The remaining slaves were in what all before the war had considered a southern, not a northern, state.
Then northerners passed constitutional amendments freeing all slaves immediately, without compensation, even slaves of men who had fought for the Union.
BTW, there's a historical injustice there that gets very little attention.
They then forced southern states to ratify the amendments.
BTW, there was discussion in the early part of the war of freeing the slaves of "traitors," while allowing loyalists to retain theirs. But this was more of a proposed revenge tactic than an anti-slavery move, and it never really got any traction. In time of war, as in all other periods, some people say stupid things. Taking such talk and claiming it as the fixed intention of a large group is inappropriate.
Hispaniola at the time of the WBTS was divided into two nations, Haiti and the Dominican Republic. Haiti underwent a horrific slave rebellion/war for independence in the early 1800s. No slavery there. The DR had ended slavery during its period of conquest by Haiti in the 20s and 30s. It was "recolonized" by Spain during most of the WBTS, which grabbed the opportunity of the Monroe Doctrine being dead for the moment, with the USA busy with other things. The reintroduction of slavery was rumoured, and was a major factor in the war of independence, which succeeded in 1865. Slavery was never re-established there.
Martinique (and Guadeloupe) are legally part of France, as is French Guiana. Slavery was permanently abolished in these areas in 1848.
Slavery was abolished in the Dutch Islands and Surinam in 1863, although vestiges hung on for another 15 years or so. Certainly no imports were permitted.
Slavery was abolished in Jamaica and all other British Islands and territories in 1834, with an "apprenticeship" abolished itself in 1838.
All slaves in the Danish Islands were freed in 1848.
Venezuela formally abolished slavery in 1854, although it was pretty well ended long before that. One source says 1821.
Colombia (includes Panama) abolished slavery in 1821.
I wasn't able to come up with a year for Costa Rica, but it was apparently in the 20s sometime, and slavery wasn't ever very important there.
Nicaragua abolished slavery early in the century. William Walker, a southern filibuster, conquered Nicaragua in 1856 and re-instituted slavery, but was promptly defeated and slavery revoked.
Slavery in Honduras ended in the early 1800s, haven't found a date.
Guatamela abolished slavery sometime in the early 1800s, Mexico in 1829.
I've now covered, I believe, every Caribbean and northern South American country. None had slavery, during the WBTS except Cuba (and the Dutch colonies during the early part of the war, but I believe even they prohibited imports).
(whether lawful or not. in some places, slaves were called "servants", "laborers" and/or "bondsmen", but they WERE slaves.)
Possible. Peonage and similar customs have existed for centuries in many places. Not exactly the same thing as chattel slavery, and not likely to fit well with importing massive amounts of foreigners.
You have claimed that northerners shipped massive numbers of slaves to the Caribbean during the WBTS. Please submit something resembling evidence or admit you made it up.
""However, do you contest-----" ===>YEP, i do, as the censuses of the 18th/19th centuries were AT BEST "educated guesses" & at worst, FRAUDULENT. may i offer the following evidence:
1. census "data" from 1890 stated that John Henry Barefoot & James Haley Barefoot (identical twins from Delaware County) were:
a. married to the SAME woman in 1890 & that BOTH men had six adult children with the same EXACT names &
b. John's wife is listed as a "spinster", even though she had been married to him for over 15 years & had had 3 sons & 4 daughters by him (the First Methodist Church office has the marriage certificate from 1874. = i happen to know about that particular bit of NONSENSE by the "enumerators" as a friend of mine is a descendant of John Barefoot & used his father's CSA service/pension record as proof to join the UDC.),
c.James was listed as a full-blood Seminole &
d.John was listed as a HALF-breed Cherokee! (fwiw, the twins were PROBABLY really Choctaw - nobody living is SURE, but they certainly were NOT of two different tribes! ===> note: there are MANY such RIDICULOUS claims in the 19th century censuses.)
2. at least three major genealogical societies (DAR, Aztec Club, UDC) that will NOT accept "family information" based on census data, absent REAL proof of the authenticity of the census information.
another comment that i've covered previously on these threads: the census of 1860 was SO BAD that, due to flooding of the Red & Trinity Rivers, the "census takers" said that NOBODY lived WEST of the Trinity. (can you say DALLAS & FT WORTH, children??? SURE, you can.)
next: (one more time!) slaves WERE NOT & COULD NOT be CS soldiers,sailors,marines. only FREE men could take the oath of enlistment (YES, SOME slaves were freed to enlist in the forces, but not nearly enough to make up a regiment, much less 100,ooo-150,ooo volunteers.). further, there are TENS OF THOUSANDS of CSA service records/pension records at the US Archives in DC & in many state archives as well (do you suggest that, like SOME DUMB-bunnies here do, that the US Archives are "in the hands of the neo-confederates" and/or that "somebody just went over & changed everything in the veterans files"?).
finally, MANY Black CSA veterans were active members of the United Confederate Veterans (do you believe that the WHITE members of the UCV would have accepted Black members, who were NOT really veterans??? OR, for that matter, that today's UDC/SCV would accept as members persons who are descendants of persons who did NOT serve???).
