These two facts are the reason why I display the Confederate flag on my profile page.
Posted on 04/08/2002 2:17:58 PM PDT by WhowasGustavusFox
Confederate effort was not about slavery
It appears a March 30 letter-writer who condemned the Confederate flag has learned no more from his history courses than did Editor Beth Padgett. However to Ms. Padgett's credit, she has a better understanding of the word compromise.
Compromise is and always has been the lifeblood of survival. Both the letter-writer and the NAACP need to take a refresher course in human psychology to grasp that fact.
Neither President Lincoln nor Jefferson Davis could have gotten enough men together to have formed a single Boy Scout unit, let alone two opposing armies, had the issue been slavery. Slavery was a national institution, not a Southern preferential privilege, as was implied.
Lincoln should have first freed the slaves in the North. This would have removed the hypocrisy that so blatantly stands out. U.S. Grant's slave had to be freed by an act of Congress nine months after the war. The unstable Tecumseh Sherman was arrested on several occasions for physical abuse of his slaves. General Robert E. Lee, as a matter of conviction, freed his slaves prior to the war. Obviously his support of the Confederate war effort was not based on a pro-slavery cause.
Southerners fought for noble causes, not slavery. States' rights, the consent of the governed, was the primary issue. Thomas Jefferson stated "without the consent of the governed, a people have not only a right but an obligation to expel such a government."
Bill Hunt Townville
Freedom of the slaves came about because it was an effective way to harm the Southern fighting forces, not [with most Northerners] because of any moral considerations.
The next evil that my friend complained of, was the Tariff. Well, let us look at that for a moment. About the time I commenced noticing public matters, this question was agitating the country almost as fearfully as the Slave question now is. In 1832, when I was in college, South Carolina was ready to nullify or secede from the Union on this account. And what have we seen? The tariff no longer distracts the public councils. Reason has triumphed. The present tariff was voted for by Massachusetts and South Carolina. The lion and the lamb lay down together-- every man in the Senate and House from Massachusetts and South Carolina, I think, voted for it, as did my honorable friend himself. And if it be true, to use the figure of speech of my honorable friend, that every man in the North, that works in iron and brass and wood, has his muscle strengthened by the protection of the government, that stimulant was given by his vote, and I believe every other Southern man. So we ought not to complain of that...Yes, and Massachusetts, with unanimity, voted with the South to lessen them, and they were made just as low as Southern men asked them to be, and those are the rates they are now at. -- Alexander Stephens to the Georgia legislature, December 1860.
Mr. Stephens didn't think much of tariffs as an issue then. What did he know that you and this yutz, Bill Hunt, apparently don't know? And another thing. If tariffs were such a bone of contention, if they were so onerous that it was worth entering into a rebellion to get away from them, then why did the confederate congress, as one of its first actions, impose tariffs as high or higher than those imposed by the federal government? That would be like the founding fathers installing John Adams a king a month after the Declaration of Independence.
Why yes, of course, I *do* see where the two are on the same moral plane... </sarcasm off>
Thanks for scanning and posting this one; I considered doing so myself.
Precisely.
The statists coming out of the wormwood will surely not mention that Virginia, as a condition for ratifying the Constitution, reserved the right to withdraw from same at her own sole discretion.
That meant nothing to the Ape and his damnyankee industrialist buddies. You know, the same ones that are now attempting to do to the world what they did to the South... and in attempting it may bring nuclear conflagration to the planet.
That either revenue from duties must be collected in the ports of the rebel states, or the ports must be closed to importations from abroad....If neither of these things be done, our revenue laws are substantially repealed; the sources which supply our treasury will be dried up; we shall have no money to carry on the government; the nation will become bankrupt before the next crop of corn is ripe.....Allow rail road iron to be entered at Savannah with the low duty of ten per cent, which is all that the Southern Confederacy think of laying on imported goods, and not an ounce more would be imported at New York; the railroads would be supplied from the southern ports. ---New York Evening Post March 12, 1861, recorded in Northern Editorials on Secession, Howard C. Perkins, ed., 1965, pp. 598-599.
If slavery was not the issue- then why does every CSA state's declaration of secession mention it as the chief reason for secession? As THE reason. Stop it. This is pathetic revionism. There is an argument to be made about the illegality of Lincoln's war- but to say that slavery was not the prime cause of the Civil War or the War of Southern Independence is utter nonsense.
These two facts are the reason why I display the Confederate flag on my profile page.
In a letter of January 11, 1865, Lee said the best relation of white to black was master to slave.
Lee owned as many as 10 slaves on his own. They came to him through inheritance. His wife had 63, and he used them to increase his net worth. He was also the executor of a will thar required the freeing of slaves. He did not free these slaves; the war did.
Lee did pay for passage for at least one former slave to leave the country.
Walt
Guess the missiles clinton fired on an aspirin factory were just.....
Guess the Titanic was really unsinkable.
Guess the Great Nations were REALLY put on this earth to be slaughtered by Manifest Destiny.
Guess the Mafia doesn't really exist 'cause Hoover said so.
C'mon.
Lincoln spoke over and over against slavery. He was a gradualist, and taking what political moves he could, his concept was to increase the pressure over time until the institution was slowly crushed out of existence. His hand was forced when South Carolina's government, who could see the handwriting on the wall, precipitated a more immediate crisis by an Act of Secession (Which specifically stated that the primary cause was Mr. Lincoln's determination to eliminate slavery).
As to the statement, "why didn't he free the slaves in the north first?", this question fails to appreciate the US is a republic and therefore the president did not have the authority to free the slaves by executive order. The Emancipation Proclamation did affect the Confederate States however, because by their secession, they had refused the protections of "states rights" afforded them by the US Constitution. They were therefore under martial law, and the president, as commander-in-chief, forced the issue for them under military rule. I am sure there were very many "Johnny Reb's" who did not see themselves as "fighting for slavery," but very few soldiers fight for ideas, most fight from a sense of honor, loyalty, or duty to their nation or state.
Why, because only the southern United States were willing to go to war to defend it. What a silly question.
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