3 major U.S. Civil War movies due in 2003: Could Rebel Flag Revival Follow? (My Title)

So you want me to forfeit my heritage to ward off minority control of our government?

No offense but that sounds a bit racial don't you think?

Do it for the GOP?.....well I am a pragmatist and I can't say it doesn't have appeal but I should point out that 40% of my black homeys in Mississippi voted to KEEP our state flag.

Blacks are not our problem in the liberal decline anymore. It's urban concentrated Mexican peasants. Wait till they come for the Alamo. Anglo Westerners are the next non-PC boogerbear.

This whole flag feelings ruffling is a relatively new invention. When I lived in Manhattan from 1982 -1988, we flew both the CBF and my Mississippi flag at Mississippi Day in Central Park behind the Met and had such notable liberals as Willie Morris, Tom Wicker, Hodding Carter Jr, and Pat Derian in attendance along with many prominant Southern blacks and no one cared or even thought about it. It was just our flag and we were over it. LOL...I was a liberal in transition by then.

Now, it's been demonized and exploited by the race hustlers (along with some Klan and CI help admittedly) and Hollywood and we are all supposed to just go well "ok..you guys say it;s bad so we'll roll over".

I'm not but your reasons for suggesting so on your last post are not without some merit. I prefer to fight the culture war to the bitter end.

I hope you are not in the mood for compromise when they come for our second amendment rights as they most assuredly will one day.

"Its for this reason that anit-illegal immigrant sentiment must also be tempered."

They are invaders not immigrants...I would only ask of them if they want to come here, to do it legally...

Exactly. General Lee disagreed with Slavery.

That is false.

Lee wrote in a January 11, 1865 letter that the best relationship between whites and blacks was that of master and slave.

Walt

Thomas Jefferson condemned the slave trade in the original draft of the Declaration of Independence, but the New England slave traders lobbied to have the clause stricken.

South Carolina and Georgia opposed this clause, not the New England states.

Walt

Owning slaves was expensive - the VAST majority of the whites in the south could not afford to own slaves. There were actually only a small percentage of slave owners in the south, mostly plantation owners.

This is false.

In 1850, slave ownership devolved on 1/2 of the whites in MS, LA and SC. Slave ownership devolved on 1/3 of whites in the other deep south states.

The taker of the 1850 census, J.E. B. DeBow, indicated that there were more slave owners in the south than there were real property owners in the north.

From a letter DeBow wrote in 1860:

Assuming the published returns, however, to be correct, it will appear that one half of the population of South Carolina, Mississippi, and Louisiana, excluding the cities, are slaveholders, and that one third of the population of the entire South are similarly circumstanced. The average number of slaves is nine to each slaveholding family, and one half of the whole number of such holders are in possession of less than five slaves.

It will thus appear that the slaveholders of the South, so far from constituting, numerically, an insignificant portion of its people, as has been malignantly alleged, make up an aggregate greater in relative proportion than the holders of any other species of property whatever, in any part of the world; and that of no other property can it be said, with equal truthfulness, that it is an interest of the whole community. While every other family in the States I have specially referred to are slaveholders, but one family in every three and a half families in Maine, New-Hampshire, Massachusetts, and Connecticut, are holders of agricultural land; and in European states the proportion is almost indefinitely less. The proportion which the slaveholders of the South bear to the entire population is greater than that of the owners of land or houses, agricultural stock, State, bank, or other corporation securities anywhere else. No political economist will deny this. Nor is that all. Even in the States which are among the largest slaveholding, South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee, the land proprietors outnumber nearly two to one, in relative proportion, the owners of the same property in Maine, Massachusetts, and Connecticut; and if the average number of slaves held by each family throughout the South be but nine, and if one half of the whole number of slaveholders own under five slaves, it will be seen how preposterous is the allegation of our enemies, that the slaveholding class is an organized wealthy aristocracy. The poor men of the South are the holders of one to five slaves, and it would be equally consistent with truth and justice to say that they represent, in reality, its slaveholding interest."

