Perspective: Die-hard Confederates should be reconstructed

St. Augustine Record ^ | 09/27/2003 | Peter Guinta

[sheltonmac]

The South's unconditional surrender in 1865 apparently was unacceptable to today's Neo-Confederates.

They'd like to rewrite history, demonizing Abraham Lincoln and the federal government that forced them to remain in the awful United States against their will.

On top of that, now they are opposing the U.S. Navy's plan to bury the crew of the CSS H.L. Hunley under the American flag next year.

The Hunley was the first submarine to sink an enemy vessel. In 1863, it rammed and fatally damaged the Union warship USS Housatonic with a fixed torpedo, but then the manually driven sub sank on its way home, killing its eight-man crew.

It might have been a lucky shot from the Housatonic, leaks caused by the torpedo explosion, an accidental strike by another Union ship, malfunction of its snorkel valves, damage to its steering planes or getting stuck in the mud.

In any case, the Navy found and raised its remains and plans a full-dress military funeral and burial service on April 17, 2004, in Charleston, S.C. The four-mile funeral procession is expected to draw 10,000 to 20,000 people, many in period costume or Confederate battle dress.

But the Sons of Confederate Veterans, generally a moderate group that works diligently to preserve Southern history and heritage, has a radical wing that is salivating with anger.

One Texas Confederate has drawn 1,600 signatures on a petition saying "the flag of their eternal enemy, the United States of America," must not fly over the Hunley crew's funeral.

To their credit, the funeral's organizers will leave the U.S. flag flying.

After all, the search and preservation of the Hunley artifacts, as well as the funeral itself, were paid for by U.S. taxpayers.

Also, the Hunley crew was born under the Stars and Stripes. The Confederacy was never an internationally recognized nation, so the crewmen also died as citizens of the United States.

They were in rebellion, but they were still Americans.

This whole issue is an insult to all Southerners who fought under the U.S. flag before and since the Civil War.

But it isn't the only outrage by rabid secessionists.

They are also opposing the placement of a statue of Abraham Lincoln in Richmond, Va., the Confederate capital.

According to an article by Bob Moser and published in the Southern Poverty Law Center's magazine "Intelligence Report," which monitors right-wing and hate groups, the U.S. Historical Society announced it was donating a statue of Lincoln to Richmond.

Lincoln visited that city in April 1865 to begin healing the wounds caused by the war.

The proposed life-sized statue has Lincoln resting on a bench, looking sad, his arm around his 12-year-old son, Tad. The base of the statue has a quote from his second inaugural address.

However, the League of the South and the Sons of Confederate Veterans raised a stink, calling Lincoln a tyrant and war criminal. Neo-Confederates are trying to make Lincoln "a figure few history students would recognize: a racist dictator who trashed the Constitution and turned the USA into an imperialist welfare state," Moser's article says.

White supremacist groups have jumped onto the bandwagon. Their motto is "Taking America back starts with taking Lincoln down."

Actually, if it weren't for the forgiving nature of Lincoln, Richmond would be a smoking hole in the ground and hundreds of Confederate leaders -- including Jefferson Davis -- would be hanging from trees from Fredericksburg, Va., to Atlanta.

Robert E. Lee said, "I surrendered as much to Lincoln's goodness as I did to Grant's armies."

Revisionist history to suit a political agenda is as intellectually abhorrent as whitewashing slavery itself. It's racism under a different flag. While it's not a criminal offense, it is a crime against truth and history.

I'm not talking about re-enactors here. These folks just want to live history. But the Neo-Confederate movement is a disguised attempt to change history.

In the end, the Confederacy was out-fought, out-lasted, eventually out-generaled and totally over-matched. It was a criminal idea to start with, and its success would have changed the course of modern history for the worse.

Coming to that realization cost this nation half a million lives.

So I hope that all Neo-Confederates -- 140 years after the fact -- can finally get out of their racist, twisted, angry time machine and join us here in 2003.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Ten bumps, Walt? Jeez, I never sank that low.

I know. Clearly the mark of a desperate man.

Walt

[LibKill]

Brutal unreconstructed neoconfederate reporting in. I admit, I want to OWN a klintoon. :)

[Non-Sequitur]

One of the sources that Donald lists for that quote was "The Lincoln Murder Conspiracies" by William Hanchett. Given your devotion to Eisenschiml then I would assume you would accept a source that had both 'Lincoln' and 'Conspiracy' in the title, not to mention 'Murder'.

