(my g-g-grandfather's regimental flag)
Posted on 09/30/2003 12:19:22 PM PDT by 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.
Give them a break wiz. If they aren't allowed to twist Lincoln's words out of context, they won't have a damn thing to say.
Considering the original constitution of Oregon in 1859, I'm not suprised at racism of people in the far upper West
Then I think your best bet lies in a Constitutional Convention.
the damnyankees APOLOGIZE for MURDERING 92 members of my family just because they had RED skins,
when the damnyankees APOLOGIZE for TORTURING & MURDERING at least 15,000 POWs at PLPOWC (the damnyankee's DEATH CAMP in MD.),
and when we have our LIBERTY!
NOT until then.
Then I presume you are sympathetic to the families of the Japanese civilians killed at Hiroshima and Nagasaki who want an appology from America, think the South owes an appology to all of the Union POWs who died in the South, and think that whites owe blacks reparations for slavery, right? Or can we all move into the 21st Century and realize that the people who were wronged more than 100 years ago, and those who wronged them, are no longer alive to give or receive and appology.
Several of my ancesters tried to leave in 1861 but you sent a large army down here to shoot them instead.
Oh, sure. But it isn't a cop out. If you live someplace you hate, it makes a lot of sense to try to find a better place. You'll notice that if various leftist special interest groups would simply follow that philosophy, then they wouldn't be trying to control every place they are. If you don't like prayer in school, then move to some place where they don't have prayer in school. People spend way too much time trying to change where they are rather than trying to find a place where they'd be happier.
The stereotype that many place on southerners who are proud of their roots, be they good or bad, is too easily excused or ignored. Such criticism is never leveled, for instance, at cherokees, whose ancestors fought with the south, whos owned slaves, and who were guilty of gross injustices within their own culture (something not unique to anyone).
I can understand southerners being proud of their roots up until the point where it turns into anti-Americanism. A lot of Southerners died fighting under the US flag as well as under the CSA flag. To claim that the US government is a foreign power occupying the South seems to dishonor all those men from the South who fought in wars for that "foreign power", does it not?
Bashing Southern heritage is the only PC-safe pastime that is encouraged in public anymore, and it is just as wrong as any other baseless insult.
There are plenty of PC-safe bashing that can go on -- men, Christians, Caucasians, Europeans, etc. It is open season on Southern heritage in large part because it is conservative and Christian. The assumption that Southerners are racist is as much a result of 20th Century segregation and Jim Crow laws that Southerners still alive today fought to preserve as slavery, which happened a century-and-a-half ago. Also, please bear in mind that white conservative northerners are also often painted as racists simply for expressing conservative ideas.
With this type of activity, it is understandable how a superior force could claim so many casualties. However, the issue is not so clear to Civil War historians. The first and biggest problem has to do with the information that different historians base their opinions on. For example, in a historical account written by Carl Sandburg it is reported that Forrest¹s troops stood 6,000 strong. This is slightly inflated from the actual 1,500 that were present. In this same account Sandburg claims that the ³battle ended as a mob scene with wholesale lynching²(Sandburg 247). It was distorted information such as this that was used by the Union as propaganda against the South. After the incident General FIRST NAME Kilpatrick was quoted saying Forrest had ³nailed Negroes to the fences, set fire to the fences, and burned the Negroes to death²(Hurst 321). With reports like this, it is understandable why abolitionist were outraged. The Congressional Committee released a summary after the event. It stated ³that the rebels took advantage of a flag of truce to place themselves in ³position from which the more readily to charge the upon the fort²; that after the fall of the fort ³the rebels commenced in an indiscriminate slaughter sparing neither age nor sex, white or black, soldier or civilian²; that this was ³not the results passions excited by the heat of conflict, but of a policy deliberation decided upon and unhesitatingly announced²; that several of the wounded were intentionally burned to death in huts and tents about the fort; and the ³the rebels buried some of the living the dead.² (Henry 260) In the intensive studies performed by Dr. John Wyeth there were more than fifty soldiers that were present at this battle who gave sworn testimonies contradicting these findings.(260) This suggests that the Union fabricated the truth to aid in its own cause. The fact is that most of what was said about Forrest¹s unethical actions were false accusations. Testimonies from several different sources (both Union and Confederate) claim that there were no movements under the flag of truce, but that they had their positions hours before.here
Let's all remember Fort Pillow. And while we're remembering let's remember Hellmira too?
Almost 25 percent of the 12,123 Confederate soldiers who entered the 40-acre prisoner of war camp at Elmira, NY, died. This death rate was more than double the average death rate in other Northern prison camps, and only 2 percent less than the death rate at the infamous Southern prison at Andersonville, GA. The deaths at Elmira were caused by diseases brought on by terrible living conditions and starvation, conditions deliberately caused by the vindictive U.S. commissary-general of prisoners, Col. William Hoffman. The conditions were inexcusable; the North had more than enough food and materials for its armies, population, and prisoners.Here-------
Fascinating Fact: Before resigning to avoid court-martial for his criminal treatment of sick prisoners, the chief surgeon at Elmira was overheard boasting that he had killed more Rebels than any Union soldier.
Trust me, by the time the Americans got to Okinawa, the Japanese were fighting for their homes. And by the time the Americans started moving through France and Italy towards Germany, the Germans were fighting for their homes, too. That's when the Germans started fielding all sorts of creative rockets and aircraft.
They just wanted to be left alone.
I think "just" is stretching it a bit.
To me it is when they fought with their last breath against the oppressive government of the north. I think someone should buy a plot of land for these brave men and proudly fly the National flag of the Confederacy over their graves
Neither of us have any way of knowing whether they would have embraced the Union or would have continued to curse it until their dying day had they lived to see the end of the war. To assume that they would have remained "eternally" anti-Union may or may not be what they would have wanted. We just don't know. Given the demeanor of the Confederate veterans that I've seen in the pictures and films of the Gettysburg reunions, however, I get the impression that many Confederate veterans were not nearly as bitter against the Union as many Freepers currently are.
Grant was wrong. My g-g-grandfather fought for Independance and Freedom just as his own forefathers did while fighting with General Marion.
The problem is that this has never been possible since the dawn of civilization and was probably not possible in the large bands of hunter gatherers that preceded civilization. The problem is that you can't have a civilization if everyone gets to make their own decisions about how things are run.
I know that last statement doesn't really answer your question, and I apologize for that.
Well, you don't need to apologize to me. But I'd suggest you come up with a fully functional system rather than suggest that the existing system be replaced by something that is poorly defined. Wishful thinking is no substitute for a functional and proven plan.
"Leaving" implies moving yourself someplace else. My grandfather didn't try to declare a little piece of Scotland as a part of the United States. He picked himself up and came here.
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