Posted on 12/15/2001 10:52:58 AM PST by shuckmaster
A statue of Abraham Lincoln in Carle Park in Urbana, Illinois, was hit with an act of vandalism which, while not particularly damaging to the materials of the sculpture, did nothing for the image of dignity associated with our 16th president.
The vandals painted Lincoln's face white, then daubed the eyes with black paint. Local officials described the effect as looking as if Lincoln was auditioning to join the rock band KISS.
The bronze statue was installed in the park in 1927 and is green in color from the patina bronze acquires when exposed to the elements. It was created by famed sculptor Lorado Taft and depicts Lincoln as he looked as a young circuit-riding lawyer.
The statue has been a frequent target of misguided mischief in the past, according to Urbana Park District Superintendent of Operations Joseph Potts. It is located directly west of Urbana High School as well as being fairly close to the main campus of the University of Illinois.
"We've had people put a Santa hat on it or hang plastic breasts on it," he said. "It's more funny than it is destructive sometimes."
Potts said that the current attack involved only water-based paint, which was easily removed with soap and water. He added that occasional inscriptions of vulgarities with markers are considerably more difficult to remove.
The park district and city officials have had off-and-on discussions for several months over relocating the statue from Carle Park to another site, possibly downtown or to a historic site associated with Lincoln's activities in Champaign-Urbana. School officials have said they favor the move since the statue attracts students and others who gather there to smoke, forcing school janitors to clean up discarded filters on a regular basis.
A committee is being formed to look into ways to improve Carle Park, including possibly better protecting the statue, according to Renee Pollock, a member of the Urbana Park District advisory committee. Park District Executive Director Robin Hall said the neighborhood committee might want to add lighting for the statue, which he said could help deter vandalism.
Courtesy of: Civil War Interactive: The Daily Newspaper of the Civil War www.civilwarinteractive.com
There are at the present moment, many colored men in the Confederate Army doing duty not only as cooks, servants, and laborers but as real soldiers, having musket on their shoulders and bullets in their pockets, ready to shoot down loyal troops and do all that soldiers may do to destroy the Federal government and build up that of the rebels--Frederick Douglass, Fall 1861--Black Confederates, Barrow,p9
You do know who Frederick Douglass is don't you? Please Walt, don't go defaming your hero's own words now. WGreater words and of the African Americans that served for the Confederacy in defense of the Founders ideals of the Constitution, lincoln wouldn't be worth licking their boots. To defame the great men of all colors that fought for their country all to continue a lie begun by the victors 136 years ago is a disgrace
Fall 1861--Black Confederates, Barrow,p9
You do know who Frederick Douglass is don't you? Please Walt, don't go defaming your hero's own words now. WGreater words and of the African Americans that served for the Confederacy in defense of the Founders ideals of the Constitution, lincoln wouldn't be worth licking their boots. To defame the great men of all colors that fought for their country all to continue a lie begun by the victors 136 years ago is a disgrace
Well, I haven't defamed any one in this thread. I have mostly let Mr. Lincoln speak for himself.
But black confederates, you say. Seems an odd segue.
"As early as 1863, a few voices in the Confederacy had called for the enlistment of black slaves into the Confederate armed forces, but most remained opposed to such a policy, which would have violated the predominant assumption that blacks were racially inferior. However, as the military situation worsened for the Confederacy in the fall of 1864, the controversial idea resurfaced with greater force. That September, Union newspapers published a letter confiscated from Governor Henry W. Allen of Louisiana in which he urged the Confederacy to arm “every able-bodied Negro.” A few weeks later, the influential Richmond Enquirer expanded the suggestion to endorse emancipation and equal treatment of black soldiers in return for military service to the Confederacy.
The federal Congress had approved the use of blacks in the Union military in July 1862, and their recruitment began in earnest after the Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863. Almost 200,000 black men served as soldiers, sailors, or laborers for the Union armed forces during the Civil War.
