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.
I stand corrected.
There are some facts (which you might want to look into) that show Andersonville was constructed in January 1864 and prisoners began arriving in February, about nine months before Sherman started his march to the sea. By June 1864, before Sherman reached Atlanta, the population reached 20,000. By August, while Sherman was engaged around Atlanta, the population reached 33,000. By November, when Sherman was on his way to Savannah, the survivors had been moved - by train mostly - to other prison camps. During that time there was no widespread food shortage in Georgia, people were not dropping from starvation (except at Andersonville), and food could have been provided if the south wanted to.
Do you believe that Lee's Army of Northern Virginia was well fed in late 1864 and early 1865?
Because of the ineptness of the Davis regime and the decrepit state of southern transportation network, as well as sabotage on the part of some southern governors, Lee's army wasn't that well fed in 1862 or 1863. That's one of the reasons he went North.
Without a doubt.
Walt
The heritage -is- hate.
When Abraham Lincoln was running for the senate in 1858, he had to face the propaganda that because he wanted blacks to be free, that this would lead to blacks and whites inter-marrying. He rejected this false position by saying that just because he didn't want a black woman for a slave didn't mean he wanted one for a wife.
But the basis of this charge was and is clear. The people of the day hated the idea of equality for blacks.
And the heritage of the War of the Rebellion in connection with the rebel battle emblem and everything associated with the Confederate States of America (so-called) is based on hatred of those different from you.
It is straight from "1984" to say that it's heritage, not hate -- when hatred was at the center of the rebellion.
Walt
How could any policy, or any course of action, be worse than human slavery?
You're exposed:
"I think I agree a hundred percent with Ed Sebesta, though, about the motives or the hidden agenda -- not too deeply hidden, I think -- of such groups as the United Daughters of the Confederacy and the Sons of the Confederate Veterans. They are dedicated to celebrating the Confederacy and rather thinly veiled support for white supremacy. And I think that also is the -- again, not very deeply hidden -- agenda of the Confederate flag issue in several Southern states."
-- Dr. James McPherson
Walt
Clearly, Wlat, they're concerns about the end of slavery are foremost in their minds. You'd think they would have more important things to think about ss they huddled amidst the burning ruins, be it in Richmond, Atlanta, Columbia, or any of the Southern cities that were raped by the Union armies.
In Walt's world, the Southern slave-owners are just short of Satan himself. In the real world, a million Americans were killed by the actions of their government. Perhaps we should thank Lincoln, after all the Russian gov't killed over 20 million.
Judge Ould, the Confederate agent for prisoner exchange, was called by Wirz to testify on his behalf about the efforts to get food, medicines, and humane treatment to the Federal prisoners at Andersonville. Ould showed up and attended court for ten days. He said the following about it later:
Early in the morning of the day on which I expected to give my testimony I received a note from Chipman, the Judge Advocate, requiring me to surrender my subpoena. I refused, as it was my protection in Washington. Without it the doors of the Old Capitol might have opened and closed upon me. I engaged, however, to appear before the court, and I did so the same morning. I still refused to surrender my subpoena, and therefore the Judge Advocate endorsed on it these words: "The within subpoena is hereby revoked; the person named is discharged from further attendance." I have got the curious document before me now signed with the name of "N. P. Chipman, Colonel," etc. I intend to keep it if I can as the evidence of the first case in any court, of any sort, where a witness who was summoned for the defense was dismissed by the prosecution.
The legacy of Lincoln - the abuses never end.
Justice Davis in ex parte Milligan wrote [in reference to Milligan, not Wirz, but certainly applicable] that 'it is not pretended that the commission was a court ordained and established by Congress', that a 'guarantee of freedom was broken when' defendents were 'denied a trial by jury'. The 'trial and conviction by a military commission was illegal.' So much for a fair trial, when the prosecution can dismiss witnesses out of hand.
Yep. Lincoln was a stone racist, and wanted ALL blacks deported/repatriated, wanted the territories free for WHITES ( the 219 blacks there in the 10 years since the Missouri Compromise must have been too many). He was so much for black quality that he signed a proposed amendment guaranteeing slavery FOREVER.
The Navy steamers Crusader, Mohawk, Wyandott, and Water Witch were cruising the waters of Cuba seeking American ships carrying on the slave trade.
Two weeks earlier, the Mohawk had discovered a brig at anchor near Cuba. Upon investigating it, the Naval Commander discovered that the brig was the Cygnet, of Baltimore, and had evidently recently landed a cargo of slaves. The ship was taken into custody and moved to Key West.