Your original statement is preposterous.

Walt

South Carolina and Georgia opposed this clause, not the New England states.

FALSE! :-)

Then why did he release his wife's slaves?

Stupid nonsense boy.

Two things,,

1st. Don't call me boy,,boy!!!

2nd. Your post makes no sence.

"In simple words rarely heard in the United States Senate, Wigfall of Texas had said: "I am a plain, blunt-spoken man. We say that man has a right to property in man. We say that slaves are our property. We say that it is the duty of every government to protect its property everywhere. If you wish to settle this matter, declare that slaves are property, and like all other property entitled to be protected in every quarter of the globe, on land and sea, Say that to us, and then the difficulty is settled."

Jefferson Davis was saying, "Slave property is the only private property in the United States specifically recognized in the Constitution and protected by it."

...Edwin A. Pollard of Virginia had just published "Black Diamonds," calling for the African slave trade to be made lawful again; then negroes fresh from the jungles could be sold in southern seaports at $ioo.oo to $150.00 at-head. "The poor man might then hope to own a negro; the prices of labor would then be in his reach; he would be a small farmer revolutionizing the character of agriculture in the South; he would at once step up to a respectable station in the social system of the South; and with this he would acquire a practical and dear interest in the general institution of slavery that would constitute its best protection both at home and abroad. He would no longer be a miserable, nondescript cumberer of the soil, scratching the land here and there for a subsistence, living from band to mouth) or trespassing along the borders of the possessions of the large proprietors. He would be a proprietor himself. He would no longer be the scorn and sport of 'gentlemen of color' who parade their superiority, rub their well-stuffed black skins, and thank God they are not as he. Of all things I cannot bear to see negro slaves, affect superiority over the poor, needy, unsophisticated whites, who form a terribly large proportion of the population of the South."

Pollard could vision steps and advances "toward the rearing of that great Southern Empire) whose seat is eventually to be in Central America, and whose boundaries are to enclose the Gulf of Mexico." Ahead were "magnificent fields of romance" for the South, as he saw its future. "It is an empire founded on military ideas; representing the noble peculiarities of southern civilization; including within its limits the isthmuses of America and the regenerated West Indies; having control of the two dominant staples of the world's commerce—cotton and sugar; possessing the highways of the world's commerce; surpassing all empires of the world's ages in the strength of its geographical position."

Philadelphia newspapers quoted a speech by Senator Herschel V. Johnson of Georgia in their city. "We believe that capital should own labor; is there any doubt that there must be a laboring class everywhere? In all countries and under every form of social organization there must be a laboring class -- a class of men who get their living from the sweat of their brow; and then there must be another class that controls and directs the capital of the country. He pleaded: "Slave property stands upon the same footing as all other descriptions of property."

--"Abraham Lincoln, Vol. II, Prairie Years, by Carl Sandburg pp.217-221

Of course, everybody didn't think that.

"The principles of Jefferson are the definitions and axioms of free society. And yet they are denied, and evaded, with no small show of success. One dashingly calls them "glittering generalities"; another bluntly calls them "self evident lies"; and still others insidiously argue that they only apply to "superior races."

These expressions, differing in form, are identical in object and effect. -- the supplanting the principles of free government, and restoring those of classification, caste, and legitimacy. They would delight a convocation of crowned heads, plotting against the people. They are the van-guard -- the miners and sappers -- of returning despotism. We must repulse them, or they will subjugate us. This is a world of compensations; and he that would -be- no slave, must consent to --have-- no slave. Those that deny freedom to others, deserve it not for themselves, and under a just God cannot long retain it. All honor to Jefferson -- to the man who, in the concrete pressure of a struggle for national independence by a single people, had the coolness, forecast and capacity to introduce into a merely revolutionary document, an abstract truth, applicible to to all men and all times, and so to embalm it there, that to-day, and in all coming days, it shall be a rebuke and a stumbling block to the very harbingers of re-appearing tyrany and oppression."

Abraham Lincoln, March 1, 1859

Abraham Lincoln in 1860.

