Posted on 11/04/2010 3:13:46 AM PDT by markomalley
One tragedy of war is that its victors write its history and often do so with bias and dishonesty. That’s true about our War of 1861, erroneously called a civil war. Civil wars, by the way, are when two or more parties attempt to take over the central government. Jefferson Davis no more wanted to take over Washington, D.C., than George Washington, in 1776, wanted to take over London. Both wars were wars of independence.
Kevin Sieff, staff writer for The Washington Post, penned an article “Virginia 4th-grade textbook criticized over claims on black Confederate soldiers,” (Oct. 20, 2010). The textbook says that blacks fought on the side of the Confederacy. Sieff claims that “Scholars are nearly unanimous in calling these accounts of black Confederate soldiers a misrepresentation of history.” William & Mary historian Carol Sheriff said, “It is disconcerting that the next generation is being taught history based on an unfounded claim instead of accepted scholarship.” Let’s examine that accepted scholarship.
In April 1861, a Petersburg, Va., newspaper proposed “three cheers for the patriotic free Negroes of Lynchburg” after 70 blacks offered “to act in whatever capacity may be assigned to them” in defense of Virginia. Ex-slave Frederick Douglass observed, “There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants and laborers, but as real soldiers, having muskets on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down ... and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government.”
Charles H. Wesley, a distinguished black historian who lived from 1891 to 1987, wrote “The Employment of Negroes as Soldiers in the Confederate Army,” in the Journal of Negro History (1919). He says, “Seventy free blacks enlisted in the Confederate Army in Lynchburg, Virginia. Sixteen companies (1,600) of free men of color marched through Augusta, Georgia on their way to fight in Virginia.”
Wesley cites Horace Greeley’s “American Conflict” (1866) saying, “For more than two years, Negroes had been extensively employed in belligerent operations by the Confederacy. They had been embodied and drilled as rebel soldiers and had paraded with white troops at a time when this would not have been tolerated in the armies of the Union.”
Wesley goes on to say, “An observer in Charleston at the outbreak of the war noted the preparation for war, and called particular attention to the thousand Negroes who, so far from inclining to insurrections, were grinning from ear to ear at the prospect of shooting the Yankees.”
One would have to be stupid to think that blacks were fighting in order to preserve slavery. What’s untaught in most history classes is that it is relatively recent that we Americans think of ourselves as citizens of United States. For most of our history, we thought of ourselves as citizens of Virginia, citizens of New York and citizens of whatever state in which we resided.
Wesley says, “To the majority of the Negroes, as to all the South, the invading armies of the Union seemed to be ruthlessly attacking independent States, invading the beloved homeland and trampling upon all that these men held dear.” Blacks have fought in all of our wars both before and after slavery, in hopes of better treatment afterwards.
Denying the role, and thereby cheapening the memory, of the Confederacy’s slaves and freemen who fought in a failed war of independence is part of the agenda to cover up Abraham Lincoln’s unconstitutional acts to prevent Southern secession. Did states have a right to secede?
At the 1787 Constitutional Convention, James Madison rejected a proposal that would allow the federal government to suppress a seceding state. He said, “A Union of the States containing such an ingredient seemed to provide for its own destruction. The use of force against a State would look more like a declaration of war than an infliction of punishment and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.”
You said, “Because the economic sectors of those states reliant on slavery didn’t have sufficient political power to lead their states into rebellion. Every state that seceded had greater than 25% of its population as slaves. None of the four slave states that remained loyal to the United States had more than 20%, and the average of the four was more like 11% slave. Even the order in which the states seceded, with a couple of exceptions, almost directly reflects their percentage of slave population.”
My point was more that these states within the union were still allowed to even have slaves which proves that this war was not about freeing slaves and abolishing slavery.
Wrong. Those states seceded in reaction to Lincoln calling for troops after the south fired on Ft. Sumter, and long before any US forces stepped foot into their territory. Of course, this was exactly the reason that the confederate states chose to fire on Sumter in the first place, to push the wavering states into their camp.
David is extremely proud of his heritage and has stated several times that his ancestors were fighting for Mississippi and to protect their families back home.
Slavery would have ended and was phasing out. Lincoln knew that. The war wasn't about slavery. It was suppressing an Revolution of Independence.
Who said it was? Certainly not Lincoln. On the other hand, there are certainly plenty of southerners who said that their rebellion was because of the threat to slavery that they perceived.
The fact is that abolishing slavery throughout the United States would have required a constitutional amendment, and the slave states were numerous enough to insure that would never happen. And even when the war was underway, Democrats held enough seats in congress to block an amendment, although Lincoln kept pushing for one. It was only after the election of 1864, when the Republicans increased their seats, that they had sufficient votes to send the 13th amendment to the states.
