Posted on 02/10/2004 6:16:00 AM PST by stainlessbanner
IS THE Confederate battle flag a symbol of hate? Although there are certain connotations that have been improperly associated with the Confederate flag, there are still many people within the American population who display it to show pride in their heritage.
Heritage, not hate.
The Confederate States of America was a compilation of southern states that seceded from the United States of America. Following the formation of this new government, the grievances between the North and South produced hostility and warfare.
Our differences divided us as a nation. Yet during that period, there arose a certain Southern solidarity that people cannot forget.
A liberal federal judge has banned the display of Confederate flags in cemeteries near our area. Could he, not the Southerners who revere the flag, be the prejudiced one?
Only two days out of 365 in a year are people allowed to fly the Confederate battle flag in Point Lookout in Maryland. There have been many appeals, but the judge concluded that it "could" cause hateful uprisings and counter-actions to prevent the flag from flying.
So much for those who died during the Civil War bravely fighting for the South. 3,300 Confederate soldiers died at Point Lookout Cemetery, and the flag would commemorate their lives and their deaths.
Although many people do not understand or agree with what the Confederate States of America stood for, these men gave their lives and had the courage to stand up for what they believed in.
In fact, Confederates fought for the ideals expressed in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution--states' rights, no taxation without fair representation and freedom from oppressive government.
They weren't fighting for hate. They weren't fighting to destroy a race.
They were fighting to preserve the government that they had chosen--the Confederate States of America--the government that allowed them to preserve their own way of life.
Fact: The overwhelming majority of Southerners never owned slaves. Slavery as an institution was fading, and making way for more pragmatic agricultural practices, including the use of immigrant labor.
Too many people today do not agree with what Southern soldiers stood for, often basing their opinion on faulty history or willful ignorance. That doesn't mean that we should respect the soldiers from Dixie any less.
Ignorance has turned the South's past into a history of hate. I have grown up in the South. I am not racist. I consider myself to be an open-minded person.
I do have Dixie Pride, though.
I grew up in a Civil War town that has a Confederate Cemetery in the middle of it. There's even a store called "Lee's Outpost."
Yes, there are people who live in Fredericksburg who consider the Confederate flag as a symbol of hatred and racism. However, they do not know what it is truly about.
The war between the states was a time when brother fought against brother. It was a time when people didn't have the choice to be passive.
Ultimately, regardless of one's feelings about the flag, banning the Confederate flag is unconstitutional under the Bill of Rights. Flying the flag is considered a form of speech--and if it is legal to burn an American flag, it should be legal without question to fly the Confederate one.
I do own a Confederate flag. I'm a Southerner, proud of my heritage, and I take pride in the fact that my ancestors rose to the occasion and fought for their form of government.
They did not give their lives to protect slavery in the South. They did not die to keep African-Americans from sharing the same liberties and freedoms that they were blessed with. They believed they were fighting for their families, homes and states against an oppressive government in the North.
The book "The South Was Right" provides many facts to support this.
In the end, it almost doesn't matter why they fought. We claim to be a nation that believes in freedom of speech, where everyone can have their own beliefs and not be looked down on for it.
Are we or aren't we?
What makes this country great is that we have the right to make up our own minds about things. People are asked if they believe in freedom of speech. They reply, "Yes, of course I believe in freedom of speech."
Yet when they don't agree with the speech, sometimes they contradict themselves.
As a nation with millions of citizens, we will never agree on any principles or ideas as a whole--except for the fact that freedom cannot be replaced, and rights cannot be sacrificed.
So why should the Confederate flag be an exception? Free speech applies to everyone, and Southerners have great reasons to be proud of their past.
BUFFY RIPLEY is a sophomore at Virginia Commonwealth University.
This is true, but a half truth (or more likely, a 1/10th truth). The Republicans were more like antislavery-light, focusing only on expansion into the territories.
#4 is especially cute.
Neither side treated prisoners very well, but the problem really started when the North stopped prisoner exchange when it became an advantage for them not to exchange. This caused the big buildup of prisoners, overcrowding of prisons, food supply problems, easily transmitted sickness, and death.
