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.

[HangUpNow]

I have started to believe that the enemy we are facing today, is the same enemy both halves of the Nation faced in 1860. The Smug, Morally superior Wealthy Elite of New England, who felt that they needed to impose on the rest of us, not only their fiscal control, but their recently acquired Moral opinions. "Change" if you will.

Did not "Abortion" and "Gay Marriage" follow this same formula? Do not most left wing causes began among this cadre of people?

Affirmative.

These are the very same smug elites who reject the Judeo-Christian ethic, our traditions and heritage. Through Dewey, America has been indoctrinated for the last century by the religion of Secular Humanism, featuring Self as "God." Ergo, we find ourselves governed at the very top by fascists and moral relativists. Thus we are for the most part divided, conquered, confused, and heading to Hell in a very large handbasket. For their part, the governing elites get to live their mortal lives well.

Is it because the South became so poor that it kept turning to religion for comfort? Did this make them a more morally sensitive people?

I've also noticed a correlation in history between money and debauchery.

The simple equation as just stated:

The North tended to adhere to Secular Humanist values; The South retained its Judeo-Christian values. "Southern Hospitality" has its root in its collective faith. Their faith helped keep them focused, and wisely placed a premium on investing in the destination of their soul. One can not have two masters.

You notations on the draft and how the wealthy were able to evade *their* sons bleeding and dying for Lincoln's war were worthy observations.

[HangUpNow]

The United States went to war in 1861 to defeat the military power that threatened it, assaulted it and declared war on it.

And you actually believe that crap?? "Military power"?? HA! Man, what a bizarre delusion. Nice propaganda.

Lincoln-the-Fascist coerced by bloody force those whose FREE WILL and personal/State sovereignty were violated. He also violated the rights of many young men in the North of whom did not want to be drafted just to bleed and die for Lincoln's puppetmeister Yankee Elites.

DL had it exactly right.

[HangUpNow]

The student body was more conservative. We were mostly science and engineering students. I watched a large crowd of students burn Fidel Castro in effigy on campus. The students recognized him for what he was, while the MSM of the day, like the NY Times, did not.

Surprisingly good news and 'tude at the time. Sounds like good times.

Too bad things must surely have changed by now.

[rustbucket]

I'm slowly getting around to your posts to me (I've had better things to do).

Sure, as somebody posted here recently, that was Jefferson Davis' argument in January, 1861, on the US Senate floor.
But no legitimate Founder ever made such an argument, certainly not Madison, Hamilton or Jay in the Federalist Papers.
Therefore it was not Founders Original Intent.

As I've said before (sigh), three states put reassume or resume powers of governance in their ratification documents and four others included Tenth Amendment type statements which in effect accomplished the same thing since the Constitution did not prohibit secession of states. The power of secession therefore remained with the states individually, as the Tenth said. That made a majority of the thirteen original states. Then, of course, the Tenth Amendment itself was ratified and became part of the Constitution.

Well, if you argue: "Founders intent doesn't matter, what really matters is Patrick Henry's intent and warnings", then you reveal yourself as an anti-Federalist, anti-Constitution and not validly conservative.

I am arguing that Founders’ original intent does matter. You seem to be arguing the opposite by ignoring what was in the various ratification documents and ratifications conventions even including Madison’s reply to Patrick Henry:

An observation fell from a gentleman, on the same side with myself, which deserves to be attended to. If we be dissatisfiedwith the national government, if we should choose to renounce it, this is an additional safeguard to our defence.

and Madison’s “happiness comment in Federalist Paper 45 which supports New York’s reassune powers statement if “necessary to their happiness”:

Were the plan of the convention adverse to the public happiness, my voice would be, Reject the plan. Were the Union itself inconsistent with the public happiness, it would be, Abolish the Union.

You cite the following quote I posted from the Chicago Times of December 1860:

The South has furnished near three-fourths of the entire exports of the country. Last year she furnished seventy-two percent of the whole . . . We have a tariff that protects our manufacturers from thirty to fifty percent, and enables us to consume large quantities of Southern cotton, and to compete in our whole home market with the skilled labor of Europe. This operates to compel the South to pay an indirect bounty to our skilled labor, of millions annually.

To that you reply: Much more careful studies still show Deep South cotton hugely important to total US exports, but not 72%, rather closer to 50% depending on what-all you include.

