Exclusive—Victor Davis Hanson: California Is a Confederate Society with ‘Sick Fixation’ on Race

Breitbart ^ | 27 Dec 2021 | ROBERT KRAYCHIK

[x]

What Forrest said was:

When I entered the army I took forty-seven Negroes into the army with me, and forty-five of them were surrendered with me. I said to them at the start: ‘This fight is against slavery; if we lose it, you will be made free; if we whip in the fight, and if you stay with me and be good boys, I will set you free. In either case you will be free. Those boys stayed with me, drove my teams, and better confederates did not live.

I can't say whether what he says is true, but notice that he acknowledges that they were slaves and said that they "drove his teams," rather than fought. He doesn't say that they were officially enlisted or that they participated in battles.

[x]

You claim to be investigating things, but you are strangely unskeptical when it comes to articles that tell you what you want to hear. Incomplete or nonexistent records also encourage myths and legends. Holt Collier went to war as a servant and followed his master when he changed units. Maybe he fired his gun and maybe he fought, but he was not officially a Confederate soldier. That was against Confederate policy. So there were no "integrated" units in the Confederate army, as you claimed. That was specifically forbidden by the Confederate government.

You can honor him if you want -- though the post-war murder charge makes things a lot murkier. But when we remember that Southerners, black and white, who fought for the union were reviled and cursed by ex-Confederates who liked to celebrate the occasional slave who followed his master to war (so long as it didn't change anything) I don't see celebrating him as a priority for the country, black or white, North or South.

[x]

So there were three Pinckneys, if you include Thomas. Many, many other South Carolina politicians were related to the Pinckneys. Robert Hayne of Webster's Reply to Hayne was Charles Pinckney's son-in-law.

Charles switched from the Federalists to Jefferson's Democratic-Republicans. It reminds me of families during the Reformation in England whose sons adopted different religions so that the family could keep its lands and titles if the other side won.

[jeffersondem]

“Oh, dear... I think one of those Pinckney’s will be rolling over in his grave, and may come out to haunt you at night for writing him out of our history books — like him, I'd say “shame on you jeffersondem”. ;-)”

About that . . . I say shame on jeffersondem as well. What was he thinking?

It looks suspiciously like someone has been playing games with my pocket version of the Constitution. The first time I checked it there was only one Pinckney; now I see two that signed it.

I don't like to be wrong about things like that. Thank you for correcting me.

[jmacusa]

Hello Joe! Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.

Good to see you here.

[jmacusa]

Don’t forget the likes of Ross Barnett , D Mississippi.

Mississippi was one of the most segregated states in the
South at that time.

And George Wallace, D,Alabama. “ Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever!’’.

After his near death at the hands of Arthur Bremer on May 4, 1972 Wallace appeared to be a broken man who apparently had a change of heart and renounced his segregationist views.

[Pelham]

Do you supppose that BroJoeK thinks that he’s been concealing his progressive ideology all of this time? Academics can be remarkably lacking in self-awareness. It’s why they also vastly overrate their own intellects.

[wardaddy]

Answer the question....it’s rather uncomplicated.

Are you an angry black man railing on this forum for 20 years reducing everything down to simple political parties .....neither of which h I’m crazy about.

You give away nothing about yourself...your pilot fish tell us you’re academia

My homepage is forthcoming and scores here know me personally

So....what is it Bro?

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "Do you supppose that BroJoeK thinks that he’s been concealing his progressive ideology all of this time?"

My "progressive ideology" first manifested in 1964, when I supported "progressive" Barry Goldwater against "conservative" Texas Democrat Lyndon Johnson.
Goldwater, you might remember, favored the "Great Society", while "conservative" Democrat Lyndon Johnson authored "The Conscience of a Conservative" and opposed the Civil Rights bills of that time < /sarc > -- or is somebody here terribly, terribly confused?
I assure you, it's not me.

Pelham: "Academics can be remarkably lacking in self-awareness.
It’s why they also vastly overrate their own intellects."

Again, I invite you to read my Home Page, click below.
It tells you exactly what my "academic career" was, and my work experience -- if you've somehow picked up other information elsewhere, disregard that to the degree it contradicts what I first posted back in circa 2004.

As for just whose "intellects" might be overrated or underrated, I have no opinion on that, but I do watch carefully to see who is consistently truthful and who else is here to sell us a stinking pile of Democrat Adam Schiff.

[BroJoeK]

jeffersondem: "I don't like to be wrong about things like that. Thank you for correcting me."

Not a problem, everybody makes mistakes, everybody.
And the question you raised is both valid & interesting: do the South Carolina Pinckney's prove an exception to my "rule" that our Founders all opposed slavery "in principle" and acted against it where possible?

And obviously, one Pinckney was responsible for the Constitution's infamous Fugitive Slave Clause, so how can we say he was "anti-slavery"?
We can't, however, when fellow Southern slaveholders, like Thomas Jefferson, proposed laws to abolish slavery in, for example, the Northwest Territories, the Pinckney's did not stand in opposition, nor did they oppose abolition in Northern states, or abolition of imports from the Atlantic slave trade.

So I say they were closer in outlook & behavior to other Southern Founders -- like Jefferson, Washington & Madison -- than they were to 1860-era Democrat Fire Eaters like De Bow, Wigfall & Yancey.

Unlike 1860 Fire Eaters, the Pinckney's were willing to tolerate abolition, at least up to a point.
And that exact point is probably this: remember Jefferson himself long proposed Federally compensated abolition, but such proposals went nowhere, no doubt because slaveholders like the Pinckney's understood that slavery was essential to South Carolina's economy and could not imagine SC functioning without slaves.
So, while Pinckney's could tolerate abolition in other states & territories (unlike 1860 Fire Eaters), they would not hear of it in their own state.