The first major proposal for arming slaves and free blacks in the Confederacy was the “Cleburne Memorial” presented by General Patrick Cleburne, an Army of Tennessee division commander, to an officers’ meeting on January 2, 1864. By that time, there was a serious need to replace the dwindling number of servicemen in the Confederate military, which was about a third of the size of the Union forces. Cleburne told the assembled officers that the Confederacy was losing because of the lack of soldiers and that slavery, which had been a source of strength at the beginning of the war, was now a detriment to survival. In order for the Confederacy to defend its independence, it would have to give up slavery and arm black men.
The Cleburne Memorial was notable because it was made by a well-respected military leader, not a politician or journalist, and it went beyond any previous proposal to urge complete emancipation, rather than conscription without emancipation or emancipation only for servicemen. Cleburne’s commanding officer, General Joseph E. Johnston, refused to forward the memorandum to the Confederate government in Richmond, Virginia, but an angry fellow general, W. H. T. Walker of Georgia, did, along with his vehement protest. President Jefferson Davis ordered the suppression of the proposal and any discussion of it, although it continued to be debated acrimoniously among Confederate officers. Cleburne stayed out of the fray, but was passed over for promotion three times during the following eight months.
In February 1864, the Confederate Congress did authorize, at Davis’s request, the use of 20,000 free blacks and slaves (who remained the legal property of their owners) in noncombatant roles, such as cooks, laborers, nurses, and teamsters. In September 1864, Atlanta fell to the Union, General William T. Sherman began his March to the Sea, and the Confederacy suffered other military setbacks. At that point, some Southerners became more vocal about the need to consider the use of black troops. Besides Governor Allen, a group of six other governors endorsed a “change of policy” concerning the use of slave in the “public service.” The Richmond Enquirer’s approval of arming the slaves was echoed by the Mobile Register and other journals.
On November 7, 1864, President Davis unveiled a surprise in his otherwise predictable address to the Confederate Congress. He argued that the use of slaves in noncombatant roles for limited periods had not worked as well as expected, so he asked the Confederate Congress to purchase 40,000 slaves to be used for extended tours of noncombatant duty. The “due compensation” for the increased hazards and commitment should be emancipation at the end of their loyal service. Davis did not request authorization to use the slaves as soldiers, but he held out that possibility if the only alternative was “subjugation” of the Confederacy. The Confederate Congress did not act on the plan, but the issue of arming the slaves was thereafter debated vigorously until the end of the war.
Opposition to arming the slaves remained strong, led in the press by the Richmond Examiner and the Charleston Mercury, and in the political arena by Congressman R. M. T. Hunter of Virginia, speaker pro tem of the Confederate Senate, and Governors Zebulon Vance of North Carolina and Joe Brown of Georgia. Howell Cobb warned, “If slaves will make good soldiers[, then] our whole theory of slavery is wrong.” On the other hand, most of Davis’s cabinet supported the policy, although Secretary of War James Seddon was unenthusiastic.
As the Confederate military situation went from bad to worse in the winter of 1864-1865, President Davis sent Confederate Congressman Duncan Kenner of Louisiana, a long-time advocate of arming slaves, on a secret diplomatic mission in late January 1865. In a last ditch effort to convince Britain and France to issue formal recognition of Confederate independence, Davis was willing to offer emancipation of the slaves. Through indirect channels, Napoleon III of France deferred to Britain, whose prime minister, Lord Palmerston, resolutely refused. Although disappointed by the outcome of the Kenner mission (which had become publicly known), it was the failure of the Hampton Roads Peace Conference in early February—a final attempt to secure Confederate independence and a negotiated end to the war—that amplified the call for arming the slaves. Mass meetings were held across the Confederacy at which, among a general show of Southern patriotism, the radical policy was supported.
