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.
Both men did not. Lincoln was unalterably opposed to slavery, Davis was a strong supporter of slavery. Lincoln believed that black men should be free, Davis believed that blacks were suited for slavery and nothing else. Lincoln believed that free blacks should enjoy many of the same rights as whites, Davis did not. There is a vast difference between the two viewpoints.
Why not all?
It's not enumerated in the Constitution, it's not a power delegated to the federal government:
'All the restraints intended to be laid on the state governments (besides where an exclusive power is expressly given to Congress) are contained in the 10th section of the 1st article.'
John Marshall [future US Chief Justice], Elliot's Debates, Vol III, p. 420.
The secessions of the states were acts of the state, by the people assembled in convention.
Perhaps the question should be why didn't Davis support the idea that blacks were due any of the same rights as whites, but I digress.
It may be that Lincoln did believe that they should. He supported the vote for blacks, especially veterans. But I'm specifically thinking of the quote from the first Lincoln-Douglas where Lincoln believed the black man was due the same inalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as a white man was. Where Lincoln said that in "..the right to eat the bread, without the leave of anybody else, which his own hand earns, he is my equal and the equal of Judge Douglas, and the equal of every living man." Again, no southern leader would have gone that far, and most Northern leaders would have choked at the thought as well. In that, Lincoln stood above the crowd. And in that there is no southern leader with a comparable postition. Certainly not Jefferson Davis.
The Constitution is not applicable to states/nations not members of the union.
Yeah we've been down this road before. Non-enumerated powers assumed by the federal government that you agree with are OK, non-enumerated powers assumed by the federal government that you don't agree with are a sin. Well, the power to create a state and approve changes in status is enumerated by the Constitution. They are powers reserved to the Congress. Unilateral secession was not a right enjoyed by the states.
John Quincy Adams in 1939? You boys are so lost in the Republican party....
John Quincy Adams in 1939? You boys are so lost in the Republican party.... It's alright though. The Republican Party has a long history of making do with what it can get, no matter the quality.
Lincoln's position in contradictory.
The convention did consider the option of submitting the Constitution to the people of the states en masse for ratification: "Mr. GOUVERNEUR MORRIS moved, that the reference of the plan be made to one general convention, chosen and authorized by the people, to consider, amend, and establish the same."
The result: "Not seconded."
Eliott's Debates Vol. V., p. 356.
The framers refused to consolidate the people into one common mass.
And the big question is, of course, whether a state can unilaterally decide that it is no longer bound by the Constitution.
Where are the trials establising their criminal actions? Where are the trials convicting them of treason? They are non-existant for a reason:
An Act for the Punishment of Certain Crimes against the United States (1 Stat. 112, 1790)In 1862, Justice Grier, writing for the majority in The Prize Cases 2 Black 635, wrote, that the members of the Confederacy 'have declared their independence; have cast off their allegiance.'Section 1. Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That if any person or persons, owing allegiance to the United States of America, shall levy war against them, or shall adhere to their enemies, giving them aid and comfort within the United States or elsewhere, and shall be thereof convicted, on confession in open court, or on the testimony of two witnesses to the same overt act of the treason whereof he or they shall stand indicted, such person or persons shall be adjudged guilty of treason against the United States, and shall suffer death.
Treason was not possible. The Confederates owed allegiance to their states and country - the CSA.
The fact that they were also racists is just so much the better reason to say good riddance.
"Mr. Lincoln is not pledged to the ultimate extinctinction [sic ] of slavery; does not hold the black man to be the equal of the white, unqualifiedly as Mr. S. states it; and never did stigmatize their white people as immoral & unchristian; and Mr. S. can not prove one of his assertions true."
Abraham Lincoln, "To Henry J. Raymond", 18 Dec 1860, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, (Roy P. Basler, ed.), Vol. IV, p. 156.
"You and we are different races. We have between us a broader difference than exists between almost any other two races. Whether it is right or wrong I need not discuss, but this physical difference is a great disadvantage to us both, as I think your race suffer very greatly, many of them by living among us, while ours suffer from your presence. If this is admitted, it affords a reason, at least, why we should be separated."
Abraham Lincoln, "Address on Colonization to a Deputation of Negroes", 14 Aug 1862, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, (Roy P. Basler, ed.), Vol V, p. 371.
"Now, should Pierce ever be President, he will, politically speaking, not only be a mulatto; but he will be a good deal darker one than Sally Brown [a mulatto]."
Abraham Lincoln, "Speech to the Springfield Scott Club", 14 Aug 1852, Collected Works of Abraham Lincoln, Roy P. Basler ed., Vol. II, p. 157.
Do you think Lincoln is calling him "whitey"?
Not hardly; not on such a minor issue.
In any case, worship of the dogs of slavery is childish and ridiculous. You should give it up and along with that traitor's rag.
"We recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Law in nature tells us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." -- Jefferson Davis, March 1861Source "Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America" by William C. Davis, page 137
Below is the quotation as it appears in Look Away! Some of it is words attributed to Jefferson Davis and some of it is the words of William C. Davis. It is sourced to the New York Citizen of April 13, 1867. There is no indication of where or when the statement of Jefferson Davis was allegedly made six years before the Citizen publication date.
President Davis himself added his own voice in March 1861, when he declared that "we recognize the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him--our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude." Freedom only injured the slave. "The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change," he said. "You cannot transform the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables him to be." Slavery had its evils and abuses, he admitted, and also granted that at some future date the black might even be capable of some limited freedom as a peasant or serf, but no more, and not now.4[Note 4] New York Citizen, April 13, 1867.
