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Confederates in revisionism: Lee on the rise as Columbus falls
Daytona Beach News-Journal ^ | 8 October 2002 | Pierre Tristam

Posted on 10/09/2002 9:49:51 AM PDT by Rebeleye

In the Confederacy's case, the revisionism is ill-intentioned and manipulative, a corruption of the record to recast the Lost Cause into something honorable that happened to fall short, to be defeated in a battle among equals. It is a Civil War re-enactment where every man is a gentleman, every cause a just cause. Neo-Confederates use the language of honor, virtue, duty, of the Confederacy's Columbus-like motto Deo Vindice, "With God As Our Defender" and call it their heritage. But it is all sedative language hiding, as it did so well for three centuries, the South's original and ultimately irrepressible sin: White supremacy, from which the South has not yet been fully emancipated.

(Excerpt) Read more at news-journalonline.com ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: columbus; confederate; robertelee
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To: stainlessbanner

I agree! More of the Yankee ass showing going on here.

21 posted on 10/09/2002 4:48:53 PM PDT by Colt .45
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To: Colt .45
More of the Yankee ass showing going on here.

And more than a few southron ones as well.

22 posted on 10/09/2002 5:45:05 PM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: sheltonmac
"...the Confederacy is being revised upward for the same reason."

The Confederacy requires no revision:

"The Union, sir, is dissolved. That is an accomplished fact in the path of this discussion that men may as well heed. One of our confederates [South Carolina] has already, wisely, bravely, boldly confronted public danger. and she is only ahead of many of her sisters because of her greater facility for speedy action. The greater majority of those sister States, under like circumstances, consider her cause as their cause; and I charge you in their name to-day: 'Touch not Saguntum.' It is not only their cause, but it is a cause which receives the sympathy and will receive the support of tens and hundreds of thousands of honest patriot men in the nonslaveholding States, who have hitherto maintained constitutional rights, and who respect their oaths, abide by compacts, and love justice...

"Senators, my countrymen have demanded no new government; they have demanded no new Constitution. Look to their records at home and here from the beginning of this national strife until its consummation in the disruption of the empire, and they have not demanded a single thing except that you shall abide by the Constitution of the United States; that constitutional rights shall be respected, and that justice shall be done. Sirs, they have stood by your Constitution; they have stood by all its requirements, they have performed all its duties unselfishly, uncalculatingly, disinterestedly...I have stated that the discontented States of this Union have demanded nothing but clear, distinct, unequivocal, well-acknowledged constitutional rights - rights affirmed by the highest judicial tribunals of their country...We have demanded of them simply, solely - nothing else - to give us equality, security and tranquility. Give us these, and peace restores itself. Refuse them, and take what you can get.

"Sirs, the Constitution is a compact. It contains all our obligations and the duties of the federal government. I am content and have ever been content to sustain it. While I doubt its perfection, while I do not believe it was a good compact, and while I never saw the day that I would have voted for it as a proposition 'de novo,' yet I am bound to it by oath and by that common prudence which would induce men to abide by established forms rather than to rush into unknown dangers. I have given to it, and intend to give it, unfaltering support and allegiance, but I choose to put that allegiance on the true ground, not on the false idea that anybody's blood was shed for it. I say that the Constitution is the whole compact. All the obligations, all the chains that fetter the limbs of my people, are nominated in the bond, and they wisely excluded any conclusion against them, by declaring that 'the powers not granted by the Constitution to the United States, or forbidden by it to the States, belonged to the States respectively or the people.'

"Now I will try it by that standard; I will subject it to that test. The law of nature, the law of justice, would say - and it is so expounded by the publicists - that equal rights...shall be enjoyed. This right of equality being, then, according to justice and natural equity, a right belonging to all States, when did we give it up?

"What, then, will you take? You will take nothing but your own judgement; that is, you will not only judge for yourselves, not only discard the court, discard our construction [of the Constitution], discard the practice of the government, but you will drive us out, simply because you will it...In a compact where there is no common arbiter, where the parties finally decide for themselves, the sword alone at last becomes the real, if not the constitutional, arbiter...You say we shall submit to your construction. We shall do it, if you can make us; but not otherwise, or in any other manner. That is settled. You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you - that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands."

Senator Robert Augustus Toombs of Georgia, upon resigning from the Senate of the United States, January 7, 1861

23 posted on 10/09/2002 7:36:58 PM PDT by Who is John Galt?
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To: wideawake
"If the Confederates were fighting for slavery, and if Lincoln was willing to concede slavery to keep the Union together, what motivated the Confederacy to fight? Lincoln's accomodation, by your reasoning, should have stolen all their thunder. But they fought on. 90% of the soldiers who fought for the Confederacy gained no benefit from the institution. They owned no slaves and their own financial prospects were significantly impaired by the huge pool of almost-free labor the slaves represented. They were outnumbered in the field with poor supplies. Why did they fight?"

My opinion: Most of the people of the South were just as much sheep to their government as people are today. For example, most had little to say or power over "government", over the issue of "slavery", or unfair "tariffs" imposed by the Northern industrial states. All that was nothing but politics to them. They were busy just trying to make a descent living.

