I Pledge allegiance to the Confederate Flag

I Pledge allegiance to the Confederate Flag, and to the Southern People and the Culture for which it stands

The Confederate flag is again under attack, as it has always been, and as it always will be. It is under attack because of what it symbolizes. The problem is that to many Southerners have forgotten just what it does symbolize.

The Confederate Nation of 1860 - 1865 was the intellectual, as well as the spiritual, continuation of the United States of America as founded, planned, and formed by Southerners. It was the stated, and often repeated, position of almost all Southerners in the 1860’s that they, and the South, were the heirs of the original political theory embodied in the U. S. Constitution of 1789. In 1860 their attempted to separate from the rest of the states and form their own nation since that was the only way the South could preserve the philosophy and the virtues that had made the United States the magnificent nation it had become.

In both of these contentions, that is, the South was the true repository of the original political theory that made the United States great, and the South was the true home of the people who took the necessary actions to found, make, and preserve the original United States, Southerners have been proven by the passage of time to be correct.

The Southern colonies of Virginia, North and South Carolina and Maryland were where the majority of the original American population resided until the 1700’s despite the fact Massachusetts was settled only 13 years after Virginia and New York was settled 18 years before South Carolina. As the population of the colonies grew, the New England States and the middle Atlantic states, gained population so that by the time of the American Revolutionary War the two general areas of the north and the South were generally equal in size with a small population advantage being shown by Virginia. This slight difference in population by a southern state was to have a profound effect on the development of the United States.

First of all, the New England states managed to start a war with England, which they verbalized as "taxation without representation." In truth the problem from their point of view was the taxes on their trade. Having started the war they then promptly managed to lose it. The British, after conquering the entire north from Maine (then part of Massachusetts) to Boston, to Providence, to New York, to the new nation’s capital, Philadelphia, shifted their military forces to move against the Southern colonies. They secured their foothold in the South by capturing Savannah and Charleston and then proceeded to move inland to subdue the Southern population. They planed to catch the Virginia forces under General Washington in a coordinated attack moving down from the north, which they held, and up from the South that they thought they would also conquer.

The British army that had mastered the north found they could not defeat the Southern people. Once in the backwoods of the South they found themselves to be the beaten Army. The British defeats at Kings Mountain and Cowpens were absolute. Their Pyrrhic victories at Camden and Guilford Courthouse were tantamount to defeat. In both North Carolina and South Carolina they were so weakened they had to retreat from the area of their few "victories" within days. Their defeats at those well-known sites among others, along with their defeat at Yorktown in Virginia, led directly to their surrender.

Having secured the political freedom from England for all the colonists, Southerners then mistakenly sat back and took a smaller role in forming the new American government that operated under an "Articles of Confederation." That first attempt at forming a government fell to the firebrands of New England who has started the war and who still asserted their moral position of leadership despite their poor showing on the field of battle. These Articles of Confederation, the product of the Yankee political mind, gave too much economic self determination to the separate colonies (as the Northern colonies had demanded in an attempt to protect their shipping, trade and manufacturing) and too little power of enforcement to a central government.

After a period of six difficult years, when the Articles of Confederation failed as a form of government, another convention was called and a new form of government was drawn up. This time the convention was under the leadership of Southerners and they brought forth the document we all refer to as the U.S. Constitution. Even northern historians do not try to pretend the Constitution and the ideas embodied therein are anything other than a product of the Southern political mind. (Yankee historians cannot deny it, but they do choose to ignore it so their students grow up ignorant of the fact that the Constitution is Southern.) So, as it turns out, when the new nation found itself in political trouble it was the South which, once again, came to the rescue just as it had when the nation found itself previously in military trouble.

With the slight population advantage it enjoyed over other states, Virginia was able to give to the new nation politicians who are nothing short of demigods. Their names are revered in all areas of the civilized world wherever political theorists converge. Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Randolph, Henry, Taylor and Monroe are just a few, there are many more. These men along with the leading political minds of South Carolina, Rutledge, Heyward, and, most importantly, Pinckney, saw their new nation through its birth and establishment.

