Historian: Civil War tales are pure bunk

The Orlando Sentinel ^ | SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1998 | Mark Pino

[WhiskeyPapa]

The Osceola Sentinel SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1998 -- An Edition of The Orlando Sentinel

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Historian: Civil War tales are pure bunk

History doesn't lie. Right? Well, the winners want history to make them look good. Sometimes the losers get their say, too.

Perspectives can change. Villains can be made to look like heroes. Interpreting the past can lead to lively debates. And because it is history, often the only confirmation comes from what was written down or told orally through generations.

Even so, care must be taken.

When talk turns to the Civil War and blacks' role with the Confederacy, there is no room for revisionist theories for Asa R Gordon.

For instance:

The Confederate states were interested in white supremacy.

The war between North and South was not about states' rights or a War of Southern independence. States' rights and independence are WHATS of the Civil War. The WHY of it was to preserve slavery, Gordon told a small group at St. James AME Zion church in Kissimmee last week.

Simply put, there should be no memorials honoring men like Robert E. Lee and Stonewall Jackson. They and others resigned from the Union Army and fought against their country.

They were rebels, and they are traitors to the United States. Nations normally don't honor traitors, Gordon, a retired astrophysicist, said to a crowd that included a group from the Osceola Children's Home.

People normally don' t build memorials for traitors, racists or those who practice genocide.

There are no memorials to the Nazis.

In the United States, Confederate memorials dot the countryside. The flag is flown with pride. The Nazi flag - and Nazi leaders - inspire hatred.

It should he no different for Lee and others who fought for the South. The real heroes, Gordon said, are those Southerners who fought for the North.

As for those who try to promote the idea that blacks were willing soldiers for the South, Gordon's research disproves it.

In a lecture that was close to three hours long, the founder and executive director of the Washington, D.C. -based Douglass Institute of Government left no doubt about the fantasies and historical myths of Afro-Confederates.

"The South won in peace what it lost on the battlefield," Gordon said.

The commitment to the neo-Confederate movement is often emotional rather than intellectual, he said. It cannot stand the scrutiny of scholarship. The belief that blacks willingly served in the Confederate Army is ludicrous and harmful, he said.

"A slave didn't have a choice. If his master said he was going, the slave couldn't say no. He was a slave."

Those who say blacks fought for the South should look at Confederate documents, which ban blacks serving as regular members of the Army. They also need to look at records showing that those who did serve deserted when they got the chance.

Propagation of the present-day theories make it hard for people to realize that blacks were unhappy about their condition, Gordon said.

"How can you owe a people anything, if in fact they were so satisfied with the state that suppressed them?" he asked. "How can you correct that legacy if you are in denial about the true reasons?"

Gordon's visit was sponsored by Ann Tyler and Evan McKissic. McKissic, a retired Osceola teacher, has been critical of the theories of another retired local teacher, Nelson Winbush.

Winbush travels the country recounting the stories of his grandfather, who he said willingly and proudly served with Southern forces.

"I try to get the truth out. I talked with my grandfather, and I know what he said," Winbush said.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Mark Pino welcomes comments. He can be reached at (407) 931-5935, by e- mail at OSOpino1@aol.com, by fax at (407)931-5959 or by mail at The Osceola Sentinel, 804 W. Emmett St., Kissimmee, 34741.

[GOPcapitalist]

Pulling out the old appeal to authority fallacy again, eh ditto?

And what do we have in it all?

- A couple "experts" to each of whom one could cite another expert with opposing viewpoints

- The usual drivel of McPherson quotes

- and to cap it all off, a quote from a guy at Tomball College, the official two year junior college and auto mechanic training center of the most suburbanized hick town in America.

Sounds like quite an argument to me...

[GOPcapitalist]

I don't. He is in the company of the likes of the that Second Amendment foe, the awful Gary Wills, and the Roosevelt admiring faux historian Arthur Shitslinger.

Don't forget the granddaddy of pro-yankee sympathies himself, Karl Marx.

Marx invented the same arguments Walt spouts today way back in 1861.

[GOPcapitalist]

It's not revision to quote Jefferson Davis, Robert E. Lee, Howell Cobb and the minutes of the congress of the so-called CSA.

But it is revision to ignore the parts of history you don't like, and that is what you do daily on FR, Walt.

It's Soviet style disinformation to suggest otherwise.

...straight from the mouth of the admitted political heir of Karl Marx himself!

[GOPcapitalist]

Actually the theory about Hawthorne and Melville having a relationship is fairly long standing. Of course, it's hard to establish absolute certainty of something like that, but you are correct in characterizing melville as odd. It is fairly certain that he did have some homo tendencies, and historians of literature have long acknowledged some of their themes in his writings. The historical theory that most likely explains the situation is that Melville had strong homosexual tendencies that attracted him to Hawthorne. Hawthorne was not very openly receptive to it though may have flirted with perverse tendencies of his own before rejecting it. Accordingly I don't think it out of the ordinary to characterize Melville as a perverted nutcase freak, and to some extent believe that Hawthorne may also be included in that category, though not near as much as Melville.

