Perspective: Die-hard Confederates should be reconstructed

St. Augustine Record ^ | 09/27/2003 | Peter Guinta

[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.

[4CJ]

If your great Council at Washington would do as they promised, our people would believe them. The good Indian would become like his brother, and the bad Indian go away.

Ring any bells? Bump.

[Held_to_Ransom]

Your ancestor traitor was a draft dodger...........LOL......

[nolu chan]

[Walt quoting W.C. Fields Davis]

Lincoln also proposed --privately-- to the new governor of Louisiana that the new state constitution include voting rights for blacks. A year later, in April, 1865 he came out --publicly-- for the suffrage for black soldiers, because his great --political-- skill told him that the time was right.

It was a direct result of this speech, and this position, that Booth shot him.

No matter how many times you deposit this steaming pile, it still has no factual foundation. This pantsload has no factual basis and is directly contradicted by the writings of John Wilkes Booth in his diary.

BOOTH'S DIARY

April 13 - 14 Friday the Ides

"Until to day nothing was ever thought of sacrificing to our country's wrongs. For six months we had worked to capture. But our cause being almost lost, something decisive & great must be done. ... I can never repent it, though we hated to kill: Our country owed all her troubles to him, and god simply made me the instrument of his punishment. The country is not what it was. This forced union is not what I have loved."

LINCOLN'S LAST CABINET MEETING

Excerpted from:
Lincoln and Johnson
Their Plan of Reconstruction and the Resumption of National Authority
First Paper
by Gideon Welles
Galaxy Magazine, April 1872, pp. 525-527

When I went to the Cabinet meeting on Friday, the 14th of April, General Grant, who had just arrived from Appomattox, was with the President, and one or two members were already there.

* * *

He thought it providential that this great rebellion was crushed just as Congress had adjourned, and there were none of the disturbing elements of that body to hinder and embarrass us. If we were wise and discreet, we should reanimate the States and get their governments in successful operation, with order prevailing the the Union reestablished, before Congress came together in December.

Let's see. King Lincoln started a war and got it going full blast while Congress was out of session. Bypassing Congress, King Lincoln committed the nation to war, raised a standing army, obligated funds, suspended habeas corpus, et cetera.

In the early afternoon of April 14, 1865 King Lincoln stated his intent to bypass Congress and to start and finish reconstruction while Congress was out of session. He and lunatic fringe radical republicans in Congress were in extreme disagreement about how to proceed with reconstruction.

Louisiana, he said, had framed and presented one of the best constitutions that had ever been formed. He wished they had permitted negroes who had property, or could read, to vote; but this was a question which they must decide for themselves. Yet some, a very few of our friends, were not willing to let the people of the States determine these questions, but, in violation of first and fundamental principles, would exercise arbitrary power over them. These humanitarians break down all State rights and constitutional rights.

King Lincoln praised the new constitution of Louisiana as one of the best constitutions that had ever been formed. Whites, including former Confederate soldiers, were given the right to vote. Blacks, including former Union Army soldiers, were denied the right to vote.

That evening, King Lincoln was shot.

[nolu chan]

[Walt quoting W.C. Davis]

President Lincoln, besides ordering the army (note that this is only a few months after the EP) to use black soldiers more vigorously, made many public speeches to prepare the people for the idea of black suffrage. "

Davis must mean speeches like this at a cabinet meeting on the day Lincoln was shot.

Louisiana, he said, had framed and presented one of the best constitutions that had ever been formed. He wished they had permitted negroes who had property, or could read, to vote; but this was a question which they must decide for themselves. Yet some, a very few of our friends, were not willing to let the people of the States determine these questions, but, in violation of first and fundamental principles, would exercise arbitrary power over them. These humanitarians break down all State rights and constitutional rights.

As long as Lincoln maintained that Black suffrage "was a question which they [the states] must decide for themselves," the people had plenty of time to prepare for the event. After all, it couldn't happen until they voted for it.

[nolu chan]

[Walt quoting W.C. Davis]

Lincoln's sense of fairness made him seek to extend the blessings of citizenship to everyone who served under the flag.

April 14, 1865 cabinet meeting.

