Posted on 07/22/2002 12:30:48 PM PDT by Aurelius
I occasionally get some rather rude e-mail from those with a deep-rooted Yankee mentality in regard to my little web site. Usually the writer informs me, rather contemptuously that my web site is all wet, that it stinks, that the War of Northern Aggression was really fought to preserve slavery, that I am totally in error about Abraham Lincoln, who, in the writer's opinion, is really god, and on it goes. 'Those people' never offer historical argument to back up what they say [they can't] but they are quite accomplished at ridiculing others when they, themselves, don't have a clue about the historical accuracy of anything. No doubt many of them are cultural marxists and don't even realize it. But, then, no one has ever accused those with a Yankee mentality of being over-endowed with discernment. Let me say here, that when I refer to the Yankee mindset, I am not offering a blanket condemnation of all Northern folks, else I would also condemn myself. I know lots of good Northerners who would cringe at being thought of as Yankees, and I know some Southerners who, unfortunately, fit perfectly into the Yankee mold. What I am talking about has no connection whatever with where you were born.
I got a rather nice e-mail recently from a Southern-born Yankee type who crudely informed me that "Lincoln was right and J W. Booth, and R. E. Lee and Jeff Davis and the rest of the gang were murderers who all deserved to be hanged." You can really tell that this character did his homework - what historical insight! He then went on to inform me that he was a white man born in the South but was, "thankfully educated in California." Folks, I submit, that anyone today who is thankful for having been 'educated' in California the way this man seems to have been 'educated' is just not the brightest light in the harbor. He then informed me, in his infinite wisdom that I should 'get a life' beyond my web site and 'grow a brain.' He closed his tirade with the statement that Lincoln was the last of the good Republicans, and his parting salutation was 'Long live Bill Clinton.' Usually I don't bother replying to such sanctimonious drivel, but, in this man's case I made an exception. I e-mailed him back and told him that if people such as he didn't like my web site then I must be doing something right. I suppose I should have ended my reply to him with 'Have a nice day' but, for some unknown reason, I didn't bother to.
This individual is a perfect example of the Yankee mindset - smug, self-satisfied, egotistical, and totally ensconced within a sense of their own perfect rightness in all things and on all issues. Anyone daring to disagree with them has to be berated because 'those people' have got it all figured out - after all, their 'teachers' and 'college professors' dutifully informed them that the war was all about slavery and that Lincoln freed all the slaves, and the 'history' professor wouldn't lie - would he? Lincoln must be more astute than Jesus Christ because, after all, Lincoln came along more recently on the evolutionary scale didn't he?
I have had people that checked out my web site and disagreed with something they saw on it. Often they have contacted me and have been courteous enough to voice their opinions in a civil manner. Others have offered constructive criticism, which was all right, because I took it in the spirit in which it was given. I had a black man once that read one of my articles and took exception to it, stating that he was a Christian. I contacted him back, informing him that I was also a Christian and with Christian charity, I sought to correct the misconception that he had. Once he understood where I was coming from we were able to carry on a dialogue with no bad feeling on either side. Some folks will check out the site and come back with genuine questions about something. That's fine. I answer what I can historically [unlike the Yankees, I don't claim to have all the answers about everything] and I often try to pass these folks on to someone else that knows more than I do.
But there is a certain class of Yankees - often well 'educated' that are just so superior to the rest of us 'great unwashed' that they don't even feel the need to attempt courtesy. They howl about us 'rednecks' and what we write and tell us to 'get a life' yet the sum total of their 'life' seems to be wrapped up in demeaning those who dare to disagree with their vaunted opinions.
A while back, Professor Clyde Wilson wrote an excellent article in Southern Partisan magazine called The Yankee Problem in America. In it Professor Wilson took on such Yankee paragons or 'virtue' as Ted Kennedy, the man who never learned to drive over a bridge straight, and St. Hillary Clinton of 'Cattle Futures' fame. Wilson described such people as smug, self-righteous, above the rules the rest of us live by, and completely convinced that they are right in all things - right enough that they deserve the privilege of telling the rest of us how to live - all for 'our own good' of course [and just maybe for their profit.]
There is no place in the Yankee mindset for grace, courtesy, compassion, consideration of the feelings of others, or for any of those Scriptural virtues that have graced and improved our civilization in the past. The Yankee knows only complete self-righteousness and, in that self-righteousness he exhibits a certain perverse pleasure in seeking to trample on the feelings of those who dare to disagree with his elevated opinions. In most cases, the Yankee understanding of accurate history is about an inch deep, and therefore, he becomes little more than a 'useful idiot' that the cultural Marxist professor that 'educated' him can turn loose on the world for the total benefit of the New World Order.
Judah Benjamin served in the Confederate Cabinet throughout the War. The first Jew in the U.S. Cabinet wasn't appointed until 1898. I went to a Catholic H.S. in Queens and heard the epithets "Jew Bastard" and "Nigger" more times than I'd care to remember. If I had to guess, I say there was more rancor for Jews who were envied than for Blacks who were disdained.
Bump.
Who'd you get to spell the big words for you?
Yes it was.
