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Huge Confederate flag flying high over I-65
decaturdaily. ^ | 13-June-2005

Posted on 06/13/2005 4:41:07 AM PDT by stainlessbanner

VERBENA (AP) — A huge Confederate battle flag flying over Interstate 65 north of Montgomery will become a permanent fixture, according to officials with the Sons of Confederate Veterans.

The organization bought land on the side of the interstate near Verbena and put up the flag, which has been flying for several months above the tree lines from the top of a large pole, easily visible from the heavily traveled interstate.

Leonard Wilson, commander of the Alabama division of Sons of Confederate Veterans, said the flag will be dedicated in a ceremony at 5 p.m. on June 26.

The flag is located on a little more than half an acre of land just north of where Autauga County 68 crosses over the interstate, about six miles south of the Verbena exit.

"We put the flag up so people could see it," Wilson said. "We are showing off our heritage. The flag is part of our heritage."

Critics of Confederate flag displays say they are reminders of the slavery era and Alabama's racist past, and can damage Alabama's image when flown beside a busy interstate route to Gulf beaches.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; News/Current Events; US: Alabama
KEYWORDS: alabama; alvin; alvinholmes; cbf; confederacy; confederate; confederateflag; crossofsaintandrew; dixie; dixieland; flag; holmes; hugh; i65; scv; series; southshallriseagain; waydownyonder
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To: Ohioan
First off it is extremely difficult to hold any sort of meaningful discussion with you in terms of slavery & Southern segregation of the races when you respond "The social customs of other States are not my business."

In your mind slavery and racial segregation as nothing more then the "social customs of other States" and further more, you as an American proudly declares they"are not my business."(?)

In addition you repeatedly tag all those involved with the Civil Rights movement of the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's as being "communists and soicalists" every last one, correct? While on the other hand continue using such terms as "Negro youth".

You really take the cake in more ways than one! You know what you are, and the more you type, so do others.

The Muslim fanatics who have managed to murder close to 200 innocent victims in both London proper, and their latest mass slaughter at a popular Egyptian holiday resort consider blowing up 'infidels' a very intricate part of their "social customs". Since the Islamic terrorist's carnage is not yet effecting your home state will you offer the same deplorable response?

Let me get this straight, Klansman and segregationists, as long as there in the South do not fit your description of "ideologues"?

What is the universally excepted term, especially by those most effected by the extermination of the Jewish people? It's called 'Holocaust or Shoah'. If using your explanation "cold-blooded, systematic Socialist slaughter:" nobody would understand it meant the 'Holocaust' of the Jewish people and you damn well know it.

Furthermore show me any document written by a survivor of the Shoah/Holocaust in which that use such an insulting term as your defended title "The Cult Of The Holocaust" - "Golden Calf Of The Twentieth Century" regardless of the content.

In your deformed outlook those which might have survived the Holocaust, American GI's which entered the exterminations camps and everyone else lacks "intellectual integrity unless they except you labeling the Holocaust a "The Cult Of The Holocaust" - "Golden Calf Of The Twentieth Century"? "My essay also suggests that the correct response to the Marx/Hitler demonization of the Jews, is to return to a focus on the strength of the Mosaic tradition, rather than endlessly focusing on the terrible body count.

There will be no returning to "the strength of the Mosaic tradition" if, the world forgets about " focusing on the terrible body count."

Let me ask you this, were any of your direct relatives counted in that "terrible body count" of victims of the Jewish Holocaust during World War Two and even before in Nazi Germany during the 1930's?

761 posted on 07/23/2005 6:31:54 PM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is not free)
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To: Ohioan
Are you offended and want me to apologize for posting the image of Robert 'KKK' Byrd?

Do you mean this Robert 'KKK' Byrd?

Democrat!

762 posted on 07/23/2005 6:42:08 PM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is not free)
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To: Ohioan
I have never advocated slavery, so get off the tangent that suggests that I have. I have simply responded to your efforts to demonize those who held slaves. Puh-leeze. We can all decipher the code language. We've seen it before in other contexts, e.g.:

"I have never defended President Clinton. I have simply responded to the demonizing tactics of Ken Starr."

