Lincoln statue "symbol of liberty''

Richmond Times-Dispatch ^ | Feb. 25, 2003 | Jeremy Redmon

[southcarolina]

City Council members vowed to tell Richmond's Civil War history in a different way, starting with their endorsement last night of an Abraham Lincoln statue for the city.

Richmond has an abundance of monuments to Confederate heroes such as those on Monument Avenue, but it has few reminders of the abolition of slavery, a few council members contended.

[4CJ]

Billbears, don't confuse them with facts. They have a certain image of the saint, and nothing will change their mind. They can recognize the evil within Stalin, Hussein, Mussolini, but not their "precious". To them it doesn't matter about Lincoln's white supremacist attitudes, or his continual push to repatriate blacks out of this country/continent. It doesn't matter to them that Lincoln wanted lands exclusivly for whites, and that his reward to blacks for serving the union army was to plan to send them to Panama to build the canal.

It doesn't matter that Lincoln stated that he could care less about freeing any slaves, that the South could remain out of the union as long as it delivered up the $$$$$. It was all about the money.

[SCDogPapa]

The fact is, Lincoln personally pushed the 13th amendment through the House of Representatives before one of those "southern gentlemen" shot him in the back.

"southern gentlemen" I think not.

John Wilkes Booth was born on May 10, 1838 in a log house. The family home was on property near Bel Air, Maryland, twenty-five miles south of the Mason-Dixon line.

During the Civil War, Booth said he promised his mother that he would not join the Confederate army. Booth did however, undertake some action to support the Confederacy. According to some reports, Booth was actively engaged in smuggling medical supplies to Confederate forces in 1864.

The whole artice may be read here:
http://www.nps.gov/foth/booth.htm

[SCDogPapa]

I understand southern pride in there history and there anstors who fought and died.Most of those men (i believe) thought they were fighting for there honor instead of slavery but, in fact it WAS slavery they fought to preserve

They were fighting for honor and to preserve the type of Government left them by the founders. Most of them fought because their homeland was being invaded, plain and simple.

[Non-Sequitur]

And FWIW, I don't remember one Confederate soldier crossing any nation's borders until we were attacked.

Nor do I, billbears. But when Davis fired on federal soldiers manning a federal facility then all gloves were off. He chose war. The south suffered as a result of his actions.

[Non-Sequitur]

FWIW I think the idea of a Lincoln statue in Richmond is misguided and wrong. Not because I don't respect President Lincoln, or that I believe that there is any reason a statue shouldn't be put up there. Any reason but one, that is. It is a sad fact that statues of Robert Lee and Jefferson Davis and other southern leaders can and have been erected in the North and not a single one of them has been or is currently in danger of being vandalized or disgraced. Yet a statue of President Lincoln would need 24 hour guard because of gentlemen like you. So IMHO President Lincoln deserves better. Keep Richmond Lincoln free if you want. Thump your chests and proclaim victory. Then go to Gettysburg and the Capitol building and admire the statues of the leaders of the rebellion and remember that the same respect that they get up north would be denied to similar Union leaders down south. We're just more adult about it, I guess.

[WhiskeyPapa]

The fact is, Lincoln personally pushed the 13th amendment through the House of Representatives before one of those "southern gentlemen" shot him in the back.

LOL, which 13th Amendment would that be?

ARTICLE THIRTEEN No amendment shall be made to the Constitution which will authorize or give to Congress the power to abolish or interfere, within any State, with the domestic institutions thereof, including that of persons held to labor or service by the laws of said State.--passed March 2, 1861

You know that is not honest.

Lincoln made no secret that he placed maintenance of the Union above freeing the slaves. He also knew that without maintaining the former, the latter could not be brought to pass.

Lincoln saw what Washington and Jefferson could not -- a way to end slavery. Not allowing slavery into the national territories was the beginning of the end of slavery. The slave power knew that too. And the war came.

Consider this letter Lincoln wrote to John Gilmer:

Strictly Confidential.

