Confederate Flag on Gridiron Sparks Painful Civics

A Newport Beach high school principal apologized Thursday for the use of the Confederate flag during a Civil War-themed halftime show at a football game against Westchester High, a school in Los Angeles with a predominately African American student body.

The principal and student band director at Newport Harbor High School said the school used poor judgment by displaying the 7-by-10-foot flag at last Friday's event, a sight that angered several Westchester fans who came to Orange County for the game.

"Heaven forbid that people would understand the War of Norther Agression, and actually get a truthful account of what happened."

Here's a truthful account:

On April 12, 1864, Confederates forces under Gen. Nathan Bedford Forrest stormed Fort Pillow, a small garrison held by some 600 Union troops. Half were African Americans from the Sixth US Colored Heavy Artillery and the Second US Colored Light Artillery.

Black soldiers who surrendered were murdered. Black sergeants were singled out, nailed to logs and set on fire. The tents of the black wounded were set on fire. Blacks escaping into the Mississippi River were caught in a crossfire. Black women and children were shot on sight. At the end of the slaughter, the Confederates had lost 14 men, but 331 Union soldiers had been killed. The number who were prisoners is unknown. Of the living Union prisoners, 168 were white, but only 58 blacks had survived.

Testifying on Fort Pillow, one Confederate sergeant reported:

"I with several of the others tried to stop the butchery and at one time had partially succeeded, but General Forrest ordered them shot down like dogs and the carnage continued."

After the battle, General Forrest stated:

"It is hoped that these facts will demonstrate to the Northern people that nigra soldiers can't cope with Southerners."

General Grant responded by demanding that black soldiers must be treated like whites or he would cancel the practice of prisoner exchanges that until then had been one of the rules of North-South engagement. That great paragon of the South, Robert E. Lee, refused.

Speaking of Lee, the neo-confederates love to spread the lie that he was opposed to slavery. However, when Lee invaded Maryland in 1863 he ordered all free blacks shipped back to the South as slaves.

Nathan Forrest - the great white hero of the neo-cons - had been a slave dealer in Memphis before the war; following the war he was one of the organizers of the Ku Klux Klan and reportedly served as its first Grand Wizard.

But of course, the Civil War had nothing to do with race, or slavery.

There were racists on both sides of that war. Pointing out one man's atrocities is not going to change that. The war was about state's rights, and under that there were several issues. The war was not fought solely for one issue of slavery.

Also, let's not forget that Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation did not free the slaves held by the Northern States. So, if they fought to end slavery, why weren't the slaves freed?

Here is an excellent link to show what the Northerners were doing. If you to it you can read the proclamations and see where no one was actually freed. Also there is an account in there of Northerners going on a riotious spree and killing hundreds of blacks, I'll give you just a highlight.

Emancipation Proclamation and Northern Hypocrisy

Brief blurb from the article.

What Lincoln was saying was that in territories that he had absolutely no governing power he was declaring slavery to be abolished immediately. In territories in which he had governing power, the areas of the United States and areas of the Confederacy which were presently under U.S. military occupation, were "left precisely as if this proclamation were not issued" or slavery would remain untouched.(snip)

The angry mob burned fine homes, business buildings, the draft office, a Methodist church, a Negro orphanage, and many other buildings. A Negro was hung, then burned as people danced around the burning body. More than thirty Negroes were killed - shot, hung, or trampled to death. It had been reported that Negroes were hung from the lamp posts along the streets. The mobs grew to an estimated strength of between 50,000 and 70,000. For three days they swarmed through the streets, setting up barricades on First, Second, and Eighth Avenues, where sometimes a force of only 300 policemen would have to face 10,000 attackers at a time. Some troops filtered into town, and the crowds took to alleys and rooftops where they killed soldiers with bricks and guns. The gangs caught the colonel of a militia unit, stomping and beating him to death. After dragging him to his home, men, women, and children danced around his body. Eventually, enough troops arrived to put an end to the rioting. Casualties were heavy -nearly 2,000 people were dead from the melee.

I've never denied that atrocities happened in that war, but if you are going to post what one group did, then also make sure that you post what the other side did. Think too, that not everyone felt the way your example did. By pulling one man out of war and holding him up as an example of what every man in that war believed is misleading and inaccurate.

And what of Sherman? He's a man that burnt a bloody path to the sea. What of the devistation and destruction his men did on that march to kill, burn, rape, pillage and plunder? Was not a statue raised in that man's honor?

The new Sherman Statue which stands on Zane Square in Lancaster, Ohio was unveiled on July 2, 2000 during the bicentennial celebration of Lancaster. Designed by Mike Major, the statue is life size.
The three flags in the logo to the left can be identified as being the Lancaster flag (background) designed for the bicentennial, in the foreground the one on the left is the American flag and the one on the right, Sherman's Civil War troop flag.

Since you are so fond of statues and atrocities, I offer you an example of the goodness and kindness of the northern commanders. Oh yes, here lies slavery at it's best.

Even jewerly, such as wedding bands, was pulled from ladies' hands by the noble defenders of the Union.

If the saga of these poor people were to stop here, it would still rate as one of the lowest points in American histroy. But for these Southerners, there odyssey of horror had only begun. Sherman then ordered all those who worked in the factories to be gathered up and shipped out of the country. The invader evidently feared that by some miracle these people might not die of starvation, and by some enormous stroke of luck might rebuild their factories from the ashe. With little or no concern for homes, women and children were torn from their families and shipped north. The vast majority of these people were never to see their loved ones again. In all, more than two thousand women, children, and a few old men were collected. Families were divided. Children were seperated from their mothers. Tearful mothers were forced to watch as children, who had worked in the factories, were dragged away from home- almost none of them would ever be heard from again. With no remorse than that shown by the Yankee Slave trader(And oh yes the majority of slave traders were Yankee Slave traders, but that is obviously another story for another time), the invaders went about their dirty work of kidnapping defenseless women and children.

Even after the end of the war, the United States goverment never made any attempt to reunite these families! In the town of Roswell, over four hundred young women and children were kept in the open town square for nearly a week. Imagine the suffering of those who were cramped in that hot(Remember this was July in Georgia!) dirty place. As if that ere bad enough, the whiskey stores found their way into the hands of the guards. From that time on, the young girls of Roswell lived a continual nightmare. All the factory workers of New Manchester were taken off in the same manner as the other towns. So complete was the destruction that the town never recovered from the raid and soon passed from existence. New Manchester became a martyr for the cause of Southern Independence.

The following comment appeared in a Louisville, Kentucky, newspaper concernign the women and children whom Sherman had shipped north; "The train which arrived from Nashiville last evening brought up from the South, 249 women and children, who are sent here by the orders of General Sherman to be transferred north of the Ohio river. These people are mostly in a destitute condition, having no means to provide for themselves a support." These people were hired out to preform work at a price that was at no more than a subsistence level, making them virtually white slaves for the Yankees. More than 2,000 women and children were sent into the North in this manner. The papers in the area advertised them as if they were any other c mmodity for sale. And so the Yankee maintained their illicit trade in human flesh even as they were singing glory, glory, hallelujah.

I may not agree with everything that was done, and by the Good Lord I don't, but I have not turned a blind eye to the atrocities of those that fought on the southern side of the War of Northern Agression, as many northerners seem to have done with their own side.

Can you say the same?

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