Umm … The Chicago Times didn’t say that cotton alone was what accounted for the high Southern contribution to US exports. That is your assumption, and you are not correct. You have already been effectively refuted by PeaRidge in Post 343

Your figure is cotton and does not include Southern exports of tobacco, food, semi-finished cotton goods, chemicals, hemp, or the proportional value of finished cotton.

DeBow and Kettel have done excellent work on pulling together the entire data listings. That data shows the Southern contributions to export value in the 75 to 87#% range depending on year.

Your reply to the Chicago Times article also included: And US tariffs in 1860 averaged around 15%, not the "30% to 50%" the piece claims.

First, perhaps you don’t realize that the 1857 tariff ranged from 4% to 80% depending on the specific item. Raw materials generally got the lower rates while manufactured items were tariffed at 60 to 113 percent above the average rate you quoted. In other words, imported manufactured goods generally paid 24 to 32 percent tariff rate under the 1857 tariff law, not the 15% you quoted.

Second, remember that the price charged to the purchaser of imported manufactured items would have to cover the price of the imported goods, the overseas transportation cost, warehousing costs in New York or elsewhere, as well as the tariff rate. The net effect could well have been 30 to 50%, IMO. European goods of the time might well have been better quality or more uniform quality than American goods. American manufactured items would need a price advantage over perhaps better quality imported ones, an advantage they could use to boost their own prices and still be below the price of imported ones.

Years ago, I (and many others) used to argue Civil War history with WhiskeyPapa. I'd show that he was clearly in error in one thread, then he would repeat the same error in the next thread. I asked him why he was posting stuff that had been clearly refuted. He said that he was posting to the lurkers. Is that what you are doing, BroJoeK?

[PeaRidge]

1790.......James Madison, “the Father of the Constitution” expressed his view on the government and the status of the States as they ratified the new constitution when he said,

“In order to ascertain the real character of the government, it may be considered in relation to the foundation on which its…ordinary powers are to be drawn…founded on the assent …of the people …to be given by the people, not as individuals composing one entire nation, but as composing the distinct and independent States to which they respectively belong. It is to be the assent and ratification of the several States, derived from the supreme authority in each State, the authority of the people themselves…Each State, in ratifying the Constitution, is considered as a sovereign body, independent of all others, and only to be bound by its voluntary act”.

[rockrr]

Years ago, I (and many others) used to argue Civil War history with WhiskeyPapa. I'd show that he was clearly in error in one thread, then he would repeat the same error in the next thread. I asked him why he was posting stuff that had been clearly refuted. He said that he was posting to the lurkers. Is that what you are doing, BroJoeK?

Is that what you did in #596?

[x]

Of course, a large-scale cotton or sugar planter supplying the British empire was part of the developing global economy and was more of a globalist than a pioneering hunter or a backwoods subsistence farmer or a farmer or craftsman producing for a local market. It certainly makes more sense to say that then to turn some pioneering mill or forge owner was the equivalent of George Soros or Bill Gates. You'd have be deeply prejudiced against a large part of the country to think that that comparison was legitimate.

The South -- obviously an agriculture-based economy, and fragile at that -- thriving on cotton and tobacco -- simply toiled for its own survival, trading with whomever they could.

Get on the same page with your fellow liars. Your pal's whole argument is that the South was rich in the antebellum period. The Cotton South was booming in the 1850s. Planters and Southern intellectuals thought cotton would be king forever and supplying Britain would bring them even greater riches in the future. They said so. At length. Try reading DeBow's Review and other periodicals of the day. By the 1850s the Deep South wasn't the frontier country it had been two generations earlier, and it wasn't the nation's poor problem child it was in the 1890s or 1930s. Cotton planters and traders linked their fate with the growing British empire and even aimed at territorial expansion of their own.

Tariffs were intended to help America's "infant industries" grow -- to produce home-grown industries and end reliance on foreign production and global markets. That rationale was getting little outdated by 1860 and would become seriously wrong-headed with the tremendous growth of manufacturing after the war. But it would be stupid and absurd to argue that the small cotton spinner or iron forger of 1840 or 1850 was some kind of globalist elitist and the large-scale cotton planter was a "small is beautiful" localist. No, a substantial number of cotton planters were territorial expansionists who hitched their fortunes to the British Empire, and plenty of poorer Southerners resented them for their arrogance.

P.S. Ask the Irish or the Indians about your monopolistic political economic system that would control every aspect of their lives without representation. Heck, there were some people in the US who might have felt the same way back then.

[PeaRidge]

Brojoke and his cohorts do not want to admit the truth.