Springfield, Ill. Dec 15, 1860.

My dear Sir--

Yours of the 10th is received. I am greatly disinclined to write a letter on the subject embraced in yours; and I would not do so, even privately as I do, were it not that I fear you might misconstrue my silence.-- Is it desired that I shall shift the ground upon which I have been elected? I can not do it. You need only to acquaint yourself with that ground, and press it on the attention of the South. It is all in print and easy of access. May I be pardoned if I ask whether even you have ever attempted to procure the reading of the Republican platform, or my speeches by the Southern people? If not, what reason have I to expect that any additional production of mine would meet a better fate? It would make me appear as if I repented for the crime of having been elected, and was anxious to apologize and beg forgiveness. To so represent me, would would be the principal use made of any letter I might now thrust upon the public. My old record cannot be so used; and that is precisely the reason that some new declaration is so much sought.

Now, my dear sir, be assured, I am not questioning your candor; I am only pointing out, that, while a new letter would hurt the cause which I think a just one, you can quite as well effect every patriotic object with the old record. Carefully read pages 18, 19, 74, 75, 88, 89, & 267 of the volume of Joint Debates between Senator Douglas and myself,2 with the Republican Platform adopted at Chicago, and all your questions will be substantially answered. I have no thought of recommending the abolition of slavery in the District of Columbia, nor the slave trade among the slave states, even on the conditions indicated; and if I were to make such recommendation, it is quite clear Congress would not follow it.

[Note 2 Lincoln cites the earliest publication of the text of the Lincoln-Douglas Debates: Political Debates between Hon. Abraham Lincoln and Hon. Stephen A. Douglas, In the Celebrated Campaign of 1858, in Illinois...(Columbus: Follett, Foster and Company, 1860).]

As to employing slaves in Arsenals and Dock yards, it is a thing I never thought of in my life, to my recollection, till I saw your letter; and I may say of it, precisely as I have said of the two points above.

As to the use of patronage in the slave states, where there are few or no Republicans, I do not expect to enquire for the politics of the appointee, or whether he does or not own slaves. I intend in that matter to accommodate the people in the several localities, if they themselves will allow me to accommodate them. In one word, I never have been, am not now, and probably never shall be, in a mood of harassing the people, either North or South.

On the territorial question, I am inflexible, as you see my position in the book. On that, there is a difference between you and us; and it is the only substantial difference. You think slavery is right and ought to be extended; we think it is wrong and ought to be restricted. For this, neither has any just occasion to be angry with the other.

As to the state laws, mentioned in your sixth question, I really know very little of them. I never have read one. If any of them are in conflict with the fugitive slave clause, or any other part of the Constitution, I certainly should be glad of their repeal; but I could hardly be justified, as a citizen of Illinois, or as President of the United States, to recommend the repeal of a statute of Vermont, or South Carolina.

With the assurance of my highest regards I subscribe myself

Your obt. Servt.

A. Lincoln

Now, Billbears you --know-- this; there is no shadow of doubt that you do. So why would you try and put forward some other impression?

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

I understand southern pride in there history and there anstors who fought and died.Most of those men (i believe) thought they were fighting for there honor instead of slavery but, in fact it WAS slavery they fought to preserve

They were fighting for honor and to preserve the type of Government left them by the founders.

Simply not true.

Consider this text:

"The men at the [Constitutional ]convention, it is clear enough, assumed that the national government must have the power to throw down state laws that contradicted federal ones: it was obvious to them that the states could not be permitted to pass laws contravening federal ones...

It did not take long for the supremacy of the Supreme Court to become clear. Shortly after the new government was installed under the new Constitution, people realized that the final say had to be given to somebody, and the Connecticut Jurist and delegate to the Convention Oliver Ellsworth wrote the judicary act of 1789, which gave the Supreme Court the clear power of declaring state laws unconstitutional, and by implication allowing it to interpret the Constitution. The power to overturn laws passed by Congress was assumed by the Supreme Court in 1803 and became accepted practice duing the second half of the nineteenth century."

