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.
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.
Not Texas, which petitioned for admission but which action was never acted upon by the US congress. Then, with the creation of the Confederacy, and against the best counsel of some of the Texian founders and statesmen, Texas instead *jined up* with the Confederacy, and was thereafter occupied by Unionist forces as conquered enemy territory.
Texas was afterward *readmitted* to the Union, though in fact had never previously been admitted as constitutionally prescribed. So if I'm to keep the pledge I swore to support and defend the Constitution of the United States, Texas isn't really a state.
-archy-/-
No man is good enough to govern another man without that other's consent.
--Abraham Lincoln
All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.
--Marbury vs. Madison, 5 US (2 Cranch) 137, 174, 176, (1803)
In what little I have read about Jackson confirms that the lemon affection is mostly mythical. Jackson ate fruit, but he wasn't the lemon addict he is portrayed to be.
Anyone making such a statement would clearly be making a statement that would give propagandistic aid and comfort to the enemies of the United States, now waging war on it and its citizens.
Of course, I would not force the flight of the United States flag on those who might not have wanted flown over their [hopefully] final resting place. But in most cases, we can only guess at what they themselves might have so wished.
-archy-/-
Swell idea. I hope it's adopted right after the honor guard at Arlington Cemetery appears in civilian clothing, jeans, T-shirts and sneakers, since the battles are over for those who died there, and we wouldn't want to offend the sensibilities of any politicians who loath the military. Or his wife.
-archy-/-
No, but a lot of the revisionists would probably like to - honoring their forefathers & all.
I have owned a slave, a member of the Ibo tribe and Christian named Benny, when I was in Nigeria. Had I not done so, he would have been left to starvation.
I frequently whipped him as well. Mostly at checkers, a game which was new to him. He usually won when we played chess.
He made it out of Nigeria and was a free man once he arrived in Rhodesia in '77. I have no idea how he's fared since, but he saw the present difficulties coming and I doubt he stuck around to experience them firsthand. And I doubt he returned to Nigeria, either.
-archy-/-
the tyrant, lincoln the first of DC,was nothing, if not consistent in his racism & HATEFULNESS!
What else would you expect from a lawyer whose talents served the Nineteenth Century's railroad barons?
-archy-/-
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