Bias against Southerners misses the mark

Pasco Times ^ | July 11, 2005 | RICHARD COX

[Gianni]

I dispise the man for his positions on the Constitution

I'm not sure the Constitution belongs in the list with the other things you've listed. Do you hold similar feelings for the abolitionists who agitated for Northern secession & dissolution of the Union? Those that insisted on abrogating the Constitution because it bound their hands on reinstatement of fugitive slaves?

From your postings, it seems obvious the door doesn't swing both ways.

[Gianni]

I'm sure that the Germans and the Japanese believed their cause to be just and their war to be necessary.

Really? Imperialism is a strange beast, and I wouldn't be too sure.

You now have me wondering, did the US in the post-war pogrom against the plains indians believe their cause to be one of justice? Necessity? While I haven't done any extensive research on it, it seems more like an attitude whereby their opponents simply were undeserving of lands, and even life.

[Gianni]

[Heyworth, quoting in defense of Spoons] Looting was endemic and neither the sanctity of holy places nor the rank of Indian aristocrats could prevent the wholesale theft of their possessions.

Sooooooooo.... What was Lord Clyde's nickname, assuming they did not have spoons in India at the time?

[Non-Sequitur]

Really? Imperialism is a strange beast, and I wouldn't be too sure.

I'm sure you have something to contradict me?

[Non-Sequitur]

I'm not sure the Constitution belongs in the list with the other things you've listed.

"I hates the Constitution...This great Republic too...I hates the Freedmen's Buro...In uniforms of blue. I hates the nasty eagle...With all his brag and fuss...But the lyin', thievin' Yankees...I hates' em wuss and wuss. I hate the Yankee nation and everything they do...I hate the Declaration of Independence too...I hate the glorious Union, 'tis dripping with our blood...And I hate their Yankee banner and I fought it all I could."

His words, not mine.

From your postings, it seems obvious the door doesn't swing both ways.

Show me where I've ever been contradictory on the subject of rebellion and unilateal secession.

[Xiaoding]

Why do you have to keep changing your name, fool?

[Xiaoding]

"Parts of it were. New Orleans was not. My statement stands."

No, it does not. You implied that Women were being treated a whores. That was a lie. So typical of the Confederate slaver wannabes.

[Ditto]

After a woman dumped a bucket of slop from a window onto Farragut's head, Butler acted.

Some "Lady".

[TexConfederate1861]

I don't recall Confederate Leaders saying that....could you provide a quote?

[TexConfederate1861]

Better get your facts straight before you call me a "fool" you moron:


TexConfederate1861
Since Apr 16, 2002

[OB1kNOb]

All reasonable points of consideration. One thing I have seen far too often here at FR is a fairly benign post on a good topic start out as a good give and take discussion only to have those with apparent chips on their shoulders (and there appear to be many) turn a fairly innocent discussion into a mouth-foaming, spit-slinging barrage of insults and name-calling the likes of what I use to see in grade school long ago. I swear whenever I read folks disagreeing with one another it'll typically end up with one calling the other a troll, just like in school when they use to call each other butthead. It would be funny if this wasn't suppose to be a forum for adult discussion and debate on various topics of interest. Have a good day. Later. - Ob1

[Ditto]

Alexander Stephens
Cornerstone Speech
Savannah; Georgia, March 21, 1861

http://members.aol.com/jfepperson/stephans.html

But not to be tedious in enumerating the numerous changes for the better, allow me to allude to one other -- though last, not least. The new constitution has put at rest, forever, all the agitating questions relating to our peculiar institution -- African slavery as it exists amongst us -- the proper status of the negro in our form of civilization. This was the immediate cause of the late rupture and present revolution. Jefferson in his forecast, had anticipated this, as the "rock upon which the old Union would split." He was right. What was conjecture with him, is now a realized fact. But whether he fully comprehended the great truth upon which that rock stood and stands, may be doubted. The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically. It was an evil they knew not well how to deal with, but the general opinion of the men of that day was that, somehow or other in the order of Providence, the institution would be evanescent and pass away. This idea, though not incorporated in the constitution, was the prevailing idea at that time. The constitution, it is true, secured every essential guarantee to the institution while it should last, and hence no argument can be justly urged against the constitutional guarantees thus secured, because of the common sentiment of the day. Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the "storm came and the wind blew."