In a year and a half preceding the War Between the States eighty-five slave trading vessels were reported as fitting out in New York harbor alone.
An author of the time wrote that,
"from 1850 to 1860 the fitting out of slavers became a flourishing business in the United States and centered in New York City."(Dubois)
Seems as if the flags of the states of Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, Mass., Conn., and Maine, and the flag of the United States flew from the masts of these ships.
Those were flags of racism....the ones flying over the kidnapped Africans.
The sight of a Southern flag must have been a relief, since it meant getting off a vile ship, moving to a farm, having food, and a roof over your head.
That is also the goal of a lot of yankee retirees moving down here these days.
Do ships, particularly clandestine slave ships, fly state flags?
Those were flags of racism....the ones flying over the kidnapped Africans.
But by definition the flags of Southern states and the Confederacy would fly over kidnapped Africans when they arrived here ...
The sight of a Southern flag must have been a relief, since it meant getting off a vile ship, moving to a farm, having food, and a roof over your head.
That looks like very roundabout reasoning. Surely it would have been better to see the flags of a US Navy ship that might stop the slavers and free the slaves.
“In Mr. Lincoln’s message, we appreciate the calm thoughtfulness so different from the rowdyism we have been accustomed to receive from Washington. He is strong in the justice his cause and the power of his people. He speaks without acerbity even of the rebels who have brought so much calamity upon the country, but we believe that if the miscreants of the Confederacy -were brought to him today, Mr. Lincoln would bid them depart and try to be better and braver men in the future. When we recollect the raucous hate in this country toward the Indian rebels, "we feel humiliated that this 'rail splitter' from Illinois should show himself so superior to the mass of monarchical statesmen.
"Mr. Lincoln's brotherly kindness, truly father of his country, kindly merciful, lenient even to a fault, is made the sport and butt of all the idle literary buffoons of England. The day will come when the character and career of Abraham Lincoln will get justice in this country and his assailants will show their shame for the share they took in lampooning so brave and noble a man, who in a fearful crisis possessed his soul in patience, trusting in God. ‘Truly’, Mr. Lincoln speaks, 'the fiery trial through which we pass will light us down in honor or dishonor to the latest generation.' There is little doubt what the verdict of future generations will be of Abraham Lincoln.
"Before two years of his administration has been completed, he has reversed the whole constitutional attitude of America on the subject of Slavery; he has saved the territories from the unhallowed grasp of the slave power; he has purged the accursed institution from the Congressional District; he has hung a slave trader in New York, the nest of slave pirates; he has held out the right hand of fellowship to the negro Republicans of Liberia and Hayri; he has joined Great Britain in endeavoring to sweep the slave trade from the coast of Africa! There can be no doubt of the verdict of posterity on such acts as these. Within the light of the 'fiery trial' of which Mr. Lincoln speaks, another light shines clear and refulgent—the torch of freedom—to which millions of poor slaves now look with eager hope.
At home and abroad judgments came oftener that America had at last a President who was All-American. He embodied his country in that he had no precedents to guide his footsteps; he was not one more individual of a continuing tradition, with the dominant lines of the mold already cast for him by Chief Magistrates who had gone before. Webster, Calhoun, and Clay conformed to a classicism of the school of the English gentleman, as did perhaps all the Presidents between Washington and Lincoln, save only Andrew Jackson.
The inventive Yankee, the Western frontiersman and pioneer, the Kentuckian of laughter and dreams, had found blend in one man who was the national head. In the "dreamy vastness" noted by the London Spectator, in the pith of the folk words "The thoughts of the man are too big for his mouth," was the feel of something vague that ran deep in American hearts, that hovered close to a vision for which men would fight, struggle, and die, a grand though blurred chance that Lincoln might be leading them toward something greater than they could have believed might come true.
Also around Lincoln gathered some of the hope that a democracy can choose a man, set him up high with power and honor, and the very act does something to the man himself, raises up new gifts, modulations, controls, outlooks, wisdoms, inside the man, so that he is something else again than he was before they sifted him out and anointed him to take an oath and solemnly sign himself for the hard and terrible, eye-filling and center-staged, role of Head of the Nation.
To be alive for the work he must carry in his breast Cape Cod, the Shenandoah, the Mississippi, the Gulf, the Rocky Mountains, the Sacramento, the Great Plains, the Great Lakes, their dialects and shibboleths. He must be instinct with the regions of corn, textile mills, cotton, tobacco, gold, coal, zinc, iron.
--Abraham Lincoln, The War Years, Vol. II, pp.331-333, by Carl Sandburg
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