Following secession and up and until two weeks after Lincoln took office, a large part of the northern press contended that the States of the South had a full right to secede if the people desired to withdraw from the Union, and it was common to see in the northern press the words, “Erring sisters go in peace.”

Horace Greeley’s paper had said the following,

”If seven or eight contiguous States shall present themselves authentically at Washington, saying: ‘We hate the Federal Union; we have withdrawn from it;we will give you the choice between acquiescing in our secession and arranging amicably all incidental questions on the one hand, and attempting to subdue us on the other,’ we could not stand up for coercion, for subjugation, for we do not think it would be just. We hold the right of self-government even when invoked in behalf of those who deny it to others. “

'This conservative view of the question which Mr. Greeley gave to the world with such emphasis, and in which he expressed his opinion of the principle involved, had been reiterated for days, weeks and months after the election of Mr.Lincoln, and until after most of the Southern States had seceded.

'They continued until after the people of the South had adopted a constitution, and organized their new Confederate Government; after they had raised and equipped an army, appointed ambassadors to foreign courts, and convened a congress; after they had taken possession of three fourths of the arsenals and forts within their territory,and enrolled her as one of the nations of the earth.

After all this, Mr. Greeley’spaper continued to endorse the action of all southern people as fully as it was possible for language to enable it to do so. Mr. Greeley had said:

“Whenever it shall be clear that the great body of southern people have become conclusively alienated from the Union, and anxious to escape from it, we will do our best to forward their views. “

The most prominent men and able editors of Republican papers all over the North had earnestly and ably supported Mr.Greeley in his views.

In addition to all this, the commander of the Federal army, General Winfield Scott, was very emphatic in endorsing the views of the New York Tribune and other papers, to the effect that secession was the proper course for the southern people to pursue, and his oft repeated expression, “Wayward sisters, part in peace,” seemed to meet the full approval of the great body of the people of the North.

This rapidly changed.

 3/18/1861      It took only a week for Northern newspapers to understand the meaning of the low Confederate Tariff announced the week earlier in Montgomery. 

The Boston Transcript wrote,

“It does not require extraordinary sagacity to perceive that trade is perhaps the controlling motive operating to prevent the return of the seceding States to the Union.

“Alleged grievances in regard to slavery were originally the causes for the separation of the cotton States; but it is apparent that the people of the principal seceding states are now for commercial independence. They dream that the centers of traffic can be changed from Northern to Southern ports.

“The merchants of New Orleans, Charleston, and Savannah are possessed with the idea that New York, Boston, and Philadelphia may be shorn, in the future, of their mercantile greatness, by a revenue system verging upon free trade.

“If the Southern Confederation is allowed to carry out a policy by which only a nominal duty is laid upon imports, no doubt the business of the chief Northern cities will be seriously injured thereby…

“The difference is so great between the tariff of the Union and that of the Confederated States, that the entire Northwest must find it to their advantage to purchase their imported goods at New Orleans rather than at New York.In addition to this, the manufacturing interest of the country will suffer from the increased importations resulting from low duties.“

“The government would be false to its obligations if this state of things were not provided against.”

The leaders in the South knew that there would only be two choices open to the federal government politicians who had always maintained a permanent monopoly on tax revenues.Either they would meet the South’s low tax rates and compete in a peacefulfree-market which would mean a drastic cut in government revenue, power and special interest benefits.

Or they would suffer financial losses, corporate and national bankruptcy.  Not a likely scenario.

Or they would trump up some fake reasons to go to war and attempt to destroy the competitor.

[DiogenesLamp]

Am not willing to defend "New England Power Brokers", as you call them, but am very uneasy with your over-eagerness to engage in class warfare against alleged groups who are neither specifically named nor known nor accused of anything in particular.

I thought the concept of "Robber Baron" was pretty well known to American History Buffs. I did not realize it required further articulation for people to grasp what group to which I am referring. "Rockefeller", "Vanderbilt", "Morgan", are considered prime examples, but my usage of the term should definitely not be limited to just them.

As for "Class Warfare", I have no objections to people getting wealthy by their wits, luck, and hard work, but getting rich through the creation of monopolies, unethical practices and government cronyism, is a different matter all together. If there is a "class" that I find repugnant, it is the criminal class.

Further, your implication that there was no corruption before 1861, and therefore it was Civil War which taught politicians & businesses how to be corrupt, is just laughable.

I didn't say there was no corruption. I said there appears to have been a massive increase in corruption that seems to have began with the Civil War. I conjecture that it is the crony capitalism that initiated the war which redefined the normal way of doing business subsequent to the war.