You hit the transcendentalist nail on the head. Out of touch with reality is it. They were little more than a bunch of pseudo-intellectuals who never grew up and could never figure out what to do with themselves.

As another poster remarked earlier in this thread, they seem to have leap frogged the country and established themselves in california, hence today's left coast wacko types.

[Ohioan]

You haven't exposed anything, by quoting one self-styled "historian." It is pretty funny, actually. The man was invited to speak to answer another man, who relied upon first hand accounts--the true bases of real history. It sounds to me that Winbush has exposed Gordon, not the other way around.

But the reason I have stopped by to even comment on your little exercise in historic legerdemain is because of the nasty way that you keep impugning the honor of our fellow Americans from the South. To suggest that they were "traitors" because their principles led them to take a stand that you do not approve of, is not only mean spirited in the extreme. It utterly begs the question. They were not traitors in terms of any commitment, which they recognized. Their oaths to support the Constitution were not violated, if they felt that that sacred compact was no longer being honored by the General Government. Compacts work both ways.

Let me suggest that the ultimate answer to your mean spirited aspersions, may be found in three documents, which deserve to be read over and studied on July 4th, The Declaration Of Independence, which states our theory of Government; George Washington's Farewell Address, which addresses many important concepts, including the importance of not pursuing sectional antagonisms--the South felt that the North had fallen into the hands of a Sectionalist group determined to undermine the South;--and The Constitution Of The United States, which contains no language that would suggest that a State once admitted cannot leave. [Although, note that it does provide for some permanent concepts, such as the equal status of the States in the Senate.]

I am not criticizing your right to debate historic issues. But your lack of civility plays into the hands of the Left, by dividing Conservatives. In that you do us all a disservice.

William Flax

[AnAmericanMother]

To continue . . . Irving wasn't a New Englander, he was a New Yorker through and through, and Old New York at that. He was born in 1783 - a much, much earlier author although he didn't die until 1859, the works that brought him fame were published long before, beginning in 1809 and into the 1820s and 30s.

Hemingway and Steinbeck and Wilder were no more Yankees than I am a Tibetan nun. Wilder's dad married in 1860 and went west from Wisconsin, don't believe he fought, and certainly she was a frontier girl, not a Yankee. The others were just too late (heck, I REMEMBER both of them!)

I can't stand James Fenimore Cooper, he can't write for beans. Mark Twain was absolutely right about him, a waste of perfectly good ink. Check this out Fenimore Cooper's Literary Offenses

Ambrose Bierce, a brilliant but bitter and flawed man. He fought for the Union, but he wasn't Yankee or Southern, he hated everybody. He disappeared in Mexico in the teens, probably said something ugly to Pancho Villa.

Julia Ward Howe . . . ick. Fellow traveler with her repulsive husband.

Louisa Mae Alcott . . . overrated but an honest woman. (If Bronson Alcott had been your dad, you would have been a feminist, too, purely in the interests of survival.) I don't think she really WAS one, she was forced into it by circumstances. The portrait of Professor Bhaer in "Little Men" is the man she wished she could have married, sort of like her father with a SPINE, and she probably would have made him a good wife, too.

I can't agree that Emily Dickinson is boring. Strange, yes, very very strange in the good old New England tradition of women that nobody ever sees locked up in remote farmhouses. But not boring.

Walt Whitman . . . tireless self promoter and narcissist . . . good poet though, at least when not in the throes of self-infatuation. I know everybody thinks he was gay, but I think he was just bidding for attention. He served his time doing hospital work in the war, though, so I'll cut him plenty of slack for that.

Horatio Alger . . . a strange bird, but a writer for the masses who never read the Transcendentalists or the "Authors" with a capital "A". His books were didactic and always had a Moral (or two, or three) but boys who wouldn't read anything else read him and were edified thereby. I still read some of his stuff just for fun, now and then. A little of it goes a long way, but it's a nuts and bolts picture of life in New York from the point of view of a poor boy, and it must have been fascinating for his readers in small towns and sheltered families to learn how a boy "Cast Upon the Breakers" would go about finding a place to stay, a meal, and a job in the Big Bad City.

I haven't much use for Sandburg's poetry, by and large, but his "Rootabaga Stories" written for his kids (or grandkids, forget which) are magnificent nonsense and my children LOVED having them read out loud when they were growing up. I hate the new edition with the Michael Hague illustrations, they're totally at odds with the story (Hague can't help his illustrations looking sinister, I don't think). The original drawings are much better.

[AnAmericanMother]

And here I was trying to be polite about poor Herman . . . .! But I can't disagree with you.

Hawthorne I think recoiled from Melville, without ever fully realizing what he was recoiling from. He was very sheltered in a lot of ways, as opposed to Melville who had led a pretty free and easy roving life all over the world.

[Twodees]

No Ray Charles, no James Lee Burke, no Alvin York, no Russell Smith.

No George Mason.

[Non-Sequitur]

What, no commies?

