Posted on 07/02/2002 3:37:44 AM PDT by WhiskeyPapa
The Osceola Sentinel SUNDAY, JULY 5, 1998 -- An Edition of The Orlando Sentinel
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
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.
Conclusion: I don't like Planned Parenthood and I like hamburgers. Hillary is totally irrelevant to this discussion and so is Karl Marx.
No, not if the discussion were about planned parenthood (in which case hillary could potentially be relevant) or about Lincoln and the war, which it is, in which case Marx is relevant due to his extensive commentary embracing Lincoln's political actions and his open admission of those actions to have furthered his greater political cause, which we all know to have been socialism.
Rumours persist that anti-Semitism was far greater in the North than in the South and that many Union commands would not knowingly admit Jews into their ranks.
I've not had the pleasure to have looked into your eyes , nor the honour to have shaken your hand .
I will say that you people have given me the option to take your knowledge with me into the future . I choose to do so , and i tip my hat to all of you folks .
Thank you all for being here .
This is interesting and supports what I recently read in "Shrouds of Glory" about Tennessee and Hood's last campaign.
According to the book, there were plenty of small Union garrisons all through Tennessee. Thomas had to get them all back to Nashville to face Hood. I wondered how that could be possible. And Sherman had reasonably good communications with Washington up through the siege of Atlanta. That seemed odd to me, since Sherman's army was to some degree self contained. Your statement supports that.
It is generally accepted that if the people's support for the CSA had not waned, there is no way the federals could have prevailed.
Walt
You need the historical record on your side, but you don't have it.
The secessionists made their motives plain:
"We affirm that these ends for which this Government was instituted have been defeated, and the Government itself has been made destructive of them by the action of the non-slaveholding States... They have denounced as sinful the institution of slavery; they have permitted open establishment among them of societies, whose avowed object is to disturb the peace and to eloign the property of the citizens of other States. They have encouraged and assisted thousands of our slaves to leave their homes; and those who remain, have been incited by emissaries, books and pictures to servile insurrection.
--from South Carolina Decl. of Secession)
"...[the Northern States] have united in the election of a man to high office of the President of the United States, whose opinions and purpose are hostile to slavery. He is to be entrusted with the administration of the common Government, because he has declared that the `Government cannot endure permanently half slave, half free,' and that the public mind must rest in the belief that slavery is in the course of ultimate extinction."
"They demand the abolition of negro slavery throughout the confederacy, the recognition of political equality between the white and negro races, and avow their determination to press on their crusade against us, so long as a negro slave remains in these States."
--Texas Declaration of Secession.
The Mississippi secession convention began their declaration of causes with the statement, "Our cause is thoroughly identified with the institution of African slavery."
Soon to be CSA congressman Lawrence Keitt, speaking in the South Carolina secession convention, said, "Our people have come to this on the question of slavery. I am willing, in that address to rest it upon that question. I think it is the great central point from which we are now proceeding, and I am not willing to divert the public attention from it."
"As soon, however, as the Northern States that prohibited African slavery within their limits had reached a number sufficient to give their representation a controlling voice in the Congress, a persistent and organized system of hostile measures against the rights of the owners of slaves in the Southern States was inaugurated and gradually extended. A continuous series of measures was devised and prosecuted for the purpose of rendering insecure the tenure of property in slaves. . . . Emboldened by success' the theatre of agitation and aggression against the clearly expressed constitutional rights of the Southern States was transferred to the Congress. . . .
Finally a great party was organized for the purpose of obtaining the administration of the Government' with the avowed object of using its power for the total exclusion of the slave States from all participation in the benefits of the public domain acquired by al1 the States in common' whether by conquest or purchase; of surrounding them entirely by States in which slavery should be prohibited; of those rendering the property in slaves so insecure as to be comparatively worthless' and thereby annihilating in effect property worth thousands of millions of dollars. This party' thus organized' succeeded in the month of November last in the election of its candidate for the Presidency of the United States... the productions in the South of cotton' rice' sugar' and tobacco' for the full development and continuance of which the labor of African slaves was and is indispensable.'
--Jefferson Davis
From the Confederate Constitution: Article I, Section 9, Paragraph 4: "No bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law denying or impairing the right of property in negro slaves shall be passed."
Article IV, Section 3, Paragraph 3: "The Confederate States may acquire new territory . . . In all such territory, the institution of negro slavery, as it now exists in the Confederate States, shall be recognized and protected by Congress and the territorial government."
From the Georgia Constitution of 1861:"The General Assembly shall have no power to pass laws for the emancipation of slaves." (This is the entire text of Article 2, Sec. VII, Paragraph 3.)
From the Alabama Constitution of 1861: "No slave in this State shall be emancipated by any act done to take effect in this State, or any other country." (This is the entire text of Article IV, Section 1 (on slavery).)
