Posted on 09/30/2003 12:19:22 PM PDT by sheltonmac
The South's unconditional surrender in 1865 apparently was unacceptable to today's Neo-Confederates.
They'd like to rewrite history, demonizing Abraham Lincoln and the federal government that forced them to remain in the awful United States against their will.
On top of that, now they are opposing the U.S. Navy's plan to bury the crew of the CSS H.L. Hunley under the American flag next year.
The Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. In 1863, it rammed and fatally damaged the Union warship USS Housatonic with a fixed torpedo, but then the manually driven sub sank on its way home, killing its eight-man crew.
It might have been a lucky shot from the Housatonic, leaks caused by the torpedo explosion, an accidental strike by another Union ship, malfunction of its snorkel valves, damage to its steering planes or getting stuck in the mud.
In any case, the Navy found and raised its remains and plans a full-dress military funeral and burial service on April 17, 2004, in Charleston, S.C. The four-mile funeral procession is expected to draw 10,000 to 20,000 people, many in period costume or Confederate battle dress.
But the Sons of Confederate Veterans, generally a moderate group that works diligently to preserve Southern history and heritage, has a radical wing that is salivating with anger.
One Texas Confederate has drawn 1,600 signatures on a petition saying "the flag of their eternal enemy, the United States of America," must not fly over the Hunley crew's funeral.
To their credit, the funeral's organizers will leave the U.S. flag flying.
After all, the search and preservation of the Hunley artifacts, as well as the funeral itself, were paid for by U.S. taxpayers.
Also, the Hunley crew was born under the Stars and Stripes. The Confederacy was never an internationally recognized nation, so the crewmen also died as citizens of the United States.
They were in rebellion, but they were still Americans.
This whole issue is an insult to all Southerners who fought under the U.S. flag before and since the Civil War.
But it isn't the only outrage by rabid secessionists.
They are also opposing the placement of a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital.
According to an article by Bob Moser and published in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine "Intelligence Report," which monitors right-wing and hate groups, the U.S. Historical Society announced it was donating a statue of Lincoln to Richmond.
Lincoln visited that city in April 1865 to begin healing the wounds caused by the war.
The proposed life-sized statue has Lincoln resting on a bench, looking sad, his arm around his 12-year-old son, Tad. The base of the statue has a quote from his second inaugural address.
However, the League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans raised a stink, calling Lincoln a tyrant and war criminal. Neo-Confederates are trying to make Lincoln "a figure few history students would recognize: a racist dictator who trashed the Constitution and turned the USA into an imperialist welfare state," Moser's article says.
White supremacist groups have jumped onto the bandwagon. Their motto is "Taking America back starts with taking Lincoln down."
Actually, if it weren't for the forgiving nature of Lincoln, Richmond would be a smoking hole in the ground and hundreds of Confederate leaders -- including Jefferson Davis -- would be hanging from trees from Fredericksburg, Va., to Atlanta.
Robert E. Lee said, "I surrendered as much to Lincoln's goodness as I did to Grant's armies."
Revisionist history to suit a political agenda is as intellectually abhorrent as whitewashing slavery itself. It's racism under a different flag. While it's not a criminal offense, it is a crime against truth and history.
I'm not talking about re-enactors here. These folks just want to live history. But the Neo-Confederate movement is a disguised attempt to change history.
In the end, the Confederacy was out-fought, out-lasted, eventually out-generaled and totally over-matched. It was a criminal idea to start with, and its success would have changed the course of modern history for the worse.
Coming to that realization cost this nation half a million lives.
So I hope that all Neo-Confederates -- 140 years after the fact -- can finally get out of their racist, twisted, angry time machine and join us here in 2003.
Earth to stand watie, earth to stand watie, come in stand watie. Scott v Sandford was negated by the passage of the 14th and 15th Amendments. Plessy v Ferguson was overturned by the court in 1954 in Brown v Board of Education. And Roe v Wade is constantly under pressure.
Read the decision.
The Constitution contains nothing prohibiting secession; your insistence on differentiating between unilateral v. bilateral is your opinion, which you're welcome to, but can't be defended or advanced beyond the realm of opinion.
And what are you going on except your opinion, and your opinion alone? You cannot point to a section of the Constitution which specifically allows secession any more than I can point to a section which specifically prohibits it. So we both rely on interpretations of various sections to support our position. The difference is that the Supreme Court held the same position that I did, and it ruled that the position you hold is incorrect.
Perhaps you should adopt it?
So tell us Walt, could they have gotten a declaration of war through congress with Virginia and the border states still represented, or did it take unilateral action on Lincoln's part to initiate war?
A declaration of war wasn't necessary. You declare war against other countries, not part of your own.
