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.

In this and other threads when I or non-sequitor or Whiskey Papa post quotes from source documents, we’re called 'cut 'n paste artists' with no argument or rebuttal to our arguments. Now you come up with a quote, and that somehow makes every thing I say 'unsupported opinion.'

This is (to the best of my recollection) the first time we’ve debated. I’ve never referred to anyone as a “cut’n paste artist” (although given Walt’s apparent dependence upon anonymous ‘newsgroup’ sources it may be applicable in certain circumstances ;>). And, if you will review your posts addressed to me on this thread, I do not believe that you ever quoted a single source document. That’s your right – you are welcome to your (“unsubstantiated”) opinions. But, quite frankly, I am interested in history rather than opinion – I can get the latter by watching the network news... ;>)

Above I posted Article V of the Constitution to ask one of you where it implies a right to secede, as he had stated. I never got a reply to that post. It seems when you see the source you won't reply, and when we don't post source, you call us uninformed!

Thank you for the reference (to Post #362, I believe - not addressed to me). You state that the clause in question “has to do with amending the Constitution.” I was wondering: did you reach that conclusion from the location of the clause in Article V, rather than (for example) in Article I? Does the location of the clause have significance? Does the clause apply exclusively to Article V concerns (constitutional amendment)? Obviously, I am asking for your opinion, but feel free to quote any source documents upon which your opinion is based. Thanks!

;>)

Here’s the exchange.

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To: WhiskeyPapa
The original Union was voluntary. That's the one George Washington wanted. "Consent of the governed" with him was key. He was the Anti-Lincoln.
"No State, without its consent, shall be deprived of its equal suffrage in the Senate." Article V, US Constitution. Now why do you suppose a state could consent to being denied their equal suffrage in the Senate? Could it be because they had the legal option under the Constitution to SECEDE?? [ Emphasis his]
Illinois motto: "State Sovereignty, National Union" Ole Abe was shot too soon. The 39th Congress wiped out half his state's motto. Walt cheers.
359 posted on 1/2/02 2:53 PM Pacific by H.Akston
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To: H.Akston
ARTICLE V
MODE OF AMENDMENT
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The Congress, whenever two thirds of both Houses shall deem it necessary, shall propose Amendments to this Constitution, or, on the Application of the Legislatures of two thirds of the several States, shall call a Convention for proposing Amendments, which in either Case, shall be valid to all Intents and Purposes, as Part of this Constitution, when ratified by the Legislatures of three fourths of the several States or by Conventions in three fourths thereof, as the one or the other Mode of Ratification may be proposed by the Congress; Provided that no Amendment which may be made prior to the Year One thousand eight hundred and eight shall in any Manner affect the first and fourth Clauses in the Ninth Section of the first Article; and that no State, without its Consent, shall be deprived of its equal Suffrage in the Senate.
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It has to do with amending the Constitution. All the members of the Senate had to be there unless their state said it was ok for them not to be. Where do you read a right to secession into that Article? Curious minds would like to know.
362 posted on 1/2/02 3:14 PM Pacific by Ditto

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This was my source for posting article V. http://www.access.gpo.gov/congress/senate/constitution/art5.html. It’s a straight ‘cut ‘n paste. He stated emphatically that Article V said that States had the right to secede. I posted Article V, verbatim, stated the nature of that article, and asked him to show me where it granted a right to secede. And as I said, I received no reply Askton. Zip, zero, nadda.

Now what exactly is your question to me? Are you suggesting that Article I supports secession? Show me where? Article V seems rather straight forward and does not even begin to say what Askton claimed. What is it you read in Article I that says otherwise?

"You put forward Taney in Merryman. Will you honor him in the Prize Cases?"

Well of course, I'd be delighted.