"I have never defended terrorism. I have simply pointed out that Israel, the UK, and the US have done many bad things."

763 posted on 07/25/2005 5:50:12 AM PDT by steve-b (A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
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To: M. Espinola
In your mind slavery and racial segregation as nothing more then the "social customs of other States"

That position to to be expected from one who has embraced moral relativism.

As for Ohioan, he has not merely embraced moral relativism. He has his tongue deep enough to taste moral relativism's eardrum.

764 posted on 07/25/2005 5:53:16 AM PDT by steve-b (A desire not to butt into other people's business is eighty percent of all human wisdom)
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To: steve-b
"As for Ohioan, he has not merely embraced moral relativism. He has his tongue deep enough to taste moral relativism's eardrum."

Mr. Ohio's moral relativism is about as moral as the 'master' of a cotton plantation in the Old South of the 1850's. He was born in the wrong century and it's abundantly obvious in the wrong portion of the nation.


765 posted on 07/25/2005 11:53:25 AM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is not free)
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To: steve-b
Your comments seem slightly deranged. You lump together everything that you disagree with.

Where did you get the idea that the world was waiting for you to define other people's morality?

766 posted on 07/25/2005 12:44:27 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: stainlessbanner
Having not read the entire 700+ entry thread, I am fully in support of this! A flag is not racist. People are racist. The mentality that this flag represents slavery and black oppression is ludicrous and simply a crutch upon which the black community would like to lean for a few millenia.

Keep in mind that there were actually free black men and women who lived under this flag. Not everyone sees it as threatening.

767 posted on 07/25/2005 12:47:48 PM PDT by rarestia
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To: M. Espinola
First off it is extremely difficult to hold any sort of meaningful discussion with you in terms of slavery & Southern segregation of the races when you respond "The social customs of other States are not my business."

You want to define the discussion, here, in terms of your preoccupations. But why should any of us let you define what we need to address?

The point that you seem unable to grasp, is that for many of us, the debate comes down, first and foremost, to whether America respects the Constitutional compact, which specifically left moral questions to the States, or not. Sorry, that I will not accommodate you in going off on a tangent.

In addition you repeatedly tag all those involved with the Civil Rights movement of the 1940's, 1950's and 1960's as being "communists and soicalists" every last one, correct? While on the other hand continue using such terms as "Negro youth".

No, I did not. The "Civil Rights" movement was started by Socialists, later joined by Communists. However, if you will go back no further than my post 760, you will see that your statement is not true.

As for your comment as to my addressing "Negro youth," what is your problem--other than of course, a refusal to consider the terrible damage that your views have done to the prospects of millions of young American Negroes. Apparently, in your hate filled world, they are simply to be sacrificed to utilitarian dogmatism.

In a like vein, you object to my defining the Nazi outrages in terms of what was actually done, and insult humanity, by suggesting that no one would know to what was referred! How absurd can you get. Anyone with any knowledge of the World War II history, would know precisely to what a "cold-blooded, systematic slaughter" of the European Jews would refer. It is the packaging term "Holocaust," which is misleading.

And, if you have actually read my essay, you should understand that the "Golden Calf" reference relates to the diversion of a proud ancient faith, away from a focus on that Faith, to a greater focus on the horrors done to some of the practitioners. My suggestion, that strength comes from focusing on enduring truths, handed down and preserved for 3300 years, rather than ritualizing a terrible disaster, is consistent with Conservative priorities.

Of course, preserving traditional values, obviously is no prioritiy of yours, if your attacks on the Southern tradition are any clue.

768 posted on 07/25/2005 1:04:40 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: M. Espinola
Unless you can document that that picture of Robert Byrd has not been doctored, you need to apologize to everyone at Free Republic, for using dishonest tactics. When you post what looks to be a photograph, it better be a photograph, or you put yourself beyond the pale.

And why will you not apologize for attacking the wrong Byrd? Do you really believe that you can make up your own rules as you go along? Harry Flood Byrd was the most Conservative man in the United States Senate. He was a respected friend of Robert A. Taft, Sr., "Mr. Republican." He opposed FDR more consistently than any other Senator.

Again, see Harry Byrd of Virginia.

