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.
[NC]A fairy tale, retold endlessly, is a fairy tale.
Odd that the Booth quote receives full faith and credit from someone who insists a twice documented meeting between Butler and Lincoln 'never happened.'
"Three months ago I wrote you about Louisiana affairs...If the professedly loyal men shall draw the disloyal around them, and colorably set up a state government, repudiating the emancipation and re-establishing slavery, I can not recognize or sustain their work. I should fall powerless in the attempt. This government, in such an attitude would be a house divided against itself. I have said, and say again, that if a new state government acting in harmony with this government, and consistantly with general freedom, shall think best to adopt a reasonable temporary arrangement, in relation to the landless and homeless freed people, I do not object; but my word is out to be for and not against them on the question of their permanent freedom. I do not insist upon such temporary arrangement, but only say such would not be objectionable to me."
A. Lincoln., 11/5/63
Certainly. Of course, it all began with the Confederate invasion of Tennessee ang the holding of the 'revised' secession vote under armed guard. Following that was the initiation of these sorts of brutal guerilla warfare tactics by the bastard scum slavers. By the time Milroy got there, it was just a matter of returning the faover, and the areas were particularly lawless. That's what comes of have a largely ignorant and illiterate population. Literacy rates in Tennessee didn't exceed 50% until after Roosevelt and government investment in the TVA pumped vast sums into the backwards and poverty stricker region. In fact, your woebegone ancestors probably didn't have a metal spoon in the house, and probably didn't have much of an understanding of the fact that he deserted the southern Army three times.
Classic southern ignorance and revisionism. In fact, the individual outed for stealing was Judah Benjamin. He was caught at Yale with a trunkfull of students watches, wallets and memorabilia. Naturally he got the boot, but being a son of New Orleans, they had to turn the story around on someone, and they certainly needed a myth to stave off the future of New Orleans to keep in buried in racism and brutality for another century. God only knows why any southerner would have the nerve to face the truth about the old South, but sooner or later some must start.
What is most remarkable about his Excellencies autobiography is the endless account of the stupidity, greed, avarice and predictable failure of those who opposed him. Equally remarkable was his profound belief in the principles of the Declaration of Independence, and his accurate estimation that the Americans of African heritage were worth far more to the future of the nation that the majority of the illiterate, ignorant, racist and bigoted mean whites of the south. History has proven him to be absolutely correct in this regard.
No invasion. Tennessee's properly elected legislature decided to secede and called the referendum. Nor was there a previous secession vote to "revise" as you dishonestly suggest. The only previous referendum was on whether or not to call a convention on the matter of secession. Tennessee voted against it basically as the state split into three regions. The west was adamantly pro-secession from the start and remained so through both elections. Some counties there were even so strong on it that they demanded the ability to secede from Tennessee and join Alabama or Mississippi if the legislature would not act. The east was anti-secession and remained so through both elections (they voted against it in the secession referendum despite your unsubstantiated claims about armed guards forcing them to do otherwise). The swing area was in middle Tennessee, which was marginally against secession at the convention vote but had shifted its opinion in favor of secession after Fort Sumter. The referendum passed due to that shift in opinion, not some armed guard making everybody vote for it.
Following that was the initiation of these sorts of brutal guerilla warfare tactics by the bastard scum slavers.
Quod gratis asseritur, gratis negatur. While comparatively little evidence exists of confederate brutality prior to Milroy's arrival, acts of mass murder and torture by yankee-commissioned guerillas in Tennessee extend throughout the war. The most notorious was yankee Col. Fielding Hurst. He operated from August 1862 through the end of the war, committing vile brutalities throughout. In mid-1863 Hurst's band of thugs captured some confederate POW's, proceded to hack off their heads, and placed them on stakes as mile markers along a road. These and other actions prompted some of Hurst's superiors to urge that he be penalized but the yankee command instead gave him a roving commission to continue his operations that December. Hurst kicked off the new year by having his men capture a physically handicapped child and beat him to death. A few weeks later they executed some more POW's and displayed the corpses in public for a week, allowing them to rot and denying burial. Executions of this sort continued every couple of weeks for the remainder of the year and often involved the prisoners being removed in the middle of the night and their brutalized bodies being discovered the next morning in the woods. In the spring of 1864 his men captured a confederate Lieutenant who was home on furlough. They dragged him from his home in the middle of the night, took him into the woods for torture, skinned his face while he was alive, shot him, and mutlilated the body. This was common for his victims. He often cut out their tongues, eyes, and genitals while they were still alive and then ended it with a shot to the head. At one point Forrest even sent a letter to the yankee command demanding the surrender of Hurst and his men to be prosecuted for their war crimes. The yankees refused and claimed that Hurst had been acting properly.
By the time Milroy got there, it was just a matter of returning the faover
No he wasn't. He was simply continuing what Hurst had started three years earlier. Hurst resigned his commission for health reasons in December 1864, just after Milroy arrived. Milroy's death lists were in circulation by January and continued for the next several months.
In fact, your woebegone ancestors probably didn't have a metal spoon in the house
False. Milroy's death list specifically ordered the yankees to steal all the spoons, as well as other furniture, from his house. They all include detailed lists of valuables to loot for each house. Mine also apparently had a lot of guns because the note next to his name specifically directs the yankees to confiscate those as well.
Though illiteracy was a problem in Tennessee this was generally true of the poor anywhere in the 19th century. But that itself is misleading as even the most remote counties had surprisingly well educated persons there. This was generally true of the local clergy and circuit preachers, who learned to read the Bible in their divinity schooling. It was also true within the populations themselves. Read the secession resolutions that some of the Tennessee counties passed in early 1861 and read the records of their meetings. Far from being the procedings of clueless illiterates, they are eloquently composed arguments for joining the confederacy. You can literally dig up resolutions from the most backwoods farm county of western tennessee and find them quoting Shakespeare.
There is no doubt that Booth promised to kill Lincoln based on the 4/11/65 spech when Lincoln publicly advocated voting rights for blacks.
"Lincoln's address on April 11 triggered Booth's shift from thought to action. In the crowd outside the White House that evening, he heard the President recommend suffrage for blacks who were educated or had served in the Union armies. "That means nigger citizenship," the actor muttered, and he vowed, "That is the last speech he will ever make." He urged Paine to shoot the President on the spot. When Paine refused, Booth turned in disgust to his other companion, David Herold, and exclaimed, "By God, I'll put him through."
-- "Lincoln" p. 588, by David Donald
This account is well supported. What Butler wrote cannot be. It cannot be considered as part of any reasonable interpretation.
Walt
A fairy tale, retold endlessly, is a fairy tale.
You've seen this before:
"Lincoln's address on April 11 triggered Booth's shift from thought to action. In the crowd outside the White House that evening, he heard the President recommend suffrage for blacks who were educated or had served in the Union armies. "That means nigger citizenship," the actor muttered, and he vowed, "That is the last speech he will ever make." He urged Paine to shoot the President on the spot. When Paine refused, Booth turned in disgust to his other companion, David Herold, and exclaimed, "By God, I'll put him through."
-- "Lincoln" p. 588, by David Donald
Booth steeled himself to shoot Lincoln because Lincoln proposed voting rights for blacks. This is well supported in the record.
Walt
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