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.

I asked you to lay out a "long train of abuses" prior to 1860. Can you do that or not?

No. I can not lay out a "long train of abuses" that will satisfy you, ever. You are not a mid 19th Century Southerner. Get it?

I can lay out a "long train of abuses" that more than justifies to Johnny Rebel way of thinking cause to take up arms.

The people of Georgia having dissolved their political connection with the Government of the United States of America, present to their confederates and the world the causes which have led to the separation. For the last ten years we have had numerous and serious causes of complaint against our non-slave-holding confederate States with reference to the subject of African slavery. They have endeavored to weaken our security, to disturb our domestic peace and tranquility, and persistently refused to comply with their express constitutional obligations to us in reference to that property, and by the use of their power in the Federal Government have striven to deprive us of an equal enjoyment of the common Territories of the Republic. This hostile policy of our confederates has been pursued with every circumstance of aggravation which could arouse the passions and excite the hatred of our people, and has placed the two sections of the Union for many years past in the condition of virtual civil war. Our people, still attached to the Union from habit and national traditions, and averse to change, hoped that time, reason, and argument would bring, if not redress, at least exemption from further insults, injuries, and dangers. Recent events have fully dissipated all such hopes and demonstrated the necessity of separation. Our Northern confederates, after a full and calm hearing of all the facts, after a fair warning of our purpose not to submit to the rule of the authors of all these wrongs and injuries, have by a large majority committed the Government of the United States into their hands. The people of Georgia, after an equally full and fair and deliberate hearing of the case, have declared with equal firmness that they shall not rule over them. A brief history of the rise, progress, and policy of anti-slavery and the political organization into whose hands the administration of the Federal Government has been committed will fully justify the pronounced verdict of the people of Georgia. The party of Lincoln, called the Republican party, under its present name and organization, is of recent origin. It is admitted to be an anti-slavery party. While it attracts to itself by its creed the scattered advocates of exploded political heresies, of condemned theories in political economy, the advocates of commercial restrictions, of protection, of special privileges, of waste and corruption in the administration of Government, anti-slavery is its mission and its purpose. By anti-slavery it is made a power in the state. The question of slavery was the great difficulty in the way of the formation of the Constitution. While the subordination and the political and social inequality of the African race was fully conceded by all, it was plainly apparent that slavery would soon disappear from what are now the non-slave-holding States of the original thirteen. The opposition to slavery was then, as now, general in those States and the Constitution was made with direct reference to that fact. But a distinct abolition party was not formed in the United States for more than half a century after the Government went into operation. The main reason was that the North, even if united, could not control both branches of the Legislature during any portion of that time. Therefore such an organization must have resulted either in utter failure or in the total overthrow of the Government. The material prosperity of the North was greatly dependent on the Federal Government; that of the the South not at all. In the first years of the Republic the navigating, commercial, and manufacturing interests of the North began to seek profit and aggrandizement at the expense of the agricultural interests. Even the owners of fishing smacks sought and obtained bounties for pursuing their own business (which yet continue), and $500,000 is now paid them annually out of the Treasury. The navigating interests begged for protection against foreign shipbuilders and against competition in the coasting trade. Congress granted both requests, and by prohibitory acts gave an absolute monopoly of this business to each of their interests, which they enjoy without diminution to this day. Not content with these great and unjust advantages, they have sought to throw the legitimate burden of their business as much as possible upon the public; they have succeeded in throwing the cost of light-houses, buoys, and the maintenance of their seamen upon the Treasury, and the Government now pays above $2,000,000 annually for the support of these objects. Theses interests, in connection with the commercial and manufacturing classes, have also succeeded, by means of subventions to mail steamers and the reduction in postage, in relieving their business from the payment of about $7,000,000 annually, throwing it upon the public Treasury under the name of postal deficiency. The manufacturing interests entered into the same struggle early, and has clamored steadily for Government bounties and special favors. This interest was confined mainly to the Eastern and Middle non-slave-holding States. Wielding these great States it held great power and influence, and its demands were in full proportion to its power. The manufacturers and miners wisely based their demands upon special facts and reasons rather than upon general principles, and thereby mollified much of the opposition of the opposing interest. They pleaded in their favor the infancy of their business in this country, the scarcity of labor and capital, the hostile legislation of other countries toward them, the great necessity of their fabrics in the time of war, and the necessity of high duties to pay the debt incurred in our war for independence. These reasons prevailed, and they received for many years enormous bounties by the general acquiescence of the whole country. But when these reasons ceased they were no less clamorous for Government protection, but their clamors were less heeded-- the country had put the principle of protection upon trial and condemned it. After having enjoyed protection to the extent of from 15 to 200 per cent. upon their entire business for above thirty years, the act of 1846 was passed. It avoided sudden change, but the principle was settled, and free trade, low duties, and economy in public expenditures was the verdict of the American people. The South and the Northwestern States sustained this policy. There was but small hope of its reversal; upon the direct issue, none at all. All