Posted on 04/24/2005 6:08:20 PM PDT by CHARLITE
Southern heritage buffs vow to use the Virginia gubernatorial election as a platform for designating April as Confederate History and Heritage Month.
The four candidates have differing views on the Confederacy, an issue that has been debated for years in the commonwealth.
"We're not just a few people making a lot of noise," said Brag Bowling, a spokesman for the Sons of Confederate Veterans, the oldest hereditary organization for male descendents of Confederate soldiers. "This is not a racial thing; it is good for Virginia. We're going to keep pushing this until we get it."
Each candidate recently shared his thoughts on what Mr. Bowling called a "litmus test for all politicians." Lt. Gov. Timothy M. Kaine would not support a Confederate History and Heritage Month. Former state Attorney General Jerry W. Kilgore would support something that recognizes everyone who lived during the Civil War.
Sen. H. Russell Potts Jr. and Warrenton Mayor George B. Fitch would support a Confederate History and Heritage Month. Many past Virginia governors honored the Civil War or the Confederacy.
In 1990, former Gov. L. Douglas Wilder, the nation's first black governor, a Democrat and a grandson of slaves, issued a proclamation praising both sides of the war and remembering "those who sacrificed in this great struggle."
Former Govs. George Allen and James S. Gilmore III, both Republicans, issued Confederate History Month proclamations. In 2000, Mr. Gilmore replaced that proclamation with one commemorating both sides of the Civil War -- a move that enraged the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Gov. Mark Warner, a Democrat, has refused to issue a gubernatorial decree on either side of the Civil War.
Mr. Kaine, another Democrat, would decline to issue a Confederate History and Heritage Month proclamation if he is elected governor, said his campaign spokeswoman, Delacey Skinner.
(Excerpt) Read more at insider.washingtontimes.com ...
No, just pointing out historical fact, not hysterical fiction.
What happened to Joseph was evil, but God allowed it so good could arise.
Because man is evil God sent us a Saviour, I just happen to think his name was Jesus, not Lincoln as some here seem to believe.
There are alot of things that God has allowed due to man's wickedness, divorce being one example.
Just as God favoured this republic since the states threw off their allegaince to Britian. Despie having slavery, God favoured us because this was a Christian republic.
No man was ever born to be enslaved, and that is the principle of the Declaration.
Sigh. Wishing that it were true will not make it so. Again, half the world practiced slavery. Africa/Islam is replete with slavery today. Yankees might have sailed to Africa to purchase slaves, but the majority of slaves were already enslaved by Africans. The founders, as evidenced by the political acts limiting citizenship etc to WHITES ONLY, believe in political equality - the the right to self-rule.
Just as God directed the Israelites to sell their own sons and daughters into slavery in certain conditions, or to take captives as slaves.
See post 157.
I think you stated it more precisely, but it's nice to know I'm not alone out here :)
"Twelve owned or managed slave-operated plantations or large farms: Bassett, Blair, Blount, Butler, Carroll, Jenifer, Mason, Charles Pinckney, Charles Cotesworth Pinckney, Rutledge, Spaight, and Washington. Madison also owned slaves. Broom and Few were small farmers." -Wikipedia.org
How about the Founding Fathers themselves?
I am far from advocating slavery, especially as carried out on only a type of person. It is simply a charade to pronounce that they MEANT one thing, while practicing another.
by their very nature, flacks are UNbelievable to the discerning. otoh, Brag comes across to most people as AUTHENTIC & TRUTHFUL.
the public may not agree with his views but they do BELIEVE him to be HONEST.
free dixie,sw
secession is ONE of the RIGHTS of STATES/the people NOT CEDED to the central government.
SORRY, but you LOSE this one.
free dixie,sw
He comes across as authentic, truthful, and not very well educated. That's the problem.
perhaps you just don't like his style of speech.
i for a FACT know he's VERY SMART.
free dixie,sw
That is not the point. The point is that he does not sound or write as though he has a master's degree in anything (though to be frank education is not the most intellectually rigorous field in which to obtain an advanced degree, as is well known).
perhaps you just don't like his style of speech.
I don't like our cause represented by someone who can't go toe-to-toe with his adversaries in the rest of the media. I don't like our cause represented by ill-written diatribes. As for accents: well, I have one myself.
i for a FACT know he's VERY SMART.
That may well be the case.
What I do not seem to be able to communicate to you is that it's not important if you like Brag Bowling or not. He has no need to preach to the choir; the choir is already convinced. The point is that Southern heritage needs to be represented by someone who can go out into the broader world and teach America, and the world, that Southerners are not ignorant hicks and the Confederacy was not about being cruel to slaves. I'm afraid that Bowling is not doing a wonderful job at persuading the unpersuaded because he appears to fulfill every unjust stereotype they have about the Southern cause. That is not a good thing.
