House drops Confederate Flag ban for veterans cemeteries

politico.com ^ | 6/23/16 | Matthew Nussbaum

[ColdOne]

A measure to bar confederate flags from cemeteries run by the Department of Veterans Affairs was removed from legislation passed by the House early Thursday.

The flag ban was added to the VA funding bill in May by a vote of 265-159, with most Republicans voting against the ban. But Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) and Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.) both supported the measure. Ryan was commended for allowing a vote on the controversial measure, but has since limited what amendments can be offered on the floor.

[jmacusa]

At the end of threes days of some of the bloodiest fighting in US military history in July of 1863 Lee and Davis should have and could have read the handwriting on the wall at Gettysburg and, if they were decent and honorable Southern gentlemen as Lampster and his Confederate cronies would have us believe, they would have ended the war they started but they didn't and the slaughter continued for two more years. Davis was particularly determined to go on fighting. Not even the loss of the then Confederate capitol of Vicksburg the day after the battle of Gettysburg convinced him to quit.

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "Speaking for myself I don't believe Confederate dead deserve veneration."

Like you I have a great grandfather who served the Union Army during the Civil War, fought all through the western theater, wounded in Mobile Bay in April 1865.
His experience was quite different from many -- for one thing he was fresh off the boat from Europe, spoke little or no English.

My Dad fought in WWII and served in Germany, but he bore neither Germans nor Japanese animosity and had no problem with President Reagan's visit to the Nazi cemetery near Bitburg in 1985.

I myself was soldier enough to realize that any real soldier who served honorably and suffered or died for his country, even on the losing side, deserves honor & respect, certainly from his own family and country, but also from the wider world which depends on such brave men (& now women) for our safety.
Of course we give no respect to their political leaders -- none -- but soldiers themselves were doing their duty and that's all we can ask.

Today Southerners are the backbone of our military and I can promise you, when President Trump goes looking for the next General McArthur and General Patton, the ones he finds (assuming we still make such men?) will almost certainly have some Southern twang in their voice.

So I have no problem with Confederate flags generally, or specifically in cemeteries.
I don't equate them to the Nazi swastika, which was first and foremost a political symbol of warped ideology.
By contrast, Confederate Battle Flags were just that -- used to rally troops not to twist ideology.

Yes, I have huge problems with insane lost-causer propagandists hoping to white-wash the Old South's political class, but I don't blame troops for their leaders, and I personally have no problem with their flag.
As mentioned, it flies on homes and pickup trucks in many small towns in central PA, usually beside Old Glory.

[jmacusa]

My friend, a civil war is not the same as two opposing nations fighting each other. What if the South had won? What kind of a nation would America be? What kind of a world would there be today?

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "For the life of me I can't find where in the US Constitution slavery is allowed."

Seriously?
A quick search produces two oblique references:

1. Article 1, section 2: "Representatives and direct Taxes shall be apportioned among the several States which may be included within this Union, according to their respective Numbers, which shall be determined by adding to the whole Number of free Persons, including those bound to Service for a Term of Years, and excluding Indians not taxed, three fifths of all other Persons."

   "Other Persons" means slaves, the 3/5 rule.

2. Article 4, Section 2: "No Person held to Service or Labour in one State, under the Laws thereof, escaping into another, shall, in Consequence of any Law or Regulation therein, be discharged from such Service or Labour, But shall be delivered up on Claim of the Party to whom such Service or Labour may be due."

   This is the fugitive slave clause.

There may be other references, but I can't think of them now...

The key point to "get" here is that without such assurances, Southern delegates to the Constitution Convention and to state ratifying conventions would not have agreed to join the United States.
Had they walked out, we would likely have seen several loosely affiliated countries in North America, and frequent warfare amongst them.

[jmacusa]

I see. And this , of course meant any person of any race or color, say , the Irish?

[DoodleDawg]

Not even the loss of the then Confederate capitol of Vicksburg the day after the battle of Gettysburg convinced him to quit.