these classes saw this and felt it and cast about for new allies. The anti-slavery sentiment of the North offered the best chance for success. An anti-slavery party must necessarily look to the North alone for support, but a united North was now strong enough to control the Government in all of its departments, and a sectional party was therefore determined upon. Time and issues upon slavery were necessary to its completion and final triumph. The feeling of anti-slavery, which it was well known was very general among the people of the North, had been long dormant or passive; it needed only a question to arouse it into aggressive activity. This question was before us. We had acquired a large territory by successful war with Mexico; Congress had to govern it; how, in relation to slavery, was the question then demanding solution. This state of facts gave form and shape to the anti-slavery sentiment throughout the North and the conflict began. Northern anti-slavery men of all parties asserted the right to exclude slavery from the territory by Congressional legislation and demanded the prompt and efficient exercise of this power to that end. This insulting and unconstitutional demand was met with great moderation and firmness by the South. We had shed our blood and paid our money for its acquisition; we demanded a division of it on the line of the Missouri restriction or an equal participation in the whole of it. These propositions were refused, the agitation became general, and the public danger was great. The case of the South was impregnable. The price of the acquisition was the blood and treasure of both sections-- of all, and, therefore, it belonged to all upon the principles of equity and justice. The Constitution delegated no power to Congress to excluded either party from its free enjoyment; therefore our right was good under the Constitution. Our rights were further fortified by the practice of the Government from the beginning. Slavery was forbidden in the country northwest of the Ohio River by what is called the ordinance of 1787. That ordinance was adopted under the old confederation and by the assent of Virginia, who owned and ceded the country, and therefore this case must stand on its own special circumstances. The Government of the United States claimed territory by virtue of the treaty of 1783 with Great Britain, acquired territory by cession from Georgia and North Carolina, by treaty from France, and by treaty from Spain. These acquisitions largely exceeded the original limits of the Republic. In all of these acquisitions the policy of the Government was uniform. It opened them to the settlement of all the citizens of all the States of the Union. They emigrated thither with their property of every kind (including slaves). All were equally protected by public authority in their persons and property until the inhabitants became sufficiently numerous and otherwise capable of bearing the burdens and performing the duties of self-government, when they were admitted into the Union upon equal terms with the other States, with whatever republican constitution they might adopt for themselves. Under this equally just and beneficent policy law and order, stability and progress, peace and prosperity marked every step of the progress of these new communities until they entered as great and prosperous commonwealths into the sisterhood of American States. In 1820 the North endeavored to overturn this wise and successful policy and demanded that the State of Missouri should not be admitted into the Union unless she first prohibited slavery within her limits by her constitution. After a bitter and protracted struggle the North was defeated in her special object, but her policy and position led to the adoption of a section in the law for the admission of Missouri, prohibiting slavery in all that portion of the territory acquired from France lying North of 36 [degrees] 30 [minutes] north latitude and outside of Missouri. The venerable Madison at the time of its adoption declared it unconstitutional. Mr. Jefferson condemned the restriction and foresaw its consequences and predicted that it would result in the dissolution of the Union. His prediction is now history. The North demanded the application of the principle of prohibition of slavery to all of the territory acquired from Mexico and all other parts of the public domain then and in all future time. It was the announcement of her purpose to appropriate to herself all the public domain then owned and thereafter to be acquired by the United States. The claim itself was less arrogant and insulting than the reason with which she supported it. That reason was her fixed purpose to limit, restrain, and finally abolish slavery in the States where it exists. The South with great unanimity declared her purpose to resist the principle of prohibition to the last extremity. This particular question, in connection with a series of questions affecting the same subject, was finally disposed of by the defeat of prohibitory legislation. The Presidential election of 1852 resulted in the total overthrow of the advocates of restriction and their party friends. Immediately after this result the anti-slavery portion of the defeated party resolved to unite all the elements in the North opposed to slavery an to stake their future political fortunes upon their hostility to slavery everywhere. This is the party two whom the people of the North have committed the Government. They raised their standard in 1856 and were barely defeated. They entered the Presidential contest again in 1860 and succeeded. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories, hostility to it everywhere, the equality of the black and white races, disregard of all constitutional guarantees in its favor, were boldly proclaimed by its leaders and applauded by its followers. With these principles on their banners and these utterances on their lips the majority of the people of the North demand that we shall receive them as our rulers. The prohibition of slavery in the Territories is the cardinal principle of this organization. For forty years this question has been considered and debated in the halls of Congress, before the people, by the press, and before the tribunals of justice. The majority of the people of the North in 1860 decided it in their own favor. We refuse to submit to that judgment, and in vindication of our refusal we offer the Constitution of our country and point to the total absence of any express power to exclude us. We offer the practice of our Government for the first thirty years of its existence in complete refutation of the position that any such power is either necessary or proper to the execution of any other power in relation to the Territories. We offer the judgment of a large minority of the people of the North, amounting to more than