Alexander Stephens, Vice-President of the Confederacy, referring to the Confederate government: "Its foundations are laid, its cornerstone rests, upon the great truth that the negro is not equal to the white man; that slavery . . . is his natural and normal condition." [Augusta, Georgia, Daily Constitutionalist, March 30, 1861.]
A North Carolina newspaper editorial: "it is abolition doctrine . . . the very doctrine which the war was commenced to put down." [North Carolina Standard, Jan. 17, 1865; cited in Battle Cry of Freedom, p. 835.]
Robert M.T. Hunter, Senator from Virginia, "What did we go to war for, if not to protect our property?"
Alfred P. Aldrich, South Carolina legislator from Barnwell: "If the Republican party with its platform of principles, the main feature of which is the abolition of slavery and, therefore, the destruction of the South, carries the country at the next Presidential election, shall we remain in the Union, or form a separate Confederacy? This is the great, grave issue. It is not who shall be President, it is not which party shall rule -- it is a question of political and social existence." [Steven Channing, Crisis of Fear, pp. 141-142.]
Senator Hunter of VA. During the Negro Soldier Bill debate on March 7, 1865, the SOUTHERN HISTORICAL SOCIETY PAPERS notes him as stating his opinion of the Bill as follows:
"When we had left the old Government he had thought we had gotten rid forever of the slavery agitation....But to his surprise he finds that this Government assumes the power to arm the slaves, which involves also the power of enamcipation....It was regarded as a confession of despair and an abandonment of the ground upon which we had seceded from the old Union. We had insisted that Congress had no right to interfere with slavery, and upon the coming into power of the party who it was known would assume and exercise that power, we seceded....and we vindicated ourselves against the accusations of the abolitionists by asserting that slavery was the best and happiest condition of the negro. Now what does this proposition admit? The right of the central Government to put slaves into the militia, and to emancipate at least so many as shall be placed in the military service. It is a clear claim of the central Government to emancipate the slaves."
"If we are right in passing this measure we were wrong in denying to the old government the right to interfere with the institution of slavery and to emancipate the slaves."
"He now believed....that arming and emancipating the slaves was an abandonment of this contest - an abandonment of the grounds upon which it had been undertaken."
Your statement is unsupported.
Walt
That explains it! I've always wondered why slavery was still legal in the US and why states' rights always trumped anything at the federal level. I'm so glad the nice astrophysicist cleared that up.
He means that blacks had almost as few civil rights after the war as they had prior.
Glad to clear that up.
Walt
You forgot to mention, no culture, either. No Allman Brothers, no Hank Williams, no Faulkner, no Poe, no Walker Percy ....
You forgot to mention Thomas Wolfe.
I don't think anyone did later in the thread, either. Maybe you were kidding.
Walt
But it is revision to ignore the parts of history you don't like, and that is what you do daily on FR, Walt.
Show it.
Walt
The fact that Karl Marx perceived Lincoln as a great and good man in no way diminishes the fact that Lincoln -was- a great and good man.
Walt
Conceded by whom?
It's not a rumour. Grant banned Jews (civilians) from entering areas under his military control. Sherman also issued such orders. But it's practically impossible to find details about this in any standard Civil War history.
Conceded by whom?
Meaning, of course, that he would have been appointed by Abraham Lincoln, that champion of the working class -- among other things.
Walt
No one has ever denied that the subject of slavery was a key issue in the Secession. That is not to say that slavery was THE key issue. The Southern states saw the Federal Government as meddlers in their economic well-being. They challenged the right of the Federal Government to usurp authority that they clearly saw, under the Constitution, as belonging to the sovereign States themselves.
Your excerpts reinforce the first point and clearly reinforce the second point. Let me put it another way. If allowed, I can run about the Internet, pull out parts of speeches, editorials, essays, and other quotes by lawmakers and pundits alike..........and make an argument that the war in Afghanistan (and on terrorism in general) is actually being prosecuted on behalf of fat cat oil barons. It wouldn't be true, but that wouldn't matter. Give me enough time, and I can do exactly the same thing and make cases for the War on Terrorism being prosecuted for a half-dozen other reasons, all "supported" by the very words of lawmakers and other powerful people.
In short, I'm in no way defending the institution of slavery; I find the whole concept despicable. However, I DO know that the overwhelming majority of Southerners were not slaveholders and they fought in the Civil War for other reasons. To ignore that is to cheapen the memories of many, many thousands who gave their lives in that horrible war................and they weren't dying to allow some wealthy plantation owner up the road to use slaves to grow cotton.
No one is stopping you from doing that.
What you won't do is show in the --record-- that the ACW was not caused by slavery.
No slavery agitation, no war.
Walt
You know, I find that I never have to make statements like this.
I guess it's all a matter of context.
Walt
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.