"The convention was slow to tackle the problem of an army, defense, and internal police. The Virginia Plan said nothing about a standing army, but it did say that the national government could 'call forth the force of the union against any member of the Union failing to fulfill its duty under the articles thereof.' The delegates had expected to discuss something like this clause, for one of the great problems had been the inability of the old Congress to enforce its laws. Surely it should be able to march troops into states when necessary to get state governments to obey.

But in the days before the convention opened Madison had been thinking it over, and he had concluded that the idea was a mistake. You might well march your troops into Georgia or Connecticut, but then what? Could you really force a legislature to disgorge money at bayonet point? 'The use of force against a state,' Madison said, as the debate started on May 31, 'would be more like a declaration of war, than an infliction of punishment, and would probably be considered by the party attacked as a dissolution of all previous compacts by which it might be bound.' Although he did not say so at the moment, he had another way of enforcing national law, which not only would be more effective, but also philosophically sounder. As the government was to derive its power from the people, it ought to act on the people directly. Instead of trying to punish a state, which was, after all, an abstraction, for failure to obey the law, the U.S. government could punish individuals directly. Some person -- a governor, a tax collector, a state treasurer -- would be held responsible for failure to deliver the taxes. Similarly, the national government would not punish a state government for allowing say, illegal deals with Indians over western lands, but would directly punish the people making the deals. All of this seemed eminently sensible to the convention and early in the debate on the Virginia Plan the power of the national government to 'call forth the power of the Union' was dropped. And so was the idea that the government should be able to compell the states disappeared from the convention. It is rather surprising, in view of the fact that the convention had been called mainly to curb the independence of the states, that the concept went out so easily. The explanation is, in part, that the states' righters were glad to see it go; and in part that Madison's logic was persuasive: it is hard to arrest an abstraction."

--"Decision in Philadelphia" by Collier and Collier

And consider also this letter of Madison to Washington:

New York, April 16th, 1787

Dear Sir,

--I have been honored with your letter of the 31 March, and find, with much pleasure, that your views of the reform which ought to be pursued by the Convention give a sanction to those I entertained. Temporizing applications will dishonor the councils which propose them, and may foment the internal malignity of the disease, at the same time that they produce an ostensible palliation of it. Radical attempts, although unsuccessful, will at least justify the authors of them.

Having been lately led to revolve the subject which is to undergo the discussion of the Convention, and formed some outlines of a new system, I take the liberty of submitting them without apology to your eye. Conceiving that an individual independence of the States is utterly irreconcilable with their aggregate sovereignty, and that a consolidation of the whole into one simple republic would be as inexpedient as it is unattainable, I have sought for middle ground, which may at once support a due supremacy of the national authority, and not exclude the local authorities wherever they can be subordinately useful.

I would propose as the groundwork, that a change be made in the principle of representation. According to the present form of the Union, in which the intervention of the States is in all great cases necessary to effectuate the measures of Congress, an equality of suffrage does not destroy the inequality of importance in the several members. No one will deny that Virginia and Massachusetts have more weight and influence, both within and without Congress, than Delaware or Rhode Island. Under a system which would operate in many essential points without the intervention of the State legislatures, the case would be materially altered. A vote in the national Councils from Delaware would then have the same effect and value as one from the largest State in the Union. I am ready to believe that such a change would not be attended with much difficulty. A majority of the States, and those of greatest influence, will regard it as favorable to them. To the northern States it will be recommended by their present populousness; to the Southern, by their expected advantage in this respect. The lesser States must in every event yield to the predominant will. But the consideration which particularly urges a change in the representation is, that it will obviate the principal objections of the larger States to the necessary concessions of power.

I would propose next, that in addition to the present federal powers, the national Government should be armed with positive and complete authority in all cases which require uniformity; such as the regulation of trade, including the right of taxing both exports and imports, the fixing the terms and forms of naturalization, &c., &c.