Source "Look Away: A History of the Confederate States of America" by William C. Davis, page 137
Footnote on page 439.
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Charles Graham Halpine (1829 - 1868)
Editor, New York Citizen
Halpine was born in Ireland and went to Trinity College in Dublin. At one time he was a private secrfetary to politician Stephen A. Douglas. Halpine was a member of the general committee of Tammany Hall.
April 20, 1861 he became a lieutenant in NY state militia. He left the militia after a few months and on September 5, 1861 enlisted in the General Volunteers.
"Drawing on his vast newspaper experience, Halpine wrote and sent (under assumed names) a barrage of letters to Northern newspaper editors whose support of the Union cause was deemed less than exemplary."
He resigned from the service on July 31, 1864 as a brigadier general.
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Incessant labor brought on insomnia with the use of opiates, and his death was the result of an undiluted dose of chloroform.
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...On Feb, 22, 1862, after his election, Davis said, "We recognize the Negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude . . . You cannot transform the Negro into anything one tenth as useful or as good as what slavery enables them to be."
Here, the attribution is, "A feller in Gulfport, Mississippi named Bill Whitlock recently sent at letter to the Jackson' Clarion-Ledger claiming "Charley Reese's praise of Jefferson Davis was misplaced."
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On February 22, 1862 President Davis gave his second inaugural address at the Virginia Capitol, Richmond.
The material attributed to Davis by the New York Citizen does not appear in that speech.
On page 113, William C. Davis provides a further quote which is attributed to the same source as that on page 137, the New York Citizen of April 13, 1867. This one reads:
Even before North and South really had time to react to news of the commencement of the bombardment, Davis was already predicting the positive benefit that had to accrue to the Confederacy the moment Lincoln made any effort to react. Now the border states would certainly secede and join the Confederacy. "Our cause is a common cause," he told journalist Charles E.L. Stuart, "as our ideas and interests are common ideas and interests, all so interwoven that they are naturally adhesive."
I can find no trace of any journalist named Charles E.L. Stuart. However, there was a chap born Charles Edward Louis Philip Casimir, aka Charles Edward Louis Stuart, aka Bonnie Prince Charlie.
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Drawing on his vast newspaper experience, Halpine wrote and sent (under assumed names) a barrage of letters to Northern newspaper editors whose support of the Union cause was deemed less than exemplary. He also wrote as Private Miles O'Reilly, an ignorant Irish enlisted man who was free to express opinions to which Halpine, as an officer and a gentleman, could not give voice.
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He accompanied General Hunter to Hilton Head, and while there wrote a series of burlesque poems in the assumed character of an Irish private. Several of these were contributed to the New York "Herald" over the pen-name of "Miles O'Reilly," and with additional articles were issued as "Life and Adventures, Songs, Services, and Speeches of Private Miles O'Reilly, 47th Regiment, New York Volunteers" (New York, 1864), and "Baked Meats of the Funeral: A Collection of Essays, Poems, Speeches, and Banquets, by Private Miles O'Reilly, late of the 47th Regiment, New York Volunteer Infantry, 10th Army Corps. Collected, Revised, and Edited, with the Requisite Corrections of Punctuation, Spelling, and Grammar, by an Ex-Colonel of the Adjutant-General's Department, with whom the Private formerly served as Lance Corporal of Orderlies" (1866).
It may be that a puckish Irishman and General who wrote as Private Miles O'Reilly for the Herald, and wrote numerous letters under assumed names, may also have invented a journalist with the same name as Bonnie Prince Charlie.
On page 35 we have a quote attributed to the New York Citizen of April 6, 1867.
Secretary of the Treasury Howell Cobb and Secretary of War John B. Floyd resigned their posts almost immediately to go home and promote the movement in Georgia and Virginia, respectively, to no little displeasure among Reefers in their cabinet departments who had looked to them not only for leadership, but also for "spoils" in any newly formed Southern confederation. The journalist Charles E.L. Stuart, himself a bitter Reefer who never got what he thought he deserved for his efforts, grumbled that "in the coalescence between the faithful Coral Reefers and the mammoths of place and power, the latter may not have thought the former trifles, but the former had good and painful reasons to denounce a few of the latter as triflers." Such bitterness and disappointed ambition among those of the civil servant stratum was just another blow on the wedge to widen existing divisions, not adding envy and spite as powerful divisive allies with policy differences.2[Note 2, on page 431] Col. C. S. Armee [Charles E.L. Stuart], "Rummaging Through Rebeldom," New York Citizen, April 6, 1867.
Here it appears that Bonnie Prince Charlie [Charles E.L. Stuart] has metamorphosed into Confederate States Army [C.S. Armee].
No worship involved. In case you have forgotten, this entire country - in fact, much of the world, was slave-holding. Before Joseph was sold into slavery it existed, and today in Africa and other places it still exists. When this country was founded, and when the Constitution was ratified, legalized slavery existed in Northern & Southern states. Yankees sailed the Atlantic trading trinkets & rum to tribal kings to aquire their human cargos, and in some cases threw them overboard during the Middle Passage to certain deaths. Illinois practiced slavery under the guise of "indentured servitude" until 1865, and most northern states had laws aganst the immigration of blacks into their states. The yankees signed on the dotted line, agreeing to the terms and conditions of the Constitution, and practiced slavery and the slave trade as long as it was economically feasible.
You should give it up and along with that traitor's rag.
Whether or not the traitors to the Constitution invaded the Confederacy is not cause for me to take down my US flag. Regarding the flags of the Confederacy, I'll fly them forever, especially as long as it offends the ignorant.
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