Posted on 06/15/2006 4:06:18 PM PDT by Mobile Vulgus
In another example of PC stupidity gone wild, a Civil War re-enactor portraying a Confederate officer was kicked out of Historic Crossroads Village Park, near Flint, Michigan this past weekend, for saying that a young black child would probably have been a slave in 1860's Georgia.
Civil War re-enactor Tim VanRaemdonck said he was just staying in character when he wrote "slave" as the occupation of black children on fictitious enlistment papers during Civil War Days at Crossroads Village.Gosh! Imagine that! A black person being assumed a slave in 1860's Georgia?Word reached Crossroads Village manager Garry Pringle, who had two conversations with VanRaemdonck and asked him to leave.
What's next, assuming a Japanese man might have been in the Imperial Army circa 1930? Maybe an English soldier being thought a Cursader in the 14th century? Maybe it would be wrong to generalize that a North Vietnamese man would be a Communist in 1965?
Darn that history stuff anyway!
Not to be outdone by the stupidity of Village manager, Garry Pringle, Parks Director Amy M. McMillan said the following to the Media:
McMillan believes there were better choices than labeling the young boy a "slave" - even if the label was designed to share history.Um, no Mz. McMillan. You are wrong on all counts proving you know next to nothing about American history. But, also proving you are a swell practitioner of the dark arts of PCism."There were also free people of color in the southern states during this time period," she wrote in an e-mail to The Flint Journal. "More appropriate answers could have included occupations such as farmer, blacksmith, or other occupations typical of that time period.
"It would have been equally inappropriate to respond 'slave owner' to a Caucasian child who had asked such a question. Had any re-enactor provided such a response, he/she would have also been asked to leave the village."
For some REAL history, Mz. McMillan, the total number of free blacks in Georgia as noted in the 1860 census was only 3,500. By contrast, the total number of slaves in Georgia in 1860 amounted to 462,198! So, NO, Mz. McMillan, it would NOT have made much sense to assume that, on average, a black person in Georgia would have been a free man. There was nothing "more appropriate" to have said to the child but that he would probably have been a slave, Mz. McMillan.
Now, to clear up your other garbled historical claim, Mz. McMillan; The number of white slave owners in 1860 Georgia was 41,084 out of a total white population of 591,550. So, while it would not have been an automatic assumption that a white person in Georgia in 1860 was a slave owner it was far, far more likely to assume that a white person might own slaves in 1860 Georgia than to assume a black person was a free man in the same place and time period. The statistics do not lie, Mz. McMillan.
The reenactor was right and the staff of the Crossroads Village is wrong to have removed him from the Park for telling history like it is.
Another member of the group to which the unduly accosted reenactor belongs told the Flint paper:
"If we don't discuss it, children don't learn.""Learning" is NOT what the putrid purveyors of PCsim want. They want whitewashed, cleansed history free of anything that might "upset" or cause certain people to have any "low self-esteem". They don't want people to actually understand the history of this country at all. They just want to label all white people as evil and let that "lesson" go unexamined, kept as a vague notion never investigated and never spoken of directly.
I hope that Civil War reenactors in Michigan stop participating at the "Historic" Crossroads Village Park and stop helping them make all that money off a public whom the Village refuses to help learn about our history. Sadly, the "Historic" part of their charge is to be ignored.
Thanks for bringing me up to speed. Hope you dont mind that I refuse to use the term. :)
See my tag. No other comment necessary.
Nonsense. Manumission was actually difficult in most southern states. An 1838 decision by the Alabama Supreme Court, Trotter v Blocker (6 Porter 269), ruled that manumission was a gift and that legally slaves were ineligible for receiving such a gift. A North Carolina case, State v Newsom, ruled that blacks had no legal rights under the Constitution. And an 1822 law in Mississippi required approval of the state legislature to manumit a slave. Every southern state had laws preventing free blacks from moving into the state, and some like Virginia had clauses in their constitutions requiring slaves freed to leave the state within 12 months or be sold back into slavery. Those who were freed in all southern states were restricted as to what work they could do, where they could live, and who they could marry.
...and many of them would go on to form volunteer units for the Confederate Army, granted the lions share of these units originate from Louisiana.
Such units did not exist.
Ha, ha.
No, don't mind at all!
:)
If that were so then the southern states must have just been swimming in free blacks. But a check of the census records shows that just wasn't so. Alabama had 438,000 black persons, 99.4% of whom were slaves. Mississippi had 773 free blacks, down from the 1850 census. Arkansas had 144, also down from the prior census. Louisiana had more free blacks in 1830, over 25,000, than they had in 1860, less than 19,000. If manumission were as free and open as you claim then these figures couldn't be true.
http://www.press.uillinois.edu/epub/books/schweninger/s4.html
Read # 67. This is the family that I was referencing when I was talking about black planters in the NE part of the county.
Well that backs up what I was saying, manumission wasn't possible without approval of the legislature. I see #66 does the same. I also noticed that #61 references the South Carolina law forbidding blacks from moving into the state, #62 refers to a man who apparently is being expelled from his Mississippi county for being black, #65 is a petition requesting that the state pass a law requiring all free blacks to leave the county, #69 talks of the sale of free blacks into slavery because they remained in Virginia, and so on. Doesn't seem to show that manumission was open and easy as you insist.
Hey, thanks an lot! This is a terrific site! I'm going to have to look at it more closelu
Actually Mz. McMillan is not being PC. The lib talking point is that ALL blacks were slaves. And still are. Heaven forbid that anyone get the idea that there even WERE free blacks. Only 3,500 of them in Georgia but still................
...Of COURSE it is their position... but it isn't one they TALK about! That is, until it's time to squeeze money from government coffers!
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