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.
Since when did heresy become a governmental concern?
That seems to be the #1 rule with all things involving the Lincoln administration. True, his appointees were drafting all sorts of crazy colonization schemes...but old Saint Abe didn't know about it! True, his generals were waging war against civilians...but old Saint Abe didn't know about it! True, his armies were executing and starving POW's in Point Lookout at random and for sport...but old Saint Abe didn't know about it! Considering how little Saint Abe actually did know about the activities of his administration it's a miracle in itself that he was even able to govern at all.
Yet the states had to go thru "readmission" - can't have it both ways.
It is not one per se but rather a greater concern of the society itself. Heresy is like communism - it corrupts the very roots of our society, culture, and freedom. It should therefore be treated accordingly.
You nominating yourself to head up the inquisition?
Simply opposing a dangerous heresy that threatens and is openly hostile to Christianity in no way gives equivalency to or makes one an inquisitor. Anyway, that practice was a church one, not a secular one.
Well since you were moving heresy from the religious to the secular world I thought you would bring the inquisition with it. Still why bother with the trial, just boot 'em all out right? Kind of like what Mitchell was proposing.
You need to read the reconstruction acts again, stainless. None of them referred to readmitting states to the Union. Not surprising since none of the southern states were ever out of the Union.
It would be hard to deny that President Lincoln knew about Mitchell's colonization scheme since it was addressed to him. What is easy to debunk is your claim that Mitchell's proposal was ever administration policy, especially since none of it was ever enacted.
I don't propose to try heretics anymore than I propose to try communists. But that does not mean we cannot oppose them and counteract to impede their acts of hostility against the basic roots of our society. It goes back to an old paradox:
Suppose there exists a fully libertarian state where the government defends the borders, punishes criminals and little else. Implicit to this system is indeed a freedom of speech. Yet one day a group of vikings lands on the shore, ransacks a few villages, and begins to impose the political system of its homeland, Sweden, which is socialist. Further it begins agitate for the Swedish system's replacement of the existing libertarian government, to which it expresses avowed hostility. So the question is what do we do about them? Do we extend to them the protection of free speech even though doing so means that they will undermine and destroy the very same system that gives them that protection? Or do we recognize their avowed and dangerous hostility to our way of life and counteract their efforts to destroy it?
Communism and heresy are dangerous acts because they seek to undermine and overthrow the very same system in which they come to exist. This is especially true when that system openly tolerates and encourages their existence in spite of the fact that they seek to overthrow the very same thing that permits them to continue.
I'm not sure what culpability is involved. President Lincoln was the recipient of the report. You haven't presented any indication that he requested the report, or any indication that he knew what the report contained before he received it. I suppose that firing Mitchell would have been the modern way of dealing with something like this, but instead Lincoln chose to ignore the recommendations. You can blame him for that I suppose.
Where?
What makes you think Woodrow Wilson told you the truth?
Wrong. I know for a fact that my gggrandfather and his 4 brothers volunteered in 1861 - my ancestor volunteered twice, and served in multiple infantry units and the cavalry. Due to desertion or what? All units that were told to volunteer in 1861 were pressed into three year service in April, 1862, and then again in 1864. This was to ensure that no one left due to reaching age limitations while in the service. The 3rd GA Volunteer Infantry was organized in late April 1861, as were numerous other Ga volunteer units. Virginia's governor had asked for support from Georgia, to which our Governor Joseph Brown responded on 19 Apr 1861, "Will do all in my power to get the companies for Virginia."
Governor Brown led the anti draft movement in the Confederacy. He spent the war fighting to retain control of Georgia units, and this missive was just the first shot in protecting him from accusations of not supporting the war as fully as he could have. It is to be noted, that of all Confederate governors, Brown was one of the very few to have a long a successful political career after the war. A career in which he also switched parties to the Republican. He was, by definition, a scalliwag.
On 25 Jul 1863, Gov. Brown wrote Secretary of War James A. Seddon, The 51st Regiment was tendered as one of the twelve, and, with the other eleven and several additional regiments which offered their services all volunteers, was accepted by the President, as organized and officered by the State.
The cas;e of the 51st regiment was a key turning point in the effective secession of Georgia from the Confederacy. It's Col. Slaughter was killed shortly before this letter, and the Confederate commander above Slaughter appointed a new officer for the regiment. Brown objected on the grounds that the troops were 'volunteers,' ie: meaning they enlisted to avoid being conscripted, and therefore had the right to elect their own officers. Although Brown lost this argument, his response was to create a very large list of state officers of all types that he declared expempt from the draft, and in the last year of the war these men refused to serve outside of Georgia. They also cooperated with Sherman on his march on the terms worked out between Brown and Sherman.
In this letter you cite, Brown is justifying his claim to the men having a right to elect their new Colonel, nothing else. Had the men not 'volunteered,' they would have been conscripted into the units of other states. In any case, after they 'volunteered,' into their Georgia unit, they were conscripted into Confederate national service by Davis.
By all counts, including that of Richmond, Georgia had more men who avoided the draft than who served. This, of course, doesn't count the thousands of Georgians who served in the Union Army either as regulars of irregulars.
Confederate monies were not printed until May of 1861, and if their value was deflated, it was due to 'an effort to debase this currency, the North printed counterfeit Confederate money and circulated it in the south.'
Banks in the south, particularly in border regions, printed their own currencies. Naturally, they had to do this in the North as the south had very limited abilities to print anything. Even it's war bonds had to be printed in the North. This caused the Confederacy considerable grief, as the first order of such bonds printed in New York were seized by the Union before they could be delivered to Richmond in the summer of 1861.
Face it, the south was a joke.
Didn't he micromanage the war? The one that should have been over in a few months? The one against a bunch of backwoods rednecks? Youd've thought Nicolay & Hay would have kept Lincoln better informed.
I've never cared much for Wilson - Ronald Reagan was my favorite President. Men like Patrick Henry, Samuel Bryan, John Taylor of Caroline, Samuel Adams, Melancton Smith, Richard Henry Lee, John Lansing, Robert Yates, John DeWitt, and George Clinton are closer politically.
No, his term was up. He joined up on a one year term to serve in state forces - not a three year term. Despite having a wife and three small children at home - and no slaves - he thought enough about defending his country from armed invaders to re-enlist, once in the infantry, and again in the cavalry.
Face it, the south was a joke.
Au contraire! The north had the majority of industries, over 3 million more men of age to serve (besides all the immigrants), a 4 to 1 numerical superiority in numbers, a decided superiority in ships and munitions.
Despite all this, it took 4 years to finally starve the South into submission, and only then after waging war on innocent women, old men and children.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.