And BTW: Just as "Seperation of Church and State" is a myth in OUR Constitution, "Secession is against the law" is as well.
And as in both cases, Communist Governments HAVE made them law.
The USSR had a distinct clause for seperation of chruch and state in those words.
China in March inacted The Anti-Secession Law.
A certain German Dictator admired Lincoln, and shared his views. See this post: http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/backroom/1384002/posts?page=305#305
Quote the text...
Book and chapter and verse.
Not writings...their ACTIONS!
"By their fruits ye shall know them."
All of the men I mentioned could have freed their slaves, especially Jefferson. The fact is, he didn't believe in your concept of equality (Which is mine as well!).
It was Yankee blood spilled in a foreign country that the Yankees conquered and forced back into the Union against their people's will, says this Yankee.
And, you're claiming the South seceded for the sole purpose of keeping their slaves (You listed no other reasons) and were extremely immoral for so doing? Then what do you say about the Union allies in Maryland and Delaware whose slaves were not freed under the Emancipation Proclamation? Only those slaves in states not then under the control of the President of the United States were "freed" by the EP.
A man with character would have taken on the offending other man, not burned an animal.
Time to stop telling that B.S. story anyway until you try to duplicate it, because when you do you will get a kick that'll send you farther than horse and soldier in your fanciful story about your cowardly, animal-torturing ancestor.
I do see the similarities between a man who would make up a story about himself and his descendant who takes time from his work day to insult the ancestors of some of the best people on this site.
And, I'm from Massachusetts too.
Likewise slavery did not begin until Genesis 10.
To say that because slavery is in the Bible means that it is good is no different then saying that because pologmy is in the Bible (it begins in Gen.4), that it should be acceptable also.
God did not intend man to be a slave or to have more then one wife.
Your Confederacy was fighting to keep slavery alive as a virtue, just like you and your buddies are arguing for it now.
The Confederacy was anti-American and thus, Anti-Freedom
Slavery was not that easy to get oneself out of in the first place.
That the Founders did attempt to limit it and end it eventually shows that they thought slavery was an evil, not a good (as later espoused by the Confederacy)
That the former colonies all had slavery and many of them did end it due to the Declaration, shows that the principles were believed in.
Moreover, there were many freed slaves living in these areas as citizens.
This was a fact that Taney ignored when he made his Dred Scott decision, that the Declaration was not meant for Negros.
Freed Black men were citizens of the United States and had fought in the Revolution and had voted in later elections.
http://www.wallbuilders.com/resources/search/detail.php?ResourceID=94
The Founders Believed Slavery Was Fundamentally Wrong. The overwhelming majority of early Americans and most of America's leaders did not own slaves. Some did own slaves, which were often inherited (like George Washington at age eleven), but many of these people set them free after independence. Most Founders believed that slavery was wrong and that it should be abolished. William Livingston, signer of the Constitution and Governor of New Jersey, wrote to an anti-slavery society in New York (John Jay, the first Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court and President of the Continental Congress, was President of this society):
I would most ardently wish to become a member of it [the anti-slavery society] and . . . I can safely promise them that neither my tongue, nor my pen, nor purse shall be wanting to promote the abolition of what to me appears so inconsistent with humanity and Christianity. . . . May the great and the equal Father of the human race, who has expressly declared His abhorrence of oppression, and that He is no respecter of persons, succeed a design so laudably calculated to undo the heavy burdens, to let the oppressed go free, and to break every yoke. 11
John Quincy Adams, who worked tirelessly for years to end slavery, spoke of the anti-slavery views of the southern Founders, including Jefferson who owned slaves:
The inconsistency of the institution of domestic slavery with the principles of the Declaration of Independence was seen and lamented by all the southern patriots of the Revolution; by no one with deeper and more unalterable conviction than by the author of the Declaration himself. No charge of insincerity or hypocrisy can be fairly laid to their charge. Never from their lips was heard one syllable of attempt to justify the institution of slavery. They universally considered it as a reproach fastened upon them by the unnatural step-mother country and they saw that before the principles of the Declaration of Independence, slavery, in common with every other mode of oppression, was destined sooner or later to be banished from the earth. Such was the undoubting conviction of Jefferson to his dying day. In the Memoir of His Life, written at the age of seventy-seven, he gave to his countrymen the solemn and emphatic warning that the day was not distant when they must hear and adopt the general emancipation of their slaves. “Nothing is more certainly written,” said he, “in the book of fate, than that these people are to be free.” 12