I noticed you finally got around to the 'Lincoln was gay' stories. So tell me, while you're on the subject. what do you think was the real reason why Jefferson Davis brought that young black boy, Jim Limber, to live in the confederate executive mansion?

[WhiskeyPapa]

[Walt] As long as it ultimately provided for general freedom.

It did not provide any right for Blacks to vote, then or ever.

I dunno about that.

Regarding the 4/11/65 speech:

"With Sumner and other Republican critics in mind, Lincoln observed that he was much censored for the state government he'd created in Louisiana.

A few Republicans were especially displeased because black men there could not vote (in fact, that very day Salmon Chase had complained to Lincoln about this, insisting that it was criminal to deny Southern Negroes the suffrage and thus leave them in the political control of their former masters).

Well, Lincoln too was unhappy that blacks couldn't vote in Louisiana. He himself preferred that "very intelligent blacks" and those who'd served in Union forces should have the suffrage: But he wasn't going to throw out Louisiana's government because it failed to enfranchise Negroes. No, it was wiser to accept Louisiana with all its current imperfections and "help to improve it." After all, he said, Louisiana already had a fine constitution which outlawed slavery all over the state, granted black people economic independence, provided public school benefits equally for both races, and even empowered the legislature to enfranchise Negroes if it wanted to. Wasn't it better to work from this nucleus than to dismantle the state government and start all over again? How would the latter course more effectively restore Louisiana to the Union? Help "the colored man" there?

"Grant that he deserves the elective franchise," Lincoln said, "will he not attain it sooner by saving the already advanced steps toward it, than by running backward "ower them?" Moreover, if Republicans rejected Louisiana, they rejected one more vote for the Thirteenth Amendment."

-- "With Malice Towards None", p. 424, by Stephen B. Oates.

The Louisiana Legislature certainly had the -power- to grant blacks the franchise. I mean, blacks do now in fact vote in Louisiana.

Walt

[nolu chan]

And who do you claim actually heard it from Powell/Paine, or Herold or Booth?

Where are your first three snippets in your fairy tale quote???

"at present" - Tidwell

"if he wished" - Pitman

"to the tyrant" - Furtwangler

That's three irrelevant sources.

For information, Pitman, page 45, deals with testimony of Samuel Knapp Chester on May 12, 1865. The quote relates to a meeting in New York and reads: "On Friday, one week previous to the assassination, I saw him again in New York. We were in the 'House of Lords,' sitting at a table. e had not been there long before he exclaimed, striking the table, 'What an excellent chance I had to kill the President, if I had wished, on inauguration day!' He said he was as near the President that day as he was to me."

If it is well-documented, why do you cite such irrelevant garbage???

Now let's deal with the other two.

"will ever make" - William Hanchett

Hanchett sources it to footnote 9 at page 250:

9. John Russell Young, Men and memories, ed. May D. Russell Young, (New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1901), 56; Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington, Village and capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 21.

In the words of the immortal Wlat, that's not quoting Powell/Paine or Herold or Booth. That is not even quoting somebody who purports to have heard Powell/Paine or Herold or Booth. I thought you said this was well-documented?

"Dr. McPherson uses the same source (Hanchett) and says: "

As Hanchett cites no source who heard any party who was there, what McPherson says is irrelevant. It is merely piggy-backing on Hanchett's material.

Where is your documentation???

[nolu chan]

[Walt] even empowered the legislature to enfranchise Negroes if it wanted to.

What do you think, Walt? Did the legislature of Louisiana want to???

What odds would Las Vegas have given on that one?

[nolu chan]

Hanchett sources it to footnote 9 at page 250:

9. John Russell Young, Men and memories, ed. May D. Russell Young, (New York: F. Tennyson Neely, 1901), 56; Constance McLaughlin Green, Washington, Village and capital, 1800-1878 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), 21.

In the words of the immortal Wlat, that's not quoting Powell/Paine or Herold or Booth. That is not even quoting somebody who purports to have heard Powell/Paine or Herold or Booth. I thought you said this was well-documented?

You can help Walt on his desperation mission impossible.

[WhiskeyPapa]

Where are your first three snippets in your fairy tale quote???

"at present" - Tidwell

"if he wished" - Pitman

"to the tyrant" - Furtwangler

That's three irrelevant sources.

As I indicated, these are the sources Donald uses just on page 588 of his book.

Hanchett is cited as providing the material that Paine and Herold heard Booth swear to kill Lincoln.

Why this should be an issue, I've no idea.