Over and above this positive power, a negative in all cases whatsoever on the Legislative acts of the States, as heretofore exercised by the Kingly prerogative, appears to me to be absolutely necessary, and to be the least possible encroachment on the State jurisdictions. Without this defensive power, every positive power that can be given on paper will be evaded or defeated. The States will continue to invade the National jurisdiction, to violate treaties, and the law of nations, and to harass each other with rival and spiteful measures dictated by mistaken views of interest. . . .

The national supremacy ought also to be extended, as I conceive, to the Judiciary departments. If those who are to expound and apply the laws are connected by their interests and their oaths with the particular States wholly, and not with the Union, the participation of the Union in the making of the laws may be possibly rendered unavailing. It seems at least necessary that the oaths of the Judges should include a fidelity to the general as well as local Constitution, and that an appeal should lie to some National tribunal in all cases to which foreigners or inhabitants or other States may be parties. The admiralty jurisdiction seems to fall entirely within the purview of the National Government.

The National supremacy in the Executive departments is liable to some difficulty, unless the officers administering them could be made appointable by the Supreme Government. The Militia ought certainly to be placed, in some form or other, under the authority which is entrusted with the general protection and defense.

A Government composed of such extensive powers should be well organized and balanced. The legislative department might be divided into two branches; one of them chosen every. . .years, by the people at large, or by the Legislatures; the other to consist of fewer members, to hold their places for a longer term, and to go out in such rotation as always to leave in office a large majority of old members. Perhaps the negative on the laws might be most conveniently exercised by this branch. As a further check, a Council of revision, including the great ministerial officers, might be superadded.

A National Executive must also be provided. I have scarcely ventured, as yet, to form my own opinion either of the manner in which it ought to be constituted, or of the authorities with which it ought to be clothed.

An article should be inserted expressly guaranteeing the tranquility of the States against internal as well as external dangers.

In like manner the right of coercion should be expressly declared. With the resources of commerce in hand, the National administration might always find means of exerting it either by sea or land. But the difficulty and awkwardness of operating by force on the collective will of a State render it particularly desirable that the necessity of it might be precluded. Perhaps the negative on the laws might create such a mutuality of dependence between the general and particular authorities as to answer this purpose. Or, perhaps, some defined objects of taxation might be submitted, along with commerce, to the general authority.

To give a new system its proper validity and energy, a ratification must be obtained from the people, and not merely from the ordination of the Legislatures. This will be the more essential, as inroads on the existing Constitutions of the States will be unavoidable.

Washington responds:

Mount Vernon, November 5, 1786.

... Fain would I hope, that the great, and most important of all objects, the foederal governmt., may be considered with that calm and deliberate attention which the magnitude of it so loudly calls for at this critical moment. Let prejudices, unreasonable jealousies, and local interest yield to reason and liberality. Let us look to our National character, and to things beyond the present period. No morn ever dawned more favourably than ours did; and no day was ever more clouded than the present! Wisdom, and good examples are necessary at this time to rescue the political machine from the impending storm. Virginia has now an opportunity to set the latter, and has enough of the former, I hope, to take the lead in promoting this great and arduous work. Without some alteration in our political creed, the superstructure we have been seven years raising at the expence of so much blood and treasure, must fall. We are fast verging to anarchy and confusion! ...

How melancholy is the reflection, that in so short a space, we should have made such large strides towards fulfilling the prediction of our transatlantic foe! "leave them to themselves, and their government will soon dissolve." Will not the wise and good strive hard to avert this evil? Or will their supineness suffer ignorance, and the arts of self-interested designing disaffected and desperate characters, to involve this rising empire in wretchedness and contempt? What stronger evidence can be given of the want of energy in our governments than these disorders? If there exists not a power to check them, what security has a man for life, liberty, or property? To you, I am sure I need not add aught on this subject, the consequences of a lax, or inefficient government, are too obvious to be dwelt on. Thirteen Sovereignties pulling against each other, and all tugging at the foederal head will soon bring ruin on the whole; whereas a liberal, and energetic Constitution, well guarded and closely watched, to prevent incroachments, might restore us to that degree of respectability and consequence, to which we had a fair claim, and the brightest prospect of attaining.

