Civil war erupts over Confederate handbags

DFW ^ | January 6, 2006 | JIM DOUGLAS

[stainlessbanner]

BURLESON — Two North Texas high school students who were kicked out of class for displaying rebel flags vow to take their fight to court. They said they are proud of their heritage, but Burleson High School education officials maintain the Confederate symbol is offensive.

Ashley Thomas remembered how it all started. "Principal comes up and says, 'You've got to get rid of your purse... it's racist."

Ashley and Aubrie McAllum both received purses patterened after the Confederate battle flag from their parents for Christmas. Both girls decided to take their presents to school.

"I don't have 'KKK' written on me or anything; it's just a purse," Aubrie said. "Doesn't have anything to do with what color you are."

The students were asked to leave their purses with the principal; they elected to leave school after calling their parents.

Ashley was sent home three times this week. "I'm at the point where I really don't know what to do," she said. "I want to keep going to school and get my education, but this is my life. I was born and raised in the South. Why is the flag so bad?"

Here's the answer, from Burleson ISD spokesman Richard Crummel: "It's a violation of the dress code," he said. "We don't want students to wear anything that might cause a disruption, and that symbol has done that in the past."

"Then that's a heritage violation on her, on me... on all of us," said Aubrie's father, Rick McAllum. "So we can push it."

McAllum belongs to the Sons of Confederate Veterans. Ashley's mom, Joni Thomas, is from New York. But the parents of both girls praised their daughters, and vowed to fight.

"I'm hiring a lawyer," Thomas said. "I'm going all the way with it, because I think it's wrong."

Burleson High School, with a 2,200 student enrollment, is about 90 percent white, 8 or 9 percent Hispanic. There are very few African Americans.

"We want to be sensitive to everyone; make it comfortable in school for all our students," Crummel said.

Both girls said they have never been in trouble and don't want trouble now.

But they don't want to back down, either.

School officials know controversy often follows the Confederate flag, and they will not let it in.

The girls as of Friday, decided to go back to school

[Non-Sequitur]

The secession of the southern states was lawful; or else the secession and following U.S. statehood of West Virginia from the Confederate state of Virginia was a constitutional violation as well, making Lincoln a perjurer unfit to hold his office...

Turn that around. If southern acts if unilateral secession were legal then why was the secession of part of Virginia illegal? What act of the confederate or the Virginia constitutions prevented it?

I don't think the federal government wanted to go there....

It did actually. Virginia v West Virginia was a post rebellion Supreme Court case where the Supreme Court gave de fact recognition of the legitimacy of West Virginia by hearing the case.

[Non-Sequitur]

The reason it was NOT a *civil war* or revolution, but a War for Independence, just as the American colonies of 1776 did not intend to overthrow King George and the existing government of Great Britain at the time, and as per the Rhodesian Unilateral Declaration of Independence of 11 November 1965.

Let's concentrate on pre-rebellion declarations, shall we? The colonist actions in 1776 was a revolution, a rebellion. They waged a war against the established government. Their actions were illegal under British law, and only the fact that they won and other countries recognized their sovereignty allowed the colonists to form a nation. Now, if the southern states had actually won their rebellion in 1861...

[El Gato]

Any suggestion a slave fought for the South voluntarily because he wanted to be a slave is absurd.

Of course it is, and that is the real point, secession and the war were not *only* or even primarily, about slavery. Lincoln only freed slaves in those states "in rebellion" and not in states such as Maryland. He's on record as saying if freeing the slaves would help preserve the union, he would free them, and if not freeing them would do so, then he wouldn't.

From Lincoln's perspective the war was about forcing the Southern states to remain in the Union, despite the wishes of the legitimately elected legislatures thereof. For the South, it was about defending a newly declared independence from what they saw as a Northern oligarchy.

[jjmcgo]

The winner gets to write the history.

[Casloy]

secession and the war were not *only* or even primarily, about slavery.

Southern sympathizers can twist this issue any way they want but at the very core of the sectionalism that brought on the war was slavery. The overwhelming issues which divided the north from the south in the years preceding the Civil War were about expansion of slavery into the new territories. Without slavery there would have been no civil war. Southern apologists would love to paint this as some sort of effort by the South to cast off Northern dominance, which is unbelievably ironic considering the utter depravity of the kind of dominance the Southern slave holders kept over millions of blacks. Lincoln never made a secret of why he freed the slaves only in the States which had seceded, but there was also never any doubt after he emancipated those slaves that when the war was over slavery would be abolished.

[Pelayo]

The overwhelming issues which divided the north from the south in the years preceding the Civil War were about expansion of slavery into the new territories.