Congress, on the 6th of August, 1862, passed an Act confirming all acts, proclamations, and orders of the President after the 4th of March, 1861, respecting the army and navy, and legalizing them, so far as was competent for that body, and it has been suggested, but scarcely argued, that this legislation on the subject had the effect to bring into existence an ex post facto civil war, with all the rights of capture and confiscation, jure belli, from the date referred to. An ex post facto law is defined when, after an action, indifferent in itself or lawful, is committed, the Legislature then, for the first time, declares it to have been a crime and inflicts punishment upon the person who committed it. The principle is sought to be applied in this case. Property of the citizen or foreign subject engaged in lawful trade at the time, and illegally captured, which must be taken as true if a confirmatory act be necessary, may be held and confiscated by subsequent legislation. In other words, trade and commerce authorized at the time by acts of Congress and treaties may, by ex post facto legislation, be changed into illicit trade and commerce with all its penalties and forfeitures annexed and enforced. The instance of the seizure of the Dutch ships in 1803 by Great Britain before the war, and confiscation after the declaration of war, which is well known, is referred to as an authority. But there, the ships were seized by the war power, the orders of the Government, the seizure being a partial exercise of that power, and which was soon after exercised in full.
The precedent is one which has not received the approbation of jurists, and is not to be followed. See W. B. Lawrence, 2d ed. Wheaton's Element of Int.Law, pt. 4, ch. 1. sec. 11, and note. But, admitting its full weight, it affords no authority in the present case. Here, the captures were without any Constitutional authority and void, and, on principle, no subsequent ratification could make them valid.
Upon the whole, after the most careful consideration of this case which the pressure of other duties has admitted, I am compelled to the conclusion that no civil war existed between this Government and the States in insurrection till recognized by the Act of Congress 13th of July, 1861; that the President does not possess the power under the Constitution to declare war or recognize its existence within the meaning of the law of nations, which carries with it belligerent rights, and thus change the country and all its citizens from a state of peace to a state of war; that this power belongs exclusively to the Congress of the United States, and, consequently, that the President had no power to set on foot a blockade under the law of nations, and that the capture of the vessel and cargo in this case, and in all cases before us in which the capture occurred before the 13th of July, 1861, for breach of blockade, or as enemies' property, are illegal and void, and that the decrees of condemnation should be reversed, and the vessel and cargo restored.
Mr. Chief Justice TANEY, Mr. Justice CATRON and Mr. Justice CLIFFORD, concurred in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Nelson.

Thank you again Walt. I'm impressed that you consided Taney's opinion worthy of inclusion into the record.

Upon the whole, after the most careful consideration of this case which the pressure of other duties has admitted, I am compelled to the conclusion that no civil war existed between this Government and the States in insurrection till recognized by the Act of Congress 13th of July, 1861; that the President does not possess the power under the Constitution to declare war or recognize its existence within the meaning of the law of nations, which carries with it belligerent rights, and thus change the country and all its citizens from a state of peace to a state of war; that this power belongs exclusively to the Congress of the United States, and, consequently, that the President had no power to set on foot a blockade under the law of nations, and that the capture of the vessel and cargo in this case, and in all cases before us in which the capture occurred before the 13th of July, 1861, for breach of blockade, or as enemies' property, are illegal and void, and that the decrees of condemnation should be reversed, and the vessel and cargo restored.
Mr. Chief Justice TANEY, Mr. Justice CATRON and Mr. Justice CLIFFORD, concurred in the dissenting opinion of Mr. Justice Nelson.

Thank you again Walt. I'm impressed that you consided Taney's opinion worthy of inclusion into the record.

This is a clear attempt on your part to pervert the record.

The court ruled -unanimously- that the government had the right to put down the rebellion, referring to the insurgent area as the "so-called confederate states".

What you quote is the minority opinon on -who- can put down the rebellion, the president, or Congress. The court ruled 5-4 in -favor- of presidential power.

From the syllabus of the cases:

"A civil war exists, and may be prosecuted on the same footing as if those opposing the Government were foreign invaders, whenever the regular course of justice is interrupted by revolt, rebellion, or insurrection, so that the Courts cannot be kept open.

"The present civil war between the United States and the so-called Confederate States has such character and magnitude as to give the United States the same rights and powers which they might exercise in the case of a national or foreign war..."

Not very clever on your part.

Walt

...but he was only one voice.

To quote one famous American ‘icon,’ “not hardly.” As I noted some time ago, on another thread:

"You may wish to review Article I, Section 9 of the United States Constitution, Blackstone's Commentaries of 1803, Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Ex parte Bollman & Swartwout (1807), Justice Story's 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution, and Chief Justice Taney's opinion in Ex parte Merryman (1861). Each suggests that Mr. Lincoln's suspension of the writ of habeas corpus was thoroughly unconstitutional..."
196 Posted on 06/04/2001 14:17:21 PDT by Who is John Galt? (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)

If you are unable to locate the references in question, I will be happy to provide links.

;>)

Not very clever on your part.

You still have not retracted this ‘whopper’:

”It wasn;t until the slave holders saw their power to control the national government slipping away that the these positions were challenged.”
405 posted on 1/4/02 2:23 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa

“Not very clever on your part” – after all, I can quote ratification documents from the late 18th century, I can quote Tucker’s Blackstone’s of 1803, and I can quote Rawle’s View of the Constitution to prove you dead wrong. Perhaps you should see if you can find ‘reverse’ - before you 'get stuck'...

;>)

We didn't get the KKK of the SCOTUS for a long long long time.