President Lincoln couldn't make the war by himself.
"On April 15 Lincoln issued a proclamation calling 75,000 militiamen into national service for ninety days to put down an insurrection "too powerful to be suppressed by the ordinary course of judicial proceedings." The response from free states was overwhelming. War meetings in every city and village cheered the flag and vowed vengeance on traitors. "The heather is on fire," wrote a Harvard professor who had been born during George Washington's presidency. "I never knew what a popular excitement can be. . . . The whole population, men, women, and children, seem to be in the streets with Union favors and flags."
From Ohio and the West came "one great Eagle-scream" for the flag. "The people have gone stark mad!" In New York City, previously a nursery of pro-southern sentiment, a quarter of a million people turned out for a Union rally. "The change in public ,sentiment here is wonderful-almost miraculous," wrote a New York merchant on April 1. I look with awe on the national movement here in New York and all through the Free States," added a lawyer. "After our late discords, it seems supernatural." The "time before Sumter" was like another century, wrote a New York woman. "It seems as if we never were alive till now; never had a country till now."
Democrats joined in the eagle-scream of patriotic fury. Stephen Douglas paid a well-publicized national unity call to the White House and then traveled home to Chicago, where he told a huge crowd: "There are only two sides to the question. Every man must be for the United States or against it. There can be no neutrals in this war, only patriots--or traitors." A month later Douglas was dead-a victim probably of cirrhosis of the liver-but for a year or more his war spirit lived on among most Democrats. "Let our enemies perish by the sword," was the theme of Democratic editorials in the spring of 1861. "All squeamish sentimentality should be discarded, and bloody vengence wreaked upon the heads of the contempible traitors who have provoked it by their dastardly impertinence and rebellious acts."
--BCF, pp. 274-75
Walt
As I said, both the majority and dissenting opinons in the Prize Cases held that the government was empowered under law to put down the rebellion.
Walt
Why should I? You have yet to post any document that proves they were draftees - not volunteers - and that their terms were for 3 years.
As I said a few weeks ago, this is lock, stock and barrel out of the "Doonesbury" comic strip when Honey Hsu had to go back to China and testify at the trial of the Gang of Four.
You can't have it both ways, Ms. Hsu! Were they the lap dogs of the capitalists or the scurvy opressors of the workers? Which is it!"
Walt
You had said, 'The Supreme Court said the president had the power to act.' The dissent states that not until Congress passed the Act of 13 Jul 1861 could he act, and that the Militia Acts conferring him the authority to act were 'simply a monstrous exaggeration.'
Every Justice thought the government had the power to put down the rebellion against the lawful government.
The Constitution in Article 1 § 8 delegates Congress the power 'to provide for calling forth the militia to execute the laws of the Union, suppress insurrections, and repel invasions.'
In Grier's opinion he states, 'The parties belligerent in a public war are independent nations.' And again, ' Several of these States have combined to form a new confederacy, claiming to be acknowledged by the world as a sovereign State. Their right to do so is now being decided by wager of battle.' He doesn't state that their right to do so is unconstitutional nor illegal. The majority call it war in every case. Against a foreign nation. That being the case, Article 1 § 8 would apply only to 'repel invasion', yet it was Lincoln who invaded a sovereign, independent country.
Hmmm... That's not what the supreme court said, or does Whiskeypapa only grant them authority when he agrees. Lincoln's initiation of war was found valid under the rules of international law, was it not?
Then why do you supply a quote from the period after Lincoln initiated the war? As usual, your citation does nothing to support your assertion.
Sorry, Walt, but it's you who wants it both ways. Lincoln was empowered to wage war under international law, yet they were never out of the Union. The Supreme Court was the proper authority for resolving matters with the states when the Confederacy acted, yet when Lincoln acted no such authorization was required from the SC or congress. Your blatent use of a double standard is downright sickening.
Per the whiskeypapa standard of historical evidence, people who were personal witness to events are not credible (ref: Butler autobiography). Per his own doing, he is on the hook to provide a first-person account from Booth.
Hmmm...When did they say that?
Yeah, I knew that. I read the majority decision. Now I admit that I'm late to this discussion but what point are you making? The Supreme Court ruled that Lincoln could call out the militia and blockade the southern states in order to combat their rebellion. And?
come dixie liberty, your Socialist States of Amerika can be PRO-baby murder, anti-gun,PRO-socialized medicine, PRO-social experimentation,PRO-nanny state, etc, etc, etc.
we southrons, otoh, will have a FREE nation.
free dixie,sw
in the new Southron Republic, citizens will make their own decisions, absent "big brother".
free dixie,sw
Yeah, I keep forgetting. No supreme court to worry about.
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