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.

[Enlightened1]

Bingo!

[DiogenesLamp]

Well, the South certainly didn’t go to war to free the slaves.

Neither did the North. They went to war to get back that pile of money sitting on New York.

[DiogenesLamp]

Bingo!

Thank you. I think it eloquently summed up the arguing points of our opposition. They want us to focus on slavery, because the truth is very very ugly.

The influential people of the North were worse than slave holders. They were murderers who willingly traded hundreds of thousands of people's lives for money and power.

Someone just posted this on another website I frequent. For the astute among us, the parallels are easily discernible.

https://youtu.be/rOuLkfJjtgQ

I urge all to consider what this man points out. I'm not saying I agree with him, but he makes a powerful argument.

[jmacusa]

Tired of getting slapped around by Joe BroK yet?

[DiogenesLamp]

Tired of getting slapped around by Joe BroK yet?

In order to become tired of something, one must first experience it.

BroJoeK is tiresome, but only in his repetition of his dogma and unrelated facts.

I'm sure he can tell us how many shoe laces Lincoln had, but about the economics that drove the North to attack, he is curiously silent.

[jmacusa]

You’re tiresome you gnat.

[rustbucket]

I’m sure you found my quote from that March 18, 1861 newspaper that came from the published book I cited. My quote included the phrase, “will be compelled to blockade the Southern ports ...” Do you dispute that my quote came from that issue of the paper?

On the date in question, the paper was published under the name “The Press.” The Wikipedia quote that I provided you about the existence of the paper called it, “The Philadelphia Press (or The Press)...” because it was published under different names at various times.

I’m surprised that an amateur period historian like yourself wasn’t aware of The Press because its publisher/editor, John W. Forney, was “the man who was to become Lincoln’s favorite editor” according to the book, “Lincoln’s Wrath, Fierce Mobs, Brilliant Scoundrels and a President’s Mission to Destroy the Press” by Jeffrey Manber and Neil Dahlstrom. Lincoln helped Forney become the Secretary of the US Senate.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "The transatlantic trade capacity of British vessels was already in direct competition with Union ships.
Didn’t you know that Northern and British shippers had been fighting over the Southern trade market for decades?
Why do you think the Federal government had been used to hurt the British?"

Our pro-Confederates are somewhat, ah, confused on this subject.
They talked about "Navigation Acts" as if Northerners had prevented Southerners from owning & operating ships to transport Southern cotton to markets.
Of course, those Navigation Acts did nothing of the sort, but they did effectively penalize any foreign ships, including British, for transporting American made goods.
Such extra taxes could presumably be discontinued under a Confederacy, but as DoodleDawg points out, those goods would still be heavily taxed once transported into Union states.

And since Union states accounted for 80% of potential American customers, it's most unlikely that shippers would wish to pay duties twice -- once in the Confederacy and again to the Union -- for any products intended for North Americans.

PeaRidge: "At the time of the articles, British shipping was already replacing them.
That is written all over the editorials I gave....didn’t read them or ignoring them?"

Sure, it makes sense that such things could happen, however, none of the quotes I've seen posted on this thread speak of British ships as having already replaced US carriers in any significant amount.

PeaRidge: "You can see that traders were already shipping North...the editorial was complaining about the low tariffs on these goods in early 1861."

Iirc, that particular quote spoke of goods arriving in St. Louis having paid no tariffs in New Orleans.
But we know the Confederacy soon enough passed its own tariff law and began collecting revenues.
Confederate tariffs were approximately the same as US tariffs pre-Morrill.
So goods received in the Confederacy for transshipment to the Union would have to pay tariffs twice.
That would not work so well.

And since 80% of white Americans lived in the Union, we could well expect 80% of international shipping to find ports in the North.

Thus yet again making nonsense of DiogenesLamp's economic hypotheses.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "Major Anderson threatened Governor Pickens and the harbor in January of 1861.
You can find the info. in the OR."

Governor Pickens began threatening, demanding surrender and seizing Federal forts around Charleston in December, 1860.
You can find that info. in any history book.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "You aren't keeping up with the information being provided in this thread.
The only reason domestic shipping was competitive at all was because of the Navigation act of 1817 which put heavy penalties on the use of Foreign ships or crew.
With independence, that statute disappears and instantly makes foreign ships and crew a relative bargain."

We should note that it has taken DiogenesLamp several posts to even begin getting his history right on this.
But he's still not quite there.
In fact the 1817 Navigation Act taxed only transportation of goods between US ports.
Foreign shippers could still carry goods to or from, say, New York and overseas markets.
The Navigation Act of 1817 made intracoastal packets all US owned -- no not Northern owned, US owned.

Nothing prevented Southerners from major ports like New Orleans, Baltimore or even the smaller Charleston from building, owning or operating their own packets.
And there's no reason to suppose they didn't.

DiogenesLamp: "The South was saving a little bit of money by using US Shipping, but they would save far more by using foreign ships at non protectionist rates.
This would of course, instantly screw the us Shipping industry which had grown accustomed to all those gouged prices since 1817."