BUT...., when the Northern armies began invading their towns and homes, shooting, killing, burning, arresting local officials (rebels), etc, what do you think they would do? Let it happen? To the Southern people they were fighting a foreign enemy on their own soil, as surely as our ancestors did in the American revolution.

We can possibly debate who started it, and why they started it, but once the fighting started, the South was fighting for their lives and homeland. Slavery, unfair tariffs, were of minor consequence to them then. The invading Northern army never even gave them an opportunity to consider any such concessions. Politics at the end of a gun barrel.

24 posted on 10/09/2002 7:38:26 PM PDT by Bob Mc
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To: Colt .45
-- Hey - there's no way that flag can be flown upside down!
It's indistressable! No matter how many lies are told about the nature of things in the South, there she is - proud and true! :)
25 posted on 10/09/2002 8:27:02 PM PDT by H.Akston
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To: Rebeleye
"They are too just to wish that a partial sacrifice should be made for the general good, and too well aware that whatever may be the intrinsic character of that description of property, it is one known to the Constitution, and, as such, could not be constitutionally taken away without just compensation." - James Madison, June 15, 1819

"They are too just to wish that a partial sacrifice should be made for the general good" - such brilliant words, and exactly the opposite of "liberal think" today.

Madison is saying here that the elimination of slavery is a national problem, and that the slave owners alone, should not be expected to bear the financial impact of the emancipation of legal, constitutionally sanctioned property. That would be asking a "partial" segment of the population to bear the brunt of the entire country's inherited defect. That's what many tax-the-rich liberals expect, today!

26 posted on 10/09/2002 8:50:39 PM PDT by H.Akston
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To: Non-Sequitur
Has Walt disowned you?....LOL....I was momentarily so proud of you....I know I know....it will be fleeting..

I salute you....sometimes you are ok for a dastardly bluebellied scoundrel.
27 posted on 10/09/2002 10:01:43 PM PDT by wardaddy
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To: stainlessbanner
I wish to be emancipated from my property taxes....if you hear of any aboloitionists of this type....please let me know.

I'm a slave to the beast of public school funding.....I hope my heirs sue for reparations some day.
28 posted on 10/09/2002 10:04:08 PM PDT by wardaddy
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To: Rebeleye
"the rest of us may have descended or ascended from monkeys, but it took a God to make Marse Robert"

[From Four Years Under Marse Robert, 1904, by Robert Stiles (1836-1905), Major of Artillery in the Army of Northern Virginia]

29 posted on 10/09/2002 10:21:40 PM PDT by rustbucket
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To: H.Akston
-- Hey - there's no way that flag can be flown upside down!

Or sideways, for that matter. That makes it almost fool proof.

30 posted on 10/10/2002 4:46:32 AM PDT by Non-Sequitur
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To: Bob Mc
Exactly. There is the famous anecdote of the penniless, starving, barefoot, wounded Confederate captured by well-fed, well-shod Union troops. He was asked why he was fighting. He responded: " 'Cause y'all are down here".
31 posted on 10/10/2002 6:36:18 AM PDT by wideawake
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To: Who is John Galt?
"The Confederacy requires no revision"

Well, it does (at least people's perception of it) in the sense that it has been revised down for so long by the victors. Having gone through the government school system, I know the lies perpetrated by the North's version of the story.

32 posted on 10/10/2002 6:36:49 AM PDT by sheltonmac
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To: Who is John Galt?
You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you - that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands."

Many thanks to the Senator from Georgia.

33 posted on 10/10/2002 6:48:46 AM PDT by stainlessbanner
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To: Bob Mc
"We can possibly debate who started it, and why they started it, but once the fighting started, the South was fighting for their lives and homeland."

True. The motives of politicians and the motives of average citizens have never really been the same.

34 posted on 10/10/2002 7:08:22 AM PDT by sheltonmac
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To: Bob Mc
BUT...., when the Northern armies began invading their towns and homes, shooting, killing, burning, arresting local officials (rebels), etc, what do you think they would do? Let it happen? To the Southern people they were fighting a foreign enemy on their own soil, as surely as our ancestors did in the American revolution.

We can possibly debate who started it, and why they started it, but once the fighting started, the South was fighting for their lives and homeland. Slavery, unfair tariffs, were of minor consequence to them then. The invading Northern army never even gave them an opportunity to consider any such concessions. Politics at the end of a gun barrel.

Well said. Bravo!

35 posted on 10/10/2002 7:15:47 AM PDT by A2J
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To: H.Akston
-- Hey - there's no way that flag can be flown upside down! It's indistressable! No matter how many lies are told about the nature of things in the South, there she is - proud and true! :)

Another beautiful post!

36 posted on 10/10/2002 7:16:55 AM PDT by A2J
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To: stainlessbanner; Who is John Galt?
You may call it secession, or you may call it revolution; but there is a big fact standing before you, ready to oppose you - that fact is, freemen with arms in their hands."

Such a true statement.

The South are still full of "freemen," those who believe like their forefathers that no one has the right to tell the people of a state what they should do.

As I've said before, the more pure DNA of the Founding Fathers is found in those who sided with the South.

37 posted on 10/10/2002 7:26:56 AM PDT by A2J
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