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.
"had the late war been to perserve the institution of chattal slavery, i would have offered my sword to the south",
i feel VINDICATED that my ancestors served & died for the TRUE CAUSE of dixie LIBERTY!
free dixie,sw
ALL loyal southerns celebrate the HONORABLE service of your brave ancestor!
free dixie,sw
ALL loyal southrons do so as well.
free dixie,sw
It is a legitimate topic for historical debate. Abraham Lincoln was not successful in avoiding the only Civil War our nation suffered with horrendous loss of life and limb. I think he would have been a more successful President had he achieved the same results without the war.
According to Charles R. Woods, 1st Lieutenant, Ninth Infantry report, the Star of the West had over 200 armed men, was a military expedition, pursuant to orders from the Headquarters of the Army dated 5 Jan 1861, Capt. John McGowan orders were 'to put the troops in Fort Sumter'.
They came like thieves: 'During the night ... our lights were all out ... During the whole trip downward the troops were kept out of sight whenever a vessel came near enough to us to distinguish them'.
Would you not fire on an ARMED intruder entering your property?
Finally Fort Sumter (US FEDERAL GOVERNMENT PROPERTY) was fired on by Seccessionists in April 1861.
Nope. The state of SC resumed possession & ownership when the federal government failed to abide by the terms of the original cession in 1805, which terms were referenced in the cession of the the shoal/harbor for construction of Ft. Sumter. Even after disputes were resolved in 1842, the federal government had failed to finish within the required 3 years and maintain a garrison.
Pro Union sentiment was very present in sections of Alabama, Arkansas, North Carolina, Tennessee & Virginia. Eastern Tennessee and western North Carolina were exceptionally troublesome areas for Confederate authorities who frequently complained that the populations of those areas were not friendly to the cause and interfered with Army recruiting efforts.
Virginia and several other states seceded after Lincoln called for troops to invade a sister state. There were MILLIONs of Northerners that sided with the Confederacy, Lincoln barely won a close election in 1864, and even then Gen Butler admitted that the miltary was used to prevent voting by pro-confederates.
as the Minister of DIS-Information for the damnyankee cause on FR, neither i nor any other southron patriot as been so RUDE.
free dixie,sw
the tyrant, lincoln the first of DC,was nothing, if not consistent in his racism & HATEFULNESS!
free dixie,sw
free the southland,sw
While I'm sure that's the case, that's not how it looks, which is my point. By all means condemn northern racism. But if you don't qualify that with an acknowledgement of Southern racism, it looks like excuses are being made for Southern racism either through moral equivalency or by trying to deflect to issue onto someone else. I personally feel that a lot of the hard feelings here are caused by impressions more than facts and I'd like people to pay a little more attention to the impressions that they are giving others.
i did NOT make his words up for him.
free dixie,sw
you should be ashamed.
free dixie,sw
Not that I have to answer to you, but I did post the regiment. Are you a mindreader? Why would you think I don't know when he served? If I so desired, I could list his enlistment dates, the names of those in his regiment, the battles he fought in, when he was wounded and when he was killed. I could give you the names of his family members, their children, his ancestors back 10 generations or more.
Read the post again, I posted 4 that had blacks serving. And if I had my records in front of me I could post hundreds of documented black Confederate soldiers from TN, VA, LA and others.
those pictures would be just as meaningful as the ones you posted.
free dixie,sw
Amendment V of the Bill of Rights reads (in part):
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the Militia, when in actual service in time of War or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offence to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
The clear implication of the last two clauses is that the government can deprive a person of property through due process and can take private property for public use so long as the owner is compensated justly. For the government to have those powers means that property rights are not absolute but qualified. When I own a piece of property, it is both my property and a part of my town, county, state, and country. So the land is mine and also a part of my country. I can't unilaterally decide that my property is a part of the Bahamas because I like their tax structure better, a part of the UK because I think the US is illegitimate, or a part of Syria if I decided that the Islamofascists were right. And you can't have a modern nation or a civilization if every property owner is given that sort of sovereignty.
I think that's a good idea but I would suggest that it would be even better to use the CSA flag and not the battle flag (the battle is over and the battle flag, alas, has become associated with racism) or, even better, the state flags of those men who died.
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