Remember, we're only talking about intracoastal packet ships here, not transatlantic freighters.
No law stopped larger foreign ships from picking up cargoes in New Orleans, Baltimore or New York for transportation to overseas markets.

And that makes your economic hypotheses a lot of stuff & nonsense, FRiend.

Intracoastal packet, SS Planter, built in Charleston SC, 1860, loaded with 1,000 bales of cotton.
The US cotton crop in 1860 was approx. 5 million bales worth just under $200 million.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Unfortunately yes.
They do not want to believe what we are telling them.
It upheaves their entire moral outlook on the war, and the role their ancestors played in it.
Unfortunately the evidence indicates it is the truth.
The Union invasion of the South was not about 'preserving the Union' it was about preserving protectionist trade policies for the Northern States.
It was about preserving the dominance of New York in the wealth and power."

Unfortunately the evidence indicates that our Lost Causers are totally delusional, concocting cockamamie Marxist nonsense out of thin air, when real facts won't suit them.

In this particular case the reality was a Union responding to Confederate rebellion, invasion and war against the United States, but that doesn't suit Lost Causers' fantasies.
So they concoct total nonsense about some amorphous Northeastern business interests somehow ginning up a war where none existed.
In reality these Northeastern businessmen were Democrats, political allies to Southern slaveocrats, and so of no influence on Republicans in Washington.
Yes, when war came most did support it, for whatever reasons, but many copperheads remained sympathetic to the Confederacy.

DiogenesLamp: "I have come to realize that if people look around, the descendants of these people and their elite social groups are still doing the exact same thing today.
Their power has simply gotten stronger since 1861. "

Remember, we're talking about Democrats here -- the people thrown out of power by the election of 1860 and replaced by the anti-establishment people of their age, Republicans.
So, if you see today's Democrats in power in Washington or New York abusing the constitution and average citizens generally, they are not to be confused with the out-of-power political rebels (Republicans) of 1860, or indeed of 2016.

DiogenesLamp: "...just as their predecessors got rich off of Union protectionist policies which heavily favored New York.
Same enemy, different century."

Same enemy = Democrats!
Northern Democrats political allies to Southern slaveocrats, had a falling out in 1860 due to Republican electoral victory, but soon came back together again after the Civil War.
Today of course those old South slaveocrats are gone, so now Northern Democrats ally with the next best thing (and really much better allies than those old-fogey white men) -- the descendants of their slaves.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp quoting: "Cleveland’s Daily National Democrat November 20, 1860"

Found it!

DiogenesLamp quoting: "Deduct from the exports the silver and gold and the foreign goods exported, and the cotton crop of the South alone exported exceeds the other entire export of the United States, and when to this we add the hemp and Naval stores, sugar, rice, and tobacco, produced alone in the Southern States, we have near two-thirds of the value entire of exports from the South."

Sure, and you could say much the same thing today if you exclude whole categories of exports such as raw materials.
But why do that?
In fact, US exports in 1858 totaled $324 million, including specie (gold & silver).
Of that, cotton totaled $131 million, or 40%.
That's huge, but it's not "two-thirds".

DiogenesLamp quoting: "A separation would take from us this advantage, and it would take from the vessels owned by the North the carrying tradeof the South, now mostly monopolised by them."

DiogenesLamp: "In other words, *we* are correct, and BroJoeK is absolutely wrong.
This statement was contemporary and from OHIO, a Northern state."

No, "in other words" both you and this Cleveland newspaper are exaggerating for effect the importance of cotton & other Deep-South exports to the Northern economy.
Nobody denies they were important, just not as important as DiogenesLamp, PeaRidge and Confederates of that time imagined.
In fact, when there was no trade between Union & Confederacy the Northern economy made adjustments, prospered and prosecuted war without any Southern input -- effectively zero, zip, nada Southern inputs.

DiogenesLamp: "It also points out that the North had monopolized the shipping trade, just as we've been saying."

But the key word there is "mostly", meaning a majority not a monopoly.
The fact is no law prevented Southerners from building, owning and operating their own intracoastal packet ships, and some did:

Intracoastal packet, SS Planter, built in Charleston SC, 1860, loaded with 1,000 bales of cotton.
The US cotton crop in 1860 was approx. 5 million bales worth just under $200 million.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "3/22/1861 The economic editor of the New York Times said:

'At once shut down every Southern port, destroy its commerce, and bring utter ruin on the Confederate States.'

"This was another editor reversing his position of earlier in March when he declared that secession would not injure Northern commerce and prosperity..."

If we knew the full context of this quote, we might well lean it was preceded by some such statement as: "If the Confederacy continues to prepare for, provoke & start war against the Union then here are our options."

By March 22, 1861 the Confederacy had already seized dozens of major federal properties (forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc.), threatened Union officials and fired on Union ships while sending agents into Union states to foment rebellion there.
So there were plenty of reasons for Northerners to change their opinions from "neutral" or "friendly" towards secessionists to angry & hostile.

[DiogenesLamp]

In fact, when there was no trade between Union & Confederacy the Northern economy made adjustments, prospered and prosecuted war without any Southern input -- effectively zero, zip, nada Southern inputs.

