PC has done in American history. The real historical shame is the deification of one of the most ruthless bloody Presidents the US ever had, Lincoln.
Dag nabbit! Dem Yankee varmints are gonna get their comeuppance! Der Souf will rise again I tell ya!
IMO this shouldn’t be happening in the first place.
No theme plates, no vanity plates, no plates to save the manatee or any other cause.
License plates should be uniform and have a number with a state & county on it.
BTW, the folks in Florida who pay $100 a year (or whatever it is now) for a plate to save the manatee or support whatever cause that makes them feel good about themselves? You should know that the state takes a percentage of the money for “administration” fees and the byzantine method for disbursing the money means that some of your money is possibly going to someone else’s cause.
If you care about a cause, and aren’t aiming to show everyone else how much you care, donate directly to the cause. Don’t give any more money to the state.
“I see the Confederate flag as the symbol of men who, as Lincoln put it, wrung their bread from the sweat of other men’s faces...”
That viewpoint is his problem since he is not a Southerner. The Confederate flag has never symbolized slavery to any Southerner; it symbolizes a people, and a people who fought, not for slavery, but an invading army. Real men in this country use to fight invaders because of love of country, their people, other lofty motives. Now, only base motives are assigned to those instincts, such as racism. Currently, I am supposed to revere May 5, rather than something that symbolizes part of my heritage.
“rend the Union, even by war.”
Odd comment coming from Lincoln — considering he was the one who ordered the invasion of the southern states.
One of the biggest lies in American History is that the Civil War was started over slavery. When even the smallest bit of research can uncover Lincoln conceded the issue of slavery to the South during the negotiations leading to secession and made it clear it was not a contentious issue in his Inaugural speech.
There's Thomas Circle, at 14th and M Street NW in Washington, DC. Back in the 1970's, 14th Street grew increasingly dangerous as one proceeded north from Thomas Circle into a high crime area, but the neighborhood has since become gentrified.
The way I see it is this: The Civil War was fought over federalism, whether states could secede, whether states had the right to self determination. The central government “won”. I see the Confederacy as little different from the Colonies who fought King George for the right to self determination.
No, the Confederate states were forced to remain in the federal club, even though they didn’t want to. What’s “free” about that?
virtually no Confederate soldiers actually owned slaves.
In actual fact, a very large percentage of soldiers, in fact a larger percentage than in the Confederate population, came from slaveowning families.
http://deadconfederates.com/2011/04/28/ninety-eight-percent-of-texas-confederate-soldiers-never-owned-a-slave/
By the standard used to come up with these creative statistics of low Confederate participation in slavery, Scarlett O'Hara was not a slaveowner, since legal title, as with most property in most households, was vested in her Papa.
The link above shows that in some southern states the percentage of slaveowning families was very near a majority.
I live in Osceola Mo a town that Lincoln ordered to be burned along with many others here in Missouri. My children did a research project on the Civil War, Lincoln and the “burnt districts”. Several area residents had parents (now deceased) and grandparents who wrote about and passed on to them many stories of what really went on during the Civil War. My wife and children came away with a totally different view from the ideas I was taught at public (government) school. Neither side was free from wrong doing to some extent that is true but just as we have seen in current events we surely can’t trust those who have re-written history to suite their ends.
Think what you will about the Civil War but no doubt as Stonewall Jackson had stated Slavery was to die a natural death already since it was not compatible with our founding documents taking in their totality.
It is a fact that much of the North including the beloved Lincoln was racist and wanted the “negros” returned to their homeland. Lincoln himself advocated this.
For a healthy counterbalance I recommend a book called “The Real Lincoln”.
If anyone is truly interested I have copies of a book written by a local historian documenting what happened in Missouri prior to the war and after. It is a real eye opener.
These men where prophetic. They could see the dangers we would face if the Federal Government was allowed to grow in scope and power beyond what the Founders intended. We are living that nightmare now.
Lincoln set the stage, Obama is now playing the part as well as many others before him Democrats and Republicans included.
It should also be noted that somewhere between 5% and 6% of southerners owned slaves in 1860. Which implies that at that time, 94% or 95% did not. 85% of Southerners owned the land and structures they lived upon, mostly small farms that *competed* with slave labored plantations.
The slave trade was very profitably financed from New England, and ironically, this paid in large part for the Industrial Revolution in the North, which allowed the North to conquer the South.
