Posted on 04/10/2015 5:03:22 PM PDT by lqcincinnatus
One hundred-fifty years after Appomattox, many Southerners still won’t give up.
One hundred fifty years ago, on April 9th, 1865, Gen. Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox Court House and the Union triumphed in the Civil War. Yet the passage of a century and a half has not dimmed the passion for the Confederacy among many Americans. Just three weeks ago, the Sons of Confederate Veterans (SCV) appeared before the Supreme Court arguing for the right to put a Confederate flag on vanity license plates in Texas. Just why would someone in 2015 want a Confederate flag on their license plate? The answer is likely not a desire to overtly display one’s genealogical research skills; nor can it be simplistically understood solely as an exhibition of racism, although the power of the Confederate flag to convey white supremacist beliefs cannot be discounted.
Rather, displaying the Confederate flag in 2015 is an indicator of a complex and reactionary politics that is very much alive in America today. It is a politics that harks back to the South’s proud stand in the Civil War as a way of rallying opinion against the federal government—and against the country’s changing demographic, economic, and moral character, of which Washington is often seen as the malign author. Today’s understanding of the Confederacy by its supporters is thus neither nostalgia, nor mere heritage; rather Confederate sympathy in 2015 is a well-funded and active political movement (which, in turn, supports a lucrative Confederate memorabilia industry).
(Excerpt) Read more at politico.com ...
They ratified it in the sense that the Mafia gives someone a deal they can't refuse. They ratified it at the point of union guns. Our legal system doesn't believe in coercion or duress unless it comes from the very top, then they are all in favor of it.
Does anyone really believe that those Southern states actually ratified the 13th amendment of their own free will? If so, I have a bridge in San Fransisco that i'd like to sell you.
What an idiot. The worst thing that’s ever happened to this country was the South losing the War of Northern Aggression.
Exactly. I was coercion and arm twisting from people who don't believe in Slavery.
It was the use of force to subjugate the will of others.
Leonard M Scruggs, “The Un-Civil War: Shattering The Historical Myths”
What they have in common is the fact that powerful New Yorkers change their opinions about morality, and then believe the rest of us must be forced to do the same.
Today it's "gay" marriage. Tomorrow it will be "Global Warming." Whatever it is, Wealthy New Yorkers and Wealthy Californians think it is perfectly reasonable to impose it on the rest of us against our will.
Not true. Every rebel state seized federal property, including fortifications, armories, customs houses, and mints. On page three of this ink (What did their "southern neighbors" do that constituted insurrection? Seems to me that it was only South Carolina that fired on Ft. Sumter. The other states did nothing until the Union invaded.) you can see an illustration of what was stolen and from where: https://www.illinois.gov/alplm/museum/Learning/Documents/2.Confederate%20Confiscations.pdf
The southern plantation states held the greatest concentration of wealth in the United States at the inception of the War Between The states.
The Southerners believed they had a right to secede because it was only "Four score and Seven years ago" that the founders did exactly the same thing.
That "Declaration of Independence" thing asserted that "it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.
The only difference between the American War of Independence and the Civil war is that George III was not nearly so intent on destroying the Colonists as Lincoln was about stopping Southern independence.
Had George III been as fanatical as Lincoln, we would still be British. It is only a matter of luck and British acquiescence that we won.
Oh, and the fact that the Colonialists won their rebellion while the southern rebels lost theirs.
Sorry, but you’re a pusssy... with an extra “s”.
So far I’ve found three FR posters with bees in their bonnets about Southern slavery.
The argument I had with the first one about a month ago was interesting, in that he thought Wilberforce was absolutely wonderful for outlawing slavery peacefully, but THE SOUTH was HORRIBLE for perpetuating it.
Something that never crossed his little leftist-poisoned mind: his heroes in the North didn’t outlaw it. They let it continue when they COULD have simply made slavery illegal and retained that superb piece of moral high ground that leftists and South-haters love to prattle on about so much.
Why didn’t the North do it, like Britain had done it?
Money, plain and simple. They were making too much money off of the 6% of Americans who owned slaves, ON TOP OF the sugar cane business in the slave Caribbean Isles. Politicians and money, forever and ever and always.
Moral high ground? More like high horse.
You mean paper? The Union states had Factories, Ship building industries, Massive trade with Europe, Railroads, Iron, gold and Silver mines, Manufacturing of every sort. They were a much more massive economy.
Not only did they have more than four times the population, they had far more valuable properties and institutions.
The Southern states had mostly agriculture, and d@mned little else.
Northern states did pass individual state laws outlawing slavery or defining a plan for emancipation. They couldn't "simply make slavery illegal" - they knew that would take an amendment to the Constitution.
The fact that the southern slavers chose to spend their loot on race horses and imported champagne instead of building their infrastructure isn’t my problem. And it doesn’t change the fact that they held the greatest concentration of wealth.
You could say the Colonists won, but more accurately Britain just decided it wasn't worth the cost. George III was a more reasonable man than was Lincoln.
Lincoln didn't stop till 600,000 lay dead. George quit at 15,000.
I point this out every time one of these arguments comes up. The unmitigated facts are that the Union didn't fight the war to end slavery, they fought it to end Independence for Southern states. Ending slavery was just a revenge tactic and a sop to the Abolitionists.
See how Slavery ended in Massachusetts. Yes, the courts ruled it unconstitutional. They "simply made slavery illegal."
Well okay then. Look, I think i'll go find something else to argue about. I occasionally find it fun to witness cognitive dissonance, but I think i've satiated my thirst for it for today.
And what do you say to those who assert that when northern states realized they could not amend the constitution because of the super-majority provision of the constitution, they started a war on the pre-text of the Gulf of Tonkin incident - er, I mean Fort Sumpter - and killed those who opposed amending the constitution and disenfanchised the rest?
I had noticed that you have in spades - but I was hesitant to say anything.
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