Americans owe Confederate history respect

Columbia Tribune ^ | June 10, 2003 | Chris Edwards

[WhiskeyPapa]

But we KNOW from the liberal history books that the ENTIRE war was about slavery. (/disgusted sarcasm)

We don't have to look in history books. We can quote the people of the day.

"In simple words rarely heard in the United States Senate, Wigfall of Texas had said: "I am a plain, blunt-spoken man. We say that man has a right to property in man. We say that slaves are our property. We say that it is the duty of every government to protect its property everywhere. If you wish to settle this matter, declare that slaves are property, and like all other property entitled to be protected in every quarter of the globe, on land and sea, Say that to us, and then the difficulty is settled."

Jefferson Davis was saying, "Slave property is the only private property in the United States specifically recognized in the Constitution and protected by it."

...Edwin A. Pollard of Virginia had just published "Black Diamonds," calling for the African slave trade to be made lawful again; then negroes fresh from the jungles could be sold in southern seaports at $ioo.oo to $150.00 at-head. "The poor man might then hope to own a negro; the prices of labor would then be in his reach; he would be a small farmer revolutionizing the character of agriculture in the South; he would at once step up to a respectable station in the social system of the South; and with this he would acquire a practical and dear interest in the general institution of slavery that would constitute its best protection both at home and abroad. He would no longer be a miserable, nondescript cumberer of the soil, scratching the land here and there for a subsistence, living from band to mouth) or trespassing along the borders of the possessions of the large proprietors. He would be a proprietor himself. He would no longer be the scorn and sport of 'gentlemen of color' who parade their superiority, rub their well-stuffed black skins, and thank God they are not as he. Of all things I cannot bear to see negro slaves, affect superiority over the poor, needy, unsophisticated whites, who form a terribly large proportion of the population of the South."

Pollard could vision steps and advances "toward the rearing of that great Southern Empire) whose seat is eventually to be in Central America, and whose boundaries are to enclose the Gulf of Mexico." Ahead were "magnificent fields of romance" for the South, as he saw its future. "It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of southern civilization; including within its limits the isthmuses of America and the regenerated West Indies; having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the world's ages in the strength of its geographical position."

Philadelphia newspapers quoted a speech by Senator Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia in their city. "We believe that capital should own labor; is there any doubt that there must be a laboring class everywhere? In all countries and under every form of social organization there must be a laboring class -- a class of men who get their living from the sweat of their brow; and then there must be another class that controls and directs the capital of the country. He pleaded: "Slave property stands upon the same footing as all other descriptions of property."

--"Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, Prairie Years, by Carl Sandburg pp.217-221

Of course, everybody didn't think that.

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson -- to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicible to to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyrany and oppression."

Abraham Lincoln, March 1, 1859

Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

[WhiskeyPapa]

We know that between 75,000 and 100,000 blacks responded to this call...

Fantasy.

"It's pure fantasy,' contends James McPherson, a Princeton historian and one of the nation's leading Civil War scholars. Adds Edwin Bearss, historian emeritus at the National Park Service: 'It's b.s., wishful thinking.' Robert Krick, author of 10 books on the Confederacy, has studied the records of 150,000 Southern soldiers and found fewer than a dozen were black. 'Of course, if I documented 12, someone would start adding zeros,' he says.

"These and other scholars say claims about black rebels derive from unreliable anecdotes, a blurring of soldiers and laborers, and the rapid spread on the Internet of what Mr. McPherson calls 'pseudohistory.' Thousands of blacks did accompany rebel troops -- as servants, cooks, teamsters and musicians. Most were slaves who served involuntarily; until the final days of the war, the Confederacy staunchly refused to enlist black soldiers.

"Some blacks carried guns for their masters and wore spare or cast-off uniforms, which may help explain eyewitness accounts of blacks units. But any blacks who actually fought did so unofficially, either out of personal loyalty or self-defense, many historians say.

"They also bristle at what they see as the disingenuous twist on political correctness fueling the black Confederate fad. 'It's a search for a multicultural Confederacy, a desperate desire to feel better about your ancestors,' says Leslie Rowland, a University of Maryland historian. 'If you suggest that some blacks supported the South, then you can deny that the Confederacy was about slavery and white supremacy.'

