Americans owe Confederate history respect

Columbia Tribune ^ | June 10, 2003 | Chris Edwards

[stainlessbanner]

After attending the Confederate Memorial Day service on June 1 in Higginsville, I found myself believing our nation should be ashamed for not giving more respect and recognition to our ancestors.

I understand that some find the Confederate flag offensive because they feel it represents slavery and oppression. Well, here are the facts: The Confederate flag flew over the South from 1861 to 1865. That's a total of four years. The U.S. Constitution was ratified in April 1789, and that document protected and condoned the institution of slavery from 1789 to 1861. In other words, if we denigrate the Confederate flag for representing slavery for four years, shouldn't we also vilify the U.S. flag for representing slavery for 72 years? Unless we're hypocrites, it is clear that one flag is no less pure than the other.

A fascinating aspect of studying the Civil War is researching the issues that led to the confrontation. The more you read, the less black-and-white the issues become. President Abraham Lincoln said he would do anything to save the union, even if that meant preserving the institution of slavery. Lincoln's focus was obviously on the union, not slavery.

In another case, historians William McFeely and Gene Smith write that Union Gen. Ulysses S. Grant threatened to "throw down his sword" if he thought he was fighting to end slavery.

Closer to home, in 1864, Col. William Switzler, one of the most respected Union men in Boone County, purchased a slave named Dick for $126. What makes this transaction interesting is not only the fact that Switzler was a Union man but that he bought the slave one year after the issuance of the Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation. Of course, history students know the proclamation did not include slaves living in the North or in border states such as Missouri.

So if this war was fought strictly over slavery, why were so many Unionists reluctant to act like that was the issue?

In reviewing the motives that led to the Civil War, one should read the letters soldiers wrote home to their loved ones. Historian John Perry, who studied the soldier's correspondence, says in his three years of research, he failed to find one letter that referred to slavery from Confederate or Union soldiers.

Perry says that Yankees tended to write about preserving the Union and Confederates wrote about protecting their rights from a too-powerful federal government. The numerous letters failed to specifically say soldiers were fighting either to destroy or protect the institution of slavery. Shelby Foote, in his three-volume Civil War history, recounts an incident in which a Union soldier asks a Confederate prisoner captured in Tennessee why he was fighting. The rebel responded, "Because you're down here."

History tends to overlook the South's efforts to resolve the issue of slavery. For example, in 1863, because of a shortage of manpower, Lincoln permitted the enlistment of black soldiers into the Union Army. Battlefield documents bear out the fact that these units were composed of some of the finest fighting men in the war. Unfortunately for these brave soldiers, the Union used them as cannon fodder, preferring to sacrifice black lives instead of whites.

These courageous black Union soldiers experienced a Pyrrhic victory for their right to engage in combat. However, history has little to say about the South's same effort in 1865. The Confederacy, its own troop strength depleted, offered slaves freedom if they volunteered for the army.

We know that between 75,000 and 100,000 blacks responded to this call, causing Frederick Douglass to bemoan the fact that blacks were joining the Confederacy. But the assimilation of black slaves into the Confederate army was short-lived as the war came to an end before the government's policy could be fully implemented.

It's tragic that Missouri does not do more to recognize the bravery of the men who fought in the Missouri Confederate brigades who fought valiantly in every battle they were engaged in. To many Confederate generals, the Missouri brigades were considered the best fighting units in the South.

The courage these boys from Missouri demonstrated at Port Gibson and Champion Hill, Miss., Franklin, Tenn., and Fort Blakely, Ala., represent just a few of the incredible sacrifices they withstood on the battlefield. Missouri should celebrate their struggles instead of damning them.

For the real story about the Missouri Confederate brigades, one should read Phil Gottschalk and Philip Tucker's excellent books about these units. The amount of blood spilled by these Missouri boys on the field of battle will make you cry.

Our Confederate ancestors deserve better from this nation. They fought for what they believed in and lost. Most important, we should remember that when they surrendered, they gave up the fight completely. Defeated Confederate soldiers did not resort to guerrilla warfare or form renegade bands that refused to surrender. These men simply laid down their arms, went home and lived peacefully under the U.S. flag. When these ex-Confederates died, they died Americans.

