Posted on 05/24/2007 6:03:30 AM PDT by Rebeleye
...he was stunned to see two large Confederate flags flying from trucks...emblazoned with the words "The South Shall Rise Again." I'm stunned, too, that people still think it is cool to fly this flag. Our society should bury these flags -- not flaunt them...because the Confederate flag symbolizes racial tyranny to so many... ...This flag doesn't belong on city streets, in videos or in the middle of civil discussion. It belongs in our past -- in museums and in history books -- along with the ideas it represents.
(Excerpt) Read more at kansas.com ...
They just hate it when you remind them that their hands are as dirty as anyones when it comes to slavery.
And that still doesn’t get you to “millions” of yankees investing capital into the slave trade. Your claim. Back it up.
Personally, most of my ancestors were still in Europe during the heyday of the slave trade, and once here were more likely to invest any capital they had in more midwestern farmland and a new plow. But I'm not going to argue that a good part of the shipping interests of New England were up to their necks in the slave trade. Obviously they were. I'm arguing 4CJ's claim that "millions" of yankees invested capital in the trade, a claim he refuses to back up.
Ok. I see your point. It was a question of the number of actual traders. I misunderstood.
#####In other words, the Confederates.....can get away with any kind of seizure of power and property, not like them Mexicans#####
I have no idea how you came up with that interpretation of my post given that I was essentially saying that if La Raza comes to dominate things in California, we may as well let them secede.
My reasons for occasionally posting in these Confederacy threads isn’t to re-fight the Civil War. It’s over and done with. Nor is it to assign blame to any particular party involved in that unfortunate conflict. That’s why I never participate in the debates over whom to blame for Ft. Sumter or anything else. I respect both sides in the conflict. I honor both armies. I regret the loss of life on both sides.
My reasons for joining these debates are:
A) To defend the right of Southerners to respect their Confederate ancestors, and to honor the emblems their ancestors fought under.
B) To note that the Politically Correct assault on the Rebel Flag and other Confederate symbols is just the opening round in a larger war to eradicate America itself.
Political Correctness is a cancer eating away at the heart of our civilization. The willingness of so many conservatives to tuck their tails between their legs and flee any time the left plays the race card is disheartening.
Enoch Powell once said that true statesmanship involves taking the sometimes hard steps necessary to prevent “preventable evils” from occurring. You brought up the issue of what might happen if La Raza were to take power in California. Well, La Raza might indeed take power there, and that’s an evil that could have been prevented at one time. It was back in 1965 that Teddy Kennedy sponsored a bill that was clearly designed to change the demographics of our nation and to replace our traditional melting pot with a “multi-cultural” society. Southern Democrats lined up against the bill. Democrats outside the South lined up in favor of it. The Republicans were actually in a position to determne the bill’s fate. They knew it was a horrendous piece of legislation, but everywhere they turned they saw liberal elites wagging their fingers at them, warning them that they’d be seen as “racist” if they voted against the bill. So, most of them turned coward and voted for the bill, enabling it to pass. In the decades since, most Republicans have joined with the Democratic left in refusing to protect our borders. It might be “racist”, after all, to do that.
The result? A massive leftist Democrat stronghold in the formerly GOP-leaning state of California. So for being Politically Correct, the GOP has paid a huge electoral price. Have they learned from this huge mistake? Nah! Republican senators even go to La Raza meetings, where they denounce opponents of their open borders policy as bigots and brag that they’ll shut them down during debate.
You asked (in the post to which I am responding) whether the Founding Fathers were slave owners or men who opposed slavery and hoped it would one day be abolished. The founders held a variety of positions on slavery, which is why there was a compromise in the Constitution on the issue. Many of them were indeed slave owners. But I don’t hate them for it, or desire to see their memory trashed. I (hopefully) have enough political savvy to see the storm clouds gathering that will eventually rain hatred down on our Founding Fathers. For the very arguments used against the Confederacy and the Battle Flag will in the not too distant future be used against the founders. That’s an evil that we can prevent, but not if we’re falling over each other to see who can score brownie points with the left by being the first to trash the Rebel Flag and the Confederate ancestors of many Americans. When a “civil rights activist” in 2016 wants every reference to George Washington removed from civil society, on the grounds that he was a slave owner, you wanna try explaining to him that Washington was a “good man” who just happened to own slaves, not a “wicked man” like those Confederates? He’ll laugh in your face. And in the end, he’ll win because few conservatives have the nerve to fight this PC nonsense.
Heck, they had to change the name of the anniversary of Jamestown to a “commemoration”, rather than a “celebration”, on the grounds that the arrival of whites in Virginia was nothing to celebrate. That was the 400th anniversary of Jamestown. Any predictions on what the 450th will be like, given the aggressiveness with which the left is trashing our history, and the weakness shown by all but a few conservatives in defending it?