I forget the numbers but the vast majority of Johnny-rebs didn't own any slaves. So what did they fight for? Their rich neighbors maybe?

As for slavery in the new territories, well that was an extension of the souths fear of political estrangement from the government in Washington, as Yankee interests gained more and more power, both politically and economically. Emancipation societies were not popular in the South not because there were no southern emancipationists, but because of their association with radical abolitionism, and, a sense among southerners that it was an effected attitude by Yankees to act all morally superior. Of course the south was vary aware of the irony that the north didn't "discover" it's abolitionist sentiments until the Atlantic slave trade was closed down by the English.

In most cases I can see, the use of the Confederate ANV battle flag by Southerners (note: I'm talking about Southerners, not racists, I know the Klan likes to use the flag, but right now the state with the largest Klan activity is Michigan) do so out of pure cussedness. That is, you tell a person he can't do this, you are only gonna make him want to do it more. And from the perspective of those who have a true link with confederate heritage, (I for instance, am distantly connected to General P.G.T. Beauregard, which, given that Generals involvement with the adoption of the ANV flag by the Confederacy, gives me a particular claim to that flag as a symbol my family heritage) it is frustrating to only hear one side of the story told ad nauseam every were, with the only justification being that, even if the facts are technically wrong, it doesn't matter on account of the belief that if one has to completely soil all Southern culture in order to attack the evils of Slavery it's ok, because in the end, all southerners are racists anyway, right?

There was a Mark Fiore cartoon I saw on the MSNBC website that was quite illustrative of this hypocrisy of Yankee superiority on these grounds, on the issue of Southern heritage he just put this up

Well excuse me but that's Massachusetts heritage, not Southern.

Without slavery there would have been no civil war.

You are right about that, for the simple reason that without slavery their would have been no source of labor in the south which the northern industrialists would have had to compete with. End slavery maybe, but free em and make em equal, that probably would have come as a surprise to most Yankee troops.

[Casloy]

You are right about that, for the simple reason that without slavery their would have been no source of labor in the south which the northern industrialists would have had to compete with.

The arguments made by modern day southern apologists would most likely surprise the Southerners and Northerners of the 1850's. The slave labor in the south was almost exclusively used to grow, harvest, and process cotton. Were it not for the cotton gin, slavery would most likely have died a slow death by the late 1830s. Except for slave trading, slavery was not a profitable enterprise. It offered no competition to northern industrailists in any way. Virtually all of a southern planter's capital was tied up in slaves and had he been willing and able to hire cheap immigrant labor he would have done better financially. The abolition of slavery would have meant ruin for most planters not because he would have to hire his labor, but because all his capital would have been confiscated from him. In truth, slavery was far more about class and caste than it was about profit. If you read some of the primary source material from the 1840s through the 1850s you will find passions peaked by the abolitionist's attempts to free the slaves, and the Southern attempts to maintain the status quo, "our peculiar institution." It is only in modern times that southerners have grasped onto this idea that there was some other passions which led to the Civil War. Abolitionists did not suddenly crop up in 1807 with the end of the African slave trade, but had been growing gradually in the north since the 1700s as state after northern state abolished slavery. If you read the Southern anti abolitionist tracts of the time you will see some of the outrageous and idiotic claims made in order to justify slavery. Southern apologists are always pointing the finger at abolitionists and their extreme rhetoric, but they fail to ever note the degeneracy of some of the writings used to defend slavery. Slavery was to sensibilities of those times what late term abortions are to modern times. Southerners can certainly be proud of their culture and their heritage, but it doesn't serve them well to pretend slavery was not a grotesque institution which the carriers of that battle flag were fighting to maintain.

[Pelayo]

Southerners can certainly be proud of their culture and their heritage, but it doesn't serve them well to pretend slavery was not a grotesque institution which the carriers of that battle flag were fighting to maintain.

So what are we left with then. We are allowed to be proud of are heritage, so long as we accept the fact that it was all about a grotesque institution? You don't intend to leave us with anything, just admit it and be done. If you think all Southerners who have sympathy for the ANV flag are no better than Nazis just say it.

BTW, I have read many primary sources concerning both pro and ant-abolitionist philosophy. And yes I do know that the issue of "States Rights" in the context of the secessionist movements of the 1860s was, anyway you square it, the result of fear of losing the right to own slaves. And you are right that the maintaining of the class structure, which was almost feudal, and thus slavery upon which it was dependent, was the major motivating factor for secession.

Where you are wrong is in the assumption that the North was fight'n primarily to free the slaves. They were not, and since they technically where the aggressor they establish the foundation of the conflict by their initial actions.

