Posted on 12/27/2002 6:50:38 AM PST by yankeedame
Friday, December 27, 2002
Lincoln statue won't be embraced by all
The Associated Press
RICHMOND, Va. - Abraham Lincoln is returning to the capital of the Confederacy, much to the chagrin of the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
Five days before the Civil War ended in April 1865, the president and his youngest child, Tad, traveled to still-smoldering Richmond soon after Southern forces abandoned the city in flames. On April 5, 2003, the 138th anniversary of that visit, a bronze statue of the pair commissioned by the United States Historical Society will be unveiled at the Civil War Visitor Center of the National Park Service.
"Here is a national hero, a small boy, and a beautiful city by the James River, all united again," said Robert Kline, chairman of the nonprofit group society, which works on behalf of museums and other groups on projects of historic and artistic value. "This time Lincoln's in Richmond for all time."
Richmond, home to towering statues of Confederacy figures including Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson and J.E.B. Stuart, was abandoned after Union forces led by Gen. Ulysses S. Grant attacked on April 2, 1965.
The Sons of Confederate Veterans view the Lincoln statue as "a slap in the face of a lot of brave men and women who went through four years of unbelievable hell fighting an invasion of Virginia led by President Lincoln," Brag Bowling, the SCV Virginia commander, said Thursday. The group had only recently learned of the statue, and had no immediate plans to protest.
The life-size statue by sculptor David Frech will show Lincoln and his son on a bench against a granite wall. The words "To Bind Up The Nation's Wounds" will be etched into a capstone.
That's not exactly what he said, was it?
He said that Lincoln was the -only- great man he had met in the United States who in no way reminded him of the different color of his skin.
Walt
Then you must have been quite pleased when the arabs crashed the plane into the Pentagon in occupied Virginia and killed all those Yankees in New York.
"Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull and indifferent; but measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined."
I'd be glad to leave it there.
So would I, because it proves how ridiculously false and imaginary your revisionist claims are that he was "very advanced" in regards to race. Bwaaaahaaaaahaaaaa!!!! Douglass is pointing out that Lincoln was the opposite of "very advanced" in his attitude about race from the standpoint of those who wanted to abolish slavery!!! Thank you for finally agreeing with me. Here's the other quote from that speech:
"In his interests and associations, in his habits and thoughts and his prejudices, he was a white man, he was preeminently the white man's president."
This post of yours is so stupid I really don't know why I'm responding other than to tell you that you're a darn liar. So far I have been very kind and have not pointed out your extreme ignorance in regards to the Lincoln assassination. If you truly believe that Booth just got pissed about something Lincoln said and then peppered his head a few days later, then you must obviously obtain the bulk of your historical knowledge from comic books or the back of cereal boxes. It is a very complex and fascinating subject, and historians can still not agree on exactly how deep the conspiracy went. One thing I think most of them would agree on, however, is that your overly simplistic explanation is childish at best.
NO it is NOT a modern day 'judgement'. It was a precise comparison for his time. Re-read my post, I made it quite clear I was keeping things relative to the historical period. I even gave him credit for being a moderate, which he was. I kept everything in context so you could not post some crap line, but you did anyway. Arrghhh.
It's hard to tell with Lincoln though. He also once went to a hospital full of wounded confederate soldiers and offered to shake hands with any that would shake his.
And General Lee showed compassion to wounded and captured yankees.
After the surrender at Appomattox he was shown a picture of General Lee. He said Lee had a good face.
Lee did have a good face.
You may not know that the evening before his final public address, a jubilant crowd gathered at the White House and requested a speech. He made a short speech; he also said "Dixie" was one of his favorite tunes, and had the band play it.
Yes, he did, and you obviously don't know the history behind that little 'joke' of his. Immediately after he requested the song, he said this: "I insist that on yesterday, we fairly captured it. I referred the question to the attorney-general, and he gave it as his legal opinion that it is now our property." - He was not being nice, Walt. He was being a smart-ass, and the crowd loved it.
He also called Lincoln a fraud in 1864, and said ten years after his death that he was prejudiced. But here's the quote in question as you provided it:
"[He was] the first great man that I talked with in the United States freely, who in no single instance reminded me of the difference between himself and myself, of the difference of color."
