Posted on 10/02/2007 1:10:01 PM PDT by BGHater
AMERICANA, Brazil
Now well past 90, Judith MacKnight Jones is suffering from Alzheimer's disease, the illness that robbed her of all of her memory, her most precious asset.
She has been lying here for the past 11 years, covered by a patchwork blanket, made from pieces her great-grandmother brought from the United States between 1865 and 1885, after the Confederacy lost the Civil War.
Unable to speak or remember now, her book "Soldado Descanso" ("Rest Soldier") is written in Portuguese, but soon will be translated into English, as the publisher thinks Americans should know about the proud history of Confederate immigrants settling in Brazil, finding a new home here but maintaining many of the traditions they brought from Alabama, Texas, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, the Carolinas and Georgia.
Her daughter-in-law, Heloisa Jones, said patchwork is only one of the values the Americans have brought.
This blanket is not just any patchwork, she said, "these pieces are very old and reflect a valuable tradition," she said.
"Over a century old and symbolizing our heritage, the flight from our homelands, it is extremely important to keep it that way. I teach my children and grandchildren the American values our ancestors have brought with them. And I expect them to teach their children and grandchildren the same," she said.
Every spring, hundreds of the descendants of the soldiers who lost the war against the North go to the cemetery they call O Campo. They party and meet dressed in traditional costumes, staging shows, singing Southern songs like "When the Saints Come Marching In" or "Oh Susannah," playing banjos and blowing trumpets, the men eventually getting drunk on home-brewed beer.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtontimes.com ...
Not in our book, Red.
There was some ambivalence to begin with, but the more the mountain people saw of the Confederate misgovernment up close, the more strongly they held to the Union. It was not ambivalence the produced the large number of East Tennesseans who volunteered to fight for the Union and it was not ambivalence that made the 1st and 2nd Congressional districts Republican strongholds after the war.
I meant Black Codes of 1866. The South didn’t see the need for such codes in 1966 though from the way some of the Dixie politicians talked in that era, I’m sure they would not have had any philosophical aversion to them.
That the “peculiar institution” was at the base of the seccesionist movement is the tragedy of the age. The Southern desire to uphold the principles of federalism designed by The Founders was forever tarnished and discredited by association with the great human evil of racial slavery. Were the same argument to have been joined over another, lesser issue we may well have preserved the America envisioned by Jefferson if not the Union. The better part of the rights of states contained in the Constitution was blotted out by the blood spilled in the Civil War!
West Virginia was organized by the legitimate legislature of the state of Virginia, and thus its existence was approved by the legislature of VA and of WV and was approved by Congress.
I was born in Texas, raised in the beautiful country of South Carolina. When I posted that statement I forgot to put the on/off sarc line in there. I’m not a yankee. I agree with your entire statement. Thanx.
They do take such an oath.
Personally have ancestors that people are free to lampoon and insult, if they had an odd penchant to do so. Will defend ancestors that have met and with whom have interacted. Unmet ancestors could just be about the same as some stranger, in terms of honor that should be bestowed upon them.
Just as people living today do not deserve honor for what their ancestors did, people living today do not need to defend the honor of some distant ancestors long gone.
But that's just the view of neither a Northerner nor a Southerner, but a western Californian.
I have actually been to Americana. My ex is from Rio but we knew folks all over and I worked with a geologist from Americana....though he was German....a Nazi I guess..lol...to the sanctimonious on this thread
The usual Neo-Yankees on this thread are just puffing up as is their wont.
For these Brasilians, it’s just about a tradition of where they come from same as it is for most of us in Dixie. THey feel a connection culturally to me and the South same as many here do to Ireland or Scotland or Italy or Wessex etc..nothing diabolical about it
Something most Yankees lack ...they used to have it in New England till they gave it to the Socialists.
shame, too bad most of the Neo-Abs here always South bashing can’t fix the mess in their own backyards....that way maybe we Southerners would not have to be the finger in the dyke holding back the left year after year.
But no....the self righteous hypocrites can never be sated
btw....there are CSA refugee colonies in Colombia and Nicaragua too...probably elsewhere...I knew a family in Barranquilla, the great great grandfather had fled after Mobile Bay and stayed there...had a riverboat company on the Magdalena....they had his uniform under glass, photos and letters from Lee to come home
Of course it did.
Are you living in some alternate reality wherein the legislature of the state of Virginia was simultaneously part of the union and part of the Confederacy, wherein the President takes no oath of office and wherein slavery was not abolished?
LOL
What curse do you pronounce upon people who use painfully awkward archaisms and abysmal grammar?
I've never understood why having friends among a designated group is considered to be dispositive proof of ill feelings toward that group.
It seems an irrational import from the leftist world onto this board.
I have read none of this "self-glorifying neo-Confederate mythology ". on this board.
My reference was to the article under discussion, and the conceit of the Confederados, as should be perfectly clear.
Especially around southern folk who don't kindly to rash statements concerning their ancestors.