Then why did he release his wife's slaves?

He didn't.

Walt

South Carolina and Georgia opposed this clause, not the New England states.

FALSE! :-)

You made the original claim that the NE states opposed Jefferson's clause in the D of I condemning slavery. Show that in the record.

Walt

My point is that the southern soldier, be he officer or enlisted, fought because the people who he considered his government told him to fight. And those people initiated the rebellion to defend what they saw as a threat to slavery.

You made the original claim that the NE states opposed Jefferson's clause in the D of I condemning slavery. Show that in the record.

No,,,,I made the post,,not the claim.

YOU,,,show me. :-)

Gota go,,back later.

Gota go,,back later.

Much later, I suppose, as you made a false statement in #32.

Walt

Thirty year later, with the South paying 87 percent of federal tariff revenue while having their livelihoods threatened by protectionist legislation, it became impossible for the two regions to be governed under the same regime.

Nonsense. Here are the tariff collections for the three largest Northern ports and the 9 largest southern ones.

New York $35,155,452.75
Boston $5,133,414.55
Philadelphia $2,262,349.57
New Orleans $2,120,058.76
Charleston $299,399.43
Mobile $118,027.99
Galveston $92,417.72
Savannah $89,157.18
Norfolk $70,897.73
Richmond $47,763.63
Wilmington, NC $33,104.67
Pensacola $3,577.60

Those figures are for the period June 1859 through June 1860. As you can see about 95% of all tariff revenue was actually collected in three Northern ports. If the southern demand for imported goods was so great then why weren't those goods shipped directly to them? Why go through Northern ports? That 87% figure of yours gets tossed around a lot but there seems to be nothing to back it up. BTW the figures I quoted were from the "Statement Showing the Amount of Revenue Collected Annually", Executive Document No.33, 36th Congress, 1st Session, 1860."

Southerners abolished the African slave trade in the Confederate Constitution.

But it let stand and specifically protected slave imports from the old United States.

a foreign affair ploy, cost Republicans control of the legislature that November.

Nonsense, the Republicans picked up two seats in the Senate for the 38th Congress. They lost seats in the House but retained control. The Speaker was Schuyler Colfax, Republican from Indiana.

Hard to make the case for slavery as the issue, esp when the North turned over the legislation as a result.

Again it is not hard at all. Since you seem to be concentrating on the Northern viewpoint let me provide you some quotes from southerners.

As the last and crowning act of insult and outrage upon the people of the South, the citizens of the Northern States, by overwhelming majorities, on the 6th day of November last, elected Abraham Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin, President and Vice President of the United States. Whilst it may be admitted that the mere election of any man to the Presidency, is not, per se, a sufficient cause for a dissolution of the Union; yet, when the issues upon, and circumstances under which he was elected, are properly appreciated and understood, the question arises whether a due regard to the interest, honor, and safety of their citizens, in view of this and all the other antecedent wrongs and outrages, do not render it the imperative duty of the Southern States to resume the powers they have delegated to the Federal Government, and interpose their sovereignty for the protection of their citizens.

What, then are the circumstances under which, and the issues upon which he was elected? His own declarations, and the current history of the times, but too plainly indicate he was elected by a Northern sectional vote, against the most solemn warnings and protestations of the whole South. He stands forth as the representative of the fanaticism of the North, which, for the last quarter of a century, has been making war upon the South, her property, her civilization, her institutions, and her interests; as the representative of that party which overrides all Constitutional barriers, ignores the obligations of official oaths, and acknowledges allegiance to a higher law than the Constitution, striking down the sovereignty and equality of the States, and resting its claims to popular favor upon the one dogma, the Equality of the Races, white and black." -- Letter of S.F. Hale, Commissioner of Alabama to the State of Kentucky, to Gov. Magoffin of Kentucky

In the momentous step which our State has taken of dissolving its connection with the government of which we so long formed a part, it is but just that we should declare the prominent reasons which have induced our course.