Our new government is founded upon exactly the opposite idea; its foundations are laid, its corner- stone rests upon the great truth, that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery -- subordination to the superior race -- is his natural and normal condition. [Applause.] This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based upon this great physical, philosophical, and moral truth. This truth has been slow in the process of its development, like all other truths in the various departments of science. It has been so even amongst us. Many who hear me, perhaps, can recollect well, that this truth was not generally admitted, even within their day. The errors of the past generation still clung to many as late as twenty years ago. Those at the North, who still cling to these errors, with a zeal above knowledge, we justly denominate fanatics. All fanaticism springs from an aberration of the mind-from a defect in reasoning. It is a species of insanity. One of the most striking characteristics of insanity, in many instances, is forming correct conclusions from fancied or erroneous premises; so with the anti-slavery fanatics; their conclusions are right if their premises were. They assume that the negro is equal, and hence conclude that he is entitled to equal privileges and rights with the white man. If their premises were correct, their conclusions would be logical and just-but their premise being wrong, their whole argument fails. I recollect once of having heard a gentleman from one of the northern States, of great power and ability, announce in the House of Representatives, with imposing effect, that we of the South would be compelled, ultimately, to yield upon this subject of slavery, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics, as it was in physics or mechanics. That the principle would ultimately prevail. That we, in maintaining slavery as it exists with us, were warring against a principle, a principle founded in nature, the principle of the equality of men. The reply I made to him was, that upon his own grounds, we should, ultimately, succeed, and that he and his associates, in this crusade against our institutions, would ultimately fail. The truth announced, that it was as impossible to war successfully against a principle in politics as it was in physics and mechanics, I admitted; but told him that it was he, and those acting with him, who were warring against a principle. They were attempting to make things equal which the Creator had made unequal.

[Final Authority]

Most new houses in NH are selling for over $475K and up and have central air. Most of the houses that don't were built anywhere from 250 and 100 years ago, and really, over my 45 years, there are only about 5 nights a year where I live (15 miles as the crow flies from the Atlantic) where it is hot enough to not sleep under a sheet or blanket. The past week however, it has been very humid due to the remnants of the hurricanes moving inland.

BTW, I know most houses in the south have central air but how hard can it be to fit an air conditioner through a cut hole in a trailer?

[eyespysomething]

BTW, I know most houses in the south have central air but how hard can it be to fit an air conditioner through a cut hole in a trailer?

LOL! That was a low blow!

[robowombat]

I have been amazed at the heat if not light that has been generated by the posting of this squib of an article. The PC conscious writer seems taken aback by discovering that the one group that the 'right thinking, highly evolved' folks he lives around can safely be contemptuously prejudiced against are white southerners regardless of whether they are from the tidewater, the piedmont, the deep south, or the mountains. The unconscious irony of this article is what attracted me to it not as an invitation to display who was the most regionally chauvinistic.

One item that has gotten a lot more attention than it merits is the curious song "Im a Good Old Rebel' and its purported author Innes Randolph, Jr. Many consider
"Good Old Rebel" has always been something of a shell-game. It's not a southern folk song, a lament from the oral tradition. Innes Randolph, the man who wrote it, was an officer and a gentleman who served on J. E. B. Stuart's staff and became a poet after the Civil War. The writer, whoever he was, deliberately makes "the good old rebel" mispronounce words and use bad grammar. This would appear to be to poke fun at him and his political viewpoint. It appears Randolph a genteel southerner is ridiculing southern hillbilly attitudes.

One authority on music of the WBTS/CW, Charles Hamm, has this to say about this curious song and its cloudy provenance:

The text of this song is not in keeping with the rest of his work which consisted of conventional Victorian pieties respectful towards the heroes of the past (John Marshall for instance. Not a figure a fire eating secessionist would find inspirational) Born in Virginia in 1837 Randolph attended Hobart College in Geneva, New York and was a graduate of the State and National Law School in Poughkeepsie both interestingly,in heavily abolitionist eras. During the Civil War he was a topographical engineer and held the rank of major serving under Jed Hotchkiss first on Jackson and then Stuart's staffs. After the Civil War he settled at Richmond where he was worked at the Examiner while pursuing his poetry and other writing. The poetry of this period was collected and published by his son Harold Randolph after his death. It was in 1868 that Randolph moved to Baltimore and took up the pactice of law but he continued his newspaper work with the Baltimore papers and was the long time editorial page writer for the old Baltimore American. Innes Randolph died in Baltimore in 1887.

A number of mysteries surround the present song. American War Songs claims that itwas entered for copyright by A. C. Blackmar in Louisiana in 1864, yet the words were clearly written after the war. The earliest edition gives “J.R.T.” as the author, yet mosthistorians of song agree that the tune was known as “Joe Bowers” and was by R. Bishop Buckley of Buckley’s Minstrels, the text by either Adelbert Volck or Major Innes Randolph, a “cultivated Southerner of letters. ”This edition (used for the presentrecording) appears to have been published in New Orleans in 1866 and bears an ironic dedication to “the Honorable Thad. Stevens.” The first musical phrase differs from the version printed in such anthologies as Songs of the Civil War and Singing Soldiers,though the remainder of the music is almost identical.It may well be that most of these allegations are true, that the many contradictions in this story can be resolved. The tune may have been known in oral tradition before the Civil War: many of its melodic turns, and its use of a “gapped” or incomplete scale (the fourth note is absent, and the seventh is barely touched on), are characteristic of much Scotch-Irish traditional music. Buckley may have appropriated the tune, perhaps polishing it to make it conform more nearly to the tastes of minstrel-show audiences; a certain number of minstrel songs, including “Old Dan Tucker” and “De Boatman’s Dance,” show similar evidence of having been adapted from oral tradition tunes. Volck, or Innes, or both may have fitted a new topical text to a tune they knew either from folk tradition or the minstrel repertory. This text was probably too extreme to be widely circulated in a printed version,even in the postwar South, and its chief popularity was as a song passed on by earthrough several generations. It seems not to have appeared in print between the one edition in 1866 and the several versions taken down from oral tradition in the middle of the present century, and the differences between the nineteenth- and twentieth-centuryversions are not unusual for a song that has bounced back and forth between written and oral versions. On this album it is sung in an unaccompanied version.Whatever the case, the song in all its versions is yet another demonstration of the intensity of feeling aroused by the war.