On February 10, 1865, Ethelbert Barksdale of Mississippi introduced a bill on the floor of the Confederate Congress to arm the slaves. Within days, General Robert E. Lee, commander of the Confederate armed forces, endorsed the measure and the Davis administration put its authority behind the bill. Former foes in the press, like the Richmond Examiner, now switched their editorial position to favor arming the slaves. The bill passed on March 13, but with opposition still substantial (winning by just a vote in the Senate) and without rewarding the armed slaves with emancipation. However, on March 23, the Davis administration’s executive order to implement the act added the stipulations that a slave must agree to enlistment and that his master must consent in writing to grant him, “as far as he may, the rights of a freedman.” The executive order also required that the black soldiers receive equal treatment with their white comrades.
[note this was 10 days before the evacuation of Richmond.]
The recruitment of black Confederate soldiers began, with the first black company formed in Richmond on March 25. The Confederate capital fell just over one week later, and General Lee surrendered to the Union commander, General Ulysses S. Grant, on April 9, 1865. To most white Confederates, the arming and emancipation of black slaves was a desperate measure taken out of military necessary in the final days of the Civil War. It did not emancipate all of the slaves, nor did it abolish slavery as an institution. The latter was accomplished by the Thirteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution in December 1865, with much reluctance on the part of white politicians in the South."
--Robert C. Kennedy
There basically were -no- black CSA soldiers, no matter what Douglass said.
On the other hand:
"Recognizing me, even before I reached him, he exclaimed, so that all around could hear him, "Here comes my friend Douglass." Taking me by the hand, he said, "I am glad to see you. I saw you in the crowd to-day, listening to my inaugural address; how did you like it?" I said, "Mr. Lincoln, I must not detain you with my poor opinion, when there are thousands waiting to shake hands with you." "No, no," he said, "you must stop a little, Douglass; there is no man in the country whose opinion I value more than yours. I want to know what you think of it?" I replied, "Mr. Lincoln, that was a sacred effort."
"I am glad you liked it!" he said; and I passed on, feeling that any man, however distinguished, might well regard himself honored by such expressions, from such a man."
--Frederick Douglass
Walt
The first Federal income tax was levied to help pay for the Union war effort. In the summer of 1861, Salmon P. Chase reported to the Congress that he would need $320 million over the next fiscal year to finance the war. He thought he could put his hands on $300 million by borrowing part of it and raising the rest through existing taxes and sale of public lands. He left it up to Congress to come up with a way to raise the remaining $20 million. After weighing their options, the House Ways and Means Committee drew up a bill to tax personal and corporate incomes. This bill, the first income tax measure in the United States, called for a 3% tax on incomes over $800. Although the bill quickly passed in both the House and the Senate, it was never put into operation. Still, it paved the way for the next bill of its kind. In 1862, Abraham Lincoln signed a bill that imposed a 3% tax on incomes between $600 and $10,000 and a 5% tax on higher incomes. The bill was amended in 1864 to levy a tax of 5% on incomes between $600 and $5,000, a 7.5% tax on incomes in the $5,000-$10,000 range and a 10% tax on everything higher. This bill was repealed in 1872 and declared to be unconstitutional. The Confederacy also collected income taxes. It authorized its first national income tax measure in 1863. The Confederate bill that finally passed after great debate was a graduated income tax. It exempted wages up to $1,000, levied a 1% tax on the first $1,500 over the exemption, and 2% on all additional income.
See for yourself here
Perhaps the greatest debate is whether the term 'soldier' can be properly applied to these black men(and women) whos served as bodyguards, nurses, cooks, scouts, barbers, teamsters, and construction laborers, and who in many cases 'joined the fight' WITHOUT OFFICIAL GOVERNMENT SANCTION. The American Heritage Dictionary defines a soldier as 'one who serves in an army; an enlisted person or a noncommissioned officer; and an active loyal and militant follower." By this definition, with the exception of 'proper enlistment' , the term 'Black Confederates' would qualify; though in some cases they were carried on official rolls, EVEN THOUGH THE AUTHORIZATION FOR OFFICIAL BLACK COMPANIES WAS NOT APPROVED by the Confederate Congress and signed into law by Davis until near the end of the war on March 18,1865. Moreover, if proper enlistment is a definite criterion, then thousands of white men who served in state and local militia units would not qualify as soldiers either--BC,p3
Gee Walt, we can count the white soldiers that continue to propagate the lie it was over slavery but when the facts are presented and it is clearly shown by one of the great abolitionists of the north that African-Americans served as well, we don't count them because it wasn't official? Sounds like a double standard to me. Please don't tell me you're applying a standard based on the color of skin. Are you?