William Flax

769 posted on 07/25/2005 1:35:34 PM PDT by Ohioan
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To: Ohioan
"Unless you can document that that picture of Robert Byrd has not been doctored, you need to apologize to everyone at Free Republic, for using dishonest tactics."

The identical photo has been posted on FR many times. Why don't you peddle your rubbish to all those whom have previously posted the photo in question. Or does the bed-sheet outfit remind you of someone else?

Everyone at Free Republic would be simply amazed and shocked that you would defend the likes of Robert 'KKK' Byrd.

"Do you really believe that you can make up your own rules as you go along?

You are doing a superb job in that department - LOL

770 posted on 07/25/2005 2:25:26 PM PDT by M. Espinola (Freedom is not free)
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To: M. Espinola
Do you also agree with this comment stated by John D. Long, a legislator from South Carolina: "As for the Negro voting in my primary," he said, "we'll fight him at the precinct meeting, we'll fight him at the county convention, we'll fight him at the enrollment books, and, by God, well fight him at the polls if I have to bite the dust as did my ancestors!" Agree?
By unanimous consent, Mr. Brooks (James of New York) presented a protest; which was ordered to be entered on the journal, as follows:

The recognized presence of three persons on the floor of this house from the State of Arkansas, sent here by military force acting under a brigadier general of the army, but nevertheless claiming to be members of this Congress, and to share with us, the representatives from free States, in the imposition of taxes and customs and other laws upon our people, makes it our imperative duty in this, the first case, to remonstrate most solemnly, and to protest as solemnly, against this perilous and destructive innovation upon the principles and practices of our hitherto constitutional self-government. The so-called reconstruction acts which created the military government in Arkansas and like governments in other southern States to share with us in the legislative power of the northern and western free people, we have every reason to believe, have been held to be unconstitutional by the Supreme Court of the United States, the public declaration of which fact was avoided only by the extraordinary and strange device of this Congress in snatching jurisdiction from the court in the McCardle case when such a public decision was about to be made.

Of the three great branches of the government, it seems, then, that after the Executive vetoed these acts as unconstitutional, the judiciary adjudicated them to be so, while a Congress, the creation of but twenty-seven of the thirty-seven States of the Union, overrides these equal and co-ordinate branches of that government, first by voting down the vetoes, next by nullifying the judgments of the court! In an era of profound peace, when not an armed man rises against the government from the Potomac to the Rio Grande, there, in ten States, our American historical way of creating the organic law has been utterly subverted by the bayonet. Ever since the Declaration of Independence, with scarcely an exception, and even amid the battles of the Revolution, conventions have been convoked through, and constitutions created by, the electors of the States, the only authorized depositaries of the sovereign power of every State without exterior dictation or domination, as well under the old confederation as under the existing federal Constitution. The hardest and harshest test-oath required from 1766 to the peace of 1783 was an abjuration oath of allegiance to George III, while some of the now so-called bayonet-made constitutions from the south propose absurd and cruel tests; absurd, as in Arkansas, where is interwoven in the organic law a mere party test between the radical reconstructionists and the democratic conservatives, such as would exclude from voting, if living there, the thousands and tens of thousands and hundreds of thousands of democrats in the free States, (art. S, sec. 4;) or cruel, as in Alabama, where no white man can vote who will not forever forswear his own race and color, and perjure himself by swearing, in defiance of the law of God, that the negro is his equal and forever to be his equal at the ballot-box, in the jury-box, with the cartridge-box; in the school, in the college, in house and home, and by the fire-side; in short, in every way, everywhere, (art. 7, sec. 4.)