"Edmund Ruffin was writing to Yancey, saying that it would be a "clear & unmistakable indication of future and fixed domination of the Northern section & its abolition policy over the southern states & their institutions, & the beginning of a sure and speedy progress to the extermination of negro slavery & the consequent utter ruin of the prosperity of the South." The only possible answer to this, he wrote, must be secession. In his diary, Ruffin wrote that his sons hoped that Lincoln would be defeated but that he did not. "I most earnestly & anxiously desire Lincoln to be elected -- because I have hope that at least one state, S.C. wil secede & that others will follow -- & even if otherwise, I wish the question tested & settlted now. If there is a general submission now, there never will be future maintenance of our rights -- & the end of negro slavery may be considered as settled. I can think of little else than this momentous crisis of our institutions and our fate.
Few men were as realistic or as outspoken as Edmund Ruffin. There were even times when it seemed as if the pro-slavery and anti-slavery parties were repeating the same ugly words. Yancey himself got into New York, in the middle of this campaign, and he made a light-hearted taunting speech which was strangely like the thoughts which that Cincinnati campaign newspaper, the Railsplitter, had given to the north a few weeks earlier.
Slavery, said Yancey, was an institution necessary to the south and to the north as well; and furthermore, it was nothing any northerner need worry about. "It is an institution, too, that doesn't harm you, for we don't let our niggers run about to injure anybody; we keep them; they never steal from you; they don't trouble you with that peculiar stench which is very good in the nose of the Southern man but intolerable in the nose of a Northerner." Yet the north might elect Lincoln, who would "build up an abolitionist party in every southern state," and Yancey warned that this would not be borne: "Wirh the election of a black Republican, all the south would be menaced. Emissaries will percolate between master and slave as water between the crevices of the rocks underground....The keystone of the arch of the Union is already crumbling. A more weighty question was never before you. One freighted with the fate of societies and of nationalities is on your mind."
--"The Coming Fury" p. 98-99 by Bruce Catton
"If we shall suppose that American slavery is one of those offenses which, in the providence of God, must needs come, but which, having continued through His appointed time, He now wills to remove, and that He gives to both North and South this terrible war as the woe due to those by whom the offense came, shall we discern therein any departure from those divine attributes which the believers in a living God always ascribe to Him? Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman's two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said "the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether."
A. Lincoln, 3/4/65
Walt
Long live the republic of Carthage.
'bout the same.
Walt
Despite the myth, Union arms were almost universally crowned with success, especially in the west. The advance in the west went from Forts Henry and Donelson, through Vicksburg and Corinth to Stone's River and Murfreesbourough, down to Atlanta, Savannah and Charleston, with only the single check at Chickamaugua.
"A new England private said that each evening the men in the company would speculate about the number of deserters who would come in that night: "The boys talk about the Johnnies as at home we talk about suckers and eels. The boys will look around in the evening and guess that there will be a good run of Johnnies." Heavy firing on the picket line was always taken to mean that the enemy wsa trying to keep deserters from getting away."
"A Stillness at Apotmattox" pp 330-31, by Bruce Catton
This was interesting:
"It developed that [Alexander]Stephens's [vice president of the so-called CSA] nephew, a Confederate officer, had for twenty months been a prisoner of war on Johnson's Island, in Sandusty Bay. Lincoln made a note of it, and a few days later that surprised young officer found himself called out of prison and seat down to Washington, where be was taken to the White House for a chai with President Lincoln; after which be was sent tbrough the lines to Richmond. The Confederates returned the favor, picking at random a Union officer of the same rank, and so the 13th New Hampshire presently welcomed the return of its Lieutenant Murray, who who was delighted and surprised by the whole business."
Ibid. p 333
Walt
Lincoln clearly implicated the federal government came first. That's a flat out lie. There was no coersion to force the states to join. It was voluntary as set forth in the Constitution.
Maybe I am a far-sighted federal pharisee, fully figuring the fatal flaws in your foolish fluff.
The Supreme Court ruled -unanimously- in 1862 that the actions of the so-called seceded states were outside the law. That is the "no black man has a right that a white man has to respect" Taney Court now.
President Lincoln's -interpretation- also matches that of Chief Justice John Jay:
"The revolution, or rather the Declaration of Independence, found the people already united for general purposes, and at the same time, providing for their more domestic concerns by state conventions, and other temporary arrangements.
From the crown of Great Britain, the sovereignty of their country passed to the people of it; and it was then not an uncommon opinion, that the unappropriated lands, which belonged to that crown, passed, not to the people of the colony or states within whose limits they were situated, but to the whole people; on whatever principles this opinion rested, it did not give way to the other, and thirteen sovereignties were considered as emerged from the principles of the revolution, combined with local convenience and considerations; the people nevertheless continued to consider themselves, in a national point of view, as one people; and they continued without interruption to manage their national concerns accordingly; afterwards, in the hurry of the war, and in the warmth of mutual confidence, they made a confederation of the States, the basis of a general Government."
--Chief Justice John Jay, 1793
Walt
Where does the Constitution say that?
The Constitution speaks to "We the People", not "We the states".
Walt
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