You asked if I think the South was any more devoted than the North to the Declaration of Independence in 1950 or 1960. Probably not, but that was before Political Correctness. PC has infected the North far more than the South. We elect some clowns on occasion down here, but for heaven’s sake look at the senators the North sends to Washington. Look at who they vote for in presidential elections. No, support for foreign wars isn’t all there is to being an American, but the South’s wartime support does show that it isn’t the disloyal backwoods filled with racist traitors that elite liberals claim we are.
I can understand people on either side of this debate getting heated over the Civil War and its causes. What I can’t understand is why it’s so upsetting to certain alleged conservatives that we occasionally slap a Rebel Flag sticker on a car bumper or bring a Rebel Flag to a NASCAR race. Why do you find it necessary to join with the vilest elements of the left to denounce this innocent symbol of regional and ancestral pride? Why are you so blind that you can’t see that this will eventually set precedents which will then be used against our Founding Fathers, our Bill of Rights, and against the American Flag?
I thank you for your willingness to debate. I’m departing for the weekend. You can have the last word if you wish. I’ve said my piece! :-)
Have a great weekend!
Not quite. It was the number of people who had invested capital in the slave trade--in essence, who owned stock in that business--and I seriously doubt that this number was anything like the vast majority of yankees that 4CJ's "millions" number would necessarily indicate.
If this is your criteria, I assume that you would not have been happy with the Lincoln Administration's rule over of the North and the border states during the war. All of the things you list also happened in the North and in northern controlled border states. There were bad folks in both regions during that time period. The South didn’t have a monopoly on them, nor did the North.
What special privileges for Dixie? Any state could leave the Union when it no longer comported to their happiness.
I’m curious. What fraudulent elections were you talking about in the South? I'm aware of election problems in Delaware, New York, and Kentucky during the war, and the overthrow of elected government in Maryland. Missouri too maybe, but I don't know the history of that state very well.
I've heard allegations of intimidation of Texas Union supporters during the secession vote. The results of the secession vote closely matched the previous fall's election returns between Bell (Constitutional Union) and Breckenridge (Southern Democrat), so apparently not many people's minds were changed by whatever intimidation there was. I don't like voter intimidation, and I'm sure you don't either.
Seizing property and bad behavior? I suspect that you are not talking about looting by Federal troops at Fredericksburg or what occurred in Georgia and South Carolina along Sherman's path. I assume you are not talking about the many Northern newspapers shut down and in some cases destroyed and editrors and writers jailed. I also assume that you are not talking about the refusal in some northern states to return fugitive slaves before the war, slaves being defined as property under the laws of the time. Some slave owners and their agents were killed by mob action, IIRC.
On the other hand, you might be talking about bad behavior by Confederate supporters in East Tennessee after secession. I'm sure, of course, that you will not forget about the bad behavior by some East Tennessee Unionists. Or maybe you are talking about Quantrill. Or you could be talking about bad behavior by some Texan in response to plots against their families admitted on the witness stand or against Texas Germans going to join the Union armies.
You don't get it. Reagan was a legitimate national leader. It was only right for him to try to negotiate from a position of strength.
Pardon me, but I find your answer rather strange. Certainly Reagan had the right to try to negotiate from a position of strength. So did Lincoln. So did Davis for that matter.
What is your point? I would trust a politician if I could verify that his/her actions were what I wanted. But many politicians say one thing, then do another. We probably agree on that point.
The earlier call by Congress was something Davis could have stopped if he'd wanted to and been on the ball. If he'd used his head he would have understood what a provocation that was. Lincoln's call was a response to the war the rebels had already started. It lost unionists the Upper South, ...
There were all sorts of provocations going on:
- Anderson occupying Sumter in apparent violation of the informal truce between South Carolinians and Buchanan.
- South Carolinians then occupying forts around Charleston Harbor.
- Buchanan sending the Star of the West with 200 troops into Charleston Harbor to reinforce Sumter.
- South Carolinians firing on that ship.
- Southern states taking over US forts and armories in their territories.
- The North seizing ships and shipments of arms headed South.
- Lincoln saying he would collect the revenue from imports headed to the South by force if necessary.
- The Confederacy responding to that threat by authorizing Davis to call up 100,000 troops for defensive purposes.
- The Lincoln Administration saying Sumter would be evacuated, then sending an armed fleet south with the intent to enter South Carolina territorial waters and resupply the Sumter or perhaps to reinforce it with the troops in that fleet -- who could trust Lincoln's word after the evacuation flip-flop?
- The South firing on Sumter.
- Lincoln calling for 75,000 state forces to invade the South. (Why am I reminded about Hamilton's warning against the coercion of states? Apparently Virginia and other states remembered.)
- Davis calls for his own volunteers.
… but wasn't unconstitutional or illegitimate as the earlier Confederate demand was.