Indeed, your narrow focus on economic reasons and classes of people suggests an underlying Marxist ideology, and tells us that you are likely on conservative Free Republic as a poser, a false flagger whose real ideology is quite alien here.

My narrow focus on economic reasons (and classes of people) for the war is the consequence of seeing this map which was created by a group called "Dead Confederates.Com" Which I take to mean an anti-confederate group.

This map opened my eyes to what was really going on in the USA prior to the Civil War. From other discussions, I had been made aware that *MOST* of the export value was produced by Southern Products, and the basics of trade informs us that the trade equations must roughly balance, so I had to ask myself, "Why is all that money ending up in New York if the bulk of it is produced from Products exported by the South?"

This did not make any sense to me until I learned of how the laws were jiggered to favor the New England States and New England ships and shipping.

I then realized a bunch of that trade would be effectively shut off and redistributed to Southern ports if the South became a separate nation.

I already knew that Lincoln had gotten quite a lot of financial support for his campaign from Wealthy New Yorkers, and I thought to myself "How would they feel about losing all that trade?" Well, they would be livid! They would be foaming at the mouth angry. So what would they do about it? Why they would demand something be done! It would quickly occur to them that they were in an economic trap for which the only solution was to STOP SOUTHERN INDEPENDENCE!

The only way their financial problems could be remedied was to stop the South from becoming independent, and so I believe they brought every possible pressure to bear on Lincoln in an effort to convince Him to stop the South from forming it's own nation.

It also answered a question that has been puzzling me since high school. "What was the purpose of that blockade"?

For years I thought Lincoln threw up that blockade just to give the Navy something to do. I didn't see how it could have any military significance because those who were going to fight on the side of the South were already there, and they appeared to have all the guns and weapons they needed.

Sure it could affect *TRADE*, but how much effect could it have militarily? Not much that I could see.

But when the Blockade is examined in the light of PREVENTING EUROPEAN PROFITS through trading with the South, it suddenly becomes crystal clear that the blockade was an absolutely critical aspect of the Union War effort.

If European shipping was allowed to see much larger profits than they would ordinarily have received from New York, It would have changed everything. The European governments would have a much larger stake in seeing Southern Independence occur, so that future profits could be locked in.

The Blockade wasn't created for any significant military purpose, it was created entirely for economic reasons. It was created entirely to keep European economic trade from being established with the South, to the detriment of New England Trade.

When you want to know why anything happens, "Follow the Money."

[DiogenesLamp]

Sorry, but first of all, there's no evidence that Lincoln himself was ever prepared to abandon Fort Sumter without getting something valuable in return, such as his offer of "a fort for a state" meaning Virginia.

I'm sorry, but what does "Let's make a deal!" have to do with whether or not states have a legitimate right to leave?

If they have a right to do so, and Lincoln refuses to let them because he doesn't find the deal satisfying, then that is corrupt.

If they don't have a right to do so, and Lincoln makes a deal to let them go, then that is also corrupt.

How do you spin Lincoln's "Let's make a Deal!" behavior as anything but corrupt? Pick either outcome, and it still works out to Lincoln being corrupt.

He's either denying them rights they do have, or he is giving them rights they don't have.

[DiogenesLamp]

Did you ever actually read the Declaration of Independence?

Many times, and apparently a lot closer than have you.

Did you somehow fail to catch what it says about serious actions taken "at pleasure"?

It said that:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

I am confident the Southern states believed their cause of Independence was neither light or transitory. The Northern states had jiggered the laws to take profits away from them, and they wished to live under a government more to their liking, as was their right articulated by the Declaration of Independence.

That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, 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.

[PeaRidge]

Excellent commentary and devastating analogy. Thumbs up.

[jmacusa]

Informative post ‘’x’’, thanks. We can argue this ad infinitum. It’s right and proper to discuss this very crucial period of American history and everyone here is certainly entitled to express their thoughts and opinions on the subject, naturally so. But the fact of the matter is the South launched a war it had every intention of winning, a war to preserve an economic based on the use of slave labor but the fact is they were doomed from the start. After their defeat at the bloodbath of Gettysburg and the fall of the Confederate capitol of Vicksburg the day after Lee and Jeff Davis should have seen the hand writing on the wall and stopped the slaughter but they didn’t and the blood letting continued for another two years. Many here often call Lincoln a tyrant and a murderer. To me it was Davis and Lee who were the tyrants and murderers. The two of them committed crimes that in any other time and era would have at least drawn them lengthy prison sentences or at the very worst have gotten them hung, as they should have been.