Borrowing and Spending (The Financial Legacy of the War it seems) is a temporary and long term unworkable solution to a nation's financial troubles.

But it did set the stage for all the future corruption and influence peddling. It also set the stage for eventual financial destruction once the borrowing got out of hand, which it would inevitably do, because people who start a spending party never get enough of their easy money "fix."

And Joe, I don't read most of your posts anymore. Too long, and too irrelevant to any worthwhile point. Your posts come across as a Civil War version of a Hare Krishna acolyte.

[PeaRidge]

While our friends are finding it necessary to research old newspapers to verify what is posted here...then let's give them some more to keep them happy:

“The affair at Fort Sumter, it seems to us, has been planned as a means by which the war feeling at the North should be intensified, and the administration thus receive popular support for its policy.... If the armament which lay outside the harbor, while the fort was being battered to pieces [the US ship The Harriet Lane, and seven other reinforcement ships], had been designed for the relief of Major Anderson, it certainly would have made a show of fulfilling its mission. But it seems plain to us that no such design was had. The administration, virtually, to use a homely illustration, stood at Sumter like a boy with a chip on his shoulder, daring his antagonist to knock it off. The Carolinians have knocked off the chip. War is inaugurated, and the design of the administration accomplished.” ~ The Buffalo Daily Courier, April 16, 1861.

“We have no doubt, and all the circumstances prove, that it was a cunningly devised scheme, contrived with all due attention to scenic display and intended to arouse, and, if possible, exasperate the northern people against the South.... We venture to say a more gigantic conspiracy against the principles of human liberty and freedom has never been concocted. Who but a fiend could have thought of sacrificing the gallant Major Anderson and his little band in order to carry out a political game? Yet there he was compelled to stand for thirty-six hours amid a torrent of fire and shell, while the fleet sent to assist him, coolly looked at his flag of distress and moved not to his assistance! Why did they not? Perhaps the archives in Washington will yet tell the tale of this strange proceeding.... Pause then, and consider before you endorse these mad men who are now, under pretense of preserving the Union, doing the very thing that must forever divide it.” ~ The New York Evening Day-Book, April 17, 1861..

“You and I both anticipated that the cause of the country would be advanced by making the attempt to provision Fort Sumter, even if it should fail ; and it is no small consolation now to feel that our anticipation is justified by the result. “ Abraham Lincoln, in a letter to Gustavus Fox, May 1, 1861.

[DiogenesLamp]

Those are excellent contemporary articles.

You know, I first got interested in the Civil War when my best friend (who happens to be black) was attending College and majoring in History told me that he had just learned that Lincoln had cleverly engineered the start of the war.

He was chortling about it. He was extremely pleased. He said "Lincoln laid a trap and those stupid Confederates fell right into it."

I asked him for details of how he knew this, and he told me that Lincoln had been advised by his military staff of a non confrontational way to resupply the fort, but Lincoln was having none of it.

He said that Lincoln sent a letter to the Confederates informing them that he was going to resupply the fort whether they liked it or not. That he believed this would trigger an attack is apparent in the fact that he had sent a letter to Major Anderson informing him that he would be attacked, and that he should hold the fort for awhile and then surrender.

I later found out that this part was not completely accurate. The letter was from the Secretary of War, (who presumably was doing Lincoln's bidding) Not Lincoln, but the essential facts were accurate.

I thought at the time that this was compelling evidence that Lincoln did indeed trigger a horribly bloody war that cost many lives and destroyed many people's futures.

I thought it was not appropriate to be laughing about Lincoln deliberately starting this war, but I didn't say anything at the time because he had a very "Social Justice Warrior" mindset and simply supported the eventual result of the war.

In any case, it is interesting that at least a couple of Northern Newspapers recognized what was going on. I'm pretty sure Lincoln had them shut down when he started his crackdown on dissident press.

[PeaRidge]

Maybe this one of the quotes you asked for:

12/3/1860 When Congress convened, several Republicans, especially from the mid-western states, “swore by everything in the Heavens above, and the Earth that they would convert the rebel States into a wilderness.”

I believe that would constitute a threat sufficient to begin to raise an army. “Without a little blood-letting,” wrote Michigan’s radical, coarse-grained Senator Zachariah Chandler, “this Union will not be worth a rush.”

[PeaRidge]

If you want a very complete lesson in the activities surrounding Ft. Sumter, I would suggest “Days of Defiance” my Maury Klein.

You are right about Lincoln and his irresponsible manipulations that led to almost three quarters of a million dead people.

[BroJoeK]

bert: "States rights"

No, Deep South Fire Eaters assumed "states rights" but "states rights" was not their reason for declaring secession.
Rather, their reasons, as they clearly stated were to protect slavery against the Black Republican Party and its leader, "Ape" Lincoln.

[BroJoeK]

rockrr: "The only reason the south ventured into anything beyond cottage industry was because they had foolishly committed themselves to a disastrous course of action and too late realized that they lacked the capacity to support themselves and their would-be confederacy.
Up until 1860 they were happy to outsource virtually every commodity they needed."

Well said.