The fact is that while the Confederate leadership did not officially recognize these brave soldiers they were out in the fields fighting in integrated commands long before the north started fielding segregated units. And to not recognize that does more of an injustice to their memories than anything. Would you like me to start supplying the OFFICIAL rolls of those African-Americans who applied for Confederate veteran status next?
I know I do.
The American Heritage Dictionary defines a soldier as 'one who serves in an army; an enlisted person or a noncommissioned officer; and an active loyal and militant follower." By this definition, with the exception of 'proper enlistment' , the term 'Black Confederates' would qualify; though in some cases they were carried on official rolls, EVEN THOUGH THE AUTHORIZATION FOR OFFICIAL BLACK COMPANIES WAS NOT APPROVED by the Confederate Congress and signed into law by Davis until near the end of the war on March 18,1865. Moreover, if proper enlistment is a definite criterion, then thousands of white men who served in state and local militia units would not qualify as soldiers either--BC,p3 Gee Walt, we can count the white soldiers that continue to propagate the lie it was over slavery but when the facts are presented and it is clearly shown by one of the great abolitionists of the north that African-Americans served as well, we don't count them because it wasn't official? Sounds like a double standard to me. Please don't tell me you're applying a standard based on the color of skin. Are you?
I don't see any numbers here. Have you got any?
"It's pure fantasy,' contends James McPherson, a Princeton historian and one of the nation's leading Civil War scholars. Adds Edwin Bearss, historian emeritus at the National Park Service: 'It's b.s., wishful thinking.' Robert Krick, author of 10 books on the Confederacy, has studied the records of 150,000 Southern soldiers and found fewer than a dozen were black. 'Of course, if I documented 12, someone would start adding zeros,' he says.
"These and other scholars say claims about black rebels derive from unreliable anecdotes, a blurring of soldiers and laborers, and the rapid spread on the Internet of what Mr. McPherson calls 'pseudohistory.' Thousands of blacks did accompany rebel troops -- as servants, cooks, teamsters and musicians. Most were slaves who served involuntarily; until the final days of the war, the Confederacy staunchly refused to enlist black soldiers.
"Some blacks carried guns for their masters and wore spare or cast-off uniforms, which may help explain eyewitness accounts of blacks units. But any blacks who actually fought did so unofficially, either out of personal loyalty or self-defense, many historians say.
"They also bristle at what they see as the disingenuous twist on political correctness fueling the black Confederate fad. 'It's a search for a multicultural Confederacy, a desperate desire to feel better about your ancestors,' says Leslie Rowland, a University of Maryland historian. 'If you suggest that some blacks supported the South, then you can deny that the Confederacy was about slavery and white supremacy.'
"David Blight, an Amherst College historian, likens the trend to bygone notions about happy plantation darkies.' Confederate groups invited devoted ex-slaves to reunions and even won Senate approval in 1923 for a "mammy" monument in Washington (it was never built). Black Confederates, Mr. Blight says, are a new and more palatable way to 'legitimize the Confederacy.'"