Sherman, the FACT is that you NEED to go to the archives with my friend & SEE for yourself what i'm talking about. then you won't have your "blinders on", as all too many of the LEFTIST/nit-witted/REVISIONIST/"useful idiots" of "the DAMNyankee coven" DO! (fwiw, i've offered numerous times to take off from work, go to the Archives with any/several of the DYs to show them the PROOF that they've been LIED TO, provided that they promised that, after i had done that, that they would come on FR & ADMIT the TRUTH, that they had seen with "their own eyes". NONE of the DYs want to KNOW the TRUTH and/or they want to HIDE the FACTS that prove that they are LYING! = fwiw, that is called: WILFUL IGNORANCE & intellectual DISHONESTY.)
free dixie,sw
you don't think it important that the CSMC was DESEGREGATED 80 years BEFORE the USMC "lowered itself" to accept Black/AI volunteers??? could it be that you dismiss this bit of TRUTH because it doesn't "fit the DY template"???
free dixie,sw
as for "simplistic", i think NOT. it is the DAMN-fools/DAMNyankees that are the SIMPLETONS, in that they wish to reduce the WBTS to a "Crusade Against Slavery", rather than the war against northern ELITISM that it really was. (fwiw, "The Radical School", though they are marxist/leninist in outlook, adherents are HALF-right: the WBTS was at least MOSTLY a economic/CLASS WAR against "the HAVES" by "the HAVE-NOTS". it was, in many ways, a PEASANT REVOLT. ===> note: had the south won our war for freedom, the "plantation aristocrats" might well have been "NEXT" on "the list of southron ENEMIES", as the aristocrats were all too often, colloborators!!!)
admitting that the WBTS (from the northern view) was ONLY about keeping the south IN the union & subservient forever to northern financial/business/social elites and/OR (from the southern view) that the southern people simply wanted OUT of the union (as was their NATURAL RIGHT, enumerated in the BOR!) makes the DYs look like the AGGRESSORS/OPPRESSORS that they demonstrably were.
PITY that you haven't figured that out, too.
free dixie,sw
as for "simplistic", i think NOT. it is the DAMN-fools/DAMNyankees that are the SIMPLETONS, in that they wish to reduce the WBTS to a "Crusade Against Slavery", rather than the war against northern ELITISM that it really was. (fwiw, "The Radical School", though they are marxist/leninist in outlook, adherents are HALF-right: the WBTS was at least MOSTLY a economic/CLASS WAR against "the HAVES" by "the HAVE-NOTS". it was, in many ways, a PEASANT REVOLT. ===> note: had the south won our war for freedom, the "plantation aristocrats" might well have been "NEXT" on "the list of southron ENEMIES", as the aristocrats were all too often, collaborators!!!)
admitting that the WBTS (from the northern view) was ONLY about keeping the south IN the union & subservient forever to northern financial/business/social elites and/OR (from the southern view) that the southern people simply wanted OUT of the union (as was their NATURAL RIGHT, enumerated in the BOR!) makes the DYs look like the AGGRESSORS/OPPRESSORS that they demonstrably were.
PITY that you haven't figured that out, too.
free dixie,sw
free dixie,sw
YES, i know about the slave revolt on Hispaniola & that SUPPOSEDLY slavery was outlawed in both Haiti & in the DR. the REALITY was QUITE different!
the colonies of France had "de facto slavery" until well after 1900 = the slaves were called (i think, my HS French "leaves a lot to be desired"!!):"Enchainees ceux".
the "Dutch islands" HAD "de facto slavery" well into the 1880s.
further, i was stationed (with USASOCOM) in Venezuela in the 1980s & know, for a FACT, that "Los Obreros" of the 1920s were IN ACTUALITY slaves, despite the FACT that slavery was outlawed over 80 years before.
"de facto" & "de jure" are often QUITE different. IF you are "laboring under the lash" & WITHOUT WAGES, you ARE a SLAVE, regardless of what you are called.
free dixie,sw
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.