[BroJoeK]

wardaddy: "Answer the question....it’s rather uncomplicated."

Read my Home Page... it's rather uncomplicated.

wardaddy: "Are you an angry black man railing on this forum for 20 years reducing everything down to simple political parties .....neither of which h I’m crazy about.
You give away nothing about yourself...your pilot fish tell us you’re academia"

No, read it again!
My Home Page tells you the basics about me, and over many years I've posted plenty of other details, including my family & ancestry.
Anything you've read or heard which didn't come directly from me, you should take with a grain of salt, or better yet, disregard.

Your problem is you are full of hatred & anger, not against me, but against some phantasm you've conjured in your own mind based on... something, who knows what?
And so you have no good intentions toward me, none, you're only looking for something, anything you can grab onto and weaponize against me.

And that's because you are a true Democrat at heart -- that's what Democrats do, it's the way Democrat minds work: ignore the issues, focus on personal attacks, am I right about that?

wardaddy: "My homepage is forthcoming and scores here know me personally
So....what is it Bro?"

I was interested to learn whatever you've posted here about yourself, and I have never, ever, not once used your personal information to attack you!

As for me, I'll repeat: read my Home Page, read my posts over the years, take anything else you've heard with a grain of salt, or better yet, just ignore whatever it is that's creating phantasms in your mind.

[rustbucket]

It has been a good while since I've posted on these threads. I thought the following old post might be of interest:

To: Dionysius

Forrest is without equal, but arguably the best CSA foot commander in the West was Patrick Ronayne Cleburne. He would have risen higher if not for his suggestion that slaves be enlisted in the force.

I think there were small numbers of black Confederate soldiers in a few state units and maybe unofficially in regular Confederate units. I just ran across the following in the New York Herald of January 20, 1864 [my red bold font below for emphasis]:

Headquarters, Second Division
Department of West Virginia
New Creek, W. Va., Jan. 13, 1864

Captain -- A soldier of ours, James A. Walker, Company H [possibly a "B"] Second Maryland regiment, captured in the attack upon the train at the Moorefield and Alleghany Junction on the 3d inst., by the enemy under General Fitzhugh Lee, escaped when near Brock's Gap, on the 5th inst., and reported to me this morning. He informs me that thirteen of the enemy were killed and twenty wounded in the skirmish.

He also states that there were present under the command of General Fitzhugh Lee, three companies of negro troops (cavalry), armed with carbines. They were not engaged in the attack, but stationed with the reserve. The guards, he reports, openly admitted to the prisoners that they were accompanied by negro soldiers, stating, however, that the North had shown [can't read word] -ample. Faithfully,

James A. Mulligan, Colonel

I couldn't find this communication in the Official Records, but Colonel Mulligan was operating in the area and did send messages that were saved in the Official Records.

448 posted on 12/20/2007 12:59:43 PM CST by rustbucket [ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 418 | View Replies | Report Abuse ]

If memory serves, posters here used to post sketches of armed black Confederate pickets early in the war that appeared in one of the major Northern publications. There were Louisiana troops in Virginia at that point, and I suspect there were mixed race Louisiana Creoles serving in those Louisiana units which might explain the Northern sketches of armed black Confederate pickets.

There were also Northern reports of mounted armed blacks fighting for Forrest in his cavalry. His slaves, no doubt, whom he later freed.

[x]

They were not engaged in the attack, but stationed with the reserve.

I don't know the battlefield, but it could have been difficult to see who was back in the other side's reserves. A company could have been 300 men (roughly, probably less later on in the war) and there would have been officers and official records. I'm skeptical about these wartime stories. Some laborers or drivers might have been seen and a myth constructed around them.

The history of the Reconstruction-era black militias and what happened to them when segregation was becoming the law is something somebody might want to look into, though. "In January 1887, Governor Fitzhugh Lee became the only southern governor ever to activate an all-black militia unit when he included a black company among those he called on to help deal with a violent longshoremen strike in Newport News." But that was over 20 years later and a lot had changed in the meantime.

[rustbucket]

I don't know the battlefield, but it could have been difficult to see who was back in the other side's reserves.

What you say is probably true if you were with your troops facing the enemy in battle. You probably couldn't see the reserves of the enemy. But in the case of the newspaper report, the Union soldier who reported Fitzhugh Lee's black cavalry units had been taken prisoner by Fitzhugh Lee's troops.

As a prisoner, he might well have been taken into the interior of Fitzhugh Lee's troops where he might have seen the black cavalry in reserve in the two days before he escaped back to the Union side. On the other hand, the white Confederate soldiers could have been intentionally stretching the truth in their comments to him.

Here is another copy of that same article, this one reported in "The daily register" of Wheeling, West Virginia on January 20, 1864:

Another newspaper account (identical) of the report about Fitzhugh Lee's three companies of black cavalry in reserve

I would think there would be other corroborating documentation about such black troops, if they existed, serving the Confederates under Fitzhugh Lee.

[jeffersondem]

“. . . you (jeffersondem) are strangely unskeptical when it comes to articles that tell you what you want to hear.”

I believe the Holt Collier story, in part, because I want to believe it.

[robowombat]

Thank you for this post which I regularly send to those who gush over Senor Victor as a great conservative voice. VDH is good military historian when he is not waving the bloody shirt about the glorious mission of Sherman’s forces in literally destroying the state of South Carolina. He is also, it seems, a decent classicist, which is how he started out in academia. He is, as you point out, a classic GOP country club type who has become perturbed at their being too many latinos in California after spending years fence sitting, tut-tutting emigration control advocates and being the usual RINO mentality, viewing normal white Californians with disdain, type .