one-third, who united with the unanimous voice of the South against this usurpation; and, finally, we offer the judgment of the Supreme Court of the United States, the highest judicial tribunal of our country, in our favor. This evidence ought to be conclusive that we have never surrendered this right. The conduct of our adversaries admonishes us that if we had surrendered it, it is time to resume it. The faithless conduct of our adversaries is not confined to such acts as might aggrandize themselves or their section of the Union. They are content if they can only injure us. The Constitution declares that persons charged with crimes in one State and fleeing to another shall be delivered up on the demand of the executive authority of the State from which they may flee, to be tried in the jurisdiction where the crime was committed. It would appear difficult to employ language freer from ambiguity, yet for above twenty years the non-slave-holding States generally have wholly refused to deliver up to us persons charged with crimes affecting slave property. Our confederates, with punic faith, shield and give sanctuary to all criminals who seek to deprive us of this property or who use it to destroy us. This clause of the Constitution has no other sanction than their good faith; that is withheld from us; we are remediless in the Union; out of it we are remitted to the laws of nations. A similar provision of the Constitution requires them to surrender fugitives from labor. This provision and the one last referred to were our main inducements for confederating with the Northern States. Without them it is historically true that we would have rejected the Constitution. In the fourth year of the Republic Congress passed a law to give full vigor and efficiency to this important provision. This act depended to a considerable degree upon the local magistrates in the several States for its efficiency. The non-slave-holding States generally repealed all laws intended to aid the execution of that act, and imposed penalties upon those citizens whose loyalty to the Constitution and their oaths might induce them to discharge their duty. Congress then passed the act of 1850, providing for the complete execution of this duty by Federal officers. This law, which their own bad faith rendered absolutely indispensible for the protection of constitutional rights, was instantly met with ferocious revilings and all conceivable modes of hostility. The Supreme Court unanimously, and their own local courts with equal unanimity (with the single and temporary exception of the supreme court of Wisconsin), sustained its constitutionality in all of its provisions. Yet it stands to-day a dead letter for all practicable purposes in every non-slave-holding State in the Union. We have their convenants, we have their oaths to keep and observe it, but the unfortunate claimant, even accompanied by a Federal officer with the mandate of the highest judicial authority in his hands, is everywhere met with fraud, with force, and with legislative enactments to elude, to resist, and defeat him. Claimants are murdered with impunity; officers of the law are beaten by frantic mobs instigated by inflammatory appeals from persons holding the highest public employment in these States, and supported by legislation in conflict with the clearest provisions of the Constitution, and even the ordinary principles of humanity. In several of our confederate States a citizen cannot travel the highway with his servant who may voluntarily accompany him, without being declared by law a felon and being subjected to infamous punishments. It is difficult to perceive how we could suffer more by the hostility than by the fraternity of such brethren. The public law of civilized nations requires every State to restrain its citizens or subjects from committing acts injurious to the peace and security of any other State and from attempting to excite insurrection, or to lessen the security, or to disturb the tranquillity of their neighbors, and our Constitution wisely gives Congress the power to punish all offenses against the laws of nations. These are sound and just principles which have received the approbation of just men in all countries and all centuries; but they are wholly disregarded by the people of the Northern States, and the Federal Government is impotent to maintain them. For twenty years past the abolitionists and their allies in the Northern States have been engaged in constant efforts to subvert our institutions and to excite insurrection and servile war among us. They have sent emissaries among us for the accomplishment of these purposes. Some of these efforts have received the public sanction of a majority of the leading men of the Republican party in the national councils, the same men who are now proposed as our rulers. These efforts have in one instance led to the actual invasion of one of the slave-holding States, and those of the murderers and incendiaries who escaped public justice by flight have found fraternal protection among our Northern confederates. These are the same men who say the Union shall be preserved. Such are the opinions and such are the practices of the Republican party, who have been called by their own votes to administer the Federal Government under the Constitution of the United States. We know their treachery; we know the shallow pretenses under which they daily disregard its plainest obligations. If we submit to them it will be our fault and not theirs. The people of Georgia have ever been willing to stand by this bargain, this contract; they have never sought to evade any of its obligations; they have never hitherto sought to establish any new government; they have struggled to maintain the ancient right of themselves and the human race through and by that Constitution. But they know the value of parchment rights in treacherous hands, and therefore they refuse to commit their own to the rulers whom the North offers us. Why? Because by their declared principles and policy they have outlawed $3,000,000,000 of our property in the common territories of the Union; put it under the ban of the Republic in the States where it exists and out of the protection of Federal law everywhere; because they give sanctuary to thieves and incendiaries who assail it to the whole extent of their power, in spite of their most solemn obligations and covenants; because their avowed purpose is to subvert our society and subject us not only to the loss of our property but the destruction of ourselves, our wives, and our children, and the desolation of our homes, our altars, and our firesides. To avoid these evils we resume the powers which our fathers delegated to the Government of the United States, and henceforth will seek new safeguards for our liberty, equality, security, and tranquillity. [Approved, Tuesday, January 29, 1861]