I had no idea all Southerners' ancestors had fled America to live in Brazil. I was under the impression that 99.9% of Southerners' ancestors had not fled their homes to live in South America, but actually stayed.
fWe’ll, I’m sure they fought well for the central and western parts anyway. East Tennessee was by and large happy to stay part of the greatest nation on earth, thank you very much. ;)
Very true on the North and South both being complicit in the slave trade.I grew up in California but lived in the South for three years.
Attitudes were pretty much the same.
As the descendant of Southern Unionist Republicans, and therefore of the Puritan/Federalist/Whig tradition, I am hardly trying to sweep the history of slavery in the United States under the rug. I do, however, resent being hated by white liberals for traits I share with my poor Southern Black neighbors--traits which are praised and celebrated in them.
I reject the "compact theory" and believe in Federal supremacy, loose construction of the Constitution, and a government with implied discretionary powers. So if you're wanting to zing a neo-"Confederate" (most of whom aren't really "confederates" anyway and are merely 1930's pro-Nazi Midwestern isolationists parading as traditional Southerners) then you will have to zing elsewhere.
I still maintain that the United States is disproportionately blamed for slavery because the Left, being mystical-nationalist in orientation, despises us for being an "artificial" nation unlike everyone else (like French Canadians in Quebec) allegedly growing organically out of their "mother soil."
When it comes to slavery proper, however, I must confess to being a Theocrat and accept the Divinely-dictated Torah on all things, no matter how alien to my own background or how uncomfortable it makes us moderns feel. There's no use in trying to be more moral than G-d.
Lee's opposition to slavery was tepid at best and as late as January 1865 he was saying that slavery was the best place for blacks in the South.
The problem with the Longstreet quote, that the South should have freed the slaves and then seceded, is that he never said it. It's a quote from Michael Shaara's "The Killer Angels" and Tom Berringer said it in "Gettysburg".
This country was taken over (effectively) by an armed coup by the Lincoln Republicans and abolitionists and northeastern industrialists, and the southern states decided to leave, and the north invaded.
How can you compare a Constitutional election for president with an 'armed coup' and keep a straight face?
We were a conquered and oppressed and humiliated people during reconstruction.
Because you started a war and lost. I'm sorry if the outcome isn't to your liking but those are the risks you run when you choose war to achieve your aims. And if you are an oppressed and humiliated people then you certainly are a whiny lot because I would defy you to name a single country where the people who launched and lost a bloody rebellion were incorporated back into the body politic and positions of governmental power faster than the Southerners were.
Now do not think that anyone can call my ancestors treasonous and come away without my vehement response. The Supreme Court advised against the prosecution of Jefferson Davis for treason, because they knew the case would be lost, and the proof would have upset the entire legality of the war. This is history.
That is myth. The only member of the Supreme Court involved was Salmon Chase, and the only reason why Davis wasn't tried and convicted for treason is that with the ratification of the 14th Amendment Chase saw a trial and punishment as a violation of Davis's 5th Amendment protections against double jeopardy.
The north had the draft riots, and I do not believe the south had the draft.
You would be wrong. The South instituted conscription in April of 1862, the same time that they forcibly extended the enlistments of the confederate soldiers for the duration of the war. By the end of the rebellion somewhere between two-thirds and three-quarters of confederate soldiers were draftees.
By the way, I will argue for my ancestors until the day my own great great grandchildren die. And no doubt they will cling to the same cause lost myths that you do.
They see me trollin’,
They hatin’,
Tryin’ to catch me ridin’ dirty...
XD
It’s hard not to give people a hard time when they think internet arguments about history are serious business, isn’t it?
With the exception of the Hebrews - who were under the direct guidance of God Almighty - all these peoples engaged in unjust behavior. Morality is not defined by situations or circumstances, but is objective truth.
And they founded it, how? By destroying the previous union with England
There was no union with the Kingdom of Great Britain to destroy. The colonies were colonies - not states with equal standing to England and with representation in the national legislature.
The so-called Confederacy was comprised of states that were joined in an equal Union with the other states and which were fully represented - actually overrepresented - in the national legislature.
Moreover, the colonies spent more than 20 years seeking legal redress under the UK constitution and they were completely rebuffed in every instance - and their local legislatures were even dismissed or overruled in purely local matters. The Confederate states began seceding six weeks after Abraham Lincoln was legitimately elected President of the USA - they left because they were dissatisfied with the result of an entirely constitutional election.
There is no comparison between the two situations.
Are you suggesting that morality is determined by public opinion? That it's okay to deprive women of the vote if no one cares about that issue?
No, I am saying that the franchise, unlike freedom, is not a universal right and that progress has been made from the already generous extension made by the Founders.
Once you start down this "the Confederacy was evil because they owned slaves" road
The Confederacy was not evil, but slavery was, and this evil practice ultimately proved the Confederacy's total undoing.
The Confederacy was fundamentally flawed from its inception.
I could have just as easily brought up homosexuality (notice the ridicule of General Pace?) or illegal immigration
Again, just as their is no inherent individual right to the franchise, there is no inherent right to murder unborn children or engage in sodomy or trespass national boundaries.
There is an inherent individual right to choose one's employer and the terms of one's employment.
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