Vicksburg was never the Confederate capitol. You're confusing it with Montgomery, Alabama.

[jmacusa]

Thanks for the clarification. Capturing this vital port city not only gave the North control of the Mississippi River, geographically it split the Confederacy in two. This should have further shown those two treasonous scoundrels Lee and Davis that further bloodshed was useless.

[BroJoeK]

CodeToad: "The figures show conclusively that, when free, blacks disproportionately became slave masters in pre-Civil War America.
The statistics outlined above show that about 28 percent of free blacks owned slaves—as opposed to less than 4.8 percent of southern whites..."

How does that old saying go?
"Figures don't lie, but liars can sure figure."

In this case you've carefully selected numbers which make nonsense of the real facts.

1. First, as you say: there's no disputing that slavery was practiced in Africa with dominant tribes enslaving weaker ones and selling them to European or American slave ships.
   But this practice made slaves stolen "property" which should, by itself, have made their purchase here illegal.

2. My report that, "over 99% of slaves were owned by whites and fewer than one tenth of one percent of blacks owned any slaves" is 100% true, not "opinion".
   You have attempted to dispute my numbers by changing the terms from 1% of blacks to "28% of Free Negros in New Orleans".

   I'm saying New Orleans is exceptional and does not change the bigger picture.

3. For that bigger picture, I'll quote my source:

   "In 1830, the year most carefully studied by Carter G. Woodson, about 13.7 percent (319,599) of the black population was free.
   Of these, 3,776 free Negroes owned 12,907 slaves, out of a total of 2,009,043 slaves owned in the entire United States, so the numbers of slaves owned by black people over all was quite small by comparison with the number owned by white people."

4. I simply did the math: if 12,907 slaves were owned by blacks, it means more than 99% of all slaves were owned by whites.
   And if 3,776 free Negroes owned slaves, that means fewer than one tenth of one percent of all blacks owned slaves.

5. Now, if we want to look only at the 319,599 free blacks in 1830, then it turns out: roughly 1% (3,776) of them owned slaves, according to my source.

6. Why pick 1830 to examine?
   Because 1830 was the peak year for black slave ownership and afterwards laws were passed throughout the south limiting both manumission of slaves and blacks owning slaves:

   "The good news, scholars agree, is that by 1860 the number of free blacks owning slaves had markedly decreased from 1830.
   In fact, Loren Schweninger concludes that by the eve of the Civil War, 'the phenomenon of free blacks owning slaves had nearly disappeared' in the Upper South, even if it had not in places such as Louisiana in the Lower South."

7. This source reports:
   "African-American history and culture scholar Henry Louis Gates Jr. wrote:
   ...the percentage of free black slave owners as the total number of free black heads of families was quite high in several states, namely
   • 43 percent in South Carolina,
   • 40 percent in Louisiana,
   • 26 percent in Mississippi,
   • 25 percent in Alabama and
   • 20 percent in Georgia.[196]"

8. However, after 1830 things went down hill:
   "The historian James Oakes in 1982 notes that '[t]he evidence is overwhelming that the vast majority of black slaveholders were free men who purchased members of their families or who acted out of benevolence.'[199]
   After 1810 southern states made it increasingly difficult for any slaveholders to free slaves.
   Often the purchasers of family members were left with no choice but to maintain, on paper, the owner–slave relationship.
   In the 1850s 'there were increasing efforts to restrict the right to hold bondsmen on the grounds that slaves should be kept 'as far as possible under the control of white men only.' [200]"

9. Finally, on the percentages of whites who owned slaves, it depends on the state, and how you count slave-holding families.
   If you consider: every slaveholder headed a large family, then it turns out nearly 50% of Deep South white families owned slaves, about 1/3 of Upper South families and around 10% of Border State white families.

So the bottom line: we do find some black slave-holders, about 1% of all free blacks or less than .1% of all blacks, though in certain areas -- New Orleans especially -- those numbers could be higher.
But 99% of all slaves were owned by whites and only 1% of free blacks owned slaves, as of 1830.