The military leadership, as well as the political leadership, of the South saw the nation through its expansion. Under Southern leadership the British were defeated a second time in 1814. Under Southerners, most obviously John Tyler and Andrew Jackson, Florida was added as a state. The defeat of Mexico in 1846, under the Southern leadership of James Polk and numerous Southern military officers, established of the United States as a force to be feared. That was an astonishing accomplishment for so small and so young a nation

Thomas Jefferson, who added the Louisiana Purchase, barely escaped impeachment for his efforts. The north argued continuously against the war with Mexico that added the area from Texas to California just as they had argued against the Louisiana Purchase. One Congressman from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, was particularly vehement against Texas being made a state. Northerners, having seen Mexico defeated and the United States enlarged all the way to the Pacific Ocean, then objected to the methods and motives of the acquisition of the Washington and Oregon territories in the northwest. Polk, who had added that vast area from Louisiana to California to Colorado to the pacific northwest, served only one term as President due to the constant attacks he sufferer in the Northern press. Left to the people of the north, the French would still control from Minnesota to Louisiana and Mexico would control from Texas to the Pacific while Canada would still include Washington, Oregon Idaho and Montana.

Every square inch of soil that now comprises the continental United States was added under a Southern president, and they did it over the strenuous political objections of the north. The provincial and mercenary Yankee people fought every effort to expand the United States. The expansion of the United States became a regional political disagreement that spread ill feeling north and South. Its accomplishment by Southerners was no small feat. It was accomplished under Southern military leadership and with much Southern blood. (Which is why Tennessee is called "The Volunteer State" and the names of Southerners are almost exclusively the only ones found on memorial tablets and monuments from Texas to California.). The expansion of the original colonies into the continental power it became was completely the results of the Southern mind and Southern leadership.

Having secured the freedom of the United States from England and then having formed and led the successful government into a new political age under a written constitution that is still the envy of the whole world, the South gave the entire military and political leadership that formed the United States into the boundaries it now enjoys. But these magnificent accomplishments were soon to be overshadowed by population shifts and the ensuing results that brings in a representative government. By the early 1820s the north had finally secured just enough additional population that it had achieved enough political clout to start protecting its first love, its money. The unfair and punitive tariffs that were passed in 1828 led to the South’s first half-hearted attempt to form its own separate government with the Nullification movement of 1832. The threat of war that South Carolina held out in 1832 then caused a negotiated modification of those laws to where the South could live with them. For the time being, the political question was settled by compromise.

While those changes pacified the political leaders of the South for the time being, some statesmen could see, even then, that if the North ever became totally dominant politically, the South would be destroyed, not just economically, but philosophically and spiritually as well. Those statesmen, with Calhoun in the lead, then started planting the intellectual seeds that led to the South’s second attempt at political freedom in 1860.

Unfortunately, in the 1840’s Yankee abolitionist introduced the new poison of the "voluntary end" of slavery as a political issue. There were attempts by many Southerners to defuse this situation by offering an economic solution. That is, Southerners offered to end slavery in the South just as England had ended it in the West Indies, by having the slave-holders paid for their losses when the slaves were freed. The abolitionist Yankees would have none of that. Their position was simple, the South could give up it slaves for free and each farmer could absorb the loss personally. There was to be no payment. To the Yankee abolitionists it was either their way or war.

The fact that the abolitionist movement became a dominant presence in the northern part of the United States from the 1840’s on is primarily because a liberal can politicize any subject and enrage any body of people regardless of the level of preexisting good will. (As current liberals have turned the simple good sense argument that one should not litter one’s own environment into the political upheaval of "the ecology movement." The effectiveness of liberal methods can currently be seen in the simple instance that most people believe such nonsense as the chemical cause of "ozone depletion" and "the greenhouse effect" despite any evidence of either. Liberals are absolutely capable, by their strident, activist natures of raising any question to harmful emotional heights.)

Unfortunately, the loss of the War for Southern Independence in 1865 caused the very thing that Southern statesmen had foreseen in the 1830’s; that is, the north became dominant and the cultural, spiritual, and economic base of the South was decimated. The loss of the war was most severely felt in the South, of course, but it has also had political repercussions in the north as well.

