I can definitely relate to that sentiment.
Posted on 11/04/2010 3:13:46 AM PDT by markomalley
Accurate but very one-sided history.
Lincoln said the war was about whether a government of, by and for the people could “long endure.”
It seems indisputable that any consensual government that can be broken up by any sufficiently strong minority can indeed not endure very long. Such governments would probably split and resplit till the small units left became a prey to despotic governments subject to no such challenge. To expand on the words of Franklin, if the states didn’t hang together, in the long run they would assuredly hang separately.
It is the second greatest tragedy of American history that we fought our greatest war against ourselves, but the responsibility for that war lies with those who precipitated it, the fire-eaters of the South who worked for a generation to exacerbate tensions between the sections. They also managed to convince (white) southerners that slavery was not an evil to be put in the way of eventual extinction, as the southern Founders believed, but rather a positive good to be protected and spread.
Disgraceful article. Shame on Williams. The Confederate democrats absolutely were fighting to destroy the rule of law and to deny United States citizens equal rights to representation for all. Their succesors (the progressive democrats) continued to do the same. Next maybe Williams could write an article about how blacks served in the KKK. Absolutely pathetic and shameful article.
I can definitely relate to that sentiment.
Pardon me for asking, but exactly how is truth ever to be considered “disgraceful” or “pathetic and shameful”?
Skipping the question of accuracy and just calling something "shameful" and wishing it would be suppressed or go away is itself shameful - the desire to erase uncomfortable truth in the interest of ideology is the m.o. of authoritarians everywhere.
Good for Mr Williams.
Apparently we are going to have to fight that damnable war all over again. The wrong side won the first time. We will make it right the second time.
He is certainly right about one thing. There were black Confederate soldiers. Even Ken Burns showed such photos, and that must have hurt him sincerely to have to show such a thing.
In seems to me I read somewhere that there were free blacks who owned slaves in those days. I'd have to search my archives, but I suppose if I found such to be true I would be considered revisionist.
....Williams is correct...1861-1865 was not a civil war...it was a war of secession and partition....we’ve had three of those so far: 1776,1832,1861...those were based on politics...the coming one will be tribal, and if I were betting on it; the Southwest will be where it will start.
mark,
I was taught in school that a white man in the south could send one or two slaves to represent him in the case he was drafted in to the army.
When it's only half the truth. What Williams neglects to say is that had the confederacy won then all those slaves who served the rebel army would have gone back to being slaves. And had any of their owners decided to free them for their service then according to the Virginia constitution they would have had 12 months to leave the state or else be returned to slavery. In short, Williams wants us to believe that the service to the confederate cause by any black person was respected was respected by the white populace. That is ridiculous.
And there were jews who helped the Nazis.
A handful of deluded people doesn’t erase the millions who fought on the Right side.
It is amazing how you and others that follow your post think that every word uttered in this article by Willaims is simply a truth. It is laced with opinion. The opinions of Willaims that the war was not about upholding slavery and was not a Civil war are what are disgraceful. The Confederate democrats sought to uphold slavery and to usurp the power delegated by the Constitution for their own anti-freedom purposes.
But his further argument, at the end, about a supposed "states' right to secede," is bogus to the max.
Sure, anyone can carefully select a quote from Madison or another founder, but there are as many or more other quotes saying legitimate secession can only be by mutual consent, or in the event of "usurpations" and "abuses" of Federal power.
Secession was not legitimate "at pleasure."
And yet in 1860 there had been no "usurpations" or "abuses," and the Deep South did secede "at pleasure."
This made their secession unconstitutional.
Then seizing Federal properties and shooting at Federal forces made it "insurrection" and "rebellion."
The rest is history...
It's that history that Lost Causers insist on ignoring.
Col. Parkhurst’s (Northern) Account of Forrest’s Black Confederates:
"The forces attacking my camp were the First Regiment Texas Rangers, a battalion of the First Georgia Rangers … and quite a number of Negroes attached to the Texas and Georgia troops, who were armed and equipped, and took part in the several engagements with my forces during the day"
(Lieutenant Colonel Parkhurst's Report (Ninth Michigan Infantry) on General Forrest's attack at Murfreesboro, Tennessee, July 13, 1862, in Official Records, Series I, Vol XVI, Part I, page 805).
The brother against brother part of the war was not just brothers across enemy lines. There is a very good reason the South still flew the Confederate flag with pride until these last few years and it was not because they were proud of slavery but of the real reasons the war started and what they were fighting for. Ask yourself why murdering outlaw man like Jesse James became a hero and their exploits followed with such zeal if the South was so wrong.
So the real shame is the revisionist history that says the war was started and fought over slavery.
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