The Founding Fathers believed that blacks had the same God-given inalienable rights as any other peoples. James Otis of Massachusetts said in 1764 that “The colonists are by the law of nature freeborn, as indeed all men are, white or black.” 13
There had always been free blacks in America who owned property, voted, and had the same rights as other citizens. 14 Most of the men who gave us the Declaration and the Constitution wanted to see slavery abolished. For example, George Washington wrote in a letter to Robert Morris:
I can only say that there is not a man living who wishes more sincerely than I do to see a plan adopted for the abolition of it [slavery]. 15
Charles Carroll, Signer of Declaration from Maryland, wrote:
Why keep alive the question of slavery? It is admitted by all to be a great evil. 16
Benjamin Rush, Signer from Pennsylvania, stated: Domestic slavery is repugnant to the principles of Christianity. . . . It is rebellion against the authority of a common Father. It is a practical denial of the extent and efficacy of the death of a common Savior. It is an usurpation of the prerogative of the great Sovereign of the universe who has solemnly claimed an exclusive property in the souls of men. 17
Father of American education, and contributor to the ideas in the Constitution, Noah Webster wrote: Justice and humanity require it [the end of slavery] — Christianity commands it. Let every benevolent . . . pray for the glorious period when the last slave who fights for freedom shall be restored to the possession of that inestimable right. 18
Quotes from John Adams reveal his strong anti-slavery views: Every measure of prudence, therefore, ought to be assumed for the eventual total extirpation of slavery from the United States. . . . I have, through my whole life, held the practice of slavery in . . . abhorrence. 19 My opinion against it [slavery] has always been known. . . . [N]ever in my life did I own a slave. 20
When Benjamin Franklin served as President of the Pennsylvania Society of Promoting the Abolition of Slavery he declared: “Slavery is . . . an atrocious debasement of human nature.” 21
Thomas Jefferson's original draft of the Declaration included a strong denunciation of slavery, declaring the king's perpetuation of the slave trade and his vetoing of colonial anti-slavery measures as one reason the colonists were declaring their independence:
He [King George III] has waged cruel war against human nature itself, violating its most sacred rights of life and liberty in the persons of a distant people who never offended him, captivating and carrying them into slavery in another hemisphere. . . . Determined to keep open a market where MEN should be bought and sold, he has prostituted his negative for suppressing every legislative attempt to prohibit or restrain this execrable commerce. 22
Prior to independence, anti-slavery measures by the colonists were thwarted by the British government. Franklin wrote in 1773:
A disposition to abolish slavery prevails in North America, that many of Pennsylvanians have set their slaves at liberty, and that even the Virginia Assembly have petitioned the King for permission to make a law for preventing the importation of more into that colony. This request, however, will probably not be granted as their former laws of that kind have always been repealed.. 23
The Founders took action against slavery. The founders did not just believe slavery was an evil that needed to be abolished, and they did not just speak against it, but they acted on their beliefs. During the Revolutionary War black slaves who fought won their freedom in every state except South Carolina and Georgia. 24
Many of the founders started and served in anti-slavery societies. Franklin and Rush founded the first such society in America in 1774. John Jay was president of a similar society in New York. Other Founding Fathers serving in anti-slavery societies included: William Livingston (Constitution signer), James Madison, Richard Bassett, James Monroe, Bushrod Washington, Charles Carroll, William Few, John Marshall, Richard Stockton, Zephaniah Swift, and many more. 25
As the Founders worked to free themselves from enslavement to Britain, based upon laws of God and nature, they also spoke against slavery and took steps to stop it. Abolition grew as principled resistance to the tyranny of England grew, since both were based upon the same ideas. This worked itself out on a personal as well as policy level, as seen in the following incident in the life of William Whipple, signer of the Declaration of Independence from New Hampshire. Dwight writes:
When General Whipple set out to join the army, he took with him for his waiting servant, a colored man named Prince, one whom he had imported from Africa many years before. He was a slave whom his master highly valued. As he advanced on his journey, he said to Prince, “If we should be called into an engagement with the enemy, I expect you will behave like a man of courage, and fight like a brave soldier for your country.” Prince feelingly replied, “Sir, I have no inducement to fight, I have no country while I am a slave. If I had my freedom, I would endeavor to defend it to the last drop of my blood.” This reply of Prince produced the effect on his master's heart which Prince desired. The general declared him free on the spot. 26
The Founders opposed slavery based upon the principle of the equality of all men. Throughout history many slaves have revolted but it was believed (even by those enslaved) that some people had the right to enslave others. The American slave protests were the first in history based on principles of God-endowed liberty for all. It was not the secularists who spoke out against slavery but the ministers and Christian statesmen.
