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.
You're certainly welcome to assume that, and probably will.
But you'll find links to various sources *here*, and *here*, and other official reports, Unionist and Confederate, of the events of that day *here.*
Forrest's report of the affairs of that day to General Buford via his adjutant can be read here. The text of Forrest's letter to Union General Washburn and others regarding that instance and its aftermath can be read here.
Always assuming, of course, that you do in fact know how to read.
-archy-/-
Owns a '78 olds. Takes car to mechanic for headlight and bulb replacement. Thinks a Kia is "very fast".
I suspect the author is actually an old lady posing as a man.
Nor mine. My g-grandfather was a poor mule and horse trader in Bexar county TX when he volunteered into Co. B, 2nd TX Cavalry in 1862. He owned no slaves, and his only reason for fighting was his loyalty to his state. He had served as a TX ranger on the TX frontier protecting settlements from Comanche and Mexican predation before marrying my g-grandmother in the mid 1850s, and he knew well the hardships and dangers he faced in war.
People today, expecially northern people, do not understand the feelings of the people of that era. Loyalty to one's state was usually stronger than loyalty to the union of states that comprised the federal government. That one g-grandfather, and the 5 g-g-grandfathers from GA, AL, and FL (all volunteers) fought for their native state's sovereignty, and not to preserve slavery, an institution from which they derived no benefit.
My Confederate ancestors lost what little they had before the war. Even my part-Cherokee g-g-grandfather who enlisted in the union army near the end of the war, to avoid being hanged by a vindictive union officer, lost everything he had during the awful period of "reconstruction". His small CSA cavalry force was captured while attempting to draw union cavalry away from drovers who were driving cattle to a train depot. The union officer in charge hanged 2 Confederate cavalrymen and gave the 3 others the choice of being hanged or enlisting in the union army. One chose hanging, my ancestor and one other chose the alternative. He served the last 3 months of the war in the union garrison at Cedar Key, FL. After the war he was summarily discharged and treated no better by the occupying union forces than Confederates in general.
My extended family has contributed soldiers, airmen, and sailors to the US military in two world wars and VN. Several of those didn't come home. My family and I are as loyal to the USA as anyone in any northern state. But I refuse to bow or submit to the politically correct nonsense that the UN-AMERICAN leftists (mostly northerners) are trying to force on ALL freedom loving Americans north and south. I also refuse to renounce my pride in ancestors who made sacrifices and endured hardships that very few Americans alive today can imagine. And to a man, they endured those hardships defending against an invasion of their ancestral states and in defense of their families, not to preserve the institution of slavery.
I'm not backtracking at all since President Lincoln's support for colonization is well documented. But I will continue to dispute your claim that President Lincoln wanted all blacks sent to Africa. His support was for voluntary emigration only.
As did Robert Lee, who paid passage to Liberia for at least two of his former slaves. I guess that means that Robert Lee wanted to send all free blacks to Liberia, too?
Really? Robert Lee sent his former slaves to Liberia in the 1850's, long before he, or almost anyone else, had heard of Abraham Lincoln. Interesting that he should be influenced by someone he didn't know. On the other hand, it's possible that Lee was influenced by John Breckenridge, who was also a strong supporter of colonization. Or Lee might have been influenced by the Virginia Constitution, which required freed slaves to leave the state within 12 months or be sold back into slavery.
For the most part the states didn't enter anything freely or voluntarily. They asked to be admitted. They gained statehood only with the approval of the majority of the other states. In fact, the Constitution does not require any input from a territory at all for Congress to make a state out of it. Since they owed their admission in the first place to the approval of the other states then why shouldn't that permission also be necessary to walk away from the agreement?
There are several regiments in GA, of which my ancestor served in one. The 14th, 5th, 52nd, 57th and numerous others. I have a book "Black Confederates" (aka "Forgotten Confederates" by Barrow et al documenting such soldiers, and along with GOPCapitalist and others, have posted such on this forum pages and pages of documentation. You can also read some accounts in the Slave Narratives (as told by ex-slaves) where slaves volunteered to serve, and did so proudly.
See the following books, to name a few, for more information:
Richard Rollins, ed., Black Southerners in Gray: Essays on Afro-Americans in Confederate Armies
Segars & Barrow, eds., Black Southerners in Confederate Armies.
Charles Kelly Barrow, et. al., Forgotten Confederates: An Anthology About Black Southerners.
Barrow, Segars & Rosenberg, eds., Black Confederates
Dr. Edward Smith & Nelson Winbush, Black Southern Heritage.
Ervin L. Jordan, jr., Black Confederates and Afro-Yankees in Civil War Virginia (A Nation Divided: New Studies in Civil War History).
H. R. Blackerby, Blacks in Blue & Gray.
"CRACKERS; HILLBILLIES; NEANDERTHALS; PINHEADS; REDNECKS; TRAITORS;"
Seems our Yankee "friends" can't discuss the issues in a civil way, and would rather denigrate us and call names.
How juvenile.
I wonder if they realize that the moderators can check to see who's abusing the keywords?
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