Calling this false is to hold on high the revisionist history that you so soundly believe.

I know it is Christmas and all, but it is so -easy- to show your position as false.

Okay, is it revision to quote George Washington in 1786? Or the Chief Justice of the United States in 1793? What am I revising?

I know I am a brainwashed drone of the Yankee National Education Association, and all; that is why I quote the actual and early participants.

"I do not conceive we can exist long as a nation, without having lodged somewhere a power which will pervade the whole Union in as energetic a manner, as the authority of the different state governments extends over the several states. To be fearful of vesting Congress, constituted as that body is, with ample authorities for national purposes, appears to me to be the very climax of popular absurdity and madness."

George Washington to John Jay, 15 August 1786

"What stronger evidence can be given of the want of energy in our government than these disorders? If there exists not a power to check them, what security has a man of life, liberty, or property? To you, I am sure I need not add aught on this subject, the consequences of a lax or inefficient government, are too obvious to be dwelt on. Thirteen sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the federal head, will soon bring ruin to the whole; whereas a liberal, and energetic Constitution, well guarded and closely watched, to prevent encroachments, might restore us to that degree of respectability and consequence, to which we had a fair claim, and the brightest prospect of attaining..."

George Washington to James Madison November 5, 1786

"In all our deliberations on this subject we kept steadily in our view, that which appears to us the greatest interest of every true American, the consolidation of our Union, in which is involved our prosperity, felicity, safety, perhaps our national existance. This important consideration, seriously and deeply impressed on our minds [at the constitutional convention] led each State in the convention to be less rigid on points of inferior magnitude...the constitution, which we now present, is the result of of a spirit of amity, and of that mutual deference and concession which the peculularity of our political situation rendered indispensible."

George Washington to the Continental Congress September 17, 1787

Consider also that the Supreme Court made clear in several seminal decisions very early in the nation's history that the sovereignty of the United States relies on the people of the whole country.

