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.

[sheltonmac]

Lincoln viewed secession as impossible.

And as we all know, Lincoln's beliefs trump the Constitution.

[republicanwizard]

The Constitution doesn't recognize the right to secede whenever a state feels its right to enslave its citizens is being abridged.

The President is the sworn enforcer of the laws and Constitution of the United States. The President was Abraham Lincoln.

[cyborg]

Do you need to be reconstructed?

[Texas_Dawg]

insanity ping

[warchild9]

"Citizenship" doesn't have to be enforced at gunpoint. The state of being a "subject" does.

[republicanwizard]

Well, Southerners evidently felt that a person's lack of citizenship, I mean being a slave, could be defended at gunpoint. So why not the acquisition or maintenance of citizenship?

[UncleJeff]

Gen'l Lee felt called on to surrender, given the circumstances facing him and his command, and I will not fault him for his decision.

I have never felt that way.

Forget, hell.

[stainlessbanner]

Lincoln viewed secession as impossible.

'Any people whatsoever have the right to abolish the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better. This is a most valuable, a most sacred right.'

-Lincoln 1848

[republicanwizard]

Thank God he did. How many men had to die before the South would realize that a man is not born to be a slave?

[republicanwizard]

As usual twisting out of context. Lincoln was referring to the Constitutional provision for revising the Government.

[Paul C. Jesup]

What is so noble about turning one's sword on the government and country that gave him the sword?

That question could be applied to the Founding Fathers also.

Do you think that this nation did not have a right to secede from England?

[Cobra Scott]

Taken one step farther, your views do not support the interpretation of the 2nd amendment as a check against domestic tyranny.

Yes, they should have shot everyone. Especially the slaves who fought beside and in place of their owners. Men, women children, all of them. After all, they were criminals, right? Why, I'm sure you can point out numerous cases where these instigators were convicted of treason....

Surely you can. Can't you?

[republicanwizard]

"That question could be applied to the Founding Fathers also."

You are forgetting the justification for both men turning on their native countries.

If you would compare Washington, who fought to keep us from being enslaved, to Lee, who fought to keep men slaves, then that says more about you than the comparable justification.

[Paul C. Jesup]

Why do people like you keep posting articles like this? You're like the foolish darwin award winner that decided to start a fire in a nitro factory.

[Held_to_Ransom]

Therefore, though they might claim a new allegiance, the Confederates were still legally citizens of the United States.

And therefore traitors. They really shouldn't be buried under the US flag. Better an unmarked grave.

The state governments ceased to have legitimacy when they seceded, but the citizens of the states who didn't take arms against the United States government (close to half if not more than half) were always US citizens, and not necessarily traitors. Since all southern soldiers and sailers were drafted, they all have an excuse to claim they weren't willing traitors, but they also had plenty of opportunity to enlist in the Union Army as the war went on, and indeed, a very great number did so. Certainly southerners who served in the Union Army should be buried under a US flag whether they were forced to fight under the traitor flag before that or not, but to my knowledge, none of the Hunley crew fell into that category.

[Paul C. Jesup]

You're avoiding the question.

[Question_Assumptions]

"Citizenship" doesn't have to be enforced at gunpoint. The state of being a "subject" does.

Unlike "subjects", Americans are free to leave whenever they want. What's stopping you?

[Cobra Scott]

I ask you then, where are the verdicts from the trials which convicted these traitors?

Consider that some where active abolutionists who felt a duty to fight for the political entity they supported (at that time a state).

[republicanwizard]

You mean the male slaves whom the South denied of their manhood for their entire lives. You mean the enslaved women whom the masters and their evil deputies whipped and abused and treated like animals. You mean the children of slaves whom you denied an education.

I suppose, being that you whipped them when they refused to work, that they were afraid that you would whip them when they failed to fight for your unconstitutional, unamerican, unpatriotic rebellion against all that makes this country a model to the world.

[warchild9]

Arguing about slavery is a red herring, as irrelevant as arguments about Lincoln's sexual preferences.
An appropriate contemporary argument would concern the meaning of citizenship, and whether politicians, for whatever reason, have a right to maintain their power over others using force, and whether the Constitution as a contract concedes adherence to the Union under threat of death.