With sentiments of the sincerest esteem etc.

[end]

President Lincoln and the loyal Union men preserved the government established by the framers, and your campaign of disinformation is easily exposed.

Walt

[stainlessbanner]

Most of those men (i believe) thought they were fighting for there honor instead of slavery but, in fact it WAS slavery they fought to preserve.

First part correct, second part incorrect.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Glad to see abe cared so much for the slaves< /sarcasm>

(After the death of Abraham Lincoln...)

"On the Avenue in front of the White House were several hundred colored people, mostly women and children, weeping and wailing their loss. This crowd did not diminish through the whole of that cold, wet day; they seemed not to know what was to by their fate since their great benefactor was dead, and though strong and brave men wept when I met them, the hopeless grief of those poor colored people affected me more than almost anything else."

--Gideon Welles

David Herbert Donald in Lincoln describes the scene on April 4, 1865, when President Lincoln went to visit the former Confederate capital, Richmond. Landing without fanfare from a barge on the James River, he was first noticed by some black workmen, undoubtedly freed slaves. Donald notes that:

Their leader, a man about sixty, dropped his spade and rushed forward, exclaiming, "Bless the Lord, there is the great Messiah! . . . Glory, Hallelujah!" He and others fell on their knees, trying to kiss the President’s feet. "Don’t kneel to me," Lincoln told them, embarrassed. "That is not right. You must kneel to God only, and thank him for the liberty you will hereafter enjoy." Quickly word of the President’s arrival spread, and he was soon surrounded by throngs of blacks, who shouted, "Bless the Lord, Father Abraham come."

http://www.whitehousehistory.org/02_learning/subs_9/activities_9/frame_act_903e.html

The 'rough man' from Illinois in 1860

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

Most of those men (i believe) thought they were fighting for there honor instead of slavery but, in fact it WAS slavery they fought to preserve.

First part correct, second part incorrect.

That's not what they said:

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 hand 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."

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

"... a North Carolina mountaineer wrote to governor Zebulon Vance a letter that expressed the non-slave holder's view perfectly Believing that some able-bodied men ought to stay at home to preserve order, this man set forth his feelings: "We have but little interest in the value of slaves, but there is one matter in this connection about which we have a very deep interest. We are opposed to Negro equality. To prevent this we are willing to spare the last man, down to the point where women and children begin to suffer for food and clothing; when these begin to suffer and die, rather than see them equalized with an inferior race we will die with them. Everything, even life itself, stands pledged to to the cause; but that our greatest strength may be employed to the best advantage and the struggle prolonged let us not sacrifice at once the object for which we are fighting."

-- "The Coming Fury" p. 202-203 by Bruce Catton.

"Though I protest against the false and degrading standard to which Northern orators and statesmen have reduced the measure of patriotism, which is to be expected from a free and enlightened people, and in the name of the non-slaveholders of the South, fling back the insolent charge that they are only bound to their country by the consideration of its "loaves and fishes," and would be found derelict in honor and principle, and public virtue, in proportion as they were needy in circumstances, I think it but easy to show that the interest of the poorest non-slaveholder among us is to make common cause with, and die in the last trenches, in defence of the slave property of his more favored neighbor.

"The non-slaveholders of the South may be classed as either such as desire and are incapable of purchasing slaves, or such as have the means to purchase and do not, because of the absence of the motive-preferring to hire or employ cheaper white labor. A class conscientiously objecting to the ownership of slave property does not exist at the South: for all such scruples have long since been silenced by the profound and unanswerable arguments to which Yankee controversy has driven our statesmen, popular orators, and clergy. Upon the sure testimony of God's Holy Book, and upon the principles of universal polity, they have defended and justified the institution! The exceptions, which embrace recent importations in Virginia, and in some of the Southern cities, from the free States of the North, and some of the crazy, socialistic Germans in Texas, are too unimportant to affect the truth of the proposition."