Before 1830, abolitionists in the North had advocated secession, because congress was dominated by the South. After 1830, when the North became dominant, only the South advocated secession.
Lincoln ordered the closure of 300 northern newspapers that either supported the South or advocated peace. Jefferson Davis did not close any, even those vigorously opposed to the war, secession or slavery.
I found this a very interesting read, if not slightly self-serving:
Leonard M Scruggs, “The Un-Civil War Shattering the Historical Myths”
Wow. A few years ago, it was only 30% of CSA troops owned slaves. Then it went to only 10%. Now its virtually no Confederate soldiers actually owned slaves. What's next... there were no slaves in the Confederacy?
Isn’t the Texas state flag a knock-off of the Confederate flag?
After past extended discussion with those claiming emancipation was only a late desperate move because the Union was losing, I put together the Timeline below.
To my mind it indicates that Emancipation was a continuous process starting within weeks of the beginning of the war and continuing pretty steadily through to the ultimate end of slavery.
1861
May General Butler refuses to return three slaves being used to build CSA fortifications to their owner. Concept of “contraband of war” originated.
August Confiscation Act of 1861 declares that any property, including slaves, used by CSA could be confiscated by military action.
September “Contrabands” employed by US Army and Navy paid wages, in addition to rations
November Nathaniel Gordon convicted and sentenced to death in NYC for slave trading (classified as piracy)
1862
February Nathaniel Gordon executed
March Washington, DC slaves freed by Congress, with compensation
Return of escaped slaves to their owners prohibited by Congress
April Congress offers compensation to any state that emancipates
May Lincoln publicly entreats border states to free slaves
Slavery prohibited in all territories
July Lincoln appeals again to the border states
September Preliminary Emancipation Proclamation
1863
January Final Emancipation Proclamation
July WV slaves freed by state action
1864
January 13th Amendment introduced
March AR slaves freed by state action
April 13th Amendment passes Senate
June Congress repeals Fugitive Slave Law
September LA slaves freed by state action
November MD slaves freed by state action
1865
January MO slaves freed by state action
13th Amendment passes House
February TN slaves freed by state action
April Lee surrenders
December 13th Amendment ratified
Slaves in KY (50,000) and DE (200) freed
As a proud Ohioan, I will not disavow the Ohio military men, who basically made the difference in the terrible War; even though I sincerely believe that the war could have been avoided. I honor those brave Ohio military men, and I also sincerely respect those unashamed Southerners, who honor their Confederate traditions.
All of that said, it is a completely dishonest tactic, intellectually, to denounce anyone's ancestry, because at some time, their ancestry lived in a country that had some form of involuntary servitude. Frankly, I have tried to think of five countries in the entire world, that never had some form of involuntary servitude, and I do not believe that I can.
Rather than dreaming up reasons to divide American Conservatives in 2015, why doesn't someone actually try to identify countries that never had involuntary servitude? It might start to put the divisive device, back in Pandora's box.
Instead of secession and war, the South would have done far better to have remained in the Union and gotten the best deal possible. A long delay in and compensation for emancipation would have avoided the worst economic losses and permitted the creation of new arrangements in which the slaves were freed, educated, and given a start as sharecroppers, small farmers, and tradesmen. Given the human and material costs of the Civil War, not just the South but the entire country would have been better off if secession and military conflict had been avoided.
Why didn't the South seek to make a deal instead of going to war? The prideful and unrealistic slaveholder planter class insisted that slavery was a positive good and led the South to the catastrophic folly of secession and toxic dreams of an expansion of slavery. As the saying goes though, it was a rich man's war, but a poor man's fight, and in Appalachia, the Alabama hill country, and other areas inhospitable to plantations, popular sentiment was pro-Union.
After the war, Southern memoirists, propagandists, and historians spun the great tale of the Lost Cause and of the antebellum South as the land of content, well-cared for slaves owned by refined, aristocratic planters -- done in by the grubby, industrialized North and a scheming, tyrannical Lincoln.
Notably, Jefferson Davis and the Confederate government were also accused of grabbing power at the expense of the Confederate states. The resistance to central power was effective enough to hamper the full mobilization and deployment of the South's resources. As one Southern general warned, the Confederacy's obituary would read that it had died of state's rights.
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