Our position is thoroughly identified with the institution of slavery, the greatest material interest of the world. --Mississppi Declaration of the Causes of Secession

SIR: In obedience to your instructions I repaired to the seat of government of the State of Louisiana to confer with the Governor of that State and with the legislative department on the grave and important state of our political relations with the Federal Government, and the duty of the slave-holding States in the matter of their rights and honor, so menacingly involved in matters connected with the institution of African slavery. --Report from John Winston, Alabama's Secession Commissioner to Louisiana

This was the ground taken, gentlemen, not only by Mississippi, but by other slaveholding States, in view of the then threatened purpose, of a party founded upon the idea of unrelenting and eternal hostility to the institution of slavery, to take possession of the power of the Government and use it to our destruction. It cannot, therefore, be pretended that the Northern people did not have ample warning of the disastrous and fatal consequences that would follow the success of that party in the election, and impartial history will emblazon it to future generations, that it was their folly, their recklessness and their ambition, not ours, which shattered into pieces this great confederated Government, and destroyed this great temple of constitutional liberty which their ancestors and ours erected, in the hope that their descendants might together worship beneath its roof as long as time should last. -- Speech of Fulton Anderson to the Virginia Convention

Texas abandoned her separate national existence and consented to become one of the Confederated Union to promote her welfare, insure domestic tranquility and secure more substantially the blessings of peace and liberty to her people. She was received into the confederacy with her own constitution, under the guarantee of the federal constitution and the compact of annexation, that she should enjoy these blessings. She was received as a commonwealth holding, maintaining and protecting the institution known as negro slavery-- the servitude of the African to the white race within her limits-- a relation that had existed from the first settlement of her wilderness by the white race, and which her people intended should exist in all future time. -- Texas Declaration of the causes of secession

What was the reason that induced Georgia to take the step of secession? This reason may be summed up in one single proposition. It was a conviction, a deep conviction on the part of Georgia, that a separation from the North-was the only thing that could prevent the abolition of her slavery. -- Speech of Henry Benning to the Virginia Convention

Gentlemen, I see before me men who have observed all the records of human life, and many, perhaps, who have been chief actors in many of its gravest scenes, and I ask such men if in all their lore of human society they can offer an example like this? South Carolina has 300,000 whites, and 400,000 slaves. These 300,000 whites depend for their whole system of civilization on these 400,000 slaves. Twenty millions of people, with one of the strongest Governments on the face of the earth, decree the extermination of these 400,000 slaves, and then ask, is honor, is interest, is liberty, is right, is justice, is life, worth the struggle?

Gentlemen, I have thus very rapidly endeavored to group before you the causes which have produced the action of the people of South Carolina. -- Speech of John Preston to the Virginia Convention

This new union with Lincoln Black Republicans and free negroes, without slavery, or, slavery under our old constitutional bond of union, without Lincoln Black Republicans, or free negroes either, to molest us.

If we take the former, then submission to negro equality is our fate. if the latter, then secession is inevitable --- -- Address of William L. Harris of Mississippi

But I trust I may not be intrusive if I refer for a moment to the circumstances which prompted South Carolina in the act of her own immediate secession, in which some have charged a want of courtesy and respect for her Southern sister States. She had not been disturbed by discord or conflict in the recent canvass for president or vice-president of the United States. She had waited for the result in the calm apprehension that the Black Republican party would succeed. She had, within a year, invited her sister Southern States to a conference with her on our mutual impending danger. Her legislature was called in extra session to cast her vote for president and vice-president, through electors, of the United States and before they adjourned the telegraphic wires conveyed the intelligence that Lincoln was elected by a sectional vote, whose platform was that of the Black Republican party and whose policy was to be the abolition of slavery upon this continent and the elevation of our own slaves to equality with ourselves and our children, and coupled with all this was the act that, from our friends in our sister Southern States, we were urged in the most earnest terms to secede at once, and prepared as we were, with not a dissenting voice in the State, South Carolina struck the blow and we are now satisfied that none have struck too soon, for when we are now threatened with the sword and the bayonet by a Democratic administration for the exercise of this high and inalienable right, what might we meet under the dominion of such a party and such a president as Lincoln and his minions. -- Speech of John McQueen, the Secession Commissioner from South Carolina to Texas