I’m sorry. You lost me. What was unconstitutional or illegitimate? Please cite the law or part of the Constitution being violated.
nothing, let them go.
President Buchanan? Is that you?
That post was great! Thank you.
They may have missed the point. It was always aggrandizement of the business class and its interests that were the object of Hamiltonian concentration and amalgamation of powers.
The Northern faction were simply continuing Hamilton's agitation of 1787 for royalism without the king, and for access capitalism protected and enlarged by the royal favor.
And no backtalk from the gomers, the subjects if you will, out in Stickland.
And it is also to ignore the repeatedly posted quotation from Lincoln's own personal secretary and enthusiastic cheerleader, John Nicolay, that shows very definitively that Lincoln knew exactly what he was doing, and why, and to whom.
Non-Sequitur has made an online career of the forensic foot-fault called "slothful induction". He simply refuses, without acknowledgement but persistently and tenaciously, to recognize valid points made, supported, and documented with data and contemporary source documents, and goes on levelling his charges, accusations, and snarks without regard to what actually happened, firstly, and secondly in utter disregard of any previous actual refutation of his assorted arguments and themes that may have been put up by his interlocutors.
His theory seems to be that if you are a Southerner, you are a talking dog, and not to be taken seriously. Your documents are trash, even when the sources are on Non-Sequitur's own side, or unimpeachable in their authority (such as, e.g. Federalist 39 re-posted to him above by another poster for about the 14th time), and any points made or documents offered are instantly vitiated and transubstantiated into ontological nullities by their issuing from a Bad and Faithless (i.e. rebellious Southern) Person, viz., you.
To sum up, Non-Sequitur is intransigently dishonest in debate.
So don't worry about him. Just make sure you don't let him lie to the noobs.
And that, gentlemen, is called "calling it the way it is."
Then what were the Missouri Wide Awakes doing when they appeared in arms with a federal officer and U.S. troops to confront and disarm the Missouri Militia?
The Militia, remember, are a constitutionally protected entity, the People in arms.
What was a federal officer doing, pretending to arrest the People? What were the Wide Awakes doing helping him?
And here you are again, eternally shameless, utterly refuted in the by-and-by on this very point, working your grift yet again on an unsuspecting customer who thinks you're on the level.
False dilemma, BA.
Either he pops a Lincoln quote -- and Lincoln a) was the most reticent man alive at the time, but you knew that, and b) he wasn't stupid enough to say out loud what history could hang him for later -- or else carton has only his opinion unsupported.
You are a piece of work.
It has been well observed, that to coerce the States is one of the maddest projects that was ever devised. A failure of compliance will never be confined to a single State. This being the case, can we suppose it wise to hazard a civil war? Suppose Massachusetts or any large State should refuse, and Congress should attempt to compel them, would not they have influence to procure assistance, especially from those States which are in the same situation as themselves? What picture does this present to our view? A complying State at war with a non-complying State; Congress marching the troops of one State into the bosom of another; this State collecting auxiliaries, and forming, perhaps, a majority against its federal head. Here is a nation at war with itself! Can any reasonable man be well disposed towards a Government which makes war and carnage the only means of supporting itself -- a Government that can exist only by the sword? Every such war must involve the innocent with the guilty. This single consideration should be sufficient to dispose every peaceable citizen against such a Government.
Then why were troops embarked in the flotilla he dispatched to Sumter? And did he "maintain the status quo" by reinforcing Fort Pickens, thus stealing a march on the Anaconda Plan?
There you go again.
On March 29th a second and final cabinet discussion was held, in which there appeared a change of sentiment. Four of [Lincoln's] seven counsellors now voted for an attempt to relieve Anderson, and at the close of the meeting the President ordered the preparation of the expedition proposed by Captain [Gustavus] Fox. Three ships of war, with a transport and three swift steamtugs, a supply of open boats, provisions for six months, and two hundred recruits, were fitted out in New York with all possible secrecy, and sailed from that port, after unforeseen delays, on April 9th and 10th, under sealed orders to rendezvous before Charleston Harbor at daylight on the morning of the 11th......The mystery was finally solved on the evening of April 8th. A government messenger [this will have been Ward Lamon -- LG] arrived in Charleston, reported himself to Governor Pickens, and was immediately admitted by him to an interview at which General Beauregard was present. The messenger read to them an official communication, drafted by President Lincoln. It ran as follows:
"I am directed by the President of the United States to notify you to expect an attempt will be made to supply Fort Sumter with provisions only, and that if such attempt be not resisted, no effort to throw in provisions, arms, or ammunition will be made without further notice, or in case of an attack upon the fort."
