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
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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.
Government: You are going to pay taxes.
Well Asa, there's a lot of black folks walking around whose grandparents and great grandparents are telling them bold faced lies about fighting for the South then!!
In the United States, Confederate memorials dot the countryside. The flag is flown with pride. The Nazi flag - and Nazi leaders - inspire hatred.
And you know what? There's even a few to the brave black soldiers who fought for the South!! What are you going to do about those? Tear them down? Wouldn't that be racist of you
And looky here. Why say it ain't so, Walt!!!
Here's a page all about Asa and the 'wonderful' organizations he supports. This fool couldn't even get into another organization so I guess he had to start his own!!!! And right from Asa's page
The Douglass Institute of Government (DIG) is an educational " think tank " dedicated to research and policy studies on African - American culture, history, and relevant contemporary issues in support of Frederick Douglass' admonition to a young student: "Agitate, agitate, agitate".Gee Walt do you think you could come up with anybody else further to the left than Asa? Or anymore racist? Click on the link!! It's a jokeAffirmative action is widely thought to be unfair because it benefits minority applicants at the expense of more deserving whites. Yet this perception tends to inflate the cost beyond its real proportions. While it is true that affirmative action gives minority applicants a significant boost in selective admissions, it is not true that most white applicants would fare better if elite schools eliminated the practice. Understanding why is crucial to separating fact from fiction in the national debate over affirmative action. ...These figures show that rejected white applicants have every reason not to blame their misfortune on affirmative action. In selective admissions, the competition is so intense that even without affirmative action, the overwhelming majority of rejected white applicants still wouldn't get in.
The CSA exposed.
More like Walt exposed. Do you support the SPLC and Morris Dees, Walt?
This is not just self-serving family legend that grew up after the war -- I have all this documented in the original letters, which my gg grandmother saved in her breakfront drawer in the parlor. They are now in Special Collections at Emory University. Some of Grandpa Long's letters were published in James McPherson's "Why They Fought."
I don't know how often this happened . . . how many folks treated their slaves decently and had good relationships with them, acknowledged marriages, allowed them to read & write, earn money, etc. I don't know how many people believed the politicians' rantings. But it's common in the South to have a fairly obvious split between the rhetoric and the actual way that ordinary decent people treated each other, despite the existence of a rotten system, plus the usual complement of nasty trash who shouldn't be allowed to keep a dog, let alone have another human being's life in their hands. But no-good folks are everywhere, including the New York draft riots. Southerners have no monopoly on them.
Extreme One: The North fought a war against the South because they were acting out of altrusim and love for black people, and only wanted to bring it's wayward cousin, the Antebellum South, into civilization.
Extreme Two: The South was fighting a war against the North only to prevent excessive federalism, to promote states rights, and to preserve the right of secession.
Yeah, and in the Feudal ages, your Lord only took one-third.
Now we pay more than half.
Statistics as the "mathematics of the collection, organization, and interpretation of the numerical data, esp. the analysis of population characteristics by inference from sampling", (American Heritage Dictionary), is accepted as a valid scientific discipline in our social endeavors except where it might infer the racist characteristics of a measured white population. Here it suffers racist exclusion as a science by arguing that any statistical proof of discriminatory bias should move us to reject as reverse discrimination a statistical response "quotas" that would guarantee access to victims of the bias, to the detriment of those who have been statistically proven to have benefited from that bias. We cannot respond to a prejudicial imbalance in numbers by resorting to numbers.Jim Crowe Science
This is Jim Crow science.An overview of the statistical proof of structural White Supremacy that cannot and will not be addressed, by Law
Hey Walt, you going? Can I catch a ride with you? It's free admission. Probably the only way this fool could get anybody to show up!!
Nothing's that simple, Tok.
The Confederacy was out gunned, out manned and out produced, they didn't have a chance.
They could, however, shoot much straighter and had much better looking women! {;o)
I'm glad I saved the receipt on that magic lamp I bought, the wishes don't work, as it is apparent that Wlat has not yet expired of intestinal cancer in a part of the world where the benefits of morphine remain as yet undiscovered.
Curious indeed.
Have you never heard of the Janissaries? A better description of this fighting group, feared for generations, I can not imagine: slave-warriors.
This ding-dong never heard of Carthage? The Muslim conquests?
FR sure is educational.
Cultures that have made soldiers of slaves ultimately do fail, but the original statement is preposterous on its face.
Slavery was AN issue............not THE issue...........that led to the Civil War. Bone up and come back again sometime.
I understand a proposed amendment to the Constitution--which amendment, however, I have not seen--has passed Congress, to the effect that the Federal Government shall never interfere with the domestic institutions of the States, including that of persons held to service. To avoid misconstruction of what I have said, I depart from my purpose not to speak of particular amendments so far as to say that, holding such a provision to now be implied Constitutional law, I have no objection to its being made express and irrevocablelincoln could have cared less about slavery or blacks. All he wanted to do was save his precious 'union'
What crap.
Of course this is purely a "black slave" thing, the reluctance to go get killed.
Funny, I failed to see even a hint of a mention of the violent northern riots against conscription by whites who felt exactly the same way about fighting a war they wanted no part of.
Laz, I think you have the rights of it. History's like everything else in life . . . you have some extremes but most folks are in the middle somewhere, among the shades of grey. I never knew my Grandpa Long but I knew his daughter in law, my great grandmother, very well (my great grandfather died very young of typhoid, leaving Nanny with two children and one on the way) and she always spoke very highly of him. Apparently he was a hard working rather close-fisted man (farmer and merchant) but very kind-hearted and shy. He told Nanny that he only once struck a slave - because he was "unmercifully beating a horse." I think that, to the extent he could be (given the times and the culture he grew up in) he was a humane master. (Had he not been, surely Bas would have "taken off" at one of any number of opportunities, e.g. on the way home from the war, or when the Yankees came through.)
"They were rebels, and they are traitors to the United States."
At the close of the war, Lincoln realized the only route to peace - if any were to be had - was to offer amnesty to those who fought against the Union. There are many instances (my GGgrandfathers included) who sware allegiance to USA after the war's end in order to obtain that pardon.
The revisionists continue only to see that rebellion while, convenient to further their cause of inciting hatred, they refuse to acknowledge the grant of amnesty...
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