During the postwar period, ex-Confederates overwhelmingly supported the Democratic Party. This party, led in Missouri by Rep. Dick Gephardt and Gov. Bob Holden, has chosen to turn its back on its fallen sons.

The act of pulling down Confederate flags at two obscure Confederate cemeteries for the sake of promoting Gephardt's hopeless quest for the presidency was a cowardly decision. I pray these men will rethink their decision.

The reality is, when it comes to slavery, the Confederate and United States flags drip with an equal amount of blood.

[SCDogPapa]

Yes it is! Thanks,,,

[Polybius]

However, that said...the confederate flag is unwanted and a disgrace simply because it represents a bunch of losers.

Is that your opinion about the Alamo, Wake Island and the "Battlin' Bastards" of Bataan?

Is that your opinion about the Union Army of the Potomac at Bull Run, the Seven Days Battles, Second Manassas, Fredericksburg, Chancellorsville and Cold Harbor?

People don't go waving the nazi flag around in Germany or the Baath Iraqi flag in Iraq any more.

You are creating a strawman argument by deliberatly equating hateful political symbols with honorable military symbols.

The Swastika (the political symbol of the Nazis) is banned in Germany but the Iron Cross (the military symbol of the German armed forces) is still on German military aircraft and armor. Likewise, the Rising Sun Flag (the military symbol of the Japanese armed forces) still flies from Japanese naval vessels.

If the military symbol of the Confederate fighting man was a symbol that the veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic themselves honored at the 50th Anniverssary of Gettysburg, who are you and other neo-Fire-Eaters to equate it with the hateful political symbolism of the Nazi Swastika flag?

Confederate veterans of Pickett's Division and Union veterans of the Philadelphia Brigade trading ceremonial battle flags on July 3, 1913 at the Gettysburg 50th Anniverssary Reunion

"Comrades and friends, these splendid statues of marble and granite and bronze shall finally crumble to dust, and in the ages to come, will perhaps be forgotten, but the spirit that has called this great assembly of our people together, on this field, shall live for ever."...........-Dr. Nathaniel D. Cox, July 2, 1913 at Gettysburg.

[Polybius]

Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, James Longstreet, Johnston, etc. were TRAITORS because they had all taken an oath (made a vow) to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.

If resigning a military commission with a declared intent to return to defend, if necessary, their home states is "treason", then why did the U.S. Army and U.S. Navy not arrest and try for treason all the Southern officers that submitted the resignation of their U.S. Army and U.S. Navy commissions in 1860 and 1861?

It seems that neo-Fire-Eaters believe that they know more about the military code of honor and conduct in 1860 than the U.S. War Department itself did in 1860.

[Budge]

Robert E. Lee, "Stonewall" Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, James Longstreet, Johnston, etc. were TRAITORS because they had all taken an oath (made a vow) to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States.

Did you ever stop to think that that was exactly what they were doing?

Or are you blindly accepting the revisionist "history?"

[Corin Stormhands]

Bump.

[wardaddy]

Bump!

[Budge]

Did you ever stop to think that that was exactly what they were doing?

Include: they were defending the Constitution.

[archy]

But if you want to wave around a loser flag and somehow feel proud of it, go ahead.

Them fellas at the Alamo in 1836 lost their fight, too. But like the Dixie Southerns, they waren't no bunch of *losers.*

The Confederate government was made of fallible humans, who too often erred, buth on matters of tactics and strategy [Cleburne's plan to utilize truly large-scale numbers of blacks in the Confederate Army, for instance; between a tenth and a quarter of the overall troop strength, for example] and by compromising the principles upon which their government and constitution were founded, if to a lesser degree than their totalitarian Unionist opponents did. Accordingly, the weight of those errors eventually caused their cause to crumble, but that does not mean that the moral virtues in which those who fought for that cause are thereby forfeit.

If you really believe that, you have no or little understanding of the motivations of the good and decent men, common soldier and officer-leader deserving of being followed that filled the ranks on both sides, nor why they were willing to go to their deaths not because they favoured slavery, nor preservation of the union, nor because they were suicidal fanatics happy to die beneath their favoured bit of coloured cloth, but because of the company and example of those with whom they served, who very few were willing to let down or betray by shirking what they saw as their duty.