Now, unfortunately, we have slavery to credit card and mortgage companies, slavery of hookers to their pimps, and slavery to our masters the federal government. Do you support the revolution that happened Tuesday and will continue over the next few years? Are you a rebel?
Good question.
Wrong. It was the confederates who first violated Kentucky's neutrality by occupying the town of Columbus, which had the effect of discrediting the secessionists in the state.
Then surely you won't have any trouble pointing to some quotes from Lincoln and from southern political leaders saying as much.
Automation was coming on strong - the cotton gin, steam engines and soon to come combustion engines.
You do realize that the advent of the cotton gin heightened the interest in, and the utilization of slaves, not diminished it, right?
Now, unfortunately, we have slavery to credit card and mortgage companies, slavery of hookers to their pimps, and slavery to our masters the federal government. Do you support the revolution that happened Tuesday and will continue over the next few years? Are you a rebel?
This is irrelevant to the conversation, but as you answered my question, I will answer yours. I reject your characterization of the use of the term "slavery" in these contexts as I believe them inappropriate (except, perhaps, or the hooker & pimp although I fail to see the propriety of including that!). Did I support the electing of conservatives? Absolutely. Am I a rebel? In some ways, yes.
LOL Shame on me hey.
Some lefty, smelly, slackers knickers are getting in a twist as they read that post I bet.
I suppose that's the same reason why Davis finally agreed to allow blacks into the ranks in 1865? Having slaughtered almost all of that part of his available white population that hadn't already deserted he was getting kind of desperate?
Had Lincoln chosen a measured response, such as sending a contingent of marines to invade and recapture the island on which Sumter was located or even to occupy Charleston's harbor area, I doubt you would have gotten the same response.
Substantial areas of the south (what is now West Virginia and populations on both sides of the Appalachians, especially eastern Tennessee) didn't ever warm to the Confederacy, or did so only late in the conflict in reaction to the Union Army's deprivations.
The first major shooting battle of the war was a direct reaction to the Union Army's invasion of Virginia.
So it wasn't practical, but it was competitive?
Automation was coming on strong - the cotton gin, steam engines and soon to come combustion engines.
Cotton was a hand labor-intensive crop, and it wasn't automated until the 1940s, when the first practical cotton picking machines came onto the market and when herbicides developed as a by-product of WW2 research ended the need for hand chopping and weeding. Would slavery have persisted until until then? Coincidentally, that was about the time that sharecropping, the labor system that replaced bond slavery with debt peonage, faded away.
Moreoever, not every slave was working on a plantation. Many were household help in the towns and cities. Why would automation make owning your housekeeper less attractive?
No. Why not tell us all about it?
How about the rushing of troops to Kentucky before to war to preempt them from succeeding?
A few minutes on Google would have shown you that the U.S. didn't send any troops into Kentucky until after Leonidas Polk had violated their neutrality by sending in rebel troops.
Slavery would have ended and was phasing out.
Another good one! Pray tell how was it being 'phased out'?
From the rebel standpoint it was all about slavery.
There’s a black guy(not African American as Africans can be white too) near where I live who has a rebel flag on his truck.
I bumped into him at a flying J off I-95, near me and we got talking.
Just at that time near the main entrance a couple of college kids from up north came through the doors and had parked to get Gas next to the black guy’s truck.
We heard them talking about the flag and one of them saying , “well we’re downn south now with the rednecks and racist”
They all laughed at the stupid bigoted remark.
The black guy turned to them and said “hey that’s my truck you got a problem with it?”
They all looked at each other, couple of them laughed nervously and then look totally confused .
They then walked into flying J with heads down totally confused.
The looks of their face was a master card moment and never to be forgot.
Both of us laughed like crazy over the incident and every time we see each other we still talk about it.
Incidentally he also went to the Tampa rebel flag’s raising(biggest rebel flag to be flying in the world right now)
I'm sorry but that whole paragraph is flat out ridiculous.
It was ordered by the confederate government in Montgomery, not by the South Carolina government.
Had Lincoln chosen a measured response, such as sending a contingent of marines to invade and recapture the island on which Sumter was located or even to occupy Charleston's harbor area, I doubt you would have gotten the same response.
So let's see. Ft. Sumter is in a harbor, surrounded by enemy batteries that have just forced it to surrender. And your plan is to chug some boats into that harbor, under the enemy guns, land some marines and then what? Wait for them to be shelled into submission, too?
That was not my area of concentration (I wrote my thesis on the military side, really) but I read the book. It was 30 years ago, so I don't remember the title, but I know it was by Genovese.
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