Posted on 08/05/2008 12:11:25 PM PDT by cowboyway
TAMPA, FLA. - Chip Witte doesn't consider himself a Rebel. He doesn't hang Dixie battle flags in his living room, nor does he wear one on the back of his leather jacket.
Yet when the Tampa motorcycle mechanic saw the world's largest Confederate battle flag unfurl above the intersection of I-75 and I-4 in June, he felt a jolt of solidarity with the lost cause and lost rights that he says the battle flag represents. "I think it's great that they're allowed to fly it," says Mr. Witte. [Editor's note: The original version misidentified the highway intersection.]
(Excerpt) Read more at csmonitor.com ...
Problem is that you take the left position on most threads you are on. You shouldn't get upset when people notice that.
For example?
And where did all the copperheads come from? Not from the Republican ranks, that's for sure. And if you'll look at the 1864 Democratic platform you'll see that there was a very prominent peace plank in it. So North and South, the supporters of the Southern rebellion were Democrats. Why is pointing that out wrong?
Based on what?
...btw let’s talk about your heritage?
Sure, if you're too embarassed to talk about your own. btw let’s talk about your heritage?
I just find it amusing that you Lost Causers immediately try to insult people by calling them liberal. The fact that there is nothing that indicates their political leanings other than the fact that they dare challenge the sacred Southron myths.
...but they don't mind calling you a racists Neo-Confederate or a lost causer.
Are you or are you not a supporter of the Lost Cause?
The sad stories you relate from Winston in North Alabama sound like the events I've been studying about in Tennessee and North Georgia. I've been researching a brave Unionist in Catoosa Co. Georgia by the name of Presley Yates. The rather elderly Mr. Yates voted against secession in the Georgia convention and after the rebellion started he continued to boldly speak out for the old Union. For that he got the typical Home Guard treatment - a shot in the head from a cowardly sniper. But the tough old man survived the attack, lived to welcome the Union army to Catoosa as liberators and, along with other Union men of the county, did what he could to aid Sherman's efforts in the opening stages of the Georgia campaign.
22ND Virginia Infantry Col. Patton’s Regiment.
45TH Virginia Infantry
60TH Virginia Infantry
8TH Virginia Cavalry
Those where the outfits my ancestors fought with not one of them belonged to either party they way they saw it they where for fighting for there homes and land that was there cause. Every year I myself place flags and flowers on there graves now let’s talk about your heritage?
As did many Georgians.
An examination of the actual secession vote in Georgia reveals that the secessionists likely lost the referendum on secession.
It was officially reported as 57.5% for secession and 42.5% against.
The Georgia Historical Society went back over the records because the returns in a number of strongly Unionist counties seemed to have been packed with more secession voters than there were actual voters in the counties.
Dade County claimed fraud at the time.
The GHS estimates the legitimate vote to have been 50.7% for Union and 49.3% for secession.
Had Georgia not seceded, it is unlikely that North Carolina would have seceded either - the war might have ended much sooner with far less bloodshed.
But the Democrat machine in GA fixed the vote.
Do you have family records demonstrating that these men were not Democrats?
Because the Democrats destroyed the Whigs in the 1856 elections in Virginia. Just a landslide.
And the soldiers of the Confederacy fought not just for their homes but also for their financial interests, including slaveholdings, as well.
Their letters home reveal that some signed up for fun, some to impress the ladies, some for money, some for family obligation, some for high principles, some for an offended sense of honor and some for fear that their financial holdings would be zeroed out with the loss of slavery. Or a combination of several of the above.
The Army of Northern Virginia and the Army of the Potomac were probably the best educated and most literate armies in world history up to that point.
They didn't speak for themselves in such monolithic terms as you imply.
Punctuation in your friend.
Every year I myself place flags and flowers on there graves now let’s talk about your heritage?
Knock yourself out.
Let’s hear about your heritage now N-S.
Nothing wrong with pointing it out. But what is its relevance today?
Nothing much to tell.
I didn't say it was. Stonewall dredged it up.
I live in a town that is about as far as you can get from the Confederacy in the contiguous 48 states. The town was founded by Union veterans. But an SCV group from another city has started flying the Confederate flag in a very prominent location in our town.