Now, in these and the other southern States in the midst of war President Lincoln, in his proclamation, December 8, 1863, offered amnesty and pardon to rebels then in arms, if they would lay down their arms and take an oath of fidelity, while now, not a Union man in Arkansas or Alabama can vote unless in the first place he swears allegiance to the majesty of this Congress, and in the next swears off his Americanism and Africanizes himself. Hitherto constitutions with us have been the outgrowth of popular life, springing from the exuberance of our enterprise and energy in the settlement of the forests or prairies of our country; but here, before us now. are nine constitutions, with one if not three more yet to come from Texas, which have all been imposed upon the people by five military satraps or pentarchs, in a manner never before known under our law, but borrowed at best from imperial Roman military colonization, or from the worst precedents of the French revolution. France is then recorded to have had five constitutions in three years, so frequently made and so frequently changed that they were ironically classed by the French people with the periodical literature of the day. Louisiana, a colony of that France, has had four constitutions in four years, and a constitution there has now become periodical literature, as in France, in the agonies and throes of the great revolution. Laws, mere statute laws, which can never be created by conventions, are appended, more or less, to all these constitutions, and bayonet-created, one-branch governments, with no executive, no senate, no house of representatives, no judiciary, have ordained irrepealable, irreversible laws in the very organism of the State, such as cannot be thus created by the executive, the senate, and the house of representatives of legitimate governments when acting in unison and all combined. All this has been done, without regard to preceding constitutions or precedents, or to the common law of the States or the law of nations.

The military, which, under legitimate institutions, can only be used in time of peace to conserve or preserve the State, have here been used to destroy States. The General of the army, who represents the sword, and only the sword of the republic, has beenexalted by acts of Congress above the constitutional Commander-in-chief of the army and navy, in order to execute those military decrees, and as the surer way to root out every vestige left of constitutional law or liberty. The same General of the army, in order to prolong or perpetuate his military domination north and west as well as south, has been selected in party convention at Chicago to head the electoral vote for the Presidency in ten of our States which are as much under his feet as Turkey is under the Sultan or Poland under the Czar of Russia. But, as if only to add insult to the injury of this military outrage upon popular government in these ten States, either by act of Congress or by these Congress-soldier-made State constitutions, at least 250,000 whites have been disfranchised, while 750,000 negroes, inexperienced in all law-making, and more ignorant than our children, have been enfranchised in their stead, and have thus been created absolute masters and sovereigns over the whole white population of the south.

Because of all this, and in opposition to all this, we, representatives of the people from the free States, in behalf of our constituents and of thousands and tens of thousands of others who would be here represented if the popular power without could now constitutionally act here within, earnestly and solemnly protest against this violence upon our Constitution and upon our people, and do hereby counsel and advise all friends of popular government to submit to this force and fraud only until at the ballot-box, operating through the elections, this great wrong can be put right. There is no law in the land supreme over the constitutional law. There is no government but constitutional government; and hence all bayonet-made, all Congress-imposed constitutions are of no weight, authority, or sanction, save that enforced by arms, an element of power unknown to Americans in peace, and never recognized but as it acts in and under the supreme civil law, the Constitution, and the statutes enacted in pursuance thereof. We protest, then, in behalf of the free people of the north and the west, against the right of this military oligarchy established in Arkansas or elsewhere in the now re-enslaved States of the south to impose upon us, through Congress, taxes or customs or other laws to maintain this oligarchy or its Freedmen's Bureau. We protest against going into the now proposed copartnership of military dictators and negroes in the administration of this government. We demand, in the name of the fathers of the Constitution and for the sake of posterity, not its reconstruction, but the restoration of that sacred instrument, which has been to us all a pillar of fire from 1787 on to its present overthrow; and in all solemnity, before God and man, under a full sense of the responsibility of all we utter, we do hereby affix our names to this protest against the admission of these three persons, claiming to be members of Congress from Arkansas.

* JAMES BROOKS.
* JAMES B. BECK.
* VAN TRUMP.
* CHAS. A. ELDRIDGE.
* SAMUEL J. RANDALL.
* W. MUNGEN.
* STEPHEN TABER.
* ASA P. GROVER.
* L. S. TRIMBLE.
* GEORGE M. ADAMS.
* A. J. GLOSSBRENNER.
* STEVENSON ARCHER.
* JOHN A. NICHOLSON.
* JOHN MORRISSEY.
* THOS. LAURENS JONES.
* W. E. NIBLACK.
* JULIUS HOTCHKISS.
* WM. H. BARNUM.
* JOHN W. CHANLER.
* S. B. AXTELL
* S.S. MARSHALL.
* W. S. HOLMAN.
* CHARLES HAIGHT.
* CHARLES SITGREAVES.
* J. PROCTOR KNOTT.
* J. S. GOLLADAY.
* J. M. HUMPHREY.
* FERNANDO WOOD.
* J. LAWRENCE GETZ.
* F. STONE.
* M. C. KERR.
* JOHN FOX.
* JAMES A. JOHNSON.
* JOHN V. L. PRUYN.
* W. E. ROBINSON.
* B. M. BOYER.
* GEO. W. WOODWARD.
* CHAS. E. PHELPS. * A. G. BURR. * D.M. VAN AUKEN. * J. R. McCORMICK. * DEMAS BARNES. * JAMES M. CAVANAUGH. * LEWISS W. ROSS. * H. McCULLOUGH.