Louisiana, [Lincoln] said, had framed and presented one of the best constitutions that had ever been formed. He wished they had permitted negroes who had property, or could read, to vote; but this was a question which they must decide for themselves. Yet some, a very few of our friends, were not willing to let the people of the States determine these questions, but, in violation of first and fundamental principles, would exercise arbitrary power over them. These humanitarians break down all State rights and constitutional rights.

Right up until the day he was shot, Lincoln maintained that Black suffrage "was a question which they [the states] must decide for themselves." Lincoln's alleged sense of fairness notwithstanding.

[nolu chan]

[Walt quoting W.C. Davis]

His great political skill made him realize that blacks --were--not-- leaving --

Like figuring that one out took great political skill.

Butler's Book, Benjamin F. Butler, 1892, p. 577-8

In the spring of 1863, I had another conversation with President Lincoln upon the subject of the employment of negroes. The question was, whether all the negro troops then enlisted and organized should be collected together and made a part of the Army of the Potomac and thus reinforce it.

* * *

We then talked of a favourite project he had of getting rid of the negroes by colonization, and he asked me what I thought of it. I told him that it was simply impossible; that the negroes would not go away, for they loved their homes as much as the rest of us, and all efforts at colonization would not make a substantial impression upon the number of negroes in the country.

Well isn't that special? Spoons Butler shared the same great political skill as King Lincoln.

---

FREDERICK DOUGLASS

Frederick Douglass said:
Illogical and unfair as Mr. Lincoln's statements are, they are nevertheless quite in keeping with his whole course from the beginning of his administration up to this day, and confirm the painful conviction that though elected as an anti-slavery man by Republican and Abolition voters, Mr. Lincoln is quite a genuine representative of American prejudice and Negro hatred and far more concerned for the preservation of slavery, and the favor of the Border States, than for any sentiment of magnanimity or principle of justice and humanity"
The Life and Writing of Frederick Douglass,
edited by Philip S. Foner, 4 Vols, New York, 1955, vol 3, page 268

Douglass's indictment of Lincoln: "The treatment of our poor black soldiers -- the refusal to pay them anything like equal compensation, though it was promised them when they enlisted; the refusal to insist upon the exchange of colored prisoners when colored prisoners have been slaughtered in cold blood, although the President has repeatedly promised thus to protect the lives of his colored soldiers -- have worn my patience threadbare. The President has virtually laid down this as the rule of his statesmen: Do evil by choice, right from necessity" (FD 3:404, 406-7)

Frederick Douglass attacked Lincoln's logic and his racism, saying that "a horse thief pleading that the existence of the horse is the apology for his theft or a highway man contending that the money in the traveler's pocket is the sole first cause of his robbery are about as much entitled to respect as is the President's reasoning at this point."

"Mr. Lincoln takes care in urging his colonization scheme to furnish a weapon to all the ignorant and base, who need only the countenance of men in authority to commit all kinds of violence and outrage upon the colored people of the country." (FD 3:267)

On July 4, 1862, Douglass said: "our weak, faltering and incompetent rulers in the Cabinet ... and our rebel worshipping Generals in the field" were "incomparably more dangerous to the country than dead traitors like former President James Buchanan..." (FD 3:250)

August 1862, "...ABRAHAM LINCOLN is no more fit for the place he holds than was JAMES BUCHANAN, and that the latter was no more the miserable tool of traitors and rebels than the former is allowing himself to be."

Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white people of this country."

Lincoln was "scrupulous to the very letter of the law in favor of slavery, and a perfect latitudinarian as to the discharge of his duties under a law favoring freedom."

In a January 25, 1865 speech, Douglass said that the system of forced labor inaugurated in Louisiana by General Banks, with Lincoln's approval, "practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion."

[nolu chan]

July 28, 1866
page 4291-2
Congressional Globe, U.S. Senate

Page 4291

ASSASSINATION REWARDS

The Senate, as in Committee of the Whole, resumed the consideration of House bill No. 801, authorizing the payment of the rewards offered by the President of the United States, &c.

