Vanderbilt professor maligns UDC,Confederate Heritage in Editorial

The Tennessean ^ | 20 November 02 | Jonathan D. Farley

[Rebeleye]

Lest we forget, the Confederacy aimed to destroy the United States. Every Confederate soldier, by the mores of his age and ours, deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows. The UDC honors traitors.

[rwfok]

A picture is worth a thousand words.

[Leatherneck_MT]

Yes, that's right, Slavery was a hideous evil. Slavery would have died on it's own in the south, it was already on decline. The War Between the States was a 10th Amendment war and nothing else. The rights of the states to self determination. I don't give a hoot in hell WHAT you liberal propagandists say. The War was about SELF DETERMINATION. Nothing more.

Now we have a government that wishes to record every transaction that you make in a national database. Maybe ol' Jeff Davis and his boys knew what the hell they were talking about.

[The Iguana]

Every Confederate soldier, by the mores of his age and ours, deserved not a hallowed resting place at the end of his days but a reservation at the end of the gallows.

That certainly would have gotten Reconstruction off to a positive start. (/sarcasm off)

Not that there weren't some Radical Republicans (i.e., Ben Wade) who were advocating policies along these lines. Fortunately for the country, they did not get their way.

Harrassing the UDC makes about as much sense as current neo-confederate efforts to glorify the CSA.

I wonder what that $50,000 comes to in 2002 dollars?

[Arkie2]

Check out the professors home page for a very revealing photo!


http://www.math.vanderbilt.edu/~farley/

[Dionysius]

The revisionist ravings of yet another tenured radical. I swear, they can't even drive by a statue without making it part of their agenda. Flipping it the bird is pitifully sophomoric and defines their inellectual status.

[Old Professer]

Its a harmless statue and of the people of TN want him removed they can take it down. Personally, I find that statue of Lenin in Seattle, WA much more offensive.

What you may not know, but the author surely does, is that this statue was locally sculpted and sets on private property apart from public easements yet in view from the interstate highway; tearing it down would constitute criminal trespass.

I "liked" the author's zero sum approach to war: kill all of the "survivors."

[Non-Sequitur]

Slavery would have died on it's own in the south, it was already on decline.

Slavery was not on the decline, and it would have ended in the south only over the dead bodies of the slave owners. You only have to see the lengths that they went to to protect slavery in their constitution to realize that.

[don-o]

Lest we forget, the Confederacy aimed to destroy the United States.

That's all the reading it takes to know that yet another Clymer is in print.

[Non-Sequitur]

...good, good north and the bad, bad south.

Now there's a case of the pot calling the kettle black. IMHO, of course.

[x]

The Confederate states wanted to leave the Union and live in peace with them.

The Confederate government was out to get all the territory it could get, hold and rule. They were a goverment, after all. And they weren't willing to let potential Confederates in the territories and Border States down, any more than unionists were willing to let unionists in Southern states in the lurch. If the rebels had really wanted "to live in peace with" the union they would have proceded differently. They were determined to take their independence and whatever else they could get with a sword.

[Non-Sequitur]

The Confederate states wanted to leave the Union and live in peace with them.

I guess we missed the 'live in peace' part after y'all shot up Fort Sumter.

[WhiskeyPapa]

There's no good side to the CSA.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Today's Confederates, who deny that the war was about slavery, are the new holocaust revisionists.

That's a valid point. There's a passel of 'em on FR, too.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

The Confederate states wanted to leave the Union and live in peace with them.

A purse snatcher wants the lady to give up her purse peaceably too.

The sesesh aimed to get what they wanted at the point of a gun.

Walt

[Redbob]

I'll match that dimbulb professor quote for quote.
From lincoln's (intentional failure to capitalize) first inaugural address:

"I have no purpose, directly or indirectly, to interfere with the institution of slavery in the States where it exists. I believe I have no lawful right to do so, and I have no inclination to do so."

In a letter to Horace Greeley, lincoln wrote:
"If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it,... and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that. What I do about slavery, and the colored race, I do because I believe it helps to save the Union."

And finally, this, from the Douglas Debates, when lincoln said:

"I have no purpose to introduce political and social equality between the white and the black races. There is a physical difference between the two, which in my judgment will probably forever forbid their living together upon the footing of perfect equality, and inasmuch as it becomes a necessity that there must be a difference, I, as well as Judge Douglas, am in favor of the race to which I belong, having the superior position."

[Redbob]

Robert Lee twice could have walked unmolested into Washington after dust-ups at Bull Run, if only he had known how utterly beaten and demoralized were his "stalwart" opponents.

[wastoute]

And the slaves were treated so much worse than the Irish in the North and the Chinese in the West...

[wastoute]

I read that there was every expectation that States COULD secede from the Union and that, in fact, the Commonwealth of Massachussetts had threatened to secede some dozen times prior to 1861, and no one expected that they would be invaded had they done so. In fact, I heard there was a "Kentucky Resolution" drawn up in Congress decades before the War that essentially stated a State could leave the Union at will. In this light, Ft Sumter was fired on when the "squatters" refused to leave.

[Non-Sequitur]

Robert Lee twice could have walked unmolested into Washington after dust-ups at Bull Run, if only he had known how utterly beaten and demoralized were his "stalwart" opponents.

No he couldn't.

[Non-Sequitur]

Depends on your point of view, I guess. On the one hand, the slave owners were more likely to look after the slave a little better than the employer of the Irish or the Chinese might have. The slave, after all, was property and represented an investment. On the other hand, the slave was still a slave. He had no rights that anyone was legally bound to recognize and could be sold at will. I would probably still pick the lot of the Irish over the lot of the slave.