Without the South in a position of dominance, the leadership of the United States has gone from Washington, Jefferson, Madison, Monroe, Tyler and Polk to the inept, or leftist, Grant, Harding, Arthur, Harrison and Roosevelt, among others. Plus, the ascendancy of the leftist north to national prominence has also caused the rise of leaders in the South who had to be acceptable to the north. Such spectacularly immoral or totally incompetent Southern politicians as Lyndon Johnson, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are examples of the quality of the men that the South must now produce to garner northern votes. When these modern day jackals are contrasted with the demigods the South produced when unfettered by the northern voter, that in itself should be enough to make all people reject northern philosophy and northern politics and embrace all things Southern.

As the forces of the left have gained ascendancy in the United States, the pressure intensifies to completely obliterate anything that remains between them and complete leftist victory. That means that the traditional enemy of leftists, the South, must be erased in its every form. That is why leftists always demand that even symbols of the South be eradicated.

We, therefore, now have a coalition of people who want the Southern flag taken down and hidden from public view. This coalition is composed of three main groups. First of all are African-Americans, whose emotional position is totally unmitigated by any knowledge of history. Secondly, there are Yankees who have moved to the South and who, despite their remarkable political failures in their own states, have learned nothing and continue to vote leftist here too. Or either these northern imports have been transferred here to run the newspapers that are owned by the people who live outside the South. And, thirdly, there are leftist Southerners, or Southerners of "politically correct" leaning, who have apparently learned their history from the television and movies and who feel the South is a bad place because it is not egalitarian enough.

But the demands of this coalition of political thinkers need to be put in proper perspective. Before anyone starts to tell someone else how to act and how to think, it is incumbent on him to demonstrate the success of his own ideas and actions. So far the introduction and enforcement of leftist ideas in our world has led to nothing but sorrow and degeneration. The force necessary to make people live under a leftist government has been the direct cause of the murder of over one hundred million people in this century alone. Leftist political theory has enslaved and impoverished billions of people worldwide. Its introduction has weakened even such great nations as England and France and reduced them to the status of third rate nations. Socialism in Scandinavia has reduced it to an economic level even less than that of England. In the United States leftist ideas have turned our country into the increasingly sick society it has become.

So until this coalition of leftist can point to a single successful instance of where their leftist philosophy has improved a country, or a people, rather than to the spectacular political failures the left has precipitated in any place into which its poisonous philosophy has been introduced, they have no right to demand anything of anybody. Leftist, the most spectacular political failures in all of history, have no standing to demand that Southerners accept anything that flows from their false philosophy. And of all people, leftist have the least demand on Southerners, the people who formed, guided, expanded and gave them a great country.

The Confederate flag is a symbol. It stands for the people who had the spirit, the courage, and the intelligence to give the world its greatest governmental entity. As long as the Confederate flag flies there is hope that the terrible scourge leftists have placed on the world will pass. It represents the culture that produced the most wished for, the most just, and the finest political system on earth. And as long as the Confederate flies there is hope that the greatness that was once ours may someday be reestablished.

Well I suggest you should look at the words of Frederick Douglass who in the fall of 1861 noticed the number of blacks in the Confederate Army, or Ervin Jordan, the first black professor at the University of North Carolina who wrote The Confederate Negro as an associate professor at the University of Virginia in 1969. Perhaps you would care to delve into the records of Charleston and Savannah which amply supply documented evidence of not only blacks fighting in the War, but free blacks volunteering for the war.

Perhaps if the so called 'conservatives' on this forum that are so gung-ho to follow a Tyrant into the depths of Hades were actually to look at the historical records instead of missives coming from on high command in Richmond, they would actually see the truth.

To compare the Holocaust to the War of Southern Independence is not only an insult to my ancestors, but the millions of Jews that died at the hands of a madman

Before the war, Lincoln himself had pledged to leave slavery intact,

Lincoln totally opposed Westward expansion of slavery which is exactly what the radicals in the South demanded. Lincoln would not compromise on that moral issue, and the greedy slave owning bastards looking to make a big buck selling human beings out West would not back off on their demands to make every Western territory 'slave country." They knew they needed more "slave states" if they were going to keep the institution alive and growing and continue to show a profit from their human breeding farms.