Page 4292

Mr. DAVIS. I should like some Senator to give the Senate some assurance that Abraham Lincoln's murderer was in fact killed. I have never seen myself any satisfactory evidence that Booth was killed.

Mr. HOWARD. In order to prove it demonstratively, perhaps we should be compelled to send for Botson Corbett, who shot him. I suppose the honorable Senator is speaking of Booth.

Mr. DAVIS. Yes.

Mr. JOHNSON. I submit to my friend from Kentucky that there are some things that we must take judicial notice of, just as well as that Julius Caesar is dead.

Mr. DAVIS. I would rather have better testimony of the fact. I want it proved that Booth was in that barn; I cannot conceive, if he was in the barn, why he was not taken alive and brought to this city alive. I have never seen anybody or the evidence of anybody that identified Booth after he is said to have been killed. Why so much secrecy about it? Why was not his boty brought up publicly to Washington city and exposed to the gaze of the multitude, that it might be identified? It may be that he is dead; but there is a mystery and a most inexplicable mystery to my mind about the whole affair. He may come back some of these days and murder somebody else.

I merely got up to make this suggestion. I supposed that some gentleman was in possession of facts going to show that Booth was identified. Identify Booth, and these men ought to have their reward, but I doubt whether this man Baker out to have anything. I believe he was a much bigger villain than any man he was pursuing. I do not doubt that at all; and I believe he is just such a man as to get up now a story of the capture of Booth when Booth had not been overtaken at all. If gentlemen will refer me to where I can get a narrative of facts to prove the identity of Booth, I will at my leisure read it with much interest. I want to be assured of the facts, not with a view to vote on this bill but with a view to the history of the transaction.

I do not see why, if Booth was in the bard, he should have been shot. He could have been captured just as well alive as dead. It would have been much more satisfactory to have brought him up here alive and to have inquired of him to reveal the whole transaction, to have implicated all who were guilty and to have exculpated all who were innocent. I do not see any reason why the matter had not taken that course. Bring his body up, carry it to the City Hall, expose it there to public gaze, let all who had seen him playing, all who associated with him on the stage or in the green room or the taverns and other public places, have had access to his body to have identified it. That was the way, where $100,000 was offered as a reward for catpuring the man. I am certain I was as innocent of that murder as the child that is yet unborn; but I should have disliked to have $100,000 offered for me as an accomplice in that murder; it would have caused me to be hung or shot just as certain as fate.

Mr. CONNESS. That would be a big price.

Mr. DAVIS. I have no doubt that the honorable Senator from California could have had me captured or shot for $2.50 by some of his myrmidons.

Mr. ANTHONY. I am happy to relieve my friend from Kentucky by informingg him that a small part of the skeleton of Booth is in the anatomical museum of the Surgeon General.

Mr. JOHNSON. Who knows that?

Mr. ANTHONY. I do not know how it is identified, but it is certified to be that.

Mr. SPRAGUE. I hope we shall have the question

The bill was passed.

A Remarkable Gentleman

[nolu chan]

But I thought Walt promulgated a new standard of proof with his #1020 |LINK|

Unable to document his fairy tale, Walt cited:

"You can find this story related on literally dozens of websites."

[Held_to_Ransom]

In a January 25, 1865 speech, Douglass said that the system of forced labor inaugurated in Louisiana by General Banks, with Lincoln's approval, "practically enslaves the Negro, and makes the Proclamation of 1863 a mockery and delusion."

After I left New Orleans, General Banks enlisted many more of them, but was weak enough to take away from them the great object of their ambition, under the spur of which they were ready to fight ot the death, namely, equality with the white soldiers. He was also unmanly enough to add injustice to that folly by taking the commissions from their line officers, which I had given them, and to brand their orgainzations with the stigma of a designation as a "Corps d'Afrique." Yet, in spite of his unwisdom, they did equal service and laid down their lives at Port Hudson in equal numbers comparatively with their white brothers in arms. - Gen. Benj. Butler P495, "Butler's Book.'

It's true Lincoln was a racist, but even at his worst, he was still light years ahead of the Konfederats. He at least understood that slavery had ruined the south and it's white citizenry.

[Gianni]

You mean "the so-called CSA".