I got interested in the subject some years ago because my wife's great grandfather died as a prisoner at Point Lookout Prison in Maryland, the prison mentioned in the article that started this thread.
In early 1864 after the North stopped exchanging prisoners, the South offered to let Northern surgeons come through the lines with medicines to treat Federal prisoners in Southern prisons, act as commissaries to the prisoners, and report on prisoner treatment. This offer was turned down at very high levels in the Lincoln Administration and consequently thousands of prisoners died. The South offered to purchase medicines at two or three times their cost and let Northern doctors use them to treat Federal prisoners in Southern prisons (the blockade had stopped much of the flow of medicines). The North wouldn't do it.
The North basically sacrified a large number of their soldiers in Southern prisons to keep exchanged Southern prisoners from going back into the Confederate army. The North had an excess of manpower, the South didn't. One could argue that refusing to exchange prisoners shortened the war. However, Walt Whitman complained about it and rightly laid the blame for Federal prisoners dying in Southern prisons on the Lincoln Administration.
The South eventually released a large batch of prisoners in Savannah including 5,000 well prisoners without demanding prisoners in exchange.
Various arguments were put forth by the Feds as to why they wouldn't exchange troops any more. The quote I cited by Grant was one. Another was that since the South wouldn't exchange blacks, there wouldn't be any exchange. The South (Robert E. Lee, as I remember) argued back that they did exchange free black soldiers, but they would not exchange any former Southern slaves that had escaped from their masters and gone into the Federal army. They would be returned to their Southern masters. After all, it was still US law that escaped slaves must be returned to their owners.
The black prisoner exchange argument was specious. Federal General "Beast" Butler, Commissioner of Exchange for the North, admitted being prepared to keep preventing exchange on one pretext or another even if the South agreed to all demands of the North. They didn't want the South to get the extra manpower.
I'm not as familiar with the Japanese.
That was the South's argument, anyway. Lincoln wasn't the first President they tried it on. They also tried it on Andrew Jackson, who told them to get stuffed and they came a'runnin'. Lincoln, for some reason, didn't worry them.
Bad move.
Strictly speaking, the South fired at Fort Sumter and its troops, not the ships. The troops in Fort Sumter had trained their guns at South Carolina and represented a threat. Because of bad weather, the Federal ships you mention couldn't get over the Charleston bar to be shot at. The shallower-draft Northern tugs that the Feds had hired to take the food and supplies in to the fort from the Federal ships had been scattered by the weather and were not present.
The South did fire a few shots at The Star of the West a few months months earlier when it invaded Southern territory loaded with 200 troops and munitions. The harbor that the Star entered certainly belonged to South Carolina.
About a week before initiating the war, southern batteries fired on a merchant ship, the Rhoda Shannon, that had wandered into Charleston and committed no crime other than flying the Stars and Stripes. Southern hostile intentions were evident for some time.
Or kind of like maintaining a base in Cuba after they had asked us to leave? By your logic, then, Castro should have shelled Guantanamo Bay into surrender and you would have supported him on it?
Okay. So the first amendment is *really* code for the right to be offensive. To say insulting and unpopular things. To only use your free speech in the most hurtful and destructive way possible, not to ever say anything truthful and edifying. Good logic.< /sarcasm>
You see the trouble starts when you start presuming to know the heart motivation of someone. Slavery was sinful, but it was economically doomed anyway. The South knew this, but they wanted to retain the right to determine the issue (and any other issue not constitutionally mandated to Washington) for themselves.
But the tenth amendment protected much more than slavery from the purview of the central government.Amendment X was a huge barrier to the Federalists among us, and they apparently had no problem with hundreds of thousands of slaughters to get rid of it. It was a power play against the states, more than anything else.
There were duties on tobacco, cotton, and naval stores. All industries important to the south, and enjoying protections like those enjoyed up North. In fact, those same protections were kept in the southern tariff passed in May 1861, in spite of anti-protectionist clauses in the confederate constitution. So I guess protectionism is OK if it's your industries.
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