"David Blight, an Amherst College historian, likens the trend to bygone notions about happy plantation darkies.' Confederate groups invited devoted ex-slaves to reunions and even won Senate approval in 1923 for a "mammy" monument in Washington (it was never built). Black Confederates, Mr. Blight says, are a new and more palatable way to 'legitimize the Confederacy.'"

-- Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1997

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

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. Their choices to rebel led to a bloodbath that resulted in the deaths of over a half a million Americans. Nothing honorable about that.

Exactly right.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

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?

That would have done little to heal the wounds of rebellion, as was recognized at the time.

President Lincoln was adamant that no trials be held, and this was pretty much followed after his death.

It shouldn't be forgotten, however, that Lee accepted a rebel commission while still under oath to the United States.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

In the legalistic term, they were never tried nor convicted of anything resembling treason.

People get away with heinous crimes all the time.

But even in 1862, the federal government issed a general amnesty for acts of treason. Even John Merryman, who raised secessionist troops and burned bridges in his home state of Maryland (which of course passed no secession documents) was released -after- being indicted for treason.

Later, he was a serving officer in the rebel army.

There was no desire to prosecute. But the perpetrators were still as guilty as sin.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Union forces took from July 21, 1861 to April 9, 1865 to mount a major invasion of Virginia and force a Confederate surrender.

And excepting Chickamauga, rebel forces had no major success outside Virginia Throughout the entire war.

What's your point?

Your statement is wrong any way. Union forces mounted a "major invasion" of Virginia in 1862.

Walt

[FLAUSA]

Walt,

Thanks for all the humor that you inject on these confederate threads. If it weren't for your comments, they would be dry and dull. But I do suspect you're getting mellow in your old age, since you didn't cut and paste your normal three page obscure references and you haven't bothered to call anyone a traitor on this thread (yet).

Keep the faith! Semper Fi.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Re #63. Great stuff.

Walt

[Godebert]

I notice that you fly the Virginia state flag. I posted your comments on the Virginia forum to see what the rest of the Virginian freepers think of your opinion equating our ancestors with the Nazis.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Keep the faith! Semper Fi.

Thanks. :)

Semper Fidelis

As you probably know, Marines are informally socialized that when they say "Semper Fidelis" it means to God, country and Corps.

That does not allow of any of this neo-confederate crap.

Walt

[Godebert]

Are you aware that your friend "WhiskyPapa" is an admitted Clinton and Gore voter?

[Grand Old Partisan]

Quite correct. It is pathetic how grimly the neo-Confederates cling to the myth of black Confederates.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Thanks for all the humor that you inject on these confederate threads. If it weren't for your comments, they would be dry and dull.

Thanks. I just do what Steve Martin does.

I put baloney in my shoes, and then I -feel- funny.

Walt

[Grand Old Partisan]

Ouch! Good point.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Yes they did

See #77 in this thread.

Even the legislation passed by the rebel congress in 1865 did not do what the author of this article says it did.

The article is typical neo-confederate disinformation.

Walt

[Grand Old Partisan]

I travel to the Shenandoah Valley often, and can say that the area, where once Confederate flags were displayed all over, the Confederate flag has pretty much disppeared, replaced by the Stars and Stripes, after the World Trade Center attacks, which made people there feel much more patriotic.

[Grand Old Partisan]

Absolutely right. If U.S. soldiers today did what Lee and Jackson and Stuart and Johnston did, how many neo-Confederates would condone their treason?

[Grand Old Partisan]

If a U. S. Army officer today resigned his commission and then joined a violent insurrectionist group, I'm sure you would be as sympathetic as Oprah Winfrey might be.

[Grand Old Partisan]

No, it is another ridiculous bit of neo-Confederate Orwellian doublethink to assert that the traitors who rebelled against the United States Constitution were the ones fighting for it.

[WhiskeyPapa]

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

"This sad little lizard told me he was a brontosaurus on his mother's side. I did not laugh, people who boast of ancestry often have little else to sustain them. Humoring them costs nothing and adds to happiness in a world in which happiness is always in short supply."

--Robert A. Heinlien

Maybe we shouldn't be so hard on the neo-confederates.

Walt