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.
Republican presidents took budget deficits more seriously in those day. Losing the 5% or so of the federal revenues collected in southern ports may have been a concern to the President.
So did you find it?
[Approved, February 28, 1795.]
"....By the Constitution, Congress alone has the power to declare a national or foreign war. It cannot declare war 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."
-- From the Prize Cases ruling of SCOTUS, 1863.
Whatever else secession is, it is -not- legal under U.S. law.
<>Walt
That's interesting. What we do know is that a minority of the states attempted to overthrow the federal government between 1860-65, but they failed.
The federal government belongs to all the people. As long as a majority will defend it, it will endure.
Walt
Where does it say that the federal government may not eliminate a state, say by expelling it from the Union?
That was discussed in a "New Orleans Daily Current" editorial on Jan 21, 1861, as follows:
"But why is there such objection made to the withdrawal of the South? We are told by Abolition orators and organs that the South is a poor, miserable region; that most of the wealth, the enterprise, and the intelligence of the nation is in the North; that the Southern people, as was said by Sumner in the Senate, are identified with, and apologists for, and institution essentially "barbaric"; that our section is unable to support our mail system, and that we are pensioners, to that extent, of the federal government; that we are, in short, a semi-civilized, God-forsaken people, a long ways behind the "great North" in the arts, in refinement, in education, in enterprise, and in everything else that constitutes what they call "civilization". One would suppose they would be eager to be relieved of association with a people of whom they have so poor an opinion . . . There must be a reason for this, as there is for every, and the reason is plain enough. All that they say about the South is false, and what is more, they know it to be false. They know that the South is the main prop and support for the federal system. They know that it is southern productions that constitute the surplus wealth of the nation and enables us to import so largely from foreign countries. They know that it is their import trade that draws from the people's pockets $60 million or $70 million per annum, in the shape of duties, to be expended mainly in the North and in the protection and encouragement of Northern interests. They know that it is the export of Southern productions, and the corresponding import of foreign goods, that gives profitable employment to their shipping. They know that the bulk of the duties is paid by the Southern people, though first collected at the North, and that, by the iniquitous operation of the federal government, these duties are mainly expended amont the Northern people."
You in the habit of calling preachers a liar?
Secession was simply a means of formalizing the revolutionary right into a channel that ensures its popular legitimacy. Contrary to the false claims of some modern writers who attempt to construct a wall of separation betwee the two acts, the confederates made no effort to conceal their invocation of the revolutionary right. The Charleston Mercury famously announced this when its headlines read that the "Revolution of 1861" had begun.
False. The supremacy clause means that all parts of the constitution are supreme and that includes amendment 10, which preserves the rights of the states. Therefore the exercise of a state's right is itself a protected instrumentof the supremacy clause.
Also, as I am sure you are unaware, the yankees in Congress put forth a constitutional amendment in early 1861 that would have prohibited unilateral secession. If secession was already unconstitutional, as you allege, why on earth would they need to pass a new amendment making it so? Oh, and for the record, that amendment failed miserably when they voted on it.
You have yet to substantiate as much and in fact all existing evidence suggests that it was a point of heated contention.
and few indeed are the times in history that a war was started over the right to have your pocket picked.
Trade commerce disputes have probably started more wars than any other single factor in all of human history. Just as the old adage says, when goods cease to cross borders armies will.
As if you ever post any yourself, fikus boy. Your tactics are well known around here. You dwell in the gratuitous and unsubstantiated.
That's odd. You seem to forget the period between 1865 and 1877 when it was under Republican rule.
I haven't been to the library yet. But thanks to nolu chan's efforts it does appear that the authenticity of the quote, even as it actually appears in Davis' book, is open to serious question.
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