History affords no example of a people who changed their government for more just or substantial reasons. Louisiana looks to the formation of a Southern confederacy to preserve the blessings of African slavery, and of the free institutions of the founders of the Federal Union, bequeathed to their posterity. -- Address of George Williamson, Commissioner from Louisiana to the Texas Secession Convention

It is clear that defense of the institution of slavery was the motivating factor, the single most important reason for the rebellion.

Actually the demand was already there.

Where? You claim that the southern plantation owners were anxious to get rid of their slaves when nothing could be farther from the truth. Slaves represented more than just labor to them. They were a very real investment and comprised a large percentage of their personal wealth. On larger plantations the value of the slaves exceeded the value of the land and implements. And you are saying that the southerners would be willing to drop that and go off and purchase a machine to replace them? Nonsense.

Davis and his older brother Joseph ran their plantation with a view toward the freedom of their slaves as soon as possible.

Nonsense. Davis and his brother ran their plantation with a view towards making a profit and nothing else. And they made a very good living at it, too. Davis was a slave owner all his adult life, owning as many as 115 at a time. And in all those years of slave ownership do you know how many of those slaves Davis granted their freedom? None. Zero, zip, zilch, nada, not a single one. If Davis and his brother ran their plantations with a view toward the freedom of their slaves as soon as possible then don't you think that at least one slave would have qualified over the course of 30-odd years? In fact, Jefferson Davis summed up his views towards blacks in March 1861 when he said, "We recognoze the negro as God and God's Book and God's Laws, in nature, tell us to recognize him - as our inferior, fitted expressly for servitude. Freedom only injures the slave. The innate stamp of inferiority is beyond the reach of change. You cannot the negro into anything one-tenth as useful or good as slavery allows him to be." My information is from "Jefferson Davis, American" by William J. Cooper and from "Look Away; History of the Confederate States of America" by William C. Davis.

You do know, do you not, that Jefferson Davis's wife Varina Davis formally adopted a black orphan named Jim Limber?

Again, nonsense. The Davis family may have brought Limber into the Executive Mansion to live with them but any idea that he was 'formally adopted' or a legal part of the Davis family is ridiculous. If he was then why did they drop him like a shot after the war was over? He plays no part in the family after 1865. Could it be because he was freed?

You must tell me how you account for the fact that, even after the war, the former slaves of the Davis family largely refused to leave.

I can't tell you this because it isn't true. The Davis plantation was brought under Union control fairly early in the war and the slaves disbursed.

If all you have to go on are the works of the Kennedy brothers then I suggest you quote from Grimm's Fairy Tales. It's a more reliable source.

Check the facts for a change, Comrade. Jefferson Davis was the one who nationalized industry, siezed private property for government use, and ignored his own laws. Kind of like your namesake. No wonder you admire Davis and Stalin so.

No,,,,I made the post,,not the claim.

YOU,,,show me. :-)

Just a quick reference for you:

"Many southerners thought it [slavery] an evil and manumitted slaves by deed or will, as did Robert Carter and George Washington. Only South Carolina and Georgia, still in need of slaves, stood out against a complete ban on the institution. It was, overoptimisticlly, expected that slavery would die a natural death."

--"Frabic of Freedom 1763-1800, p. 152 by Esmond Wright

Keep grinning.

Walt

Define 'never have lasted'. If you mean slavery would not exist in a free confederacy of today then you're probably right. Would slavery have gone on another 30 or 50 or 75 years? Quite possibly. The fact that the southern states went to great lengths to protect slavery in their state and the confederate constitution is an indication that they didn't expect it to die out soon.

I'd say around 30 years. I think the only place slavery really hung around for a long time was Brazil.

Of course, their are some Mid East countries where it goes on today (usually the Religion of Peace enslaving Christians), but not as a national institution.