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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.

I said:

You responded:

You have precisely confirmed my point. This was not a thread attacking Northern culture, it was a thread by a proud Southerner, paying tribute to his own culture. Why are you and the other South haters even on it? (And comparing the gracious civilization that was the Old South to a dunghill, is about as insulting and mindless a comment as one could imagine.)

You also beg a lot of questions in your concluding paragraph:

I have earlier--on this thread--posted a link to Senator Webster's speech, which deals with giving the abolitionists "their fair due." (See Webster Speech.) As for liking "civil rights?" Civil rights are simply rights that a Government creates for the people affected. They are neither good nor bad, per se. The term simply distinguishes them from the natural rights, that come from God, and which were always very important to traditional Americans.

As for the "Civil Rights," to which I think you refer, and the "values and strides" of the past two generations? I dealt with them some years ago in an essay which relates them to the Reconstruction era, even as you would. The difference is that I find the movement a repudiation of traditional American values. It is hardly something that should be celebrated:

Civil War, Reconstruction & Creating Hate In America Today.

William Flax