Before independence, some states had tried to restrict slavery in different ways (e.g. Virginia had voted to end the slave trade in 1773), but the English government had not allowed it. Following independence and victory in the war, the rule of the mother country was removed, leaving freedom for each state to deal with the slavery problem. Within about 20 years of the 1783 Treaty of Peace with Britain, the northern states abolished slavery: Pennsylvania and Massachusetts in 1780; Connecticut and Rhode Island in 1784; New Hampshire in 1792; Vermont in 1793; New York in 1799; and New Jersey in 1804.
The Northwest Ordinance (1787, 1789), which governed the admission of new states into the union from the then northwest territories, forbid slavery. Thus, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Iowa all prohibited slavery. This first federal act dealing with slavery was authored by Rufus King (signer of the Constitution) and signed into law by President George Washington.
Although no Southern state abolished slavery, there was much anti-slavery sentiment. Many anti-slavery societies were started, especially in the upper South. Many Southern states considered proposals abolishing slavery, for example, the Virginia legislature in 1778 and 1796. When none passed, many, like Washington, set their slaves free, making provision for their well being. Following independence, “Virginia changed her laws to make it easier for individuals to emancipate slaves,” 27 though over time the laws became more restrictive in Virginia.
While most states were moving toward freedom for slaves, the deep South (Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina) was largely pro-slavery. Yet, even so, the Southern courts before around 1840 generally took the position that slavery violated the natural rights of blacks. For example, the Mississippi Supreme Court ruled in 1818:
Slavery is condemned by reason and the laws of nature. It exists and can only exist, through municipal regulations, and in matters of doubt,...courts must lean in favorem vitae et libertatis [in favor of life and liberty]. 28
The same court ruled in 1820 that the slave “is still a human being, and possesses all those rights, of which he is not deprived by the positive provisions of the law.” 29
Free blacks were citizens and voted in most Northern states and Virginia, North Carolina, and South Carolina. In Baltimore prior to 1800, more blacks voted than whites; but in 1801 and 1809, Maryland began to restrict black voting and in 1835 North Carolina prohibited it. Other states made similar restrictions, but a number of Northern states allowed blacks to vote and hold office. In Massachusetts this right was given nearly a decade before the American Revolution and was never taken away, either before or after the Civil War
Show me a government that allows secession!
What secession is really an appeal to is revolution, which Lincoln never denied.
If you are going to revolt, you need just cause to do so, like violation of your rights, which by the absence of any listed so far, did not exist.
You just did not like the results of the election, the election of a Republican administration that was not going to allow slaves in the new territories.
Because of this horrible outrage to Southern 'honor' you were willing to attack your own nation's flag.
There should be no Confederacy heritage month, there should be a month of shame for fighting to expand slavery and killing your fellow Americans over it.
And the more I hear you guys try to rationalize your actions, following the same reason that Douglas and Jeff Davis used, the willingless to cast aspersions on the Founders themselves and to attack the very principles of the Declaration,(as Taney and Douglas and the rest of the Democratic Party did), the more I see how truly evil the Confederacy was.
The greatest hero that your side had, Robert E. Lee, was against both slavery and secession!
His mistake was putting his State over his Nation, which neither Washington or Patrick Henry did, both wanting to be known as Americans not Virginans.
Here in Central CA, you might see more Rebel flags, bumper stickers, auto decals, etc. than in some southern areas. Very strange indeed, considering the relaxed state of our citizenry, if not for the many Confederate soldiers' ancestors living here due to the dust bowl of the 1930's.
"Your Confederacy was fighting to keep slavery alive as a virtue, just like you and your buddies are arguing for it now"
Please, explain. Which of us argued FOR slavery?
"To say that because slavery is in the Bible means that it is good is no different then saying that because pologmy is in the Bible (it begins in Gen.4), that it should be acceptable also. "
Please read MY response to the "slavery in the Bible" question before you attack his opinion on it. It may enlighten you.
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1390366/posts?page=157#157
Number 157.
"God did not intend man to be a slave or to have more then one wife. "
Please show an example of this in the Bible. You are, after all, interpreting it for us.
"The Confederacy was anti-American and thus, Anti-Freedom"
How could it be anti-American? It WAS American! It may have been anti-federal union, but I assure you, they believed in what the Founding Fathers believed in. A Union OF States, not a Union OVER States.
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