http://www.newworldrecords.org/linernotes/80202.pdf

In passing , Hamm also remarks on the core of much of the passion that fueled Southern fervor in the conflict:

Although slavery was a crucial issue in the war, large areas of
the South did not depend on slavery, and the majority of Rebel soldiers were from nonslaveholding families; but the entire region had a fierce conviction that states, towns, and individuals—not the federal government —should determine how their lives were to be led. This attitude was expressed with clarity and conviction in a letter that Charles C. Jones, Jr., a Georgian and an officer in the Confederate Army,wrote to his father early in the war:

"Surely we are passing through harsh times, and are beset with perils which humanity in its worst phases has not encountered for centuries. The Age of Gold has yielded to the Age of Iron; and the North furnishes an example of refined barbarity, moral degeneracy, religious impiety, soulless honor, and absolute degradation almost beyond belief. Omnia vestigia retrorsum [“all footsteps turn back upon themselves”]....We can only make a proper use of those means which He has placed in our power, and with a firm reliance on the justice of our cause, and with earnest supplication of His aid who saves not by many nor by few, offer every resistance to the inroads of this inhuman enemy, and illustrate every virtue which pertains to a brave, God-fearing people engaged in an awful struggle, against wonderful odds, for personal, civil, and religious freedom."

The writer was not some provincial fanatic but rather a successful lawyer, historian, and archaeologist who held degrees from Princeton and the Harvard Law School.

In closing, as to songs and poetry of this period I personally prefer the following from the pen of another southern poet and novelist who also served in Stuart's cavalry, John Esten Cooke. Cooke lived near many of the scenes of the war he had participated and the most vivid recollections of the war were constantly awakened by normal travel and business activities. Due to this Cooke wrote the following:

THE BAND IN THE PINES
by John Esten Cooke
(1829-1867)

Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease!
Cease with your splendid call;
The living are brave and noble,
But the dead were bravest of all!

They throng to the martial summons,
To the loud triumphant strain;
And the dear, bright eyes of long dead friends
Come to the heart again.

They come with the ringing bugle,
And the deep drum's mellow roar,
Till the soul is faint with longing
For the hands we clasp no more.

Oh, band in the pine-wood, cease,
Or the heart will melt in tears,
For the gallant eyes and the smiling lips
And the voices of old years.

For more information on Innes Randolph see:

Edwin Anderson Alderman & Joel Chandler Harris (eds.), Library of Southern Literature 349 (New Orleans: Martin & Hoyt Co., 1910) (1907) (Vol. 15, Biographical Dictionary of Authors, Lucian Lamar Knight ed.)]


Curtis Carroll Davis, "James Innes Randolph, Jr. (1837-1887)," in Robert Bain, Joseph M. Flora & Louis D. Rubin, Jr. (eds.), Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary 368-369 (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1979)]

[TexConfederate1861]

I am familar with that speech, but you are assuming that Jefferson was referring to the all races, when he said that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. He wasn't. He was a slaveowner in every sense of the word, refusing to free even his own children!

Now his quote: "The prevailing ideas entertained by him and most of the leading statesmen at the time of the formation of the old constitution, were that the enslavement of the African was in violation of the laws of nature; that it was wrong in principle, socially, morally, and politically." States that most of the founding fathers were opposed to slavery, yet a good many of them also kept slaves......

So I don't believe that Stephens was disavowing the Declaration of Independence in this speech, though possibly the Constitution.

Do you have any more examples?

[TexConfederate1861]

Regardless of what you may think, most Southerners don't live in "trailers". I live in a two story, twenty-six hundred and fifty sq ft. home on a championship golf course.

[TexConfederate1861]

Great Post! Thanks for the info on the song.....:)

[Ditto]

"...but you are assuming that Jefferson was referring to the all races, when he said that "all men are created equal" in the Declaration of Independence. He wasn't. He was a slaveowner in every sense of the word, refusing to free even his own children!

Jeffersonian historians would vehemently disagree with you and argue that Jefferson and the great majority of the Founders did in fact mean that "all," including Blacks, were created equal under the law. (Don't confound the Founders views on social equality with what they thought about legal equality) That they could not at that point deal with the incongruity of slavery with their principles was a talked about by many and as Stephens said in 1861, all expected (or hoped) that slavery would pass on it's own in a generation or so. None anticipated or even could have anticipated, King Cotton and how it changed views on slavery to the point where Stephens and the Confederacy considered it to be the very cornerstone of their "republic."

[TexConfederate1861]

This viewpoint is certainly of consideration, and if it is indeed true, that Jefferson felt that negroes were "equaL" under the law, then his life is certainly a contradiction.
I have pinged LG, to comment on this, as he is certainly a more learned scholar than myself :)