Posted on 06/13/2003 6:22:01 AM PDT by 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.
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.
Whoa! You're displaying a disdain for logic sufficient to qualify as 'Rat operative. An unratified proposed amendment to the Constitution is not a Constitutional Amendment. And any proposal that has been accumulating dust for a century and a half is anything but valid. I believe your lame argument merely substantiates the gentleman's point. Your ancestors lost their war of dishonor, reb--deal with it.
Even if I were to allow you that point, the Sumter position was abandoned the day it was attacked and nothing remained there to "defend." But Lincoln's actions after Sumter extended well beyond simply defending federal installations. He marched armies into all of the confederate states plus several union states in hostility towards their people and without their consent. BY HIS OWN DEFINITION on February 11, 1861 that is an invasion.
The U.S. Government did not lift a finger against Virginia until the day after its so-called secession on May 23rd 1861, even though rebel froces there had already seized U.S. Government installations there.
Virginia was being blockaded by the last week of April. I call that lifting a finger as would any reasonable person.
Your point about an atomic bomb is especially ridicluous coming from a self-proclaimed logician.
Not in the least! Do you use a machine gun to swat flies around your house? Do you poison your neighbor's dog when it craps on your lawn? Do you punch the sacker at the supermarket when he puts your bread on the bottom? I venture to speculate no, as each form of response is excessive and extreme for the "offense," be it legitimate or not, that you think to have wronged you. Same goes for Fort Sumter. The full fledged invasion of 7 confederate states, 4 southern states that had not yet joined the confederacy, a union state that was not planning to join the confederacy, a union state that had declared its neutrality, and a union state that had some politicians advocating secession though had not acted on it is, by ANY measure, an excessive and extreme response to the bombardment of a single fort with zero casualties beyond a mule.
Battles go both ways in war, hence the same thing happened to the yankees at Mesilla. Even better was the cornering of the feds at San Augustin Springs, forcing their surrender to a smaller confederate force.
So, if the request of locals is justification, why was not the request of east Tennesseans for U.S. troops just as much justification?
Because east Tennessee, like southern New Mexico territory, was part of a formally seceded entity. Tennessee as a state voted to leave the union in a landslide. New Mexico-Arizona territory did the same thing at two conventions. But by the time the Texas forces finished ridding their own state of federal garrisons near El Paso, the yankees had encamped outside Mesilla as occupiers. Civilian authorities in Mesilla sent message to the Texans, who dispatched a small group of troops under Col. John Baylor to remove the occupying forces. They were recieved into Mesilla amidst cheers and confederate flags and joined the locals to prepare for repulsing an assault on the city. Your imperviousness to facts and logic grows tiresome.
Here is my logic for clarification. You obviously didn't get it.
Win a war = Winner. Lose a war = Loser.
I'll use an example of how this works. Sparta and Athens get into a war, let's call it the Peloponnesian War. At the end of the war in 404 BC Athens totally surrenders. Who is the loser? Can you figure it out?
Now please show me how my logic turns Washington into a traitor?
Bruce Catton calls the Army of the Potomac the "hod carrier" for the western armies after 1/1/64. The decision was always going to be in the west, something the rebels never grasped.
Walt
I am not! Perhaps you have read more into it. Here is my orginal quote. "However, that said...the confederate flag is unwanted and a disgrace simply because it represents a bunch of losers."
I even called the confederate ancestors "venerable" in my tag line on that orginal post.
"But if the United States should merely hold and retake its own forts and other property, and collect the duties on foreign importations, or even withhold the mails from places where they were habitually violated, would any or all of these things be "invasion" or "coercion?" Do our professed lovers of the Union, but who spitefully resolve that they will resist coercion or invasion of a state? If so, their idea of means to preserve the object of their great affection would seem to be exceedingly thin and airy."
-- A. Lincoln, 2/11/61
Walt
Of course he was. What's your point?
Walt
In pont of fact, the rebels never had a major success outside of Virginia, excepting Chickamauga.
Walt
In Vietnam we withdrew, we didn't surrender and the US continues to exist and we even continued to fight communism on other fronts, which is totally unlike (in anyway) the CSA losing the war.
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