Posted on 07/14/2005 6:10:21 AM PDT by robowombat
Bias against Southerners misses the mark By RICHARD COX Published July 11, 2005
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Does prejudice exist in Pasco County, an area with a very diverse population and seemingly very progressive?
I am certain that African-Americans, Hispanics and people from other countries, the poor and homeless, as well as members of certain religious faiths, experience treatment different from the mainstream populace. However, I am a member of a minority who has experienced attitudes and reactions from many individuals who assume that I am intellectually and socially challenged.
A very large percentage of the population of New Port Richey in particular is from the Northeast. I personally like the outspokenness, mince-no-words attitude, the ability to criticize as well as accept criticism without being offended, that seems to represent the culture in which Northerners grew up.
My family members seem to have the disadvantage of being born and living most of our lives in the South, in our case, Tennessee. I grew up in Knoxville, a city that many people seem to associate only with the fanatical behavior of our college football fans, and my wife is from a small city near Chattanooga.
There still seems to be a stereotype that some people associate with Tennesseans. When those individuals heard the distinct accent of my wife, my stepdaughter, and myself, it seemed to conjure up that redneck image one might associate with the humor of Jeff Foxworthy and other Southern comedians. That image is of a culture of ignorant hillbillies (certainly due to inbreeding!), barefoot, living in a shack with no indoor plumbing (but certainly an outhouse in back), having a dog living under the front porch, and owning an overgrown lawn populated with broken-down, dilapidated automobiles. And, yes, we all chew tobacco and sit on the front porch swing playing the banjo. Everyone also flies a Confederate flag and reminisces about the War Between the States.
I first noticed this attitude when my stepdaughter, an honor student, came home from middle school several days in tears because several other students harassed her daily, calling her an ignorant redneck and hillbilly among other derogatory terms. My wife and I have experienced the sudden change in facial expressions from many when they hear our accent. They seem to associate our accent with ignorance, and speak in simpler terms so that we can understand what they are saying. Telephone conversations often produce the same reaction.
I beg to differ. Tennessee is the home of several major universities, four major metropolitan areas with all the drug and gang problems associated with other large cities, and the most visited national park in the United States. Oak Ridge, in the Knoxville area, probably has as high a percentage of residents with doctorate degrees as any city in the United States. Tennessee has a musical heritage equal to none, and it is not exclusively country or bluegrass genres. Many nationally prominent politicians are from my home state, including three former presidents.
Tennessee has produced many famous musicians, actors, scientists and other intellectual and talented natives.
Well, to set the story straight, rural areas of most states have their own populace and dwellings that approach this stereotype.
My wife and I grew up in your average suburban neighborhoods, we both graduated from major universities and had successful professional careers, and, to risk seeming boastful, are probably as intelligent and knowledgeable, if not more so, than the average American. Believe it or not, East Tennessee, the section of the state we are from, fervently supported the Union during the Civil War.
I have noticed in the Pasco Times notices of meetings for various groups from areas of the Northeast and from other countries. Perhaps Southerners in our area should form a similar group. With apologies to an African-American group with a similar title, we could call our group the NAASF, the National Association for the Advancement of Southern Folks, Pasco County Branch. I hope there are enough local Southern residents available to attract to our organization.
--Richard Cox, a retired middle school science teacher and department head, lives in New Port Richey
Not hardly. Lincoln started a war with the South by an unprovoked act of aggression (larded with preparatory lies) against the independent State of South Carolina.
If the United States stood an invasion fleet into Tampico Bay, I rather imagine the Mexican Government and the local commandant would do the same thing Beauregard did.
The population of Massachusetts is greater than that of all but five of the former confederate states. The population density is greater than that of any former confederate state.
The United States Government was no longer "established". It was constitutionally and lawfully disestablished by acts of the People of the South.
Its writ no longer ran in the South, the People having repudiated it, as it was and is their God-given right to do.
Now you're just being silly. The rebel troops that surrendered at Appomattox with Lee and in North Carolina with Johnston and yes, in Texas were parolled by the federal authorities after their commanding officers had surrendered. They lost, they were whipped. Deal with it.
In your own mind, Yank. You've got to stop believing your own propaganda, it'll rot your brain.
I realize that the truth is unplesant to you but that can't be helped.
Now that is just utter nonsense. Trying to land supplies to your troops in your fort is not an act of aggression. Trying to starve them into submission and then bombarding them into surrender is.
If the United States stood an invasion fleet into Tampico Bay, I rather imagine the Mexican Government and the local commandant would do the same thing Beauregard did.
Now that's a silly analogy. The U.S. does not have a fort in Tampico.
Honestly, we do not personally know anyone who suffers from such afflictions, and we have both lived in Oklahoma most of our lives. According to the news, everyone in OK drives a beat-up truck, uses double negatives, and lives out in the middle of nowhere. Yee-haw.
Just another way the leftist journalists seek to make the mostly conservative South look like a bunch of morons. They find the most ignorant southerner they can...interview him, and replay the clip over and over and over...
No it was not. Their actions were not legal.