[docmcb]

The evidence is somewhat ambiguous, but there's NO doubt that some blacks fought

Quite a contridiction there don't ya think?
If evidence is ambiguous, then it shouldn't count, so therefor what are you basing this "NO doubt" on?

Sorry for the delay in responding. Are you really asking about historical methods, or just trying to score a debating point? Much, sometimes MOST historical evidence can be interpreted several ways, hence is ambiguous. But surely there's enough to show that thousands of blacks served with Confederate armies, at least a few voluntarily, at least a few in combat, though I don't think the evidence is there to support an assertion of large scale black support for the Confederate cause. But as others on this thread have pointed out, there are sufficient reasons for wondering how much of a story got told during a century when few were interested in the topic.

[docmcb]

And note, BTW, that Levi was not a soldier at all, but instead a loyal servant.

Hmmm. We're into semantics here. Levi Miller was with Lee's army throughout the war except when nursing a wounded officer. He might very well have worn a uniform and carried a weapon, probably a pistol or such. When he ran across the open field bringing rations to Captain Anderson the Federal sharpshooters fired on him, which suggests that he LOOKED like a Confederate soldier -- and he was evidently risking his life like one. Surely a cook or a truck driver is a soldier, even if he's not a rifleman or tank driver. And while Levi's enrollment in his company after fighting with them at Spotsylvania is certainly unusual, I think he was probably fairly typical as a body servant -- and there were thousands of those, beyond any doubt.

[Aurelius]

"Don't forget the granddaddy of pro-yankee sympathies himself, Karl Marx."

You're right, I overlooked that Lincoln admirer.

[docmcb]

BTW, I haven't seen anyone mention the Condeferate monument in Arlington Cemetary, sculpted by a Confederate veteran and set up during a fairly racist time, which PLAINLY shows a black soldier marching among white Confederates. Been there, have the pics.

[rwfromkansas]

lol!

[SamAdams76]

So Karl Marx liked Abraham Lincoln. So what? Maybe Karl Marx liked vanilla ice cream too. Does that mean that if we eat vanilla ice cream, then we must support Marxism? What if Karl Marx liked women? Well, I think you get the point.

[H.Akston]

And, as always, we must remember:

A voluntary Union is a more Perfect Union.

[GOPcapitalist]

What, no commies?

Of course there are. Yankee culture has plenty of those too. Do you not recall the little Brook Farm incident?

[GOPcapitalist]

So Karl Marx liked Abraham Lincoln. So what?

What is so is that Karl Marx did not simply "like" Lincoln but also thoroughly embraced and advocated Lincoln's political cause during his presidency and the war.

Maybe Karl Marx liked vanilla ice cream too. Does that mean that if we eat vanilla ice cream, then we must support Marxism? What if Karl Marx liked women? Well, I think you get the point.

Actually, no, as your point rests entirely upon drawing a falsely constructed analogy. Your argument could easily be translated to the modern day with equally false implications. Doubt me? Consider this.

So Hillary Clinton likes Planned Parenthood. So what? Maybe Hillary Clinton likes hamburgers too. Does that mean that if we eat hamburgers, then we must support radical Clintonian feminism? What if Hillary Clinton likes women?

Though there is a strong theory that the last point may be true, surely you can see the difference that renders the analogy unworkable.

The fact is that Hillary Clinton thoroughly embraces and supports the political agenda of Planned Parenthood, just like Karl Marx thoroughly embraced and supported Lincoln's political cause during his presidency and the war.

[SamAdams76]

Fact of the matter is, Southerners have been, are, and always will be some of the greatest AMERICANS. The Civil War's already been fought once. As a PA yankee, I'm glad the Union was preserved, if only so that I might call myself the fellow citizen of our good friends south of the Mason-Dixon line.

I totally agree with your post. I'm glad the Union was preserved and that we can all call ourselves Americans, whether we come from north or south of the Mason-Dixon line. When the Civil War ended, Abraham Lincoln did not want there to be any lingering hatred between North and South. That is why he demanded that his generals offer favorable surrender terms to the South. He wanted to reunite the Union, not keep it divided. Had Lincoln not been so accomodating to the South, I don't think that Lee would have ever surrendered at Appomatox. Instead, Lee would have taken his army to the hills and fought a guerilla war that we might still be fighting today. If you think that is a ridiculous thing to say, consider what has gone on in places like Bosnia and Ireland for hundreds of years now. Had the Union had a president that demanded total surrender and humiliation of the South, there is no way the Union could ever have been reunited.

I think the Reconstruction is one of the most amazing achievements of the United States. I mean, we had this incredibly savage war in which over 620,000 lives were lost. So much hate and bloodshed between the two sides. Yet, thanks in large part to Abraham Lincoln (who stood practically alone in extending an olive branch to the South), we were able to put the country back together in short order. Yeah, we still have a few around who refuse to let it go. But by and large, we have put the Civil War behind us and have moved on to build the greatest nation on the face of the earth.

[Askel5]

It is also interesting to see the comparison being made here between the CSA and Nazi Germany. To me, that simply means the Northern revisionists are running out of ammunition.

bump!