You see, Walt, you're wrong again. He didn't say Lincoln was the -ONLY- great man he had met in the US that was nice to him, he said Lincoln was the -FIRST-. But that is a minor point. Yes, Douglass says in that quote that Lincoln was nice to him when they met. I didn't dispute it the first time you mentioned it. Here, I'll even say WOW again: "WOW". Just for fun, here's what Douglass said in 1876 at that monument dedication:
"In his interests and associations, in his habits and thoughts and his prejudices, he was a white man, he was preeminently the white man's president."
I'm betting 'prejudiced' is a more modern word also. Did you post quotes from Douglass where he used these words? Maybe I missed it.
Walt
The word "nice" was never used, but thanks for the correction. I misread it myself.
Walt
So where Lee, Davis, Jackson, and every single other southern leader, military and civilian. Should their statues be banned, too? Or are only confederate racists permissible?
Or putting a statue of Jefferson Davis in Washington, D.C.? Oh wait, they did that.
Paris was a city in a foreign country, Richmond was not.
And been replaced by what? The south would have been as dependent on plantation agriculture in 1881 as it was in 1861. Who would have gotten the crop in?
Hmmmm, well let's see how it was under the almighty Empire. For suggested reading you might want to read all of the Slave Narratives collected in the 1930s. Not just the selected ones that paint the South in a bad light but all of them. Doesn't paint your precious union in a good light.
Amazingly enough in all the Slave Narratives I've read not a single person says that they wish that they were still slaves. They speak well of their old owners, and since most slave owners did not mistreat their chattle why wouldn't they? They talk about how hard times were and how their treatment was, but since almost all of them remained down south that is every bit a condemnation of southerners as it is northerners. But not one says, "I wish slavery hadn't ended."
Let's discuss how states that fought for the north as late as 1859 were passing laws banning the very existence of blacks in their state.
Shall we talk - again - about how southern states as late as 1861 were putting bans on free blacks in their state constitutions?
Or shall we talk about Deconstruction? Those wonderful ten years that many whites were disenfranchised to vote and blacks were all but required to vote Republican.
Shall we talk about the Black Laws prior to Reconstruction, or the Jim Crow laws, those wonderful 90-odd years that blacks were disenfranchised?
What aspects of northern ers treatment of blacks would you like to discuss?
Stay on task, bill. I believe that the question was how blacks would have been treated down south. But I'll discuss the way that they were treated, North and south, all day if you want too.
About the only thing they don't have in common is that they don't have a common army - kind of like the USA and the CSA!
If it had happened in 63 or 64, the Rats would not have had a chance in the 64 elections, IF there were elections held at all. Hamlin, a radical Republican would have been President, not the war democrat Johnson. Aside from the sympathy vote the Republicans would have had if there would have been elections, IMHO there would have been no elections in 1864. Seward or Stanton would likely have taken over as dictator with Hamlin as a figurehead, and the Copperheads would have been in prison, not running for office.
No nation in history had ever held elections in the midst of a crisis such as the Civil War. That elections were even held in 64, that there was never a thought of canceling them even when it appeared inevitable that the incumbent party would be rejected, was amazing and totally to the credit of Lincoln and his devotion to the Constitution. Sherman’s taking Atlanta in September changed the dynamics of that election. At that point, the Rats even changed their campaign rhetoric from “peace on any terms and to hell with Union” to “Union first and then peace”. The only thing they kept from their earlier platform was support for slavery. Can you even begin to imagine what the assassination of a President would have done to the dynamics of the nation at that point in time? The entire South would have paid a frightful price. The results and reactions were traumatic enough in April of 65 when the war was already won.
You should read the words of southern leaders of the time. They preached slavery as a positive good, God's way, and the natural right of freemen to hold inferiors in bondage "for their own good" and for the betterment of society. They saw it as the foundation of their culture, or as Little Alec Stephens said, the Cornerstone of their nation. They did not see it as an evil by any means.
The long and the short of it is that Germany and France are independent, soverign nations. The confederacy was not.
The strongest argument against any Frenchman or German arguing that their respective nations are independent and sovereign is the existence of the EU with its common currency and fungible citizenship. For every Frenchman or German willing to argue the point, there are two who will gladly take the other side.
The argument of any Frenchman or German against the effective consolidation of their nations will be: (1) their cultural distinctiveness and (2) the fact that their armies are not yet consolidated (although this is in the planning stages). Those arguments redound in favor of the Confederacy's sovereignty - not against it.
I would disagree with that. Any definition would require other nations recognizing your sovereignity, and not a single nation recognized the confederacy as an independent country. Richmond was, and always has been, a city in the United States so Lincoln had every right to go there.
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