-archy-/-

[Non-Sequitur]

What's the matter? Truth hurt?

[azhenfud]

"Robert E. Lee, 'Stonewall' Jackson, J.E.B. Stuart, James Longstreet, Johnston, etc. were TRAITORS because they had all taken an oath (made a vow) to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States."

Actually, it is only your opinion these men were traitors. In the legalistic term, they were never tried nor convicted of anything resembling treason.

If I were either of these men, I'd have anyone associating the unsubstantiated accusation of treason with my name sued for sander and/or malice.

If you defame a private individual, that person would have to be able to prove: 1) that you made a statement, reported as fact, to another person; 2) that the statement was false; 3) that the statement caused damage to that person; and 4) that you were negligent in making that statement. If you defame a public figure (such as a celebrity or member of government, for example), that person will have to prove: 1) that you made a statement to another person, reported as fact; 2) that the statement was false and caused damage; and 3) that you made the statement with actual malice-that is, with knowledge that the statement was false or with reckless disregard as to whether the statement was false or not.

Only a court of law may find a person guilty of treason, and therefore, a traitor.

[archy]

The confederate flag represents American Southern history to me, and I'm a Hoosier. When we visit Dixie, we love the feeling we get from seeing that brave flag wave.

There were a good many young Hoosier and Illinois boys who voted with their feet and went southward to do what they saw as trheir duty to their country and their families. And don't forget that interesting derailment and wreck of a Union troop train east of Washington, Indiana, which could well have been the result of the work of either a Confederate raiding party or Confederate sympathizers.

-archy-/-

[bk1000]

How can you even think there is a similarity between Nazis, Baathists, and the CSA? The only thing disgraceful about the flag is the adoption of it by skinheads and other idiots. And, FYI, no country has ever raped a vanquished foe to the extent the South was raped, pillaged, and abused by the damn yankees after the war. Believe it or not, we still get an occasional carpetbagger-type. We don't hold grudges much, but we get tired of the uninformed putting us down for being proud of our decendants.

[archy]

Actually, it is only your opinion these men were traitors. In the legalistic term, they were never tried nor convicted of anything resembling treason.

And thereby, anyone describing them as such, is not only a liar should they continue to do so after being so corrected, but is unworthy of calling themselves an American, since the requirement for a conviction of treason as described in the US constitution itself was never met:

Treason against the United States, shall consist only in levying War against them, or in adhering to their Enemies, giving them Aid and Comfort. No Person shall be convicted of Treason unless on the Testimony of two Witnesses to the same overt Act, or on Confession in open Court.

-- U.S. Constitution, Article 3, Section 3

[hirn_man]

It is you guys who are trying to revise history and you need to stop it. It makes you look really silly.

[archy]

The difference is.

1. The Constitution did not recognize slavery, except by omission. The Southern States, and Connecticut did recognize human servitude, but that was not put in place by the Federal Government.

You are presumably unfamiliar with the text of the original Thirteenth Amendment passed but not yet ratified, and which has never been withdrawn. It remains valid, and could technically still be passed today, though I would expect the chances of that happening are pretty small. But there it is:

No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.

This was passed in the 36th Congress.

-archy-/-

[azhenfud]

Now, I doubt the Narco-Unionists will like this perspective on the matter of these gentlemen...

[Budge]

It is you guys who are trying to revise history and you need to stop it.

BWAHAHAHAHA!

Child, don't just make an @ss of yourself, and don't just eat the book covers!

Read!

[archy]

The Swastika (the political symbol of the Nazis) is banned in Germany but the Iron Cross (the military symbol of the German armed forces) is still on German military aircraft and armor.

More precisely, the device used on current German vehicles of the Bundeswehr and the aircraft of the Luftwaffe is more correctly known as the Balkankreuz, or Balkan Cross.

[Non-Sequitur]

And I'll bet you think that OJ really is innocent, too.

[SAMWolf]

Thanks for the ping Graewoulf. Nice poem that gets to the point.

We don't know what we'd be like if we lived back then. 20/20 hindsight prevents that.