One day, the Southern Cross will only be used by racists, then it will be a racist symbol. But, it might take otherwise good people with it on account of most humans eventually accept the epitaph of evil if you apply it long enough. For example, there is a girl I know, lives in Detroit, black, very intelligent; but she has some major problems. Her family is estranged from her, her community turned it's back on her, and why? Because she is conservative in a community where that is unpopular. Because she expressed conservative views at school she was labeled a Nazi. After some point she just accepted it and even embraced it. She's doing it out of spite for being hurt, but she wont admit it. I've tried to tell her how dangerous it is to hang with those people, but everyone up here seems to think it's funny that the Louisiana boy is try'n to get a messed up black girl from the ghetto away from the damn Yankee neo-nazis and Kluxers. I don't see that it's funny but in my liberal neighborhood it is a freak'n laugh riot apparently. Even my friends, who know I'm no bigot or Nazi, still think it's funny. Just goes to show, we're all supposed to be bigots if we are from the South. A notion reinforced by the fact that anytime we show any fondness for images or elements of Southern heritage, such as the ANV flag, it's assumed that it's really just cause we are sympathetic to that “grotesque institution.”

I'll continue to be a supporter of the flag popularized by my relatives such as General P.G.T. Beauregard (who BTW, was in favor of enforcing the civil rights of the freed slaves after the war), and if that makes me a racist... well... I don't know.

[Non-Sequitur]

The winner gets to write the history.

And the loser gets to write the myths.

[Non-Sequitur]

Of course it is, and that is the real point, secession and the war were not *only* or even primarily, about slavery. Lincoln only freed slaves in those states "in rebellion" and not in states such as Maryland. He's on record as saying if freeing the slaves would help preserve the union, he would free them, and if not freeing them would do so, then he wouldn't.

OK, you've shown that the North didn't fight the war to end slavery. But can you show that the south didn't launch their rebellion to protect slavery?

[Non-Sequitur]

Well excuse me but that's Massachusetts heritage, not Southern.

Really? And none of those slaves made it to southern consumers, huh? You're like the drug addict blaming the supplier for his problem. If not for his addiction there would be no reason to supply the drugs. If not for the demand for slaves those Northern ships would never have left port. Southern heritage has slavery written all over it.

[Pelayo]

Really? And none of those slaves made it to southern consumers, huh?

Most of em, when to Brazil as I recall. But that wasn't my point. I wasn't arguing that the South wasn't in a bad way on account of it's institution of slavery, what I was angry about was the ever present Yankee sense of moral superiority that has been carefully crafted ever since the war.

[VRWCmember]

Are you referring to the same Richland Rebels who are now banned from displaying the Confederate flag and had 'Dixie' removed as their school song?

I hadn't heard this about Richland. I'll have to check with some of the kids from church that go there. I haven't been back to Richland in a while, but I can't believe they would have quietly banned the display of the Confederate flag nor removed Dixie from their pep rallies and football games without a huge uproar around town.

By the way, at the Richland I attended, Dixie was not the school song -- we had a fight song and an "alma mater" song that were the school songs -- but the band always played and everyone sang "Slow Dixie" in addition to the two official school songs at almost every major event.

[jjmcgo]

Plenty of myths in the North's version. That's why the arguments are still alive.

[Redbob]

"All the idiots who lost the dumbest war in history are DEAD!"

And so are the ones who allegedly won it.

BTW, noticed our internal migration patterns, relative economic strengths, that sort of thing?
NOW who do you think "won?"

[Froufrou]

I was not comparing Lee to Hitler. I was saying they are both 'failed generals.' There's a huge difference. Huge.

[Froufrou]

I think you're assuming I was making comparisons between President Lincoln and the confederates. I was not. I was merely pointing out that Lincoln's motives for the Civil War were not limited to the great cause of freeing slaves, and that may not have even been his primary objective.

However, I believe Beckwith was the one who pointed out that many of the recent statements re: Lincoln are a bit skewed in their persepective.

I reitereate: the girls' dad has a good chance of winning the case if there's not a specific dress code the girls violated. The flag is a part of history.

[stand watie]

"(yes i'm mocking you)"

too bad you aren't very good at it and don't even have the virtue of being entertaining.

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

our Confederate ancestors were traitors in the EXACT same way that Washington, Adams, Henry, Jefferson, Mason & thousands of other PATRIOTS were traitors to GB in 1776.

PITY that you can't see that SIMPLE truth.

must be that you are another "vicktum uva publick screwl edumakashun".

free dixie,sw

[stand watie]

PLEASE don't be vulgar. you shouldn't stoop to the DY's level of discourse, as ladies & impressionable children read the forum.

just because they are TOO IGNORANT to know better, we "good 'ole rebs" shouldn't copy them.

free dixie,sw