--J.E.B. DeBow, 1860

DeBow was the taker of the 1850 census.

These contemporary expressions are much more compelling than your simple statement to the contrary.

Walt

[stainlessbanner]

ot a single one of them has been or is currently in danger of being vandalized or disgraced.

That's simply not true, Non. We've covered many stories of vandalizated Southern statues - SC, MS, WA, Florida, TN just to name a few.

[jlogajan]

They have a certain image of the saint, and nothing will change their mind.

Bull. One needn't feel Roosevelt was a saint to agree with his smashing Hitler -- and one needn't agree with Roosevelt's socialism to revile neo-Nazis.

One needn't agree with everything Lincoln said or did to revile the treasonous slave holding southern secessionists and their modern "Confederate" loving apologists. They are as reprehensible as the the modern fans of Hitler.

Now the simple fact of the matter is that Lincoln freed the slaves in the entire USA in his single term in office. You nimwads make it sound like it was accidental or unintended. Get real. Sweeping changes like that -- major institutions with deep financial interests don't just disappear without tremendous forces and motivations arrayed against it.

You neo-Confederates are living in either a dream world or total denial. The south stood for slavery, and fell fighting for it. Those are the facts.

[WhiskeyPapa]

One needn't agree with everything Lincoln said or did to revile the treasonous slave holding southern secessionists and their modern "Confederate" loving apologists. They are as reprehensible as the the modern fans of Hitler.

Exactly right. They get way too much of a free pass, both on FR and generally.

Walt

[Non-Sequitur]

Statues of southern heroes vandalized down south? That doesn't surprise me. But what about those up North? They are safe from vandalism.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Statues of southern heroes vandalized down south?

Now that I think about it, General Longstreet's grave was vandalized a couple of years ago up in Gainesville, GA.

Walt

[mac_truck]

FYI

-The composer of "Dixie", Daniel Decatur Emmett, was born in Mount Vernon, Ohio, on October 29, 1815.

...In 1858 he joined the Dan Bryant Minstrels, in which he both composed and performed comic songs and plantation Negro "walk-arounds." The latter were the songs sung at the end of the show as a solo performer walked around the stage.

P. P. Werlein, a New Orleans publisher, had received a Northern copy of "Dixie" in early 1861. Werlein wrote to the composer to secure the Southern copyright, but with the declaration of war he decided not to wait for an answer, pirated it, and published the song in thousands of copies without any payment whatever to Emmett.

So even your favorite minstrel music was stolen from the North.

[SCDogPapa]

Dixie

I wish I was in land ob cotton,
Old times dar am not forgotten,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
In Dixie Land whar' I was born in,
Early on one frosty mornin',
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

CHORUS:
Den I wish I was in Dixie, Hoo-ray! Hoo-ray!
In Dixie land, I'll take my stand to lib and die in Dixie;
Away, away, away down south in Dixie,
Away, away, away down south in Dixie.

Old Missus marry Will-de-weaber,
Willium was a gay deceaber;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
But when he put his arms around 'er
He smiled as fierce as a forty-pounder,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

His face was sharp as a butcher's cleaber,
But dat did not seem to greab 'er;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Old Missus acted the foolish part,
And died for a man dat broke her heart,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Now here's a health to the next old Missus,
And all the gals dat want to kiss us;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
But if you want to drive 'way sorrow,
Come and hear dis song to-morrow,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

Dar's buckwheat cakes an' Injun batter,
Makes you fat or a little fatter;
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.
Den hoe it down and scratch your grabble,
To Dixie's land I'm bound to trabble,
Look away! Look away! Look away! Dixie Land.

[mac_truck]

Yee-Haw! Lets break out the burnt cork...

[SCDogPapa]

Well,,,that's the way Daniel Decatur Emmett wrote it. Thats not the way we sing it though. :)

[wtc911]

I'm confused. Is the vice-Mayor of Richmond a northerner?