Journal of the House of Representatives of the United States, 24 Jun 1868.

Are you also proud of that portion of 'Northern history' and wish it was never altered?"
771 posted on 07/25/2005 2:41:49 PM PDT by 4CJ (||) OUR sins put Him on that cross. HIS love for us kept Him there.(||)
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To: 4ConservativeJustices

Is there a name on that list that isn't a Democrat?


772 posted on 07/25/2005 3:07:40 PM PDT by Heyworth
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To: Heyworth; 4ConservativeJustices
So far as I can tell they're all Democrat Members of Congress (save Phelps who wasn't in either major party). They are precisely the people who opposed Lincoln, and the sort of people whom most Northerners had little use for.

Apparently 4CJ thinks this is some great find. It just shows how low the Democrats in North and South were willing to go in playing to racial hatreds.

These Civil War threads are really a laughing-stock. The idea seems to be to throw as much offal at the "North" in defense of the "South."

Fortunately, most people are more intelligent and sophisticated than that. They aren't locked into those categories and don't believe that their region was pure and unsullied throughout history. Rather they recognize virtue and human worth wherever they find it and condemn viciousness wherever it raises its head.

773 posted on 07/25/2005 4:41:36 PM PDT by x
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To: stand watie; 4ConservativeJustices; lentulusgracchus
PRAY, tell us in detail how many $$$$$$$$ & HOURS you spent trying to get YOUR state to DUMP every stinking LIB.

Stand, don't ever ask what actions they've taken to make America a better place to live... or aid in the WOT... or end abortion...

Didn't you get the memo? The new conservatism in action involves only coming onto FR a few times a day, hurling insults at small-government traditionalists, and talking about how much the other half of America sucks. There's some fine patriotism for ya, and if you disagree, you're a traitor or a slaver or a segregationist or a blah blah blah.

774 posted on 07/26/2005 3:42:59 AM PDT by Gianni
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To: Gianni
nope. didn't get that memo.

i'd guess us "johnny rebs" were left off the distribution list.

free dixie,sw

775 posted on 07/26/2005 7:48:29 AM PDT by stand watie (being a damnyankee is no better than being a racist. it is a LEARNED prejudice against dixie.)
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To: M. Espinola
It is no wonder that you express horror at my suggestion that the answer to the horror of the Socialist slaughter of Jews should be a return to the strength of the Mosaic legacy. Your doctored photographs are as clear an example as anyone could wish of your contempt for the Ninth Commandment. Not surprising, since your whole presence on this thread has been to denounce Southerners who still believe in the sacredness of the Fifth Commandment.

Your are both a liar and a hypocrite--a man without intellectual integrity, and without sense or consistency.

But you still have not explained why you are off on the tangent of smearing a West Virginia Senator, when my previous example of the high quality of Southern leadership was a Virginia Senator of impeccable reputation. As I suggested a while back in this thread, your intellectual integrity would equip you for an underling position in Herr Goebbels propaganda ministry. What you are doing on a Forum for free men, is a subject for speculation.

It is, also, very obvious that you are no Conservative. It is the Southern traditionalist who has been most consistent, through the generations, in adhering to the traditions of the Founding Fathers. Your hate rants and demonization cannot change that truth.

William Flax

776 posted on 07/26/2005 8:28:59 AM PDT by Ohioan
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To: stainlessbanner

If certain individuals have a problem with the south's past, I have a problem taking their money.. Its blood money, IMHO... let the NAACP boycott states tourism dollars.. we don't need em...