Consider an excerpt from Chisholm v. Georgia:

On October 31, 1777 the Executive Council of Georgia authorized state commissioners Thomas Stone and Edward Davies to purchase much needed supplies from Robert Farquahr, a Charleston, South Carolina merchant [Farquhar was killed in an accident, Georgia refused to pay...Chisholm, Farquahr's executor filed suit]. In 1792, Chisholm, nevertheless, filed suit in the Supreme Court...the decision came down February 19, 1793. All five justices delivered opinions; only Justice Iredell, holding to the view the circuit court opinion [no state was liable to be sued by an individual of another state], dissented. In the face of assurances made by Hamilton, Madison, and Marshall during the Ratification debates that a state could not, without its consent, be made party defedant in the federal courts by a citizen of another state, the Court took jurisdiction and decided against the state. {ed. note}

Excerpts from the Justices' opinions:

Wilson, Justice:-- This is a cause of uncommon magnitude. One of the parties to it is a state. certainly respectable, claiming to be sovereign. The question to be determined is whether this state, so respectable, and whose claim soars so high, is amenable to the jurisdiction of the supreme court of the United States? This question, important in itself, wil depend on others, more important still; and, may perhaps be resolved into one, no less radical than this--"do the people of the United States form a nation?"...

To the Constitution of the United States the term sovereign is totally unknown. There is but one place where it could have been used with propriety. But, even in that place it would not, perhaps, have comported tself with the delicacy of those who ordained and established that constitution. They might have announced themselves "sovereign" people of the United States; But serenely conscious of the fact, they avoided the ostentatious declaration...As to the purposes of the Union, therefore, Georgia is not a sovereign state...in almost every nation, which has been denominated free, the state has assumed a supercilious preeminence above the people who have formed it: Hence, the haughty notions of state independence, state sovereignty and state supremacy...Who were these people? They were the citizens of thirteen states, each of which had a separate constitution and government, and all of which were connected by articles of confederation. To the purposes of public strength and felicity the confederacy was totally inadequate. A requistion on the several states terminated its legislative authority; executive or judicial authority, it had none. In order, therefore, to form a more perfect union, to establish justice, to insure domestic tranquility, to provide for common defense and to secure the blessings of liberty, those people, among whom were the people of Georgia, ordained and established the present constitution. By that constitution, legislative power is vested, executive power is vested, judicial power is vested...We may then infer, that the people of the United States intended to bind the several states, by the legislative power of the national government...Whoever considers, in a combined and comprehensive view, the general texture of the constitution, wil be satisfied that the people of the United States intended to form themselves into a nation for national purposes. They instituted, for such purposes, a national government complete in all its parts, with powers legislative, executive and judiiciary, ad in all those powers extending over the whole nation.

Jay, Chief Justice:-- The Question we are now to decide has been accurately stated, viz.: Is a state suable by individual citizens of another state?...

The revolution, or rather the Declaration of Independence, found the people already united for general purposes, and at the same time, providing for their more domestic concerns by state conventions, and other temporary arrangements. From the crown of Great Britain, the sovereignty of their country passed to the people of it; and it was then not an uncommon opinion, that the unappropriated lands, which belonged to that crown, passed, not to the people of the colony or states within whose limits they were situated, bt to the whole people; on whatever principles this opinion rested, it did not give way to the other, and thirteen sovereignties were considered as emerged from the principles of the revolution, combined with local convenience and considerations; the people nevertheless continued to consider themselves, in a national point of view, as one people; and they continued without interruption to manage their national concerns accordingly; afterwards, in the hurry of the war, and in the warmth of mutual confidence, they made a confederation of the States, the basis of a general Government. Experience disappointed the expectations they had formed from it; and then the people, in their collective and national capacity, established the present Constitution. It is remarkable that in establishing it, the people exercised their own rights and their own proper sovereignty, and conscious of the plenitude of it, they declared with becoming dignity, "We the people of the United States," 'do ordain and establish this Constitution." Here we see the people acting as the sovereigns of the whole country; and in the language of sovereignty, establishing a Constitution by which it was their will, that the state governments should be bound, and to which the State Constitutions should be made to conform. Every State Constitution is a compact made by and between the citizens of a state to govern themeselves in a certain manner; and the Constitution of the United States is liekwise a compact made by the people of the United States to govern themselves as to general objects, in a certain manner. By this great compact however, many prerogatives were transferred to the national Government, such as those of making war and peace, contracting alliances, coining money, etc."

-From Chisholm v. Georgia, 1793.

So the main point of the author of "I Pledge Allegiance to the Confederate Flag" has got some serious challenge when he commends the secessionists to us as heroes, doesn't he?

In fact, the whole thing makes him look like a revisionist, doesn't it?

Walt

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