-- Wall Street Journal, May 8, 1997
AND:
"There seems to be no evidence that the Negro soldiers authorized by the Confederate Government (March 13, 1865) ever went into battle. This gives rise to the question as to whether or not any Negroes ever fought in the Confederate ranks. It is possible that some of the free Negro companies organized in Louisiana and Tennessee in the early part of the war took part in local engagements; but evidence seems to the contrary. (Authors note: If they did, their action was not authorized by the Confederate Government.) A company of "Creoles," some of whom had Negro blood, may have been accepted in the Confederate service at Mobile. Secretary Seddon conditioned his authorization of the acceptance of the company on the ability of those "Creoles" to be naturally and properly distinguished from Negroes. If persons with Negro Blood served in Confederate ranks as full-fledged soldiers, the per cent of Negro blood was sufficiently low for them to pass as whites." (Authors note: Henry Clay Warmoth said that many Louisiana mulattoes were in Confederate service but they were "not registered as Negroes." War Politics and Reconstruction, p. 56)
p. 160-61, SOUTHERN NEGROES, Wiley
AND:
History gives lie to myth of black Confederate soldiers By TRUMAN R. CLARK
A racist fabrication has sprung up in the last decade: that the Confederacy had "thousands" of African-American slaves "fighting" in its armies during the Civil War.
Unfortunately, even some African-American men today have gotten conned into putting on Confederate uniforms to play "re-enactors" in an army that fought to ensure that their ancestors would remain slaves.
There are two underlying points of this claim: first, to say that slavery wasn't so bad, because after all, the slaves themselves fought to preserve the slave South; and second, that the Confederacy wasn't really fighting for slavery. Both these notions may make some of our contemporaries feel good, but neither is historically accurate.
When one speaks of "soldiers" and "fighting" in a war, one is not talking about slaves who were taken from their masters and forced to work on military roads and other military construction projects; nor is one talking about slaves who were taken along by their masters to continue the duties of a personal valet that they performed back on the plantation. Of course, there were thousands of African-Americans forced into these situations, but they were hardly "soldiers fighting."
Another logical point against this wacky modern idea of a racially integrated Confederate army has to do with the prisoner of war issue during the Civil War. Through 1862, there was an effective exchange system of POWs between the two sides. This entirely broke down in 1863, however, because the Confederacy refused to see black Union soldiers as soldiers -- they would not be exchanged, but instead were made slaves (or, as in the 1864 Fort Pillow incident, simply murdered after their surrender). At that, the United States refused to exchange any Southern POWs and the prisoner of war camps on both sides grew immensely in numbers and misery the rest of the war.
If the Confederacy had black soldiers in its armies, why didn't it see black men as soldiers?
By the way, all the Confederate soldiers captured by Union troops were white men. If there were "thousands" of black soldiers in the Confederate armies, why were none of them among the approximately 215,000 soldiers captured by the U.S. forces?
If there were thousands of African-American men fighting in the Confederate armies, they apparently cleverly did so without Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis, the members of the Confederate congress or any of the white soldiers of the Confederacy knowing about it. (I can just imagine some former Confederate soldier, told in 1892 that hundreds of the men in his army unit during the Civil War were black, snapping his fingers and saying, "I knew there was something different about those guys!")
The South was running short of soldiers as the war dragged on, however, and some people began to suggest that it would be better to use slaves to fight than to lose. As late as three weeks before the Civil War came to an end, the members of the Confederate congress (and Lee and Davis) were hotly debating the question of whether to start using slaves in the Southern armies.
If, as some folks in the 1990s claim, there were already "thousands" of black troops in the Confederate armies, why were the leaders of the Confederacy still debating about whether or not they should start bringing them in?
The very accurate point made then by opponents of this legislation was, as one Georgia leader stated, "If slaves will make good soldiers our whole theory of slavery is wrong." Southern newspaper editors blasted the idea as "the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down," a "surrender of the essential and distinctive principle of Southern civilization."
And what was that "essential and distinctive principle of Southern civilization"? Let's listen to the people of the times. The vice president of the Confederacy, Alexander Stephens, said on March 21, 1861, that the Confederacy was "founded ... its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery, subordination to the superior race, is his natural and normal condition. This, our new government, is the first, in the history of the world, based on this great physical, philosophical and moral truth."
