As long as freedom lives in our hearts, Dixie will never die, nor will our heroes be forgotten!
Posted on 05/23/2002 7:17:47 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
Almost 50 people gathered at the Scotland County Courthouse for a Confederate Memorial Day service Sunday afternoon.
The event was sponsored by the Son of Mars Camp 1632 branch of the Sons of Confederate Veterans. It was held to honor the “Immortal 600,” a group of 600 Confederate officers who were held at Morris Island, S.C., and used as human shields to protect Union positions.
Three members of the “Immortal 600” were from Richmond County, which included part of Scotland County. They were Capt. Alexander Troy Cole, 1st Lt. Edwin Scipio Hart and 1st Lt. Franklin McIntosh, who was from Laurel Hill.
Bruce Blackmon, commander of the Son of Mars Camp 1632, said he thinks it is important to remember all 40,000 North Carolina troops who died during the Civil War.
“It’s hard to believe that in one generation, we as Southerners have been taught to despise our symbols,” he said. “We are portrayed as an ignorant people without a culture. This, by the rest of the country, who have no culture and are jealous of ours. We are often accused of not being able to let go of our past, and why should we?”
Kam Harrell, commander of the James Lide Coker Camp in Hartsville, S.C., gave the main address. He spoke of misconceptions of the Southerners as “sweaty, stupid and ignorant.”
“The South is the best-kept secret in the country,” he said. “My South is the home of honest, hardworking people. It is the birthplace of jazz and blues. In my South, soul food and country cooking is the same thing. My South is hot and cold. The tea is iced, and almost as sweet as our women. In my South, the only person to sit on the back of the bus is the person to get on last. Let’s keep it a secret -- it keeps the idiots out.”
Mike Nobles read a poem he wrote in honor of his ancestors in Bladen County who fought for the Confederacy.
Re-enactors dressed as Confederate soldiers performed a gun salute. After singing “Dixie,” the attendees were invited to place flowers on the steps of the Confederate monument outside the courthouse.
And I won't sir. May God bless Dixie and the men of all colors who fought for the CSA
Sorry to rain on the parade, but this was done in direct response to the so-called CSA action of forcing black federal POW's to work on so-called CSA fortifications under fire.
Walt
Rather ironic, isn't it, that blues, jazz, and soul food came to us via the very people those Immortal 600 were fighting to keep enslaved.....
Over 160 years later, I think we are past the slavery issue except for those disruptors who keep bringing it up.
Damned Yankee barbarians. Not a gentleman among the rotters.
And God Bless you for that sentiment, billbears.
Many folks who demean the culture and educational resources of the south, don't know or choose to forget, that schooling was nearly non-existent during Reconstruction, since any money allocated for education and schools was quickly absorbed after the war by state and local governments trying to fund emergency and essential services to their people. Lest one forget, those emergencies were created by marauding invaders who burned and pillaged civilians even after they claimed victory.
Since Reconstruction began four years after the rebellion ended, what were these emergency and essential services you speak of and what had you been doing in the mean time?
As long as freedom lives in our hearts, Dixie will never die, nor will our heroes be forgotten!
The State of Georgia, for example, was economically, socially and culturally devasted by the War For Southern Independence. It was also under military rule.
A good educational system in place was virtually eliminated. Some black children received help from the Freedman's Bureau via a federal appropriation in 1866 of more than a half-million dollars for education alone.
With help from the Georgia Teacher's Association formed in 1967, a bill finally got through the carpetbagger legislature in 1870 to help finance education. Unfortunately a corrupt reconstruction governor substituted the funds (which came from rents paid by the Western and Atlantic Railroads) with illegal bonds.
There were no taxes for education -- who could have paid them then? Since most schools and colleges were wiped up by the war, nearly a generation of Georgians were deprived of formal schooling.
Of course, there was home schooling sandwiched in between the hardscrabble daily work of simply trying to provide food, clothing and other essentials for families.
We would dishonor ourselves and the memory of our own ancestors if we failed to remember the honor of the men our ancestors fought.
But I too admire the man.
Here is one of my favourite quotes:
"Before you, in proud humility, is the embodiment of manhood; men whom neither toils and sufferings, nor the fact of death, nor disaster, nor hopelessness could bend from their resolve."--Union General Joshua Chamberlain commenting to his staff on the surrendered Confederates at Appomattox, 1865.
BTW, good to cyberseeya. I thought you were gone.
The Founding Fathers created a Government with limited powers, premised upon not only a written Constitution, but the hoped for self-restraint of those who would temporarilly serve in that Government. The South has sometimes been a victim, because not all of those who succeeded the Founders really understood those twin premises; nor the concept of mutual respect among people differing philosophically, but united for limited general purposes in all of their interests.
May we now work together, North and South, to recover the understanding that has been lost.
William Flax Return Of The Gods Web Site
Your servant, sir.
Edd Roberts
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