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.”
LOL! Still working on it... :-)
Do you think Georgians were stupid?
Do you think if they had meant "tarriffs" they were too dumb to say "tarriffs"? The word they used was "bounties" implying a subsidy from the treasury.
And once again, note a brief history of US tarriffs:
So the Morrill rates were not particularly high by historic standards, and the South had not threatened secession over previous, much higher rates.
Furthermore, the Morrill Tarriff could not have even passed, had the South remained united in Congress to oppose it.
So your arguments that high tarriffs caused the South's secession is a red-herring and bogus to the max, pal.
Both the original Articles of Confederation and the new Constitution were understood at the time as being "perpetual" Unions.
According to James Madison (you remember him?) the Union could be dissolved only through "mutual consent" or from "usurpations" and "abuses" having that effect.
Madison wrote at the time that the Constitution must be adopted in whole, and forever -- and later that no state could secede "at pleasure".
In 1860 and 1861, there was no "mutual consent" and also no "usurpations" or "abuses".
Instead, the South seceded "at pleasure" because of the election of a Congress and President which the South feared might threaten slavery at some point in the future.
Then the seceding states began immediately to attack and seize dozens federal properties, including forts, armories, ships, customs facilities and a mint.
Seceding "at pleasure" made it a Constitutional "rebellion."
Using force to seize Federal properties made it a Constitutional "insurrection."
That's the bottom line.
I've seen clearly that you post "anti-Lincoln, anti-Republican... arguments," and that they are insane nonsense, believable only by Pro-Confederate Lost Causers.
Any association of Lincoln's Republicans with today's Democrat big-government socialists is ludicrous in the extreme.
There is simply no valid comparison of Lincoln's efforts to save the Union and abolish slavery, with our modern liberal-progressive socialist government-is-everything Democrats.
Indeed, in terms of keeping people in bondage and dependent for welfare on "massa" government, I'd say today's Democrats are the direct descendants of Civil War slave owners.
As for Lincoln being "pure tyrant," more baloney.
In fact, Lincoln was far more subject to Constitutional constraints than any modern president -- in peace or war time.
Yes, the Constitution provides the government with extra powers during war, but Lincoln used his authority no more "tyrannically" than did, for example, Jefferson Davis.
So the whole idea of Lincoln and Republicans as "bad guys" is just garbage talk.
And I'm being very kind calling you a legitimate "Neo-Confederate Lost Causer."
What I really think is that some/most of our supposedly conservative "lost causers" are really just Democrat trolls, doing their d*mndest to stir up trouble amongst real conservatives.
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