What was the "very doctrine" which the South had entered into war to destroy? Let's go to the historical documents, the words of the people in those times. When Texas seceded from the Union in March 1861, its secession declaration was entirely about one subject: slavery. It said that Thomas Jefferson's words in the Declaration of Independence in 1776 -- "We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal" -- were "the debasing doctrine of equality of all men, irrespective of race or color ... a doctrine at war with nature ... and in violation of the plainest revelations of Divine Law."
But, by March 13, 1865, the Confederacy had its back against the wall, and by the less than overwhelming margin of 40 to 37 in the House, and nine to eight in the Senate, the Confederate congress approved a bill to allow Jefferson Davis to require a quota of black soldiers from each state. Presumably (although the bill did not say so) slaves who fought would, if they survived the war, be freed. Southerners who opposed using blacks in the army noted that this idea had its problems: First, it was obvious that the Yankee armies would soon free them anyway; and second, if slavery was so wonderful and happy for black people, why would one be willing to risk death to win his freedom?
The war was virtually over by then, and when black Union soldiers rode into Richmond on April 3, they found two companies of black men beginning to train as potential soldiers. (When those black men had marched down the street in Confederate uniforms, local whites had pelted them with mud.) None got into the war, and Lee surrendered on April 9.
Yes, thousands of African-American men did fight in the Civil War -- about 179,000. About 37,000 of them died in uniform. But they were all in the Army (or Navy) of the United States of America. The Confederate veterans who were still alive in the generations after the war all knew that and said so.
Finally, these modern nonhistorians say that slavery couldn't have been a main cause of the Civil War (never mind the words of Alexander Stephens and the various declarations of secession), because most of the Confederate soldiers didn't own slaves.
As modern historians such as Pulitzer Prize-winner James M. McPherson point out, the truth was that most white people in the South knew that the great bulwark of the white-supremacy system they cherished was slavery, whether or not they personally owned slaves.
"Freedom is not possible without slavery," was a typical endorsement of this underlying truth about the slave South. Without slavery, white nonslaveholders would be no better than black men.
The slave South rested upon a master-race ideology, as many generations of white Southerners stated it and lived it, from the 1600s until 1865. There is an uncomfortable parallel in our century with the master-race ideology of Nazi Germany. First, millions of the men who bravely fought and died for the Third Reich were not Nazis, but they weren't exactly fighting for the human rights of Jews or gypsies. And second, yes, as was pointed out in the movie Schindler's List, many thousands of Jews did slave labor in military production factories in Nazi Germany -- but that certainly didn't make them "thousands of Jewish soldiers fighting for Germany."
We can believe in the "black soldiers fighting" in the Confederate armies just as soon as historians discover the "thousands" of Jews in the SS and Gestapo.
Clark is a professor of history at Tomball College.
Of course the reason for the enlistment of blacks in the first place was because the white soldiers were deserting in droves.
Walt
LOL!!!! I guess Professor Clark hasn't actually looked at the historical documentation found in many of the newspapers of the day(at least the ones the Tyrant didn't shut down). He takes his findings directly from the words of a politician, and a bad one at that, who changed his mind at least twice why the war was being fought.
Interesting isn't it, that African-Americans are doing what conservatives for years have told them to do, stand up, look at the real history, be proud, and go out and make something happen, and the same conservatives slap them down because they're not supposed to study THAT history and believe the lie instead
Ah, yes, the Archangel Woodrow. If one didn't already have enough reason to wish that the Confederacy had won its independence, Wilson being against the idea would fill the void. Of course, if there had been a Confederacy, there probably wouldn't have been a Woodrow Wilson in power to make an even greater disaster of post-WWI Europe than the war itself managed. And with no Wilson, there almost certainly would have been no Hitler.
Some folks have said they think he probably played the flesh flute, but I don't really know. ;-)
Good to see your Gadsen flag on the thread here.
Edd
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