The federal authorities can pretend to push around any paper they like for propaganda purposes, but the history of Texas is that the Confederate troops just went home -- on June 20-21, 1865, mostly without orders. They just decamped from their principal stations and rode home. With their weapons. Except for Jo Shelby and (I think) Kirby Smith, who went to Mexico instead, Shelby's troops in formation and with their colors, which they sank in the Rio Grande so as not to give offense to Mexico.
The People went home.
They absolutely were, Salmon Chase's witting lies notwithstanding.
They were not, your opinions to the contrary notwithstanding.
The United States no longer had the right to maintain troops there, to occupy or garrison the fort, or to stand up a task force, which is what Lincoln sent (don't say "resupply" -- that's just an old Lincolnian lie: there were a lot of troops in that flotilla).
Sumter was no longer United States property, South Carolina having demanded its return. The United States no longer had title to any property on the territory of South Carolina, which had reclaimed her sovereignty under international law, as an exercise of the natural and sovereign rights of her People.
Kirby Smith surrendered the Trans-Mississippi Department on May 26, 1865 under the same conditions afforded the other capitulating generals. The soldiers were parolled and allowed to return to their homes in peace so long as they abided by their paroles.
The People were allowed to go home.
Explain how a constitutional convention is illegal.
Explain the illegality of the People's sovereignty.
Explain the illegality of vox populi, vox Dei.
Lawyer's lies.
Lincoln was a lawyer. There's your first big clue.
Ah yes, the ever popular southron whine.
Under what rule of law?
Sumter was no longer United States property, South Carolina having demanded its return. The United States no longer had title to any property on the territory of South Carolina, which had reclaimed her sovereignty under international law, as an exercise of the natural and sovereign rights of her People.
Sumter was the property of the U.S. government, built on property deeded to it free and clear by the South Carolina legislature. They had no legal claim to it whatsoever, regardless of what ever legal sounding terminology you make up trying to justify the southern actions. Sumter was the property of the U.S. Army. The troops stationed there were there legally. It was well within the rights of the federal government to send food to its troops stationed in its fort.
Fatalities from former confederate states: 564, with more than a quarter of those from Texas. I didn't count all the states that were Union during the Civil War, because I stopped counting when I passed the southern number after 13 states. And that's not counting California, which was in the Union and which has suffered 191 fatalities, more than any other state. If I'd counted them I could have passed the southern number with seven states (CA, NY, PA IL, MI, NJ, OH)
http://icasualties.org/oif/ByState.aspx
Someone earlier said you were at least educated for a Southern basher. I think they got it wrong, it should have read, educated least.
Using debate tricks and dissecting a post line by line is lazy and not very inspiring. At least I did learn in this thread who I will be ignoring from now on.
Actually, he didn't sign the articles until June 2nd. The 26th was the date of the Union officers' interview and negotiation with Kirby Smith's and Canby's representatives. In Kirby Smith's case, his representative was Gen. Simon Buckner.
I'm looking for my source (it isn't Fehrenbach), but the main Confederate encampment in Texas, east of Houston, didn't break up until a day or two after Gordon Granger showed up in Galveston on June 19th and started running his mouth nonstop about illegality, null and void, and blah, blah, blah.
The Confederate troops didn't just disappear because Edmund Kirby Smith inked a document and pointed his horse toward Mexico. What did disappear was much of the Confederate chain of command and Confederalized Texas troops' legal basis for resistance to the 25,000 men Phil Sheridan was leading by sea from City Point, Virginia en route Texas to reinforce Granger in Galveston and the small garrison (reduced by the battle at Palmito Ranch on May 13 -- correction to date) at the mouth of the Rio Grande.
The State of Texas never signed a surrender document, and so perforce neither did its People in arms as the Militia. Of course, if Texas did surrender, you're free to produce the surrender document, it'll be a useful addition to the discussion. I would encourage you to spend as much time as possible looking for it.
But Kirby Smith's instructions came from the Confederate governors of Arkansas, Louisiana, and Mississippi, not from Texas.
One last note: the last reference to fighting (on land, anyway) that I can find is to a skirmish that took place near Rocheport, Missouri, on May 24, 1865, between federal troops and Confederate irregulars.
I'm sure you can refute easily my claim that the People are sovereign in the United States.
Go ahead. Tell us who is sovereign instead. Who is sovereign instead? Who has the right to tell the People, "I'm your daddy"?
I'm waiting.
Under the one that says the People are sovereign, but governments aren't.
Around here, every government is just a glorified water boy.
Sumter was the property of the U.S. government, built on property deeded to it free and clear by the South Carolina legislature.
Which was good as long as South Carolina did not resume its sovereignty, remained under the United States Constitution, and continued as a party to its compact. The State had, however, seceded, resumed full sovereignty, and exercised its sovereign power to demand the return of the property in question, which Lincoln continued to hold in adverse possession by main force.
They had no legal claim to it whatsoever, regardless of what ever legal sounding terminology you make up trying to justify the southern actions.
Sure they did, unless you think the United States Government was and is God Almighty, to whom nobody can ever say "no".
Sumter was the property of the U.S. Army. The troops stationed there were there legally. It was well within the rights of the federal government to send food to its troops stationed in its fort.
All true, true, and true -- until South Carolina left the Union, and demanded return of its property.
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