Just thought I'd pass along an advance warning about what I can fairly safely assume to be one of the klansman justices you speak of: Walt's an FDR fan and New Dealer. Seeing as he willfully ignores history that he doesn't want to hear, notifying him of his other presidential hero's appointment of Hugo Black will likely only anger him into yet another state of historical denial. No word yet on how he'd react to the mention of FDR's "assistant president" and other interesting court appointment, not himself a klansman but generally considered the next closest thing...then again, rumors have long persisted that the assistant prez's replacement on the 1944 ticket himself may have enjoyed an extremely brief stint under a hood early in his life. And all of them were new deal democrats...go figure!

Actually, if one were to refer to the original post, one would note that I was not 'quoting' the amendment. I am quite careful about such things. Once again (and as usual), Walt got it wrong...

I saved it:

To: donmeaker

Under the terms of the 10th Amendment, powers not delegated or prohibited by the Constitution are reserved to the States or the people of the States - and the Constitution nowhere delegates or prohibits secession. 'So: there. No legal foundation to oppose secession. End of story.' As Harvard history professor William Gienapp recently noted, "the proponents of secession had a strong constitutional argument, probably a stronger argument than the nationalists advanced"...;>)

57 posted on 12/24/01 2:36 PM Pacific by Who is John Galt?

Don't try and weasel out.

Walt

You still have not retracted this ‘whopper’:
”It wasn;t until the slave holders saw their power to control the national government slipping away that the these positions were challenged.” 405 posted on 1/4/02 2:23 AM Pacific by WhiskeyPapa
“Not very clever on your part” – after all, I can quote ratification documents from the late 18th century, I can quote Tucker’s Blackstone’s of 1803, and I can quote Rawle’s View of the Constitution to prove you dead wrong. Perhaps you should see if you can find ‘reverse’ - before you 'get stuck'...
;>)

But you don't quote them.

You still are avoiding either supporting Taney's actions on secession or disavowing them. But you have to, don't you?

So we see you saying, "Taney, Taney, Taney," over Merryman and effectively saying 'no comment' over the Prize Cases. Fine.

Why don't you show us in the sources you claim, a right to unilateral state secession. Just saying they support your position, based on your track record, I don't find very compelling. Of course this whole ACW vanity teapot tempest here on FR involves unsupported statements by the neo-confederates being refuted in the record by those with a better grasp of the facts anyway.

In any case, I didn't tell a whopper--was there a secession convention prior to 1860?

Of course you have to discredit me personally because the record doesn't support you. Taney and the other 8 justices ALL agreed that the so-called secession of the so-called seceded states was outside the bounds of the Constitution. That is an incovenient fact for your interpretation, but it remains.

What I am doing now is very graciously offering you the opportunity to renounce a perhaps honest mistake, but the excerpt you provided regarding the -minority- opinon in the Prize Cases can only be seen as an atttempt to pervert the record--to divert attention from really happened, and you should be ashamed of that.

Walt

Chief Justice Marshall's opinion in Ex parte Bollman & Swartwout (1807), Justice Story's 1833 Commentaries on the Constitution, and Chief Justice Taney's opinion in Ex parte Merryman (1861).

Justice Marshall:

"The mischievous consequences of the construction contended for on the part of Virginia, are also entitled to great consideration. It would prostrate, it has been said, the government and its laws at the feet of every state in the Union. And would this not be the effect? What power of the government could be executed by its own means, in any states disposed to resist its execution by a course of legislation?...each member will possess a veto on the will of the whole...there is certainly nothing in the circumstances under which our constitution was formed; nothing in the history of the times, which justify the opinion that the confidence reposed in the states was so implicit as to leave in them and their tribunals the power of resisting or defeating, in the form of law, the legislative measures of the Union..."

Justice Story:

The constitution of the United States was ordained and established, not by the states in their sovereign capacities, but emphatically, as the preamble of the constitution declares, by "the people of the United States." There can be no doubt that it was competent to the people to invest the general government with all the powers which they might deem proper and necessary; to extend or restrain these powers according to their own good pleasure, and to give them a paramount and supreme authority. As little doubt can there be that the people had a right to prohibit to the states the exercise of any powers which were, in their judgment, incompatible with the objects of the general compact; to make the powers of the state governments, in given cases, subordinate to those of the nation, or to reserve to themselves those sovereign authorities which they might not choose to delegate to either."

Justice Taney didn't write the opinon is the Prize Cases but concurred with:

You have to pick and choose what suits you because the whole record doesn't support your position. You know not a one of these Justices will support a right to unilateral state secession-- which all three of the Justices you name (but don't quote) were solidly on the record as opposing.

The slave holders didn't go to the Court because they knew they had no case. Your misrepresenting and cherry picking the record won't help you establish that they did have one.

Walt

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