Unfortunate that Grant generated such a huge body-count combatting something that was only alleged to exist. Perhaps he was unaware that the courts said there was no CSA?

[Gianni]

The responsibility to combat rebellion? He had that authority as per the Militia Act of 1795.

That's good - now all you need to do is show how a sovereign can be 'in rebellion.'

[Gianni]

Ignore it if you wish, it doesn't change the fact that it was a valid decision and that unilateral secession as practiced by the southern states is illegal.

Always to the crux of your argument, validity is defined by men with guns standing by to enforce it. Whether or not it was consistent with the Constitution and the laws at the time is meaningless.

[Non-Sequitur]

A Remarkable Gentleman

A remarkable drunk, if stories be true. Without brandy Lincoln would have finished out his term.

[Gianni]

Oops, goofed on the bolding.

[Non-Sequitur]

That's good - now all you need to do is show how a sovereign can be 'in rebellion.'

No need to. The confederacy wasn't a sovereign nation, it was a section of the United States in rebellion against the federal government.

[Non-Sequitur]

Whether or not it was consistent with the Constitution and the laws at the time is meaningless.

It's not meaningless. But in the opinion of 5 of the 8 Supreme Court justices the decision was consistent with the Constiution, and the fact that you disagree means nothing. Unilateral secession is illegal.

[WhiskeyPapa]

August 1862, "...ABRAHAM LINCOLN is no more fit for the place he holds than was JAMES BUCHANAN, and that the latter was no more the miserable tool of traitors and rebels than the former is allowing himself to be."

"After the [1862] interview was over, Douglass left the White House with a growing respect for Lincoln. He was "the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely," Douglass said later, "who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color."

--"With Malice Towards None, p. 357 by Stephen Oates.

"Lincoln had Douglass shown in at once. "Here is my friend Douglass," the President announced when Douglass entered the room. "I am glad to see you," Lincoln told him. "I saw you in the crowd today, listening to my address." He added, "there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it." Douglass said he was impressed: he thought it "a sacred effort." "I am glad you liked it." Lincoln said, and he watched as Douglass passed down the [receiving] line. It was the first inaugural reception in the history of the Republic in which an American President had greeted a free black man and solicited his opinion."

Ibid. p. 412

Walt

[Non-Sequitur]

And yet another 'nonsequitur' from Non-Sequitur!

And yet another load of 'nonsense' from Who is John Galt. Read up on your boy Jeff some time.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Lincoln was not, in the fullest sense of the word, either our man or our model. In his interests, in his associations, in his habits of thought, and in his prejudices, he was a white man. He was preeminently the white man's President, entirely devoted to the welfare of the white people of this country."

No honest person could ever think you are being fair when this comes from the -same- speech by Douglass:

"The race to which we belong were not the special objects of his consideration. Knowing this, I concede to you, my white fellow-citizens, a pre-eminence in this worship at once full and supreme. First, midst, and last, you and yours were the objects of his deepest affection and his most earnest solicitude. You are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are at best only his step-children; children by adoption, children by forces of circumstances and necessity., To you it especially belongs to sound his praises, to preserve and perpetuate his memory, to multiply his statues, to hang his pictures high upon your walls, and commend his example, for to you he was a great and glorious friend and benefactor. Instead of supplanting you at his altar, we would exhort you to build high his monuments; let them be of the most costly material, of the most cunning workmanship; let their forms be symmetrical, beautiful, and perfect, let their bases be upon solid rocks, and their summits lean against the unchanging blue, overhanging sky, and let them endure forever! But while in the abundance of your wealth, and in the fullness of your just and patriotic devotion, you do all this, we entreat you to despise not the humble offering we this day unveil to view; for while Abraham Lincoln saved for you a country, he delivered us from a bondage, according to Jefferson, one hour of which was worse than ages of the oppression your fathers rose in rebellion to oppose.