When we ran through this exercise maybe a year or so ago, seems like Paine and Herold both testified to this effect before various tribunals; Paine's was maybe at his trial. I don't see any point in wasting any more time on such an incredibly trivial, and well established, story.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

[Walt] even empowered the legislature to enfranchise Negroes if it wanted to.

What do you think, Walt? Did the legislature of Louisiana want to???

What odds would Las Vegas have given on that one?

Few people in 1865 were seriously considering voting rights for blacks.

President Lincoln was in that group.

Walt

[Non-Sequitur]

Now why doesn't it surprise me that you would have Hanchett's book? Is there a Lincoln conspiracy book that you don't have?

[WhiskeyPapa]

[Walt] As long as it ultimately provided for general freedom.

It did not provide any right for Blacks to vote, then or ever.

"It" being the Louisiana Constitution.

I'd be glad if you'd document that statement.

Doctor Oates does say that the legislature had the power to enact the franchise for blacks.

Walt

[nolu chan]

[N-S} Given your devotion to Eisenschiml then I would assume you would accept a source that had both 'Lincoln' and 'Conspiracy' in the title, not to mention 'Murder'.

Is it your contention that:
(a) There was no murder, or
(b) There was no conspiracy?

[Non-Sequitur]

Is it your contention that...

I'll defer to your expertise in conspiracy theories. So who did it? Was it Seward? The Davis regime? The Catholic Church? The Jews? International bankers? Who was behind it all? I'm sure we're all dying to know.

[WhiskeyPapa]

And it prohibits secession...where, exactly?

The supremacy clause.

You're going to have to accept the idea that the Supreme Court in 1863 referred to the secessionists as traitors.

"By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war. It cannot declare was against a State, or any number of States, by virtue of any clause in the Constitution. The Constitution confers on the President the whole Executive power. He is bound to take care that the laws be faithfully executed. He is Commander-in-chief of the Army and Navy of the United States, and of the militia of the several States when called into the actual service of the United States. He has no power to initiate or declare a war either against a foreign nation or a domestic State.

But by the Acts of Congress of February 28th, 1795, and 3d of March, 1807, he is authorized to called out the militia and use the military and naval forces of the United States in case of invasion by foreign nations, and to suppress insurrection against the government of a State or of the United States.

All persons residing within this territory whose property may be used toincrease the revenues of the hostile power are, in this contest, liable to be treated as enemies, though not foreigners. They have cast off their allegiance and made war on their Government, and are none the less enemies because they are traitors."

-- Prize Cases majority opinion.

Walt

[Non-Sequitur]

And it prohibits secession...where, exactly?

And allows it...where, exactly?

[sheltonmac]

If I've pointed this out to you once, I've pointed it out a thousand times: a state no longer in the Union is no longer under the Constitution.

[sheltonmac]

I swear, you people are insufferable at times. Ever read the Tenth Amendment? This isn't rocket science, guys.

[WhiskeyPapa]

I swear, you people are insufferable at times. Ever read the Tenth Amendment? This isn't rocket science, guys.

Seriously now. What would be wrong with saying that secession is/was revolution? Any people have a right of revolution, as a wise man once said.

The flaw in your argument -- the reason it can't be accepted and won't get credence from any fair minded person, is because the Supreme Court rejected it. The Court, I think we can agree, was familiar with the Tenth Amendment. They called the secessionists traitors. It's not rocket science, you're right.

Why on earth should you get a free pass for suggesting that -you- know better than the Supreme Court? If for no other reason, you can't possibly relate fully to their context. It's not fair for you to even try.

If these threads were about the price of tea in China, you should still be taken to task -- because you are simply wrong.

Walt

[WhiskeyPapa]

If I've pointed this out to you once, I've pointed it out a thousand times: a state no longer in the Union is no longer under the Constitution.

Well, let's set a benchmark then. My native Tennessee passed a secession ordinance in June, 1861. Union forces siezed Nashville less than a year later. I don't know, but I would think that Tennessee, as a sovereign nation, had at least some Union troops somewhere within its borders for pretty much the whole war.

So how long, exactly, was Tennessee a sovereign nation? Can you be a sovereign nation if foreign troops are all over your territory?

I think it just as easy to accept another interpretation: the states were never out of the Union for an instant. That IS part of history that the winners get to write.

Losers just get to carp and hope other losers will buy off on it.

Walt

[nolu chan]

[Walt] Few people in 1865 were seriously considering voting rights for blacks. President Lincoln was in that group.

Yeah, he was serious about letting the Louisiana legislature give the vote to Blacks if they wanted to.