Posted on 03/18/2007 3:13:43 PM PDT by LdSentinal
State Sen. Jeff Mullis (R-Chickamauga) has proposed a splendid way to recognize Georgia's contributions to American history during a pivotal period in time.
He wants to establish a permanent Confederate History and Heritage Month. What better manner to encourage tourism related to the Civil War and to demonstrate how far Georgia has come since then?
Perhaps Confederate History and Heritage Month, proposed to be observed in April by Georgia, could spotlight such Civil War era items as ads for slaves.
Mullis' proposal, Senate Bill 283, sailed through the Senate Rules Committee last week. If adopted by the General Assembly and signed by Gov. Sonny Perdue, April would be designated as the month to contemplate Confederate heritage. Elementary and secondary schools, as well as the state's universities, would be urged to incorporate that heritage in history lessons.
It's a wonderful idea. The senator's bill would do all of Georgia a service by reminding everyone of the desperate lengths to which the South was willing to go to preserve the cruelty and injustice of slavery.
Schoolchildren, for example, could spend the month reciting the names of the quarter-million or so Southern men and boys who died from wounds or from disease in their vain effort to keep their black brothers and sisters in bondage, not to mention the untold others who went home maimed after the war.
Our children could work on their math by trying to estimate how many widows and orphans were left behind. Or on economics by calculating how badly the war damaged southern industry and agriculture and how long it delayed prosperity's arrival in the South.
Our children could tour Andersonville, where the Confederacy so starved and weakened Union prisoners that an appalling 13,000 died there.
Our children could ask why the terrible suffering occurred.
Thanks to Mullis, we could answer that it was because one group of people wanted to keep another brutalized and subservient.
Thanks to Mullis, it's possible that part of history will never be forgotten.
Of course, no proper observation of the Confederate heritage would be complete without an re-enactment of some sort. We surely don't want to re-enact the whipping of a slave or the forced breakup of a black family or the sexual exploitation of black women by their masters. That might stir up demands for an official apology from the state of Georgia, and some legislators have already made it clear that no such apology will be forthcoming, that's it's time to look forward, not backward.
Except, of course, for Confederate History and Heritage Month.
Instead, maybe we should re-enact the April 9, 1865, surrender of Gen. Robert E. Lee to Gen. U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House. Because apparently some people still need to be reminded that the war is over, and that the South lost, and that the South's defeat was one of the best things that ever happened to this country.
When you offend the majority of your readers, your newspapers' readership will decline. I guess she didn't take my advice.
It may be just me, but I think Republicans should stand aside on this one. The Confederacy was a Democrat Party phenomenon. We should let Democrats defend their own history, or not, as they prefer. We should never let Democrats maneuver us into defending their history for them. If you are a Republican, you have no reason to feel any need to explain or defend Democrat Party history, neither slavery, nor Jim Crow race repression, nor lynchings, fire hoses, church bombings, the Klan, none of it. Thats their historical burden.
The ignorant writer lost me at that sentence. I don't recall reading anything as factually incorrect as that sentence. I'm offended yet I was born in the North, grew up there and only one side of my family tree was from the South.
Northern ignorance, Northern racial prejudice, Northern lying, Northern hypocrisy, Northern greed and Northern manipulation ignited and promoted the war.
The AJC is very liberal and pursues an anti-white agenda as exemplified by C. Tucker.
They want to rename bus stops here for black something or other. The present bus stops reflect the areas such as streets or designations. The renaming doesn't stop.
One road is named after a convicted black who served time in prison for bribes.
Its gotten so I get lost trying to find a street that been renamed...and I'm a native of Atlanta!
Well, I don't advocate this. But you could do us all a favor if you'd find a way to separate I75 and I85 as they are routed through downtown.
Merging two heavily traveled interstates through the downtown area indicates some engineer or engineers really had a brainfart.
FRiend, let me introduce you to The Hillside Strangler...
Nobody in today's Republican or Democrat Party was alive during the Civil War and the descendants of white Confederates are mostly Republican today and are among the most staunchly patriotic Americans left in America right now.
Once you condone the Politically Correct demonization of a large percentage of the Old Americans, those of the South, that fought in a cause that they believed was to defend their land and homes, you begin going down a very slippery slope.
Of course - we must erase all traces of a major part of US history. Cleanse the history, follow in the footsteps of Stalin! < /sarcasm>
trouble is the engineer that did that is still calling the shots!
Liberals like to pick and choose what history they want to remember..
If she studied the Civil war at all she would know that Andersenville was caused by the North's refusal to trade prisoners and their plot to tie up southern troops guarding them. She would also know that more Southern prisoners died in Civil War prisons than did Northern ones and that the Southerners died as a deliberate act .Not because the methods to save them werent available.
I always get ticked at the Andersenville reference. The North had 5 prison camps every bit as bad as Andersenvile. and the deaths at the Northern camps were deliberate murder.
All that just to tie up a few hundred rebel troops? And if you studied the Civil War you would know that one of the major reasons why prisoner exchanges were halted was the Southern refusal to treat black Union soldiers as POWs.
She would also know that more Southern prisoners died in Civil War prisons than did Northern ones and that the Southerners died as a deliberate act .Not because the methods to save them werent available.
Same reason why Union prisoners died in Southern camps.
Sounds like David McNaughton has sand in his vag!na.
Some fought for that, and some fought for the "Southern Way of Life," of which slavery was an integral part. This editorial is unnecessarily sarcastic, but let us call a spade a spade, shall we?
All Confederates were Democrats. That Republican state legislator wants to celebrate the heritage of the Democratic Party.
See http://grandoldpartisan.typepad.com/blog/2007/03/george_washingt.html#comment-63610488 for more information.
Who you callin boy, Duffboy?
Not so fast. Perhaps Republicans should melt down their pennies and burn their five dollar bills to do pennance for the guilt that falls upon them because of that tyrant Lincoln's self confessed commitment to the institution of slavery.
"My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union; and what I forbear, I forbear because I do not believe it would help to save the Union. I shall do less whenever I shall believe what I am doing hurts the cause, and I shall do more whenever I shall believe doing more will help the cause."
Abraham Lincoln
Yeah, he actually knew that the UNITED States was the last great hope of mankind. So what is your point?
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