Slave population % of total, per state per year:

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: " they would have ended the war they started but they didn't and the slaughter continued for two more years.
Davis was particularly determined to go on fighting."

Totally agreed, I have nothing good to say about those people.
Their utter insanity is incomprehensible, but I don't hold that against average Confederate soldiers of the time, or their descendants today.

[jmacusa]

Joe, had the South won, what would America be like today? And the world for that matter?

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "What if the South had won?
What kind of a nation would America be?
What kind of a world would there be today?"

Again, totally agree.
Just think of the "isms" defeated in the past 150+ years.
Without a powerful USA to support the world's good guys, evil would have triumphed repeatedly.
Of course, some people argue that in defeating one relatively benign evil (i.e. the Kaiser's Germany) we unleashed more rabid ones.
Maybe, but we can only do what we can do, first one day at a time, one step and then another...

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "And this , of course meant any person of any race or color, say , the Irish?"

;-)

No, although slaveocrats were quick to call Northern immigrants working in poor conditions, "wage slaves", and to argue such people were really treated worse than their own benighted slaves.

But to my knowledge nobody was ever confused about who such passages in the Constitution referred to.

Why do you ask?

[rockrr]

So what do you think of Lysander Spooner’s argument?

He said that those references did not count because they did not explicitly enumerate any “right” to own other human beings (whatever the color or nationality).

[jmacusa]

Because my people , the Irish faced terrible prejudice in America. Whereas blacks were segregated to separate but equal the Irish faced such discrimination, particularly in areas of employment(’’Irish need Not Apply’’.) An ‘’indentured servant’’ didn’t not necessarily mean a black person, did it? But what I’m really curious about is if the South had won the war would the Confederacy have been a separate nation within the US? It’s my understanding that even as it was the Confederacy was not all that bound together. Some of the states wanted even to secede from the original Confederacy, did they not?

[BroJoeK]

rockrr: "He said that those references did not count because they did not explicitly enumerate any “right” to own other human beings (whatever the color or nationality). "

But as with the 1857 Dred-Scott decision, nobody at the 1787 Constitutional Convention understood it that way, nor did any of the state ratifiers think that's what it meant.
All considered slavery a matter of state laws, with Federal influence restricted to US territories and constitutionally specified matters such as fugitive laws.

And Founders' Original Intent is what we have to go by, it's our only real defense against lunatics like DiogenesLamp or today's "progressive-liberals" who wish desperately to read their own warped ideologies into our Founders' words.

[BroJoeK]

jmacusa: "An 'indentured servant' didn’t not necessarily mean a black person, did it?

If you read that clause more carefully, you'll see that indentured servants are counted as full 100% citizens.
Indians are specifically excluded and "all others", meaning slaves are counted as 3/5 persons.

jmacusa: "if the South had won the war would the Confederacy have been a separate nation within the US?

That was, in fact the hope of Union leaders like Lincoln in early 1861, but it was unrealistic at the time and soon became utterly impossible.

jmacusa: "It’s my understanding that even as it was the Confederacy was not all that bound together.
Some of the states wanted even to secede from the original Confederacy, did they not? "

Had the Confederacy won its Civil War, it would have a very strong claim on its citizens loyalties.
Nothing unites a nation more than victory in war, and indeed that may have been a subconscious motivator in Confederate minds when they first launched & declared war on the United States.

People who study why the Confederacy lost often point at Jefferson Davis' inability to get along with state governors, Georgia's especially.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "The trouble with you is that when someone asks you for the time, you explain how to build a clock. "

Of course, since Free Republic is the premiere site for conservative political clock makers.

Think of it this way: if DiogenesLamp better understood clock making, then you would not be so often reduced to asking for the time of day.

That's why it's a great opportunity you're passing up to scrub your own mind of endless nonsense when you refuse to make the effort to read & understand my posts.