BTW. Show me where Lincoln ever proposed or sponsored an amendment to guarantee slavery where it existed. I'd like to see your source for that. Such an amendment would have been redundant in the first place since the constitution already acknowledged the legality of slavery.

And where did you get the factoid that Fort Sumter was a customs house? It was no such thing. It was a mostly unnecessary Federal Fort that was build at the demand of the Charleston slavers as a public works project. (i.e. a Federally sponsored boondoggle)

And where in the US Constitution is the clause that says slavery will exist in every area added to the nation? That is what the Confederate constitution says, quite explicitly. Confederate States couldn't ban slavery even if they wanted to. Some Federalism there!

As to tariffs, as the great Constitutionalist that you are, you surely must be aware that import tariffs were the major source of income for the Federal government prior to the 16th amendment with excise tariffs running a very distant second. Below is the average rate of tariff revenue vs. the value of imports beginning in 1821. The rate would go high in a time of war (like the Mexican War, which was fully supported by and of great benefit to all of the Southern states) spike high in times of recession, and be lower at a times of peace and prosperity. You will note that the year 1860 was a nearly all time low for tariffs followed by a very steep rise to an all time high of 45% to pay for the Civil War. I would assume that nearly all of that increase was paid by citizens of the North. The fact is however, that the total federal take in taxes was meaningless it was so small. It simply had little or no impact on the average person in those days.

And if tariffs were such a big deal for the South, a deal big enough to break the Union and go to war, why was it that ever resolution of secession passed by the legislatures listed protection of the institution of slavery as their prime reason? Every one of them, Vinne, with no exceptions listed slavery as their cause. By their own words, they did not break over tariffs. They broke over the issue of slavery! Yes, it was economic --- 60% of the wealth of the South was in the form of slaves --- albeit that 60% was owned by less than 5% of the population of the South. Of course those same 5% owned all the Southern legislatures too, but I digress.

A mind is a terrible thing to waste Vinny. Quit wasting yours at these neo-Nazi web sites that are attempting to rewrite well-documented history. The Civil War is the most written and studied event in our history. Its cause was clear. It was all about slavery.

In effect, the South was being looted to pay for the North?s early version of industrial policy. The battle over the tariff began in 1828, with the "tariff of abomination." Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it became impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime.

Let me quote from Alexander Stephens, soon to be vice president of the confederacy:

"The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that...Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at.

How could tariffs be the cause is they were at the rate the southern politicians wanted them at?

The Confederate Constitution did, however, make possible the gradual elimination of slavery...

Let's quote from the confederate constitution:

"No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."

How would that make possible the gradual elimination of slavery?

Neither did he lift a finger to repeal the anti-Negro laws that besotted all Northern states, Illinois in particular.

Leaving aside for a moment the Black Codes implemented down south after the rebellion, how could the president dictate the repeal of state laws? Don't you believe in states rights?

The Civil War is the most written and studied event in our history. Its cause was clear. It was all about slavery.

One of those who writes and studies, as you say, is Professor Michael F. Holt of the University of Virginia. I had the privilege of sitting in on one of his lectures last year. (He is an extraordinary lecturer.) During that lecture he told his class that the suggestion that slavery was the primary cause of the war was:

R U B B I S H !!

I write it that way to put in text his emphasis during the lecture.

And you would say what: that Holt doesn't know what he is talking about? To be sure you could find other scholars who disagree, but your suggestion that only an ignoramus holds that slavery was not the primary cause of the war says more about you than we probably need to know.

ML/NJ

We have no idea if Holt knows what he is talking about or not. What does he say is the cause and what evidence does he offer to support it?

I assume that "we" is the Royal "We."

The guy is a Professor of History at the University of Virginia, Mr. Jefferson's University. So he brings those credentials to the table. I provided a link to an Amazon page where his most recent book is reviewed and argued about. (Did you bother to look? Let me guess: it was too much trouble.) That book is a 1200+ page tome about pre-"Civil War" politics, and you want me to present his argument here in a response to you? My one sentance attempt would be: The "Civil War" was caused by the breakdown of the two party system. Does that really help you?