Fellow-citizens, ours is no new-born zeal and devotion--merely a thing of this moment. The name of Abraham Lincoln was near and dear to our hearts in the darkest and most perilous hours of the Republic. We were no more ashamed of him when shrouded in clouds of darkness, of doubt, and defeat than when we saw him crowned with victory, honor, and glory. Our faith in him was often taxed and strained to the uttermost, but it never failed. When he tarried long in the mountain; when he strangely told us that we were the cause of the war; when he still more strangely told us that we were to leave the land in which we were born; when he refused to employ our arms in defense of the Union; when, after accepting our services as colored soldiers, he refused to retaliate our murder and torture as colored prisoners; when he told us he would save the Union if he could with slavery; when he revoked the Proclamation of Emancipation of General Fremont; when he refused to remove the popular commander of the Army of the Potomac, in the days of its inaction and defeat, who was more zealous n his efforts to protect slavery than to suppress rebellion; when we saw all this, and more, we were at times grieved, stunned, and greatly bewildered; but our hearts believed while they ached and bled. Nor was this, even at that time, a blind and unreasoning superstition. Despite the mist and haze that surrounded him; despite the tumult, the hurry, and confusion of the hour, we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position. We saw him, measured him, and estimated him; not by stray utterances to injudicious and tedious delegations, who often tried his patience; not by isolated facts torn from their connection; not by any partial and imperfect glimpses, caught at inopportune moments; but by a broad survey, in the light of the stern logic of great events, and in view of that divinity which shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will, we came to the conclusion that the hour and the man of our redemption had somehow met in the person of Abraham Lincoln. It mattered little to us what language he might employ on special occasions; it mattered little to us, when we fully knew him, whether he was swift or slow in his movements; it was enough for us that Abraham Lincoln was at the head of a great movement, and was in living and earnest sympathy with that movement, which, in the nature of things, must go on until slavery should be utterly and forever abolished in the United States."

When, therefore, it shall be asked what we have to do with the memory of Abraham Lincoln, or what Abraham Lincoln had to do with us, the answer is ready, full, and complete. Though he loved Caesar less than Rome, though the Union was more to him than our freedom or our future, under his wise and beneficent rule we saw ourselves gradually lifted from the depths of slavery to the heights of liberty and manhood; under his wise and beneficent rule, and by measures approved and vigorously pressed by him, we saw that the handwriting of ages, in the form of prejudice and proscription, was rapidly fading away from the face of our whole country; under his rule, and in due time, about as soon after all as the country could tolerate the strange spectacle, we saw our brave sons and brothers laying off the rags of bondage, and being clothed all over in the blue uniforms of the soldiers of the United States; under his rule we saw two hundred thousand of our dark and dusky people responding to the call of Abraham Lincoln, and with muskets on their shoulders, and eagles on their buttons, timing their high footsteps to liberty and union under the national flag; under his rule we saw the independence of the black republic of Haiti, the special object of slave-holding aversion and horror, fully recognized, and her minister, a colored gentleman, duly received here in the city of Washington; under his rule we saw the internal slave-trade, which so long disgraced the nation, abolished, and slavery abolished in the District of Columbia; under his rule we saw for the first time the law enforced against the foreign slave trade, and the first slave-trader hanged like any other pirate or murderer; under his rule, assisted by the greatest captain of our age, and his inspiration, we saw the Confederate States, based upon the idea that our race must be slaves, and slaves forever, battered to pieces and scattered to the four winds; under his rule, and in the fullness of time, we saw Abraham Lincoln, after giving the slave-holders three months' grace in which to save their hateful slave system, penning the immortal paper, which, though special in its language, was general in its principles and effect, making slavery forever impossible in the United States. Though we waited long, we saw all this and more."

--Frederick Douglass, 1876

"...we were able to take a comprehensive view of Abraham Lincoln, and to make reasonable allowance for the circumstances of his position."

That is what you and the other neo-reb cretins won't do.

Walt

[Who is John Galt?]

And yet another load of 'nonsense' from Who is John Galt.

"I invite you, as always, to prove" it! "Ante up, my friend!"

Please?

;>)

Read up on your boy Jeff some time.

Oh, I have already "read up on" Thomas Jefferson - he was definitely an advocate of States Rights (including the right of secession), as he made quite apparent in his Declaration of 1825...

Or were you referring to some other Founder?

(LOL! ;>)