Btw, the political time is now 11:59 PM, the last possible moment for saving what remains of our Founders' constitutional free republic against the forces of politically correct "progressive" liberal socialistic Democrats.

[DiogenesLamp]

I'm sorry BroJoeK, but I am not sure there is any point in attempting to argue with you. It's like trying to reason with a Muslim. Everything is "Allah Ackbar" this, and "Allah Ackbar" that.

It is pointless to attempt to reason with fanaticism.

It's a pity though, because you do seem to have some knowledge of history, and you might otherwise be a worthwhile person with which to engage in a discussion, but you are obsessed with what you wish to believe, and contradictory evidence simply makes no impact on you.

But there is one point on which I think I might like to hear your opinion.

When Texas broke from Mexico (The independence of which Lincoln supported and argued was a "sacred right") Was this "at pleasure" or not?

Never mind. Because Lincoln supported it, i'm pretty sure you are going to say it wasn't "at pleasure", because for you to do otherwise would contradict your previous narrative.

You will redefine whatever principles or definitions you need to redefine so as to go along believing what you wish to believe. There is no objective standard to your position, it is literally warped this way and that to attain the outcome you desire.

(That your "Team" were the good guys.)

[DiogenesLamp]

Correct. The young men being sent South to die weren't the children of rich industrialists,

And that is exactly correct. Neither were they the rich industrialists themselves. The War came with a built in wealthy exclusion fee of $300.00 so that these people could not be drafted as were the ordinary man who would be forced to fight on their behalf.

and they weren't thinking about the economic advantages that the magnates were trying to preserve or expand.

I dare say the average man on the street did not know of such things. What he knew is that the Federal Government was ordering him to report for military service to go do the bidding of the Federal Government. It was unbeknownst to him that the Federal Government was doing the bidding of the Wealthy and Influential Robber Barons of the New York/New England region to rescue their pocketbooks from the efforts by the South to break away from their economic control

But like I said, the average man on the street knew nothing of such things. For him it was simple. Pick up a gun, or go to prison.

They were decent, everyday Americans who were making incredible sacrifices for what they saw as a righteous cause.

I am sure they thought that staying out of prison was a *VERY* righteous cause.

Of course that double standard for the Wealthy caused one of the worst riots in US History. The rioters argued that their lives were worth less than slaves. Slaves were costing about $1,000.00 at the time, and the rich could buy out of the war for a mere $300.00. Since most of these poor men couldn't afford that $300.00, their lives were indeed worth less than the price of a slave.

Thanks to its status as the business capital of the United States, New York City was a deeply divided city at the start of the Civil War in April 1861. Its merchants and financial institutions were loath to lose their southern business and the city’s then-mayor, Fernando Wood, had called for the city to secede from the Union. Meanwhile, to the city’s poorer citizens, the war increasingly came to be seen as benefitting only the rich, as the coffers of the city’s elites filled with the financial spoils of battle and the conflict became known as a “rich man’s war, poor man’s battle.” The passage of the nation’s first military draft act, in March 1863, only worsened the situation. Not only did it allow men (presumably only the wealthy) to buy their way out of military service by paying a commutation fee of $300 (more than $5,500 in today’s money), it also exempted blacks from the draft, as they were not yet considered American citizens. Opposition to the draft was widespread across the North, and in New York, some of the loudest critics of the bill could be found in city government, as politicians (primarily Democratic) railed against the legality of the bill and its impact on the city’s working class poor.

Apparently they didn't see the value of this "righteous cause" for which they were being forced to spend their lives if they couldn't come up with $300.00.

[rockrr]

What degeneratelamp neglects to share is that the same conditions held sway in the south. Slaveholders with 20 or more slaves were eligible for an exemption as well as the rich being afforded the opportunity to buy tehir way out of service. The “robber Baron” slavocracy of the south ran everything just as the industrialists of the north did within their region.

Seems like a pretty pitiful point when it applies equally to both sides...