My point was not whether Holt is correct, or those who suggest slavery, or economics are correct. My point was that there are very highly educated people in the field who do not think slavery was the primary cause, and it is foolish to dismiss them out of hand.

ML/NJ

But the beauty of our original system was, if the local folks(states, cities, counties, towns) got out of control, people would just flee to friendlier confines. This competition would be a check against local politicians.

True enough. You can't get away from Uncle Sam and his tax collectors. But a lot of the mid-nineteenth century unpleasantness was precisely about fetching back those who fled from local tyrants to friendlier confines.

If you really had "sovereign states," you would be surprised by the mischief they could get up to. By the Constitution, the rights of citizens of one state were to be respected by other states, but since a state could decide who was a citizen and who wasn't, it could decide what rights they would have.

One could make a case that the 14th Amendment destroyed the Old Republic. One could also make a case that by guaranteeing that citizens of the United States were also citizens of the state they resided in and fully entitled to basic rights, the 14th Amendment fullfilled that Old Republic. In other words, don't be 100% sure that you could simply have taken what you had and fled and enjoyed the same rights in your new state if the Secessionists or State's Rightists had their way.

To be sure there was potential for misuse of the 14th Amendment. It would be fulfilled in the 20th Century. But the case could be made that the real change came with the 16th Amendment and the Income Tax.

After the Civil War, people were probably freer to get up and leave one state, if they felt it didn't suit them, than they were before the war. The locals in those days might be keeping tabs on you, but the feds weren't yet.

And where in the US Constitution is the clause that says slavery will exist in every area added to the nation?

Great stuff, Ditto.

Lincoln's Cooper Union speech in February, 1860 is where he compelling laid out two facts:

1. A clear majority of the original framers wanted to rid the nation of slavery through measures like the Northwest Ordinance. and,

2. He showed that the federal government clearly had the power to legislate the territories.

That made him a marked man in the south. And it meant that slaver plans to destroy the Union must be quickly brought to fruition. Thanks for all your resarch.

Walt

Do you know where that Lee quote from #32 comes from? I haven't studied Lee at all. The quote is intriguing.

Sure. This is a note I put up on a white supremacist newsgroup a couple of years ago(which I won't grace by naming):

Robert E. Lee is no proper hero for Americans, saying in 1865 that the best relationship of whites and blacks was that of master and slave. (1)

Lee agreed that the system of chattel slavery in the south was a positive good, both rational and Christian, and thus an institution fit to be made permanent to serve as the cornerstone of the Confederate "nation". Too, he was in fact aslave owner, his estate at Arlington being the home of 63 slaves. (2)

Lee took up arms against the United States before his letter of resignation was accepted. (3)

He was not even a very successful general, squandering his army's manpower in bloody battles that destroyed his opportunity for offensive action and ultimately led to mass desertions.

"He failed to rise above local professional concerns and view the war as a whole, displaying little interest or understanding of the overall strategic situation, demonstrating a predilection for Virginia - and Virginians - to the exclusion of all other theaters." (4)

If you like losers, Robert E. Lee is the man for you.

And Lee's honor? His statements were inconsistant and self serving:

"The framers of our Constitution never exhausted so much labor, wisdom andforebearance in its formation, and surrounded it with so many guards and securities, if it was to be broken by every member of the Confederacy at will. It was intended for 'perpetual union' so expressed in the preamble, and forthe establishment of a government, not a compact, which can only be dissolvedby revolution, or the consent of all the people in convention assembled. It isidle to talk of secession."

January 23, 1861 (5)

"All the South has ever desired is that the union, as formed by ourfounding fathers, should be preserved." Jan 5. 1866 (6)

Robert E. Lee is not a suitable hero for Americans today.

(1) Lee Considered, By Alan Nolan p. 21

(2) Ibid p. 10

(3) Ibid p. 52

(4) from "A Civil War Treasury" by A.A. Nofi

(5) Lee Considered By Alan Nolan p. 34

(6) Ibid p. 56

Taken all together, Lee is a bum.

Walt

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