777 posted on 07/26/2005 8:40:13 AM PDT by Schwaeky ("Truth is not determined by a majority vote" Pope Benedict XVI)
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To: x
These Civil War threads are really a laughing-stock. The idea seems to be to throw as much offal at the "North" in defense of the "South."

While there may occasionally be a thread, initiated by Southerners to attack the North, the majority of the Civil War threads have been examples of anti-Southern hate mongers gratuitously intruding into tributes to the proud heritage of the American South, to spew hate and venom. This thread is a good example. There was no reason for most of the anti-Southern invective above, but blind and stupid hate.

You, personally, seem fixated on the fact that the traditional South--before the Thurmond led realignment--was Democratic. Just what is the point? Before FDR the Democratic Party was usually the more Conservative--although neither of our Parties have ever been purely ideological. (Thus in 1896, McKinley was the Conservative candidate, supported by many Grover Cleveland Democrats, even as some Leftist Republicans supported William Jennings Bryan.)

The issues in the 1860s were very different than those of today. Frankly, I would have been a Stephen A. Douglas voter in the 1860 election, although I highly respect many aspects of Lincoln's character--and certainly the conciliatory spirit he exhibited at his second inauguration, shortly before his death. I have only contempt for the Reconstructionist Republicans who followed. Theirs was an all out assault on the whole concept of our Federal Union, with only limited roles for the Central Government.

William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site

778 posted on 07/26/2005 8:42:10 AM PDT by Ohioan
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To: Ohioan
While I appreciate your sentiments toward Lincoln (who gets a regular trashing on these so-called Southern Heritage threads), I have to ask you "What Thurmond led realignment?".

You've talked about this Southern shift to the Republican party before, citing the New Deal as the start point. However, the reality is that the South overwhelmingly supported FDR and every Democrat running for President,[with the exception of the segragationist Thurmond], until 1964.

After supporting Goldwater's losing effort, the south voted for George Wallace (68), Richard Nixon (72), and Jimmy Carter (76) in the subsquent national elections. Overlay that record with some of the mid-western Republican bedrocks and a different picture emerges.

Some states of the old Confederacy are just now getting around to electing their first Republican governor or US Senator since Reconstruction! One might conclude that the South's voting patterns are as much governed by their own particular views toward race, religion, and flow of Federal dollars as it was any deep pocket of traditional American values.

779 posted on 07/26/2005 9:44:56 AM PDT by mac_truck (Aide toi et dieu l’aidera)
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To: Ohioan
While there may occasionally be a thread, initiated by Southerners to attack the North, the majority of the Civil War threads have been examples of anti-Southern hate mongers gratuitously intruding into tributes to the proud heritage of the American South, to spew hate and venom. This thread is a good example. There was no reason for most of the anti-Southern invective above, but blind and stupid hate.

Nonsense. Look who started the thread, "stainlessbanner." Most of these threads have been started by some "stainlessbanner" or "sheltonmac" to crow like a cock on a dunghill about the Old South. Very, very few were started as attacks on Southerners.

You, personally, seem fixated on the fact that the traditional South--before the Thurmond led realignment--was Democratic. Just what is the point? Before FDR the Democratic Party was usually the more Conservative--although neither of our Parties have ever been purely ideological.

Nice try pornboy, but "4ConservativeJustices" posted this manifesto of Democratic members of Congress as a way of discrediting the Northern states. The idea seems to be that anything bad about Northerners exposes and delegitimizes them and vindicates the South. It's a cheap shell game that doesn't convince or interest most people. But these Democrats were precisely the Northerners who had the greatest sympathy and support for the slaveowners and for their White Southern counterparts.

So if he brings up these Congresscritters as typical bigoted Northerners it's an entirely justified response to point out that they were not typical Northerners but doughfaces -- Northern men of Southern principles -- and in many cases, Copperheads. It's not like doing so is going out of the way to bash the old Democrat party.

I probably would have voted for Bell or Douglas in 1860 too, but it's time we got beyond the self-justifying Southern myths about the war and reconstruction and give the abolitionists and Republicans their fair due. Those who dislike civil rights will doubtless disagree, but if one accepts and values the strides America has made on racial questions over the past two generations it's only right to honor the forerunners.

780 posted on 07/26/2005 10:04:54 AM PDT by x
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