The next morning after this notice was read to Governor Pickens and General Beauregard in Charleston, the main portion of the relieving expedition, under command of Captain G. V. Fox, sailed from New York Harbor. It consisted of the transport Baltic with the provisions and contingent reinforcements, the war-steamers Pawnee, Pocahontas, Harriet Lane, and the steam-tugs Uncle Ben, Yankee, and Freeborn. The fleet had orders to rendezvous ten miles east of Charleston Harbor on the morning of April 11th. The instructions to Captain Fox were short, but explicit: "You will take charge," wrote the Secretary of War, "of the transports in New York, having the troops and supplies on board, and endeavor in the first instance to deliver the subsistence. If you are opposed in this, you are directed to report the fact to the senior naval officer of the harbor, who will be instructed by the Secretary of the Navy to use his entire force to open a passage, when you will, if possible, effect an entrance, and place both troops and supplies in Fort Sumter."
[Emphasis added.]John G. Nicolay, The Outbreak of Rebellion, pp. 53-60 passim.
Troops, gentlemen. Lincoln sent troops, after telling Governor Pickens he wasn't doing any such thing.
Footnote: Wonder where the recruits came from? Were they Wide Awakes? One is tempted to think they might have been, given what Lincoln was doing in Missouri at the same time.
For I do like the subject very much and have so much to learn from Freepers such as you and 4CJ. I just can't waste days arguing anymore over what the meaning of is "is."
In response the Israelis went on war footing, gave Moshe Dayan the Defense Portfolio. Abba Eban was told in France that France would initiate a "arms" embargo against the Israelis. In Britain, Eban was dismissed. In the US, the Americans told Eban that if "Israel goes it alone, they will be alone."
Finally after almost three weeks, Israel struck first by destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground.
Who started the war? Well, technically the Israelis did. They pre-empted.
Recently, I had an argument with a person who argued that since Nasser did not really want war and was only being provoked by Jordan, that the Israelis were fully and totally to blame.
As if the conflict should only be defined by the anomosity between Jordan and Egypt. (Leaving Syria and the Soviets out of this tale on purpose) As if Israel should have just known twenty-two years after the Holocaust that what was going on along their borders was just an exercise of Arab one-upmanship.
Therefore, responsibility for the war rested soley on the Israeli and Nasser gets a free pass because what he wanted outweighs what he did.
This is the same argument being advanced by some in defense of Lincoln's decision to resupply Sumter.
That only works if Lincoln is the only actor that counts. He is not. The South's known and stated reaction (Petigru and Pickens just to name two) to his attempts to resupply Sumter should hold more the weight, since Lincoln sent Lamon to find out how South Carolina would react if he resupplied or reinforced the fort.
Now, the argument disintegrates. Where's my quote? If I can't provide the exact quote, then Lincoln is in the clear.
I don't need an exact quote. I have plenty of proof from those who knew Lincoln well. If NS is correct that no one can know what Lincoln was thinking and certainly not his friends, cabinet, and secretaries.... then how does NS know so emphatically Lincoln's motives. But that's another matter.
NS believes that Lincoln's secretaries were wrong, his friend was wrong, the memo is wrong, the cabinet deliberation had nothing to do with the ramifications of what would happen if Lincoln resupplied the fort, and the answers Lamon brings back for Petigru and Pickens had no bearing on Lincoln's thought processess. Then there were his own words about collecting tariffs, holding forts, etc.
No (according to NS), Lincoln sailed into the harbor hoping against hope that somehow cooler heads in the South would prevail and realize his good intentions just to give bread to a few hungry soldiers.
Can an objective historian draw an accurate picture of what Lincoln knew and did not know. Yes, just as a historian can firmly place the blame on Nasser for the Six Day War.
For the construct of Lincoln's innocence in resupplying the fort to work... Lincoln must become the only person in the entire country that did not realize what his actions would reap.
Now we can argue about whether he was justified in his actions, but there is no way any objective historian can reason he did not know his actions would be the spark to start the war.
As for me, this argument is finished. If NS wants to post his version of the events, he certainly can. But for those who have read the thread... hopefully both sides have been presented. You are more than able to make up your minds.
What do you want to discuss next?
To be landed in the event that the resupply effort was opposed, as Lincoln stated in his letter to Pickens.
[this will have been Ward Lamon -- LG
No. This will have been Robert Chew -- NS.
Troops, gentlemen. Lincoln sent troops, after telling Governor Pickens he wasn't doing any such thing.
Read the letter again. Supplies only, if not opposed. Troops and supplies if opposed.
Footnote: Wonder where the recruits came from?
First Artillery in New York probably.
One is tempted to think they might have been, given what Lincoln was doing in Missouri at the same time.
What Lincoln was doing? The people of Missouri had assembled in convention in February and voted agains secession. The rebellious forces in the state, aided and abetted by the Davis regime, were trying to overrule that convention and take the state out of the Union. If anything Lincoln was trying to maintain the wishes of the people of the state.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.