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 ...
"We show our sympathy with slavery by emancipating slaves where we cannot reach them and holding them in bondage where we can set them free."
Great reference - Thank you.
Historians and teachers have made Lincoln into a near-god. But at heart he was in the presidency because he was a politician, not a humanitarion.
Cotton was an export. Tariffs are placed on imports.
The first successful mechanical cotton harvester wasn't introduced until the 1930's. So if slavery's days were numbered then it was a pretty big number.
So, have you even read the so-called “Emancipation Proclamation”. Tell me, why did Lincoln only propose to free slaves in places where the Federal troops were not - and purposely exclude those places that the Presidential order had standing?
Every high school history student knows the “Emancipation Proclamation” freed exactly zero slaves.
While we are on the subject that you are so willfully ignorant of, how would your feel if Obama jailed the entire Texas legislature (a border state, like Maryland was in 1862), without charges - and when Chief Justice Roberts threatened to review the illegal order, Obama sent US marshals to arrest him. Lincoln was a tyrant, pure and simple. He did worse things than King George.
Uncouth winning degenerates.
Unfortunately, it was my ancestors - Irish immigrants - who not only were draft-dodgers but Copperheads as well. I often wondered if one of them was involved in the evil draft riots in NYC. That said, I love the history of the South and think that both sides made huge sacrifices in the cause of freedom and unity. I collect rebel flags because I’m afraid this crazed country will ban them. I send them to my friends in England who clamor for them.
"But, again, gentlemen, what have we to gain by this proposed change of our relation to the general government? We have always had the control of it, and can yet, if we remain in it, and are as united as we have been. We have had a majority of the Presidents chosen from the South; as well as the control and management of most of those chosen from the North. We have had sixty years of Southern Presidents to their twenty-four, thus controlling the Executive department. So of the judges of the Supreme Court, we have had eighteen from the South, and but eleven from the North; although nearly four-fifths of the judicial business has arisen in the Free States, yet a majority of the Court has always been from the South. This we have required so as to guard against any interpretation of the Constitution unfavorable to us. In like manner we have been equally watchful to guard our interests in the Legislative branch of government. In choosing the presiding Presidents (pro tern.) of the Senate, we have had twenty-four to their eleven. Speakers of the House, we have had twenty-three, and they twelve. While the majority of the Representatives, from their greater population, have always been from the North, yet we have so generally secured the Speaker, because he, to a great extent, shapes and controls the legislation of the country. Nor have we had less control in every other department of the general government. Attorneys, Generals we have had fourteen, while the North have had but five. Foreign ministers we have had eighty-six, and they but fifty-four. While three-fourths of the business which demands diplomatic agents abroad is clearly from the Free States, from their greater commercial interests, yet we have had the principal embassies, so as to secure the world markets for our cotton, tobacco and sugar on the best possible terms. We have had a vast majority of the higher offices of both army and navy, while a larger proportion of the soldiers and sailors were drawn from the North. Equally so of Clerks, Auditors and Comptrollers filling the Executive department; the records show for the last fifty years, that of the three thousand thus employed, we have had more than two-thirds of the same, while we have but one-third of the white population of the Republic." -- Alexander Stephens, January 1861
How could the government no longer be serving their interests when they were the government?
But you get to keep the majority. If you were a slave then you would have none, wouldn't you?
Why not let them speak for themselves?
“This is my country as much as the man that was born on the soil and so it is to every man who comes to this country and becomes a citizen…I have as much interest in the maintenance of the government and laws and integrity of the nation as any other man… This war, with all its evils, with all its errors and mismanagement is a war in which the people of all nations have a vital interest. This is the first test of a modern free government in the act of sustaining itself against internal enemies and matured rebellion. All men who love free government and equal laws are watching the crisis to see if a republic can sustain itself in such a case. If it fail then the hope of millions fail and the designs and wishes of all tyrants will succeed…There is yet something in this land worth fighting for.” - "Irish Green and Union Blue; Civil War Letters of Peter Welsh"
You don't force people who are fleeing starvation to go fight in a war they had no personal interest in just because you have the power to do so.
And when the Confederacy began conscripting free blacks and slaves at the end of the war, what personal interest did they have in the war?
Did you forget this line of the letter?
"I have here stated my purpose according to my view of official duty; and I intend no modification of my oft-expressed personal wish that all men every where could be free."
The great Irish Famine was 1841 to 1852.
It was about states rights, but possibly not as you may think.
The Federal Fugitive Slave Act required northern states to assist in the capture and return of escaped slaves to their self-styled "owners".
Many northerners were outraged by this filthy law and acting as private citizens, or through their local and state governments, subverted it.
What the south wanted was for northern states to surrender their states' rights and knuckle under to this federal law. When it became clear that this was not going to happen, secession ensued.
Similarly, the slaves had a God given right to overthrow their "masters", by force if necessary.
Had I been around at the time, I hope that I would have supported such regime change.
The man was Robert Toombs.
"The firing upon that fort will inaugurate a civil war greater than any the world has yet seen. Mr. President, at this time it is suicide, murder, and will lose us every friend at the North. You will wantonly strike a hornet's nest which extends from mountains to ocean, and legions now quiet will swarm out and sting us to death. It is unnecessary; it puts us in the wrong; it is fatal."
“People right to self-determination’’. To own another human being. Keep searching “Diogenes’’( I think your lamp went out.)
LOL! That's like saying only Hawaii was attacked by the Japanese so why bring everyone else in on it? When Sumter was fired on South Carolina it was part of the Confederacy and the order to fire was given by Jefferson Davis. The other six states were definitely a part of it.
Funny thing, in the Federalist papers, Madison and others belittled the idea that the militias of some states would send their armies to subdue other states.
And then came the Whiskey Rebellion.
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