I suspect that a lot of the backers are not really celebrating their "heritage" but have attitudes similar to yours. Since I'm pretty sure that 99% of the local folk do not favor either slavery or a race war, the flag really doesn't belong here. But no doubt that's another motivating factor for the people who put it up.
I don’t think its about “white resistance” and I resent these racists using an historical American flag.
If they want a “white resistance” type flag, I have a suggestion - get a red flag with a large white circle and a swastika in black in the middle and use that because that’s the kind of vermin they are. And they should keep their filthy racist fingers off a piece of American history.
The process was akin to ethnic cleansing. The movie The Gangs of New York hinted at what was going on in the Northeast. The draft rioters in NYC weren't generally Yankees- they were Irish, Italian and other immigrants from Europe and they voted Democrat. New England Yankees, along with the Midwesterners in the Old Northwest who had come from New England, were the strongest supporters of the Union.
Democrats in this country have a long history of sedition and revolt, especially in wartime.
But those rioters got what they had coming to them, that's for sure.
No, it was not. As you said:
The Federal government had specified the right of Dred Scott to be held as a slave. The nullification states continued their open disregard of the law.
The concept of an individual (Dred Scott) having "the right to be held as a slave" is incoherent.
Then again, so was the finding in Dred Scott.
The Southern position of 1860 was the maximalist position implied in Dred Scott: namely that any slaveholder from a slaveholding state could move to any free state he wanted with his slaves and maintain them in slavery.
In other words, the South wanted use Taney's legislation from the bench as a means of nullifying the ordinances of all thye free states and, more importantly, guaranteeing that every new state brought into the Union would be a slave state.
What the South could not accomplish at the ballot box, they attempted to seize via the courts.
When the northern states dared to explore the constitutional boundaries of this innovative legal claim by passing new laws meant to close the loopholes opened by the Dred Scott ruling, the South realized that it could not depend on judicial activism by a pro-slavery Supreme Court forever.
Jackson sent the fleet to Charleston because the issue involved shipping while Buchanan sent marshals because the issue involved people.
Jackson sent fewer sailors to Charleston than Buchanan sent marshals to Boston.
The final straw, or the partial list of causes of the secession were the reapportionment of the Congress,
This was no grounds for grievance. The South had been getting a free lunch of massive overrepresentation in Congress for decades.
After reapportionment the South still had more representatives in Congress than they deserved by the numbers.
the dominance of one party,
The GOP received only 40% of the vote in the 1860 Presidential election and 49% of the Congressional seats.
The only reason why the GOP triumphed is the lack of discipline among Democrats - not GOP dominance.
and the expansionist
The South was all for new states and westward expansion. Not just that, but expeditions backed by Southern legislatures and Southern leaders had attempted to annex Cuba, Baja California and Nicaragua as prospective future slave states. Expansionism was a Southern obsession.
and tariff raising planks.
The agrarian South and West had enough Congressional votes to block new tariffs - and the South was not monolithically anti-tariff in 1860. The tariffs of the 1850s were low and Southern cotton was so profitable that Southerners were importing tons of foreign goods while benefitting from the internal improvements funded thereby.
Southern sugar growers and rice growers also liked tariffs, since they helped them compete against Caribbean producers.
And I will point out that the US Constitution does not prohibit reapportionment. it does not prohibit party politics. It specifically authorizes federal tariffs. It specifically provides for territorial expansion.
None of these grievances - which are mostly imaginary - were breaches of the Constitution.
Prior to 1860, what Constitutional rights were in danger by the Federal government?
They could see what was happening to the FEDERAL Government in DC.
And what was that? Congress had spent a decade trying to appease Southerners, often in the face of bullying, outrageous demands and, in one case, the near-fatal beating of an unarmed, elederly Congressmen at the hands of thuggish Southerners. But none of this was enough for the South. They chose war instead.
Matter of fact, if they could come back and see what the GOVERNMENT is doing now - especially with having King Harry and Queen Nancy leading
After the Civil War, the, Federal government went back to its pre-war size, more or less. The abuses we are stuck with today are the result of the New Deal (which was heavily supported by Southerners) and the Great Society (instituted by a Southern President). None of this has anything to do with what was going on in the country before the Civil War.
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