[DiogenesLamp]

The First Continental Congress began meeting in 1774, the Second Continental Congress in 1775.

As Representatives of the Colonies meeting with each other under the British National government.

They both operated without an official constitution, or "Governing Document" until the Articles of Confederation were formally ratified in 1781.

A Characteristic of an Independent government is foreign Diplomacy; The sending of Diplomats to foreign governments to establish the fact that they are a new and distinct nation from their parent.

Benjamin Franklin was the first Diplomat, and he left for France October 26, 1776. You will note this is *AFTER* the Declaration of Independence, and his mission represents the government of a New Nation exercising the powers of national government which were the consequence of it's independence from England.

Not possible prior to the Declaration.

[DiogenesLamp]

So DiogenesLamp's argument here is that high Morrill tariffs, in normal peace-time, would have driven 90% of Northern trade, not just south, but specifically to the port of Charleston, SC.

If you are going to cite my position, get it right. Charleston would benefit more than other Southern ports simply because it was closer to the normal trade routes. The Other Southern ports would have also benefited, but to a lesser extent.

Also you are in error in claiming my position is that *ONLY* the tariffs that would drive trade South. That is *NOT* my position. Tariffs were only part of it. The elimination of the "navigation act of 1817" and other Northern Biased Laws, would have a substantial effect, as well as the fact that Southerners wouldn't have to use New York Shipping, Warehousing, Insurance, Banks, and so forth to handle their traffic. (With New York's commensurate cuts out of their Profits.)

But for the laws making it easier to send all the import trade through New York, they could have made more profits by doing it themselves and/or using Foreign ships.

*PROFIT* (Not just that caused by tariff differentials) would have sent trade to the South. (predominantly Charleston)

[DiogenesLamp]

Those troops were ordered not to reinforce Sumter so long as there was no Confederate resistance.

The one thing that is absolutely known is that the commander of the Mission had secret orders.

Why secret orders for a resupply mission? Were the ships carrying secret Bacon, or Secret flour?

[DiogenesLamp]

So, whatever "FedZilla" proved necessary for the Civil War was afterwards eliminated as soon as possible.

What was "established" was the fact that FedZilla could demand to be fed (in money and lives) when it Wanted, and no "consent of the governed" could gainsay it.

[DiogenesLamp]

DegenerateLamp is stuck on an “chicken vs.egg” conundrum and is revealing his ignorance at biology as well.

To be sure, if I need a lesson regarding ignorance, I will rattle your cage.

[PeaRidge]

Another great Whack-A-Brojoke post.

[DiogenesLamp]

Likewise, average Union soldiers and their officers had no interest in, what was your term for it? "New England Power Brokers".

Of that, I am absolutely certain. But they did not need to know for what cause they were fighting so long as they obeyed the orders they were given from their chain of command. That would be Lincoln, the man solely responsible for deciding whether or not there would be a war, and whether and for how long it would continue.

"Pawns" is an appropriate designation for his soldiers who fought and died to bring Independent States back under the control of Washington D.C. and it's Congress of Wolves, eager to once more divvy up the Wool from the shorn Southern Sheep.

So the only real question is whether Lincoln himself was driven by those nasty "New England Power Brokers", since Lincoln was at first almost the only member of his administration who wanted to defend Fort Sumter?
The answer is: aside from your alleged quote, "what about my tariff?", which even if true could mean almost anything, depending on context -- there's no evidence of it.

Other than the fact he launched a war over a D@mned fort he no longer had any legitimate use for? Other than the fact that he immediately threw up that Economic Blockade which had no obvious military purpose?

What the evidence does suggest is that Lincoln wanted to preserve Fort Sumter as a "bargaining chip" to be traded for something of value, such as the state of Virginia remaining in the Union.

Which i've already pointed out to you is corrupt regarding either possible outcome.

You can't make a "deal" on an issue of principle. If the states had a right to leave, Lincoln was violating that principle. If the states had no right to leave, Lincoln was also violating *THAT* principle.

So there's no objective evidence, none, that either politicians or businessmen were more or less corrupt after 1860 than they were before.

Dude, the "Gilded Age" is well known for being pretty much the most corrupt period in US History. I would say that only now, with the Chicago Mafia in charge (wasn't Lincoln from that same general area? ) have we finally matched the corruption levels that existed in that 1870 time period.