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]

Just a reminder; The South lost the war it started.

[BroJoeK]

DiogenesLamp: "Major Anderson himself realizes that what Lincoln is doing is a lying backstab on a agreement/truce/understanding."

Unionist Anderson was a pro-slavery former slave-owner from Kentucky.
He was sympathetic to the South and did not want war, though when war came he chose the Union.

Here's what's wrong with your argument:

1. All Confederate seizures of dozens of Federal properties -- forts, ships, arsenals, mints, etc. -- were illegal, rebellious and provocations for war.
   The fact that outgoing Doughfaced Democrat President Buchanan did nothing to stop them in no way made those seizures legitimate.

2. All Confederate threats against Union officials and demands for surrender of forts, troops or other assets were illegal.

3. All "agreements" made under duress by threatened Union officials had no legal standing.

4. All claims that President Lincoln had promised anything to any Confederate are false, except in the context of his negotiations with Virginia unionists to prevent Virginia's secession convention from declaring secession.
   In those negotiations Lincoln effectively offered "a fort (Sumter) for a state (Virginia)".
   But Virginians refused Lincoln's offer, and so it was withdrawn.

5. The fact that Confederates carried out their previously threatened assault on Fort Sumter after Lincoln sent resupply ships, in no way makes Lincoln's actions the "cause" of war.

Finally, the analogy is almost exact between Lincoln sending ships to Fort Sumter in 1861, and President Roosevelt ordering the US fleet to Pearl Harbor in 1940.
In both cases there were warnings the move could "provoke" an enemy attack, warnings the president ignored.
But we never blame FDR for the attack on Pearl Harbor, and should never blame Lincoln for the assault on Fort Sumter.

[HangUpNow]

Nice try, but baiting the South they engaging in coercion and tyranny were the handiwork of Lincoln and his puppetmeisters.

The federal gummint dishonorably violated the South's opt-out agreement with the Union as a condition for joining it to begin with. The South was obviously bamboozled and had their sovereignty ignored than stolen.

Fact is the Union also bamboozled and reneged on many such agreements with the injun nations as well.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "New York City’s business establishment, that annually underwrote Southern agriculture, had concern with accounts receivable.
If conflict arose... "

Thank you for posting an excellent analysis of New Yorkers' views in early 1861.
I think you hit that nail on its head.

[rockrr]

There was no “opt-out agreement”. Nor was there any tyranny - you should know better by now.

[BroJoeK]

PeaRidge: "Meigs put it this way: 'This is the beginning of the war which every statesman and soldier has foreseen since the passage of the South Carolina ordinance of secession.' "

I doubt if anyone seriously disputes the basic facts, though quotes may be revised later to better fit events.
But the argument here is: who is to blame for starting Civil War, those who first threatened and then did start it, at Fort Sumter, or somebody else?

I say, just as we don't blame FDR for Pearl Harbor, so we should not blame Lincoln for Fort Sumter.
In both cases it was an enemy military assault on US forces which started war, regardless of prior warnings.

See my post just above.

[BroJoeK]

x: "If Lincoln said it, was it really a jaw-dropping moment that revealed his inner-most motivations, or was it one of many things said in the conversation?"

Indeed, just this week we've seen yet another prime example of the press's unlimited ability to strip words from their full context to make the speaker look, well, stupid.
Of course, I'm referring to the 40 minute press conference Trump gave in Scotland, on the occasion of the Brexit vote.
In the midst of a long discussion of possible effects, Trump mentioned a weaker British pound would mean more tourist visits, good for his Scottish golf course.

Well, the press went nuts!
Stripping away the context, as if he'd said nothing else, the despicable media made it look like Trump only cares about golf, while the European Union is crashing down around him.

So context is everything, and Lincoln's comment here is certainly appropriate in some contexts, but since we can't know the full context, I'd suggest such words be underweighted in the Big Picture.

[BroJoeK]

;-)

[Pelham]

For Lincoln the looming problem was greater than Charleston and Ft Sumter. The rump Confederacy was essentially a free trade zone with dramatically lower tariffs and it was right on his doorstep. Trade that could divert would skip US ports and go to CSA ports, draining more than just the usual traffic that those ports normally received.

One of the largest problems would be the Port of New Orleans where all the interior trade headed down the Mississippi River. The USA already had had experience with this when New Orleans was controlled by Spain prior to the Louisiana Purchase. Some western states had flirted with joining Spain because of the close trade ties. They might similarly be lured into the CSA orbit for the same reason.

[ladyjane]

It wasn’t just the New York bankers who were concerned about the money they were making off of the south. The owners of the textile mills in New England needed the cotton from the south and didn’t want that cotton going to England.

There is a club in Massachusetts called the Somerset Club. It is located directly across from the Boston Common and down the street from the State House. Their members were people with money, many of them mill owners, and they depended on southern cotton.

The Somerset members were definitely in support of the cotton growers. No surprise, northern mill owners had children working 12 hours a day in their mills. Tradition has it that the servants in the Somerset Club were required to close the velvet drapes at the Club whenever the Union Army recruits were marching on the Boston Common. That way the members didn’t have to be reminded of the war.

[jmacusa]

Jeez Reb, BroJoeK lays out the subject spot on and your still cling to your fiction.

[rustbucket]

rockrr,

I checked the link I posted in post 254. It is no longer a working link. I had posted what was provided by the link I had posted earlier. However, I was able to find Baldwin's testimony online in a huge file at Link to Baldwin 1866 testimony.

After it downloads, you can find on page 104 where Baldwin testified that President Lincoln said the following when Baldwin met with him on April 4, 1861: "Well," said he, "what about the revenue? What would I do about the collection of duties?".

x, if you don't trust what I post (e.g., as you said, "It would have been useful to know if the story actually appeared in the Sun"), I suggest you check it out yourself and quit implying that I didn't quote what the newspaper article said. I think the only error I made in my post of excerpts from that April 23, 1861 Sun article was the word "mercy" which I mistyped as "mercey."

[rustbucket]

Post 272 should be to you too.

[rockrr]

Thanks Rusty - your original URL just had a space in it - I removed it and was able to open the page and find the material.

[BroJoeK]

Pelham: "The rump Confederacy was essentially a free trade zone with dramatically lower tariffs and it was right on his doorstep.
Trade that could divert would skip US ports..."

Yes, yes, I know, it's the argument DiogenesLamp has been making for ages.
And it's never been true when DL says it, so it's still not true when you make the same argument.

First of all, the fact is that Confederate tariff rates were not "dramatically lower" than Morrill Tariffs, but yes, they were lower -- they were the same as US pre-Morrill rates, approx. 15%.
If Congress seriously believed those were a major threat to US trade, they need simply reduce Morrill back to pre-Morrill levels.

But there's no actual data suggesting this potential problem ever materialized.
Indeed, during the Civil War, when all exports from Confederate states were blockaded, and so supposedly the Union would lose 70% (!) of the income needed to pay for imports providing Federal revenues... well, nothing of the sort happened.

Indeed, when push came to shove, Congress quickly found new sources of revenue, more than enough to pay for the 15 times increase in war-time spending versus that of 1860.

Of course, once the Confederacy started and declared war, then General Scott's long pre-existing "Anaconda Plan" went into effect, the purpose of which, as its name implies, was to strangle the Confederacy economically.
To that degree, Lincoln certainly did believe that economic factors would play a critical role in defeating the Confederate military.

And, of course, Lincoln was right about that.

[BroJoeK]

ladyjane: "The Somerset members were definitely in support of the cotton growers."

Of course, the North was full of people with strong economic or family ties to the South, who didn't mind Southern slavery and certainly didn't want to go to war against their friends & family.

And had Confederates not acted in the most uppity arrogant ways imaginable, those people would never have supported Civil War.
But Confederate slave owners could not be other than what they were, and so war became inevitable.

[cva66snipe]

It would help to know what cemeteries are actually involved. Many "National Cemeteries" were either begun for Union soldiers of the Civil War or founded long after that war ended. Those in the North don't have any Confederate burials. Neither do most of those in the South.

It's possible that National Cemeteries in the south started before the Civil War do have both Union and Confederate dead interred. It's like that with the Chalmette National Cemetery, which was begun after the War of 1812. Two Confederates are buried at Shiloh National Cemetery.

The DVA also has relations with state cemeteries. Those in the South may have Confederate soldier burials. Whether state or federal regulations apply there, I don't know. Most likely federal, given the way things are.

Knoxville National Cemetery a place I once worked at while attending school under a VA Program has at least one CSA buried there. That cemetery was established during the Civil War and a large percentage are Civil War vets. The grave marker clearly stated CSA under the persons name and he was a Captain IIRC. In some areas like East Tennessee loyalties were split. At least one West Point Mountain Rebel General came out of Sevier County for example.

[ladyjane]

You will find it interesting to google New England textile mills and learn about child labor in those mills.

For example, “

The system of child labor in Rhode Island mills began with Rhode Island’s first textile mill - the Slater Mill. Samuel Slater’s first employees were all children from seven to twelve years of age. By 1830, 55% of the mill workers in Rhode Island were children. These children worked long hours in unhealthy factories for wages less than $1 per week.”

The owners of the New England textile mills needed the southern cotton. They didn’t care about slaves. They had their own slaves in their factories.

It was a different time with different values.

[rockrr]

I see what you mean. Atrocious. Horrendous.

Oops - I think this is North Carolina.

Nevermind

[cva66snipe]

You're right. My great grandfather was born in Michigan in 1855 and was working before his teens. The north has no moral high ground over the south on any of it. Although blacks were free'd in the north they were forced into segregation {a practice that was even in place in WW2} and given the worst of the jobs for minimal wages. In the south you were as likely to see blacks as whites working in fields poor was poor and my dad grew up in The Great Depression on the wrong side of the tracks. Skin color meant nothing there and that was in a southeastern city.

Slavery as such existed from Alabama up into NY State in coal states both in the north and the south. You were paid less wages than what the company which owned everything in town including your home and all the stores charged you to live. The song Sixteen Tons was reality. Automation and technology changed that just as it changed the Pre Civil War north. Strip mining and machinery made deep mining requiring more men